How I spent my 34th birthday
a completely factual account
Every birthday is an insult to the imagination. In my mind, I watched 34 years melt down to a pad of butter on a stack of diner pancakes, leopard-spotted with chocolate chips. I aged backward with every sugar packet ripped and dumped in slow motion, granule by granule, into bottomless coffee. Drank half-and-half straight from their little plastic shells like big girls shoot oysters. Smiled all Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining crazy pouring syrup everywhere, no chaperone around to say “when.”
It was rare, I was there! Shouting Taylor Swift with the windows down because I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22. And damnit, I looked it. My lip gloss was poppin my DYSPORT was poppin. Smooth, hunnie. Real smooth. Racks of 90s Cavalli awaited me at the thrift, donated by some duchess who fell for an Italian forklift operator in Voorhees. Everyone at the gym surrounded my treadmill, clapping as I ran a five-minute mile. My c-section scar was magic erased and I didn’t have to lift a pouch to shave my pussy.
On my birthday, my baby was walking and talking at two months old—youngest to ever do it! She quoted Arendt and said “mamma, I’ll live the dream you never could.” She whipped out a ketchup-stained manuscript, written in purple crayon, and I was like, thank God. Thank God I can pack it up. Bid my readers farewell, LOG OFF FOREVER. I passed her the torch; it was Fisher Price. Sometimes the ultimate dream is giving up your dreams. I understand how so many women lose themselves in motherhood.
Yes, it was a soft 75 and sunny on Dia Lupo Island. Conner O’Malley was there. He said *I* was the funny one. Salinger was there. He called all my haters phonies. My friends and I—all rich and sun-kissed with symmetrical moles and no tan lines, FREE of student debt—we danced to a private Rüfüs set on clean Molly straight from the Netherlands. Drank giant piña coladas made with vanilla ice cream like the ones from Coconut Joe’s in Folly Beach, South Carolina except these had no calories! I don’t ask questions. Pink sunrise. No mosquitos. Quilted lambskin double flap Chanels full of Augustinus Bader and Dubai chocolate and diamond tennis bracelets for party favors. My mom made out with Diplo who declared my party “better than Burning Man.” COUNTLESS pics on my Canon G7X to prove it. Just countless, darling. You really had to be there.
-
Yesterday was my birthday and I’m not much of a Taylor Swift girl, if we’re being honest. I ran an 8:30 mile on a Planet Fitness treadmill before an audience of no one, my thighs rubbing together like Birdman’s hands. I never made it to the diner. My husband ordered me a pork roll, egg, and cheese on a multigrain bagel and forgot the egg. My daughter projectile shit up my forearm and peed on the floor. I did find an Ulla Johnson top for $3.99 at the thrift. I hope my mom never makes out with Diplo.
Be it the language barrier or my blind faith in you, I believed everything until "my baby was walking and talking at 2 months old" 😭
Magical🌈☀️