twenty-six. what a stupid little year.
26. what a stupid little year.
—
A year ago, my boyfriend was project managing my birthday with the efficiency of a 50-something event planner. In fact, he had just sent me out to buy florals for my own party.
I placed the order with our second favorite florist in the gaslamp quarter. When the man at the counter asked me what the flowers were for, I told him I was buying them for, “My partner”. Which was, literally speaking, mostly true.
He asked what her name was. I said Katie.
Walking back, I laughed about this on the phone with a friend on the east coast — balancing an umbrella in one hand and the boutique in the other.
We were almost ready to end a multi-year birthday party hiatus.
—
My 21st birthday party was one of the stupidest things that has ever happened to me. I asked some old friends from high school if I could use their house, and then I invited literally everyone I had ever known in the hopes that we’d get a respectable quorum.
I learned that during the second week of classes in the dead of winter, people were definitely willing to party. I also learned I had a talent for mixing jungle juice that tasted so little of alcohol that it should be illegal.
The night was a blur. People stole hot pockets from the microwave. One guest had to have a carving knife wrenched out of his hands. The backyard, once white with snow, was orange with, well, the color of the jungle juice.
The climax of the night came when one of my coworkers body slammed my friend’s childhood dining room table. Half of the party left to chase him across the street, and the other half turned back to the dick-shaped jello shots.
I got two text messages the next morning:
“I will pay $100 for that table,” from my coworker.
“I would pay anything to host your party again next year” from one of the friends who let me use their house.
—
My 22nd birthday party was with the same friends. This year, all the cabinets and drawers were zip-tied shut. The hot pockets were moved to a chest freezer in the basement. Guests who were already a few shots in were gently guided away from the jungle juice.
As a 2nd year RA, I had relaxed the rules about residents of my dorm coming. I remember laughing with one of my floor mates in the crowded kitchen. I remember watching old friends from the 1st science gen-ed I ever took playing beer bong on a (new, and improved!) table. I remember an acquaintance poking me in the chest, saying: “Wow, you’re only 22? You’re young, you’re hot, you can do anything.”
Oh man, I remember that.
—
My 23rd birthday party was fine.
I had graduated the year before. Friends had moved away to their first job, to grad school, they were busy. They couldn’t stay long. It was fine, it was fine, it was fine.
My 23rd birthday party was the first one where we had alcohol left over.
I moved away from my college town a few months later.
There was -still- alcohol left over.
—
Around this time last year, my phone began to buzz: one of the guests had arrived.
I slid down the stairwell to meet them at the front door of our apartment complex. I walked them through the pretentious lobby. They handed me a book about The Green New Deal.
My boyfriend had outdone himself, filling our dining room table with enough h’oeuvres for a hundred guests.
Six. I counted around the room with a smile. It was a hard-won six.
I drank a full bottle of wine on my own. One of my coworkers cackled on the speakerphone because she had locked her keys in her own car in the parking lot and when she finally joined us, read out-loud a Glassdoor review I had wrote about a former employer.
It was good. It was the best birthday in a long time.
And I -knew- the rest of the year was only up from there.
—
hm. on to 27.
