JANUARY 1

A year ago today, I was walking the grubby streets of Toronto with two enormous Great Danes and a good man we call Skip. It was 8AM, and I was still wearing my three-piece suit from the night before. Charlie and I had partied with her crew for a change, at a lavish restaurant hidden somewhere in a district of the GTA I had never heard of, and can't remember now. But I do recall the washrooms at the establishment. They were so unique and inviting that we slipped away to make love not long after the ball dropped.

When I woke up the next morning I was in a rare and unbelievable mood to do just about anything, despite the wickedly cruel hangover I had brewing in the back of my skull. I knew it wouldn't be long before it would manifest into a beast of a headache that would pretty much render me useless, so when Skip announced he needed help walking two giant dogs, I volunteered and was out the door, with a good-morning and good-bye kiss for Charlie and an arrangement to meet up for breakfast once everyone was up n' hungry. Then Skip and I hopped on a bus heading to the centre of town to pick up the dogs and begin the fresh day. The bus rolled straight for two blocks, then turned left, heading the opposite direction we had expected. I remember thinking "Great, my first move of the new year turns out to be wrong. Good start Wicks."

If you look back on all the previous days that began the previous new years, it's interesting to see how they differ in terms of where you were, who you were with, and what you did on that January 1st.

Back on the first of 2003, I woke up in a motor home in Pasadena, California with Matty n' Flan. We had drank so much the night before that 2 out of 3 of us had pissed ourselves. The first thing that happened upon walking out onto the streets was a stealth bomber flying low and loud (not stealth) over our fragile heads. We spent the day in the midst of the historical Rose Bowl Parade and saw Bill Cosby and Mr. Rogers.

Jan. 1, 2006, was a bitter cold day in London, Ontario, so I stayed in bed with Charlie and watched movies while nursing a viscous gash on my hand that I'd somehow acquired the night before. Maybe it was the bottle of cheap champaign that had been broken over my head when Flan and Franky crashed through the buffet table in a typical drunken play fight over nothin' but love. The only reason I remember this is because I still have a twenty dollar bill, almost completely covered with my own blood, which the bartender would not except.

This most recent first day of the new year, 2010, was spent on a beach in Thailand with Charlie and our friend Crystal. After jumping in the rejuvenating gulf of water and washing off the wild night before, we cruised around with no shoes and an appetite that none of us could seem to suppress. We ate and drank at three different huts on the beach over the course of 5 hours, stopping briefly to feed an elephant and to wash my shorts, which I had pissed in yet again the night before. It had definitely been a different New Year's Eve this time. We spent the entire night drinking Whiskey and sitting front row, centre of a talented blues-reggae band, who invited me up on stage to sing "Hey Joe" and then played on until 2AM, ending with the greatest rendition of Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" I have ever heard. Afterwards we all burned one down, I fell off my bar-stool and scraped my arm horribly, and Charlie and I got lost walking home. It was a banner evening. It's too bad every day can't be January 1st, but on the other side of that coin, I'm glad every night isn't New Year's Eve.