Birthdays are for Other People
Birthdays.
Everyone has one and some people even like theirs.
There are those who go all out and insist on a month long celebration.
There are those who prefer a quiet time at home with family and maybe a couple friends.
Then there are those like me who prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist, only share it under duress, and banish those who go against my wishes to ignore it.
I’ve gotten better about acknowledging and even celebrating my birthday in the last few years but there was a good couple decade stretch where I was one of those who went from Halloween to Christmas to avoid that whole Thanksgiving thing.
I am one of the lucky ones that has a birthday that falls on Thanksgiving week (that’s sarcasm, people). Growing up, this meant it was difficult to have a birthday party because of it’s proximity to a major holiday. There are pictures of me at exactly one birthday party. I was probably 3 (I’m terrible with estimating age in pictures - even my own) and it didn’t look terrible. Since there are no pictures of birthday parties for me after that I can only assume that that’s when things started to change.
Even around 4 or 5 I knew Grandma was “sick” but I didn’t fully understand. By age 9 I had a much better grasp of the situation and knew (in my limited understanding) that Grandma lost it from about two weeks before Thanksgiving until about mid-January every year. Some years were better than others but it wasn’t something that could be accurately predicted beforehand and the severity could only be judged after the season was over.
What this meant for me as a kid, tween, and teen was hiding as far from the yelling, fighting, and crazy as I could.
As I got older I would get inexplicably twitchy around Halloween and then it was explicable. I knew and sensed what was coming and was already dreading it.
I was the same in high school and college. Never telling friends when my birthday was even at the expense of free desserts at chain restaurants.
When I moved back to Chicago after college a friend found out when it was and organized a small group to go out and sprung it on me after I admitted I didn’t have plans. It was a group that hung out at least a couple times a week so I wasn’t suspicious. I went and it wasn’t terrible. The fact I acknowledged and actually celebrated my birthday felt like growth.
The following year things were already much crazier and more stressful and I begged the same friend who organized the previous year to drop it. She ignored my request and landed a much larger surprise party. We argued over the phone and after various unpleasantries were exchanged I went over to the party. Walked in the front door, said some hellos, walked out the back door, went home, and turned off my phone.
We didn’t speak for months and our relationship was never the same after that.
Since then, every few years I’ll decide to celebrate my birthday and let a few people know when it is. Then, some bullshit will happen and I’ll retreat back to my shell.
A few years ago when I was turning 40 I was in a pretty good place. I was about a year past the end of a bad relationship and was in the beginnings of a much better relationship and decided to go to the Joshua Tree in the high desert of Southern California. I invited Jess to join me in the desert and it was an incredibly romantic and magical time.
Since then I’ve been much more in control of my own situation and we would go for a meal or to a movie or something. Nothing big or flashy. I’m still not a big party person and I still don’t broadcast when it is.
I believe that my experiences growing up are why I am all about making birthdays, half birthdays, and all holidays as peaceful and joyous as possible for my own Tiny Human. I absolutely do not want to pass on any generational bullshit to her. She deserves better than that and I will do everything I can to make sure she gets it.
If you’ve read this far, thank you and I hope you understand my specific neurosis a little better now and I’m still not telling when my birthday is.
I Just Bought That
9:08am.
Great.
Running late again.
Hopefully the train won’t be too crowded.
It’s raining?
Awesome.
Do I have my umbrella?
Nope.
Shit.
Forgot to get cash from the bodega last night.
The bodega on the corner by the subway has an ATM and sells umbrellas.
Do I really want to pay rainy day bodega umbrella prices?
Do I have a choice?
The answer to both is no.
Seriously?
You’re going to cut in front of me to steal a seat when you see I have a cane?
Asshole.
The joys of commuting on the New York City subway.
Not nearly as glamorous as it looks on Seinfeld or one of those other shows set in New York.
The seat thief leaves their earbuds in and doesn’t look up even though I am standing right in front of them.
I feel a fart brewing.
Side effect of early morning coffee.
I manage to turn around and aim my butt at the offending seat occupier and let it rip.
Oh yeah, I had Thai food last night.
The seat thief inhales deep and yells profanities and invokes variations of deity names.
Twenty-five minutes and a sore knee later I’m at my stop.
I navigate the crowd up the stairs to street level and try to stay under as many awnings as possible.
For the first time since the last time it rained there is a line in the bodega.
Bodega cat winds between everyone’s legs leaving dander and cat hair in his wake.
I grab an umbrella, a Hal’s seltzer, and a pack of smokes.
$43.50 later I’m on my way.
Since I’m already late and paid luxury prices for a $4 umbrella I need a coffee.
My cart guy ran out of Anthora cups a few days ago and hasn’t gotten more yet.
I blame that on my no good, very bad, rainy, wet day.
There’s something about those blue and white Greek style coffee cups that I find comforting.
No rhyme or reason to it.
I just do.
Balancing a dangerously hot cup of coffee, my new umbrella, and trying to light a cigarette is as much of a workout as I will get for the foreseeable future.
Lean into it.
Take a sip, take a drag, wait.
Four steps across the street and a massive wind gust hits.
I hear a snap.
I feel rain on my head.
My rainy-day-price-bodega-umbrella is now in two pieces.
The handle, which I am holding, and the top part that is supposed to keep me dry is skipping through traffic.
I just bought that.
Now it’s gone.
Inspiration Everywhere
Two of the ideas I’m currently working on right now are inspired by weird happenings that a couple of friends posted about on Facebook. Both seemed perfect for the idea for a story and I began working on them. So far both have several iterations of outlines, some dialog snippets that came to mind, and a decent synopsis.
I recently heard an interview on The Writer Files with one of my favorite authors, S.A. Cosby, where he talked about how he would start by writing a stream of consciousness synopsis that he used to tell himself the story. It’s not meant to be a first draft just getting the story out of his head. Then came organizing, filling in details and plot holes, and the first of many drafts. I tried this method for both of these projects and it worked pretty well.
I’m not done with either synopsis but I feel less stuck than if I was trying to write a perfect first draft. If there’s something I need to look up I make a note to refer back to and keep going. It’s the difference between taking class notes on a computer versus handwritten notes. In a Word document you are much more limited with how you can go back and make notes or add something later to an earlier part of the story.
Another recent treat is that my absolute favorite author, Chuck Palahniuk, started a writing workshop newsletter on Substack and it’s been awesome. Lots of advice and anecdotes of his own experience and while they’ve all been good some have hit closer to where I feel I’m at as a writer. One his posts earlier this week validated something I had been doing for years. He suggests carrying a notebook everywhere and writing it down if you see or hear something that would be a great addition to a story.
I always had a Field Notes notebook and bullet pencil handy when I took the bus or subway to commute in New York. I found the bus to be more entertaining and produced more material but the subway definitely had it’s moments and if I follow through with even half of the ideas I have a title and main points for (along with some choice overheard dialog) you’ll be reading about it sooner than later.
Christmas 1989
Retail therapy can help heal the past.
Rei Momo, the album by former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne is one of the few specific Christmas gifts I remember getting from my dad.
Growing up, my mom and the extended family I lived with were pretty religious about some things but not everything. “Secular” music was evil, most popular toys were inspired by satan and came directly from the pits of hell, and books that were not written by explicitly christian authors were frowned upon. There’s a whole other story about a book called “Turmoil In The Toybox” and the time my mother insisted I get rid of all my Lord of the Rings books because they were full of wizardry and witchcraft only to get something from a local christian college about the virtues of J.R.R. Tolkien a few weeks later. Yeah, it was a mess and I have spent more time and money than I care to admit repurchasing some items that were unnecessarily discarded.
[SIDE NOTE: I bet if I were to ask my mother about the LotR books incident today she would claim to not remember.]
My dad left before I was old enough to have memories of him and before I was old enough to know that there were supposed to be two parents. I guess he did me a favor by leaving before I was old enough to know he was supposed to be there. I would see him every other weekend (when he remembered or lived close enough to make the trip to see me) and we’d listen to all sorts of music that was considered secular and evil by the home folks. He listened to Talking Heads and I liked the music too. He made copies of tapes and taped some of his records and I would listen to them on the school bus or when what I was listening to wasn’t being monitored. You know, the whole “evil secular music” thing.
Rei Momo came out in October of 1989. My dad had it on cassette and we’d listen to it if he remembered to come pick me up to stay overnight on a Friday night. I liked the album. I was sure it wasn’t the same old rock music that my peers at school listened to. No, I was the only one who knew about this and I felt special. In the know. I remember opening the album in a dingy, smoky apartment in Aurora, Illinois on Christmas Eve 1989 and even as I was opening it, I knew it would be tricky to get it in the house unnoticed. That’s a pretty shitty feeling for a kid to have after getting a record they like for Christmas, but it was my shitty reality.
After I was dropped off back at home the joy of owning my very own copy of Rei Momo lasted all of 15 minutes before my busybody aunt who was the bane of my existence growing up and has faithfully continued to fulfill that role to this day.
Religion can bring out the worst in people.
He dropped me off probably later than the agreed upon time and I went inside with my overnight bag and gifts. I don’t remember anything else I got that year but I remember that record.
You know how some memories from childhood stick with you even though they only be traumatic to you personally, not traumatic on a tangibly measurable scale or anything, well, what happened next falls on the first part of that scape - personally traumatic.
I walked in, said hello to my mother and whoever else was there, and began recount my hours away and what I had gotten for Christmas. Before I knew what happened, Carol grabbed the bag of presents and start to go to the second floor to review them before giving her opinion on them (which to this day I still have no idea why it was so important that she had a say on every fucking thing I did). I heard her walk up the first couple steps and sit down around the corner before starting to rifle through the few presents in the bag. In the time it took me to realize what was happening and what was about to happen I turned the corner to see Carol looking at the liner notes and lyrics and then yell to my mother in the other room, “hey Deb, this isn’t good, it should go out to the can tonight.” And just like that, the busybody struck again and my mother who has a long (and disturbing) history of going along with whatever is the easiest and is the least resistance complied and my brand fucking new record went out to the trash and I was crushed. And betrayed.
Betrayal is a theme I started noticing the more I started writing these cathartic pieces.
The same relative responsible for the unnecessary disposal of my original copy of Rei Momo has been problematic for as long as I can remember. It seems odd that a relative who was approximately 18 years older than me would feel the need to be not only antagonistic but also strangely competitive with me. I am only now as I try to put these experiences into words discovering how truly fucked up my family and childhood was. Definitely not normal stuff.
She’s always been a busy body - injecting herself into social situations and making it deeply awkward by not reading the room - or worse, not caring for anything but her own fleeting feelings. This is the same person that was the reason I had to stay in a hotel for my last week in Chicago before moving to New York in 2016. After having years to do something, she decided one afternoon to talk to a flipper and sell the house and I had a matter of hours to pack and ship my stuff. I didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye to some Chicago friends because she threw a fit that hijacked the rest of my last weekend before moving and once again, my mother sat idly by, head in hands, and did nothing to stand up for me or intervene.
The “best” part about religious family members is that even when they treat you horribly or do really fucked up stuff their default is “I don’t remember” or “I pray you can forgive me” or some equally milquetoast response.
All that to say I found a copy of the album on eBay and picked it up for a decent price and that acts of second-hand retail therapy has become a common practice in working through and healing from my past.