Why can’t it always be January 1st between midnight and 1:00 am? That convivial hour when everyone on the subway is smiling and talking to everyone else on the subway, when no one cares if you are twelve years old or fat or black or a cop or from Jersey, when you’re still happy drunk and not nappy drunk, when the parts of the night that you’ll regret when you wake up haven’t happened yet, when you still smell good, when people say “Happy New Year” and actually mean it, when the guy sitting next to you is your temporary best bud even though you don’t and will never know his name, when you think that maybe the world isn’t such a shitty place after all. Why can’t it just always be like that?

Ian Gabriel