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Let's be honest. New Year's Eve is often one gigantic Amateur Hour that starts in sticker shock (whoa whoa whoa, it's $90 to get into this crappy bar?) and ends in disappointment.

And it's a known statistic that every New Year's Eve, 47 percent more asshats will flood into the public houses of your city/suburb/rural town. Even if you live in Beefhat, Mont., the hermit who lives in that Buick Skylark by the train tracks will be at your local pub on New Year's Eve, being annoying.

And when you're single?

Forget about it. New Year's Eve is an advancing Apache war party and you're a confused, lost ranch hand stumbling around the plain, weak from dehydration. It's a goddamn bloodbath.

The way I look at it, single people have one of three options. Stay with me, here.

1. Enjoy Making Your Coupled Friends Miserable
Ever since some sailor kissed some flapper in Times Square while the ball was dropping, the pressure not to be alone at the stroke of midnight is Nicolas Cage-level intense. It's as if being unable to locate someone to kiss when the clock struck 12 would turn us all into flying rats who reproduce asexually and never know love. If brutality had an essence, this pressure to mash face at midnight would be it. Who would invent such a ridiculous construct?*

But, hey! You know what? ENOUGH! So you're all alone in the world, I say AWESOME. Go out, stay in -- hey, you're single, you can do whatever the f**k you want. Your married and your coupled friends? Maybe they're doing what they want, or maybe they're in New Jersey. Ha ha ha, have fun at that huge boring dinner party, you coupled losers -- I'm staying in and watching "Nurse Jackie" because I feel like it!

Sure, they may say, "No, it's the best, we do whatever we want and then we kiss at midnight and we're happy and we're so glad we have each other!" And this is when I like to casually remind them that they're leaving the bar because they have to go to a co-worker's potluck an hour-and-a-half away in Dude Where Are We, Queens. Oh, me? I'm gonna sit here by the fire and black out in this bar and speak at progressively louder volumes. Single people 1, coupled geeks 0.

2. Enjoy Being Miserable by Your Damn Self
OK, so fine. We singles may act like we're having a great time with you, Coupled and Married Friends, but inside, we're dreading the fact that when you leave for that potluck, we're probably going home to ring in the earliest hours of the first day of the new year by masturbating. And hey, if you want to spend New Year's in your apartment, alone, listening to sad music and nursing a nipple of bourbon, I say do it.

Because, look, I'll level with you. I've had a very, very poor track record when it comes to being single on New Year's Eve. Staying in makes sense. Hell, New Year's is my annual Waterloo.

How so? Oh, how about finding out that your girlfriend picked up a little meth habit? Too patently crazy for you? OK, how about this -- I once got dumped on New Year's Eve. It was pouring rain. I cried on a street corner. Oh my God, just writing this down makes me want to puke.

Because of these wounds, and the many years of just generally depressing New Year's Eves, I feel like I have carte blanche to just sit around and mope if I want. Sometimes the best night in the world is one spent at home. Get some good food and good hooch and send dramatic text messages. I prefer lobbing a My Heart Is a Lonely Hunter text at 3 a.m. To my mother's boyfriend. Gotta keep him on his toes!

3. Just Go for It, You Single Bastards!
This is what I'll probably end up doing -- and what you should too: embracing my singledom as a glorious one-night free pass to act like a moron.

Let's go to a bar! Why not end our year in the place we spent most of it? Oh, you're not an alcoholic? Well, even better! Tonight's the night you can pretend to be. Maybe they're not the best places to meet someone and spend New Year's Eve, but bars have single people and alcohol, and these are the exact two ingredients we need! Hey, if you want to meet a potential pederast, you go to church. If you want to potentially mash face with a drunk person, you go to a bar.

F**k it, let's go to a party. Let's let go of our middling career anxiety and crushing loneliness and revel in the spaciousness of being single inside a tightly packed kitchen! Oh hey, my elbow just grazed that gal's boob, wheee! Flirt for God's sake. Realize how lucky you are and use this foreknowledge of your potentially awesome year to come to be the person that other people gravitate to because you're having so much fun. (Just don't pick a gig heavy with couples. These parties are called Mouse Cages. They blow.)

In Sum
Single people, the world's your oyster. There are no bad decisions when all the decisions are your own. The marrieds and the coupled may have love in their lives, but they're still talking to their significant other's manager in front of a fireplace that's making them sweat, sipping a watered-down vodka tonic. Ha ha, suck it, lovers!

A whole new decade awaits. Anything can happen. But only if you're single.

*Republicans
[Redacted] is the resident Single Guy writer for Lemondrop. As he is talented AND good-looking, we often resort to Wiccan spells to keep him from meeting anybody nice so he'll be stuck writing dating columns for us. You can send him hate mail and love letters here.

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