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Well. I'm 41. How interesting. It seems like a perfectly reasonable age, given how long I've been alive, but it's still a bit strange. I really never expected to be 41. Or 40. Or even 35. My conception of life ended at about 30. I didn't really have any idea of what happened after that, getting run over by a bus or falling into a coma or whatever, I just never really thought about life after 35 as being, well, real. But here I am, 41, and still alive. And I'm not even married to an insurance salesman. Life is much better than I thought it would be when I was 14.
I'm terrible with dates, most especially birth dates. Every year, my own birthday sneaks up on me, unawares. This year, I didn't get around to inviting people to go out with me to celebrate until today. This is better than many years, where I forget all together. It was a very nice dinner. DDB, Pamela, Erik, Christopher, Martin, Eileen, and Beth went to Broder's Southside Pasta Bar with me. The food was pretty good (though I wish I'd ordered a different entree), and the company was extremely convivial. I don't know what Christopher thought of the thing, and I'm anxious to find out. Christopher is my best friend who isn't a fan. Everyone else was a fan (sf fan), of course. I had a lovely time.
40 wasn't a difficult birthday for me. I wasn't particularly surprised or unhappy to turn 40. Although it was one of those big zero birthdays, 40 wasn't a significant number as far as I was concerned. It was 30 that gave me the most trouble. "Never trust anyone over 30." I didn't even believe in life by 40. 30 was the birthday I dreaded. So, of course, it crept up upon me, unawares.
I was born on Queen Victoria's birthday. In Canada, it used to be a holiday. This is back before they moved all our holidays to Mondays, back when I lived in Upstate New York, just this side of the Canadian border. I was always envious of the kids across the border who got the school day off on my birthday. It hardly seemed fair. I've never really gotten used to this Monday holiday nonsense. Birthdays are on the day of your birth, Memorial Day is on the 31st of May, Armistice Day is called Veterans' Day, but it's still on November 11th, and they toll the bells on the eleventh hour. February has Washington and Lincoln's birthdays in it, and we celebrate them both.
It's been a long time since all that was true, of course, but I don't seem to be able to adjust. Of course, since I can't keep track of dates in the first place, not being able to adjust to such changes makes a kind of sense. The oddest thing about the new Monday holiday thing, from my perspective, is that my birthday is often over the Memorial Day weekend.
I used to live with Peter Larsen. I miss him, still. Opposites attract, I guess. An ex-biker, Peter's best friend was someone he'd known since grade school, Sam Chase, who was an investment advisor -- and about as straight and normal as possible while remaining human. I liked Sam. His wife, Rose, was busy creating Home Beautiful from magazines. I found her nice, annoying, and intimidating all at once. She cared rather too much about interior decorating to be a close friend. We usually ended up spending Memorial Day out at the Chase's, at a barbeque. Sam and Rose were the perfect suburbanites, and I guess Peter and I offered a bit of spice. Sam genuinely loved Peter, no doubt about it. How Rose felt, I never knew.
I woke up on Thursday, and realized that my 30th birthday was going to be the coming weekend, the day on which Peter and I had agreed to go out to the Chase's for the annual barbeque. I realized that I had scheduled my 30th fucking birthday to be a fucking barbeque in a fucking suburb. I was fucking appalled. I don't like suburbs. I don't particularly like barbeques. I didn't want to turn 30. The idea of making polite small talk with Rose about gardens and carpets on my 30th birthday was suddenly intolerable. I balked.
I called Rose and explained, as politely as I could, that I wouldn't be able to attend the cook out as planned. I called up a couple of girl friends and said, "I'm turning 30. Let's do something." We ended up going to the zoo. Peter went out to Excelsior to spend time with Rose and Sam. Nobody thought this was an entirely satisfactory solution, but it was the best I could figure out so close to my birthday. I did manage that it tends to creep up on me, didn't I?
I asked Peter, afterwards, how things had gone. He told me, sourly, that there had been plans to give me a surprise birthday party, and there had been a cake and everything. Rose was terribly disappointed. I felt bad about that. But you know, I was still glad that I hadn't spent my 30th birthday in the motherfucking suburbs, anyway. The zoo was perhaps not the perfect outing for someone crossing the line, as I was, but it was a hell of a lot better than being trapped in suburbia. Even though the years have softened my politics, I'm not a surbanite nor ever will be. Rose is welcome to her world, show towels and all, and I truly wish her all the happiness in the world. But her world doesn't offer anything to me, and I'm so glad I turned 30 with the monkeys and the fish and the birds, instead.
I'm terrible with dates, most especially birth dates. Every year, my own birthday sneaks up on me, unawares. This year, I didn't get around to inviting people to go out with me to celebrate until today. This is better than many years, where I forget all together. It was a very nice dinner. DDB, Pamela, Erik, Christopher, Martin, Eileen, and Beth went to Broder's Southside Pasta Bar with me. The food was pretty good (though I wish I'd ordered a different entree), and the company was extremely convivial. I don't know what Christopher thought of the thing, and I'm anxious to find out. Christopher is my best friend who isn't a fan. Everyone else was a fan (sf fan), of course. I had a lovely time.
40 wasn't a difficult birthday for me. I wasn't particularly surprised or unhappy to turn 40. Although it was one of those big zero birthdays, 40 wasn't a significant number as far as I was concerned. It was 30 that gave me the most trouble. "Never trust anyone over 30." I didn't even believe in life by 40. 30 was the birthday I dreaded. So, of course, it crept up upon me, unawares.
I was born on Queen Victoria's birthday. In Canada, it used to be a holiday. This is back before they moved all our holidays to Mondays, back when I lived in Upstate New York, just this side of the Canadian border. I was always envious of the kids across the border who got the school day off on my birthday. It hardly seemed fair. I've never really gotten used to this Monday holiday nonsense. Birthdays are on the day of your birth, Memorial Day is on the 31st of May, Armistice Day is called Veterans' Day, but it's still on November 11th, and they toll the bells on the eleventh hour. February has Washington and Lincoln's birthdays in it, and we celebrate them both.
It's been a long time since all that was true, of course, but I don't seem to be able to adjust. Of course, since I can't keep track of dates in the first place, not being able to adjust to such changes makes a kind of sense. The oddest thing about the new Monday holiday thing, from my perspective, is that my birthday is often over the Memorial Day weekend.
I used to live with Peter Larsen. I miss him, still. Opposites attract, I guess. An ex-biker, Peter's best friend was someone he'd known since grade school, Sam Chase, who was an investment advisor -- and about as straight and normal as possible while remaining human. I liked Sam. His wife, Rose, was busy creating Home Beautiful from magazines. I found her nice, annoying, and intimidating all at once. She cared rather too much about interior decorating to be a close friend. We usually ended up spending Memorial Day out at the Chase's, at a barbeque. Sam and Rose were the perfect suburbanites, and I guess Peter and I offered a bit of spice. Sam genuinely loved Peter, no doubt about it. How Rose felt, I never knew.
I woke up on Thursday, and realized that my 30th birthday was going to be the coming weekend, the day on which Peter and I had agreed to go out to the Chase's for the annual barbeque. I realized that I had scheduled my 30th fucking birthday to be a fucking barbeque in a fucking suburb. I was fucking appalled. I don't like suburbs. I don't particularly like barbeques. I didn't want to turn 30. The idea of making polite small talk with Rose about gardens and carpets on my 30th birthday was suddenly intolerable. I balked.
I called Rose and explained, as politely as I could, that I wouldn't be able to attend the cook out as planned. I called up a couple of girl friends and said, "I'm turning 30. Let's do something." We ended up going to the zoo. Peter went out to Excelsior to spend time with Rose and Sam. Nobody thought this was an entirely satisfactory solution, but it was the best I could figure out so close to my birthday. I did manage that it tends to creep up on me, didn't I?
I asked Peter, afterwards, how things had gone. He told me, sourly, that there had been plans to give me a surprise birthday party, and there had been a cake and everything. Rose was terribly disappointed. I felt bad about that. But you know, I was still glad that I hadn't spent my 30th birthday in the motherfucking suburbs, anyway. The zoo was perhaps not the perfect outing for someone crossing the line, as I was, but it was a hell of a lot better than being trapped in suburbia. Even though the years have softened my politics, I'm not a surbanite nor ever will be. Rose is welcome to her world, show towels and all, and I truly wish her all the happiness in the world. But her world doesn't offer anything to me, and I'm so glad I turned 30 with the monkeys and the fish and the birds, instead.
