Here's what's funny. I don't remember what my husband and I did on New Year's Eve. I suppose we were at the ski house one year, or went to some party, maybe just stayed home. The point is: It doesn't matter what you do when you're married. Because you're married.

I do remember my husband's friend telling me her parents always played tennis on New Year's Eve. They reserved an indoor tennis court, played doubles with their best friends, then broke out chilled champagne and went home.

I was impressed. It sounded so civilized.

I don't remember what I did the first year after I was divorced. What I do remember of my dating years on New Year's Eve was anything but fun. I remember standing freezing in a slinky dress and high-heeled shoes, in slush in a New York street with my boyfriend, trying to catch a cab.

I remember another boyfriend, another time, getting caught between parties at midnight, trying to catch a cab.

Then there were the years I didn't have a boyfriend, plenty of them. Some years I gave a party, alone, and tried to get my guests to skip the kissing-at-midnight part. One year I stayed home alone, and got a surprise midnight phone call from a drunk-dialing ex-boyfriend.

I eventually learned that the worst part of New Year's Eve in New York City is transportation, so that eliminated going to the West Village or Soho, and forget about Brooklyn or the Bronx.

So I went (alone) to parties on the Upper West Side, walking distance, and tried to leave before the midnight kissing part.

My favorite neighborhood party was at a Victorian house near Central Park. The host was a college professor, the wife a painter. The guests were smart, funny, older, knew how to drink without getting drunk. Many of them abstained until midnight, at which point they stripped down to running clothes and hit Central Park for the four-mile road race.

Only then, when the race was over and they were back inside, did they indulge in the host's heavily spiked punch.

Name dropping time: One New Year's Eve I spent with Kurt Vonnegut and his wife, the photographer Jill Krementz, and a scholar named Vieri Tucci. That was it, the four of us. We had dinner at Vonnegut's brownstone in Turtle Bay. We had some champagne. We talked at lot. At midnight we sat in the living room and watched the ball drop on TV. I don't recall anyone kissing. At least I discovered that famous people sit home and watch the ball drop on TV. Even in New York City.

Some years I just gave up on New York and went off to a cabin I had in the country. Alone. I had found it a good solution for any Saturday night, because Saturday nights in New York City always made me feel lonely. The old Julie Styne song said it:

Saturday night is the loneliest night in the week
'Cause that's the night that my sweetie and I
Used to dance cheek to cheek
I don't mind Sunday night at all
'Cause that's the night friends come to call
And Monday to Friday go fast
And another week is past
But Saturday night is the...

Saturday night in the country, on the other hand, was just another night. Chop wood, keep the stove hot, let the dog out, try to stay warm, put more wood in the stove, read a book, maybe hear an owl hoot, let the dog in, go to sleep.

New Years Eve is, in fact, Saturday night times ten. So being at the cabin on New Years was a way to avoid the whole thing. What New Year's Eve?

Because here's a true thing: A woman alone will always get invited somewhere for Christmas, and for Thanksgiving. It's the old "Oh, we don't want you to be alone."

But on New Years? Chances are that no one is going to notice a woman alone. Except, perhaps, your gay friends.

Down here in Miami, where New Year's Eve means (I'm serious here) a $25,000 Sky Box at the Gansevoort South, or a $13,000 rooftop cabana that fits 20, I know that I'll always be part of a couple.

Well, I'll be the third wheel of a couple: Billy and Fernando.

They like my cooking, especially my "famous" mac n cheese. My "famous" apple pie. My "famous," well, you get the idea. They tolerate my rambunctious dogs, and my poor housekeeping. They've seen me without makeup. And they still love me.

Even if we agree to do nothing, we'll do it together: their house, my house, or just on the phone at midnight.

At times like this, it really means something to have your closest friends as close as possible. Here's hoping you have close friends with you on New Years, if you can't spend it with the love of your life.