We were a motley band of merrymaking misfits, and we assembled at the Boston condo to celebrate the season in festive fashion. One of my very first holiday parties, dubbed rather unoriginally ‘A Festive Gathering’ was in full swing. The happy drone of a party at its height – one of the most glorious sounds in the world, and the reason I do it all – was just beginning to crest, and my incongruous band of friends, co-workers and acquaintances mingled in unexpected bonhomie.
We spilled out onto the rickety fire escape off the bathroom window, guests perched precariously on slatted steel, smoking their cigarettes and who knows what else – I was largely removed from the debauchery of that little bathroom, sadly. We laughed and shouted and sipped at cocktails from plastic glasses, beneath lighted garland and oversize Christmas ornaments hanging from the eve of the wet bar.
Most of us were not yet at the quarter century mark, our youthful exuberance and carefree countenance a sign of our early twenty-something times. We had not yet been saddled with mortgages and babies and jobs with health insurance. On this cold December night the warmth of the condo, the joy of a few good friends, and the promise of romance – ever in the air for a single twenty-two-year-old – was all we needed. It didn’t matter that we were all crammed inside a stuffy little one bedroom condo, or that the oven and its paltry supply of appetizers necessitated the opening of all the windows – we were just glad to be alive, glad to be together beneath the watchful eye of the John Hancock Tower.
Back to Blog
