Party hardly One man’s memory of a New Year’s from hell lingers like a 17-year hangover BY STEVE ALMOND

As a rule, I hate holidays during which one is expected to have fun. The reasons for this are far too complicated to detail here, but they involve a basic contrarian outlook on life, combined with a fear of public vomiting that may or may not date back to my 15th birthday.

It’s hard enough for me to enjoy a quiet evening at home alone, with popcorn and porn. I certainly don’t need some great big societal expectation that I’m going to go out and party like it’s 1999.

I mention this, obviously, because we’re in the thick of the annual New Year’s Eve hysteria, during which every single person you know is furiously planning for an evening of maximum enforced fun.

My friends used to pull the same crap on me. But I’ve managed to keep them at bay in recent years by relating a little story from my long and illustrious history of holiday failure.

I am speaking, of course, about my infamous New Year’s Eve in Baden-Baden.

This would have been 1987. I was abroad, attempting to learn how to curse in a variety of European languages, and I decided to travel to Germany over Christmas break. It was supposed to be a group thing. But my friends wanted to hit Amsterdam first and I’d already bought my train ticket, so we planned to meet up in Baden-Baden, on December 31.

Why Baden-Baden?

Good question.

The original idea had something to do with the proximity of the Black Forest. There also was a large casino. My friend Elliot had seen a brochure that made the city look "totally rad." This was more than enough for the rest of us. We were 19 years old.

The first sign that I might be in for trouble was simple enough: the hostel where we had arranged to meet no longer existed. It was, perhaps fittingly, a butcher shop.

Because I do not speak German (since the language itself frightens me), I was unable to ascertain what had happened to the hostel. And because there was no such thing as a cell phone back in that dark era, I walked around leaving notes at the various hostels in town. They were all packed, anyway, because Baden-Baden was hosting — I kid you not — a convention of teenage accordion players. They were everywhere, like locusts in lederhosen.

In an effort to calm myself, I went to a fancy spa (the city is famous for them), which was very plush and actually kind of relaxing, until I reached this giant mineral-bath area where ... everyone was naked.

It wasn’t the older women, or the various thickly draped bürgermeisters, that disturbed me. It was the hot young German fräuleins, all quite naked and in plain view.

As a reminder: I was 19 years old. The sight of certain bra ads was enough to excite me. Both I and my boner spent a long time in that bath.

By the time I got out of the spa, it was mid-afternoon. I spent a few more hours trying to locate my friends, then made another round of the hostels, hoping to find a room. Every place was full. But I met a guy named Doug at the skuzziest of them. He was from San Diego and he liked to party. These two facts pretty much explained his entire existence.

He said I could crash in his room, so I put my backpack in there.

Doug was going to meet a couple of Australian women for dinner, and he invited me along. I suppose I should mention that the reason Doug was so nice to me, I have come to see, was because I had some hash.

So we met these women — blond, lovely, and very mean. I developed an immediate, intense crush on the one named Fiona.

This made me behave more stupidly than I would have otherwise, though I’m not sure anyone else would have noticed the difference. I talked too much. I made bad jokes. In a moment of truly poor judgment, I did my Dr. Strangelove impression in the middle of a schnitzel restaurant.

After dinner, we smoked some of the hash. The problem was that, in order to transport the hash across national borders, I had resorted to that expert measure employed by many of the world’s leading drug traffickers: I had hidden my stash in a small vial of Tiger Balm.

For those of you not intimately familiar with the practices of leading drug traffickers, Tiger Balm is a topical rub used to treat aching muscles — BenGay to the 10th power, basically.

The problem with smoking hash that’s been packed in Tiger Balm is you wind up inhaling a good deal of camphor and menthol, so your lungs feel as if they are burning.

Shockingly, the hash did not make Fiona fall in love with me. On the contrary, she, her pal, and Doug ditched me when I went to the bathroom.

They had talked about going to the casino for the midnight celebration, so I headed over there. I figured my friends might show up, too. But the casino security wouldn’t let me in, because I didn’t have a necktie.

So I stood out in front of the casino, in the blistering cold, with lungs burning, listening to the sounds of strangers celebrating inside, and hoping to catch sight of someone I knew.

Around 2 a.m., I headed back to the hostel, which was locked. So I had to sneak in through a basement window. I reached Doug’s room and walked in, only to find myself physically accosted by a very angry German, who apparently thought I was attempting to steal his stuff.

I wound up sleeping in an alcove — actually, not sleeping, because some of the teen accordion players were staging a informal jam session down in the parking lot, which involved a lot of accordion solos and shouting, again, in German.

Eventually, I was reported to the manager, who threatened to have me arrested unless I vacated the premises. The downside of this arrangement was that I got hypothermia.

On the bright side, I’m pleased to report that — whatever you might have heard — Baden-Baden looks lovely at dawn.

Those who wish to party with Steve Almond may contact him at www.bbchow.com