Birthday Thoughts

I had a BIG OLD case of writer’s block trying to start this post. I was staring blankly at my iTunes wishing I could write when I thought, “OH, I should listen to some Squirrel Nut Zippers! That’ll help! So help me God, I don’t know what my logic was there.

My twenty-seventh birthday is November 25^th, 2011. I will officially be in my late twenties. This struck home the other day when I realized that early episodes of “Friends” were about people my age or marginally younger. This revelation was followed by “Oh, God. I hope I’m not Ross.” Advanced degree in something obscure? Check. “Not conventionally attractive,” in an ethnic way? Provided “cracker” counts as ethnic, check. Obsessed with a Jewish waitress? No, but it’s the kind of thing that WOULD happen to me. Let me warn you: figuring out that you’re a louder, bawdier, drunker, more Episcopalian David Schwimmer doesn’t make aging any easier.

It’s also going to be a sad birthday because Mom doesn’t have a phone. (“AT&T says I owe them three hundred dollars! We’ll see who gives in first.”) Mine was, apparently, a difficult birth, which my mother lovingly recounts every year like a war story. “Oh, around this time eight years ago, the midwife said she couldn’t do it, we’d have to go to the hospital.” “Twelve years ago, we were driving to the hospital in the sleet!” (This is a bigger deal in Texas than you might think.) “Sixteen years ago, the doctor told me he didn’t need to do an episiotomy, it was already torn.” I’ll spare you the details of “I had cold sores all over my face” and the destruction my skull allegedly wrought on her tailbone. Anyway, the story of The Birth is very much a part of my birthday, much like the recitations of the Ten Plagues are central to Passover. It’ll be sad not to hear it this year.

Being born on or near Thanksgiving, predictably, sucks. Not only does it mean I was conceived on Valentine’s Day, but no one ever is around or in the mood to do anything on my birthday. I used to sulk about this, but this year I’ve taken the opportunity to create Birthday Week:

Thursday November 24: Thanksgiving. I get a turkey leg because it’s “almost my birthday.”

Friday November 25: Actual Birthday. Giant Camel, Meg, Ex-Co-Blogger Eddie, “some of the West Philly hipster queers if they’re around,” and I are going to Ethiopian food, bowling, and the gay piano bar. Can you imagine? A gay piano bar AFTER a holiday and DURING a three day weekend? “Okay. Ooooookay. We’re going to have a drink, then we’re going to do ‘Thank You For Being a Friend’ again, then another drink, then ‘Those Were the Days,’ then drink, then ‘Moon River.’”

Saturday November 26: GWAAAAAAR! I love Gwar, and if you don’t, fuck you.

Sunday November 27: Rest; cake.

Monday November 28: “Alternate” birthday for people who were out of town for Actual Birthday. Saints play Giants. A shot for every touchdown, field goal, or safety. Will there be black and gold temporary hair color? Is the Pope a shithead?

Tuesday November 29: Write obscene fan mail to Zachary Quinto. LIBERAL use of construction paper.

Wednesday November 30: Rest; eat entire Whitman’s sampler in bed.

Thursday December 1: Philadelphia’s premier lesbian bar, Sisters, has a Thursday special: for ten bucks you get eight drink tickets and access to the buffet.

So, that’s my plan. 27. Halfway to 54, which is halfway to having been dead for twenty years.

I've reached An Age...

So… I’m gonna be twenty-seven in two months. This leads me to two points: I’m going to a Gwar concert the day after my birthday and I’m incredibly excited, and I’ve reached An Age. Let me explain An Age. One of my favorite lines I ever wrote was in a blog entry about how my mother is gloomy, and I “quoted” her as saying of the aging process, “you’re lucky to have a week between acne and gout.” I was absurdly pleased with myself for this phrase, so it sucks to be An Age now and realize it’s not true. I’m clearly Getting Older, but my acne is still hanging around, like the last party guest who’s still on the couch at three AM, opening the last bottle of wine and telling you about how the price of gold “is only going to up from here.” I actually bought a blackhead extractor today, you know, so I can dig oxidized oil out of my face. 

Aside from my face, which still has the fresh inflamed bloom of a sixteen-year-old’s, I’m getting older. I’ve been logging these “I Feel Old Moments” and putting them in a Word document titled “Blog About This if the New Goddamn Book Ever Gets Done,” so – now that the new Goddamn book is done – here’s a chronicle of my increasingly headlong dash to the grave. I can only hope that there’s some kind of obscure relationship between my career getting better and my turning into a decrepit old man: I’m perfectly content to be a head in a jar with Danielle Steel-level sales figures. 

- I wrenched my shoulder the other week while scratching my back. The implication is that there are parts of my body that I simply can’t pay attention to anymore because they’re now “too distant,” despite being part of my body. The historian in me thinks about how this is like the Roman Empire abandoning Britain in 410 because it was too expensive to defend. The paranoid in me imagines being attacked at ankle level by a Yorkshire terrier and being unable to do anything about it because it’s too short to reach. 

- I was walking to work the other day and passed a sex store. I thought, “Oh, wouldn’t it be funny to skip work and go in there and poke around?” Then I thought, “That sounds infinitely, infinitely more stressful than just going and teaching kids about the SAT. I don’t want to pretend not to be shocked so the cashier won’t come over and try to guide me gently through the process of selecting a toy that really works the clitoris.” Three years ago I would have gone in and giggled at all the things people put in their butts. (Butts! Tee hee!) Now even thinking about other people’s sex lives makes me very, very tired. 

- A corollary to this: some people are apparently trying to force watersports into the porn mainstream. Not only does this annoy me because “back in my day” that was a fringe behavior, it annoys me that I’ve told at least three people, at length, about how annoyed I am about this. I’m turning into one of those people who rants about declining standards. 

- I’m paying attention to the presidential primaries, which arguably many of the candidates aren’t doing. 

- I can clearly remember staying up late to watch “Aeon Flux” the cartoon on MTV because I was about to be a teenager, and teenagers did cool things like watch weird cartoons with titties on MTV. Now people outgrow MTV by about eight years old and try to lose their virginities by twelve because teenagers aren’t virgins, how lame. 

- I look at the teenagers I teach SAT to and think about how they have their whole lives in front of them. I look at teenagers on the street and wonder why they have to be so fucking loud and weird. 

- Did I buy women’s laxative because it was half the price of gender-neutral laxative, and because I didn’t have anything to prove to the check-out guy at K-Mart? Did I take them one day when I was in a bad mood because I thought maybe “a good clean-out” would cheer me up? Did it work? Yes, yes, YES. 

- When Meg and I were getting cabin fever and frustrated with the new book, I didn’t fantasize about going out and getting wasted and making out with a dumb guy in a bar bathroom.* I fantasized about getting wasted and watching a BBC Mystery! special. 

- I can’t spell a fucking thing anymore, which I’m going to go ahead and chalk up to senility. I used to be a champion speller in elementary school; yesterday I wrote “bicycle” as “bicicycle” because I couldn’t remember if it was an I or a Y and then I just got carried away in the moment… 

*Are you with me on this? If you’re going to make out with a stranger it’s somehow more fun if they’re dumb as a post. I guess it’s because you know you have their full attention. 

The best part about all this Feeling Old business is that it’s freeing. I don’t care about being cool anymore, and increasingly I don’t even care if I look presentable when I leave the house. I used to wonder how 60-year-old men could walk around in jean shorts, black socks, and psedo-Birkenstocks. Now I realize it’s because it’s hot, they don’t want to get little chafe injuries on their feet from the straps, and because they’re sixty, dammit. Anyone who cares how you look while getting a half-price senior breakfast at Denny’s is not your friend.