Richard B. Bronson

Save this date

NEARLY EVERY MAGAZINE IS RUNNING A SPECIAL FEATURE ON Y2K NEW YEAR'S EVE. Be it a time-bending trip across the International Date Line, a moonlit Egyptian evening with the Sphinx, or a sun-drenched bacchanal in St. Barths, celebrities and just plain folk have spent the last year agonizing over what they'll be doing and where when the clock strikes 2000.

Our December issue will be dedicated to the millennium as well, but on a personal note, I'm much more concerned with whom I'll share this special evening than where. Single people (a group to which I belong) have always cringed at the thought of upcoming special events – weddings and business dinners come to mind – that require just the right partner on one's arm. Attractive, but not flashy. Bright, but not aggressive. Affectionate, but not obsequious. Plans for New Year's Eve are wrought with even more angst, because there's a tacit agreement between a couple that they both see each other as part of their future. And when we're dealing with the granddaddy of all New Years, I know I better be right on the money with my choice of a date.

Of course, there are some people who are married, a state into which they entered, perhaps, to specifically avoid this sort of dilemma. As someone who has felt empathic dread when observing married couples seated at a restaurant with absolutely nothing to say to each other, I wonder how this New Year's Eve will pan out. Will it be an evening of reflection and sentimentality? Will these two people re-establish whatever it was that drew them together in the first place? Or will there be a mass filing of divorces?

If, as some fairly bright people believe, all hell breaks loose when the ball drops on December 31, when air traffic controllers lose control, when errant Iraqi Scud missiles darken the sky, when bank vaults lock shut for all eternity, and when the computer responsible for operating the elevator I'm riding goes haywire, leaving me stuck between floors for the rest of time, I only hope that my date has a good sense of humor – and maybe a bottle or two of Evian in her purse.