Here’s a Tall Glass of Pressure to Ring in the New Year

Talk about pressure. This time of year, that must-have-a-date-on-New-Year’s-Eve feeling nags the romantically unattached like a pain in the neck. But add this year’s mad millennial hype, with its tales of couples dashing off to the Pyramids, cruising to Antarctica or indulging in $100,000 packages at the Ritz, and now you’re talking real pressure.

“I have been going through such anxiety for the last couple of days,” said Kevin Kearin, a 42-year-old marketing executive who says he is one of the last single, childless people in his circle of college friends. “I don’t want to be a lonely person on New Year’s Eve. I feel like [the monster] in the movie ‘Young Frankenstein.’ ‘I need a woman. I need a woman.’ I would love to find a woman, rent a couple of movies and stay in for the night.”

For some, being dateless on New Year’s Eve is worse when it feels as if there’s a lotta love going around . . . for everyone but you.

“I know 26 couples who got engaged recently,” said Heather Gaines, a 22-year-old youth counselor who will spend New Year’s Eve rehearsing her role as bridesmaid for a New Year’s Day wedding. “I don’t know if it makes it more of a reality that people are going into the millennium in love and I am not, but it is not an understatement when I say I feel like everyone is engaged but me.”

Humorist Merrill Markoe, author of “Merrill Markoe’s Guide to Love” (Grove Atlantic, 1997), said being single on New Year’s Eve is like running an obstacle course. “You have to go somewhere,” she said. “There is nothing going on unless you go somewhere. What I am going to do for New Year’s is memorize all 159 Pokemon. I will be the only woman in my demographic who will know this.”

And even those who count themselves part of the millennial resistance movement have a palpable awareness of what is expected.

“I know that the thing you are supposed to do is have a date,” said Tamara Thompson, a 34-year-old business consultant and avid in-line skater, whose crystalline blue eyes and chiseled features make it hard to believe she is dateless for New Year’s Eve. “I don’t want to have a random date because they are too random,” she said. “I actually refuse to give in to the pressure. I saw an ad for the Eagles [concert] . . . and I actually thought, ‘You can be there and no one can tell you aren’t with someone.’ It wouldn’t be so clear: ‘Oh, look, she doesn’t have a date. What a loser.’ ”

But Thompson has made other plans. She will go to a bash where, at the stroke of midnight, revelers are planning to disrobe and jump into a swimming pool. (Sorry, can’t divulge the location.) “I will probably leave before midnight,” she said.

Even the normally confident say the prospect of vying for a New Year’s Eve companion is about as appealing as self-flagellation with a razor strop. “I get the feeling that girls are probably sizing it up like car shopping,” said Joel Ross, a 29-year-old actor who has no plans yet. “You would really have to impress them . . . get out all the bells and whistles.”

Still, a date for the millennial moment is not foremost in everyone’s mind. Some single folks simply aspire to survival. “I was driving home from a party last year and I saw two people run stop signs,” said David Frank, a 38-year-old artist and photographer. “I like to stay home anyway. My group of friends will probably just have dinner together.”

And anyway, if this New Year’s Eve passes without a date, there is always next year. Technically, the new millennium doesn’t begin until the first moment of 2001.

Which gives everyone another year to work on getting a date . . . or to fret about it.

Birds & Bees is a weekly column on relationships and sexuality. Kathleen Kelleher can be reached via e-mail at kellehr@gte.net.