Wanted: Someone To Kiss Me On New Year’s

I should begin this by pointing out that I think the overall tradition of kissing the nearest person to you — including friends with whom you do not want to kick-start some awkward period of sexual tension — is a stupid one. If it were my holiday, there would be some ceremonial eating of cake or taking of a shot at the stroke of midnight, not the swapping of possible herpes with a bunch of randos at the house party/bar you happened to be at that night. That being said, I know that it’s not me who gets to decide. And whether or not I feel that the kissing thing is ridiculous, it is me who is going to end up looking like sad, kissless loser come 2013. I get it.

To that end, I’d like to find someone right now whom I can lock lips with when everyone ends that famous little countdown. I’m not saying we have to be some Disney princess story that ends with us riding home in some magical, oversized pumpkin and getting married later that week in some extravagant ceremony featuring singing mice. I’m way chiller than that. Though if you were down to maybe go get some buffalo wings at the corner dive bar after we get through all of this high-pressure liplocking, I would be more than happy to join you. I’m just looking to have a good time and not feel like a leper, it doesn’t have to be difficult.

For your part, I would prefer that you be good-looking. I know, I’m incredibly shallow. But seriously, it doesn’t really help my cause if I’m kissing someone at the drop of the ball to show off to all my friends/acquaintances/fellow party-goers and they look like something which recently crawled out from a swamp next to a nuclear plant. You don’t have to be Tom Hardy, you can just be passably cute and charming enough to integrate yourself into the pre-established social dynamics of whatever party we’ll be attending. I don’t want you to leave everyone with an incredibly firm impression and opinion of you. You can just be “that nice guy who came and made out with our friend and then disappeared again.” That would be fine.

This isn’t to say that, if we feel some amazing chemistry during the actual smooch, that we can’t keep in contact. At that point, the arguably difficult part of meeting all of my friends and party-buddies will have been accomplished on New Year’s — as well as a verification that we do, indeed, enjoy kissing one another — and dating will be that much easier. I’m more than open to go getting some dinner sometime in January if all should go well, but let’s not write that into the contract. It doesn’t have to happen that way.

In all seriousness, there is just an acute loneliness that tends to develop around the holidays, one painfully and obviously punctuated by the kissing ritual on New Year’s which seems to go around the party with a stamp and mark “together” and “alone” on people’s foreheads in bright red. I have been doing pretty well this year, have made it past Thanksgiving and Christmas with what can only be described as a steely, dignified resolve. But I just want to start the new year with a sense of optimism, a fresh beginning sealed with a kiss of a handsome near-stranger. I know that makes me a bit pathetic, a bit too dependent on superstition and the approval of others, but I don’t care. This year, I just want to be kissed.

So I hope that you will understand my predicament, and perhaps be in a similar one yourself. I hope that you understand how important it can be to feel that someone is there for you when everyone is turning around to the one they love for a congratulatory affirmation of another year over. I promise you will be well-compensated in alcohol, party food, and a warm kiss from a decent-looking girl with a morbid sense of humor and good taste in cocktail dresses. I hope you can be cool about the whole “I put up a want ad for you on the internet” thing. But I would guess you’ll be pretty understanding about how we’re going to come into one another’s lives here — I mean, after all, everything happens on the internet. It’s 2012. Err, well, 2013.

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