04.22.06
Twenty-five, and still alive
Ah, another birthday! This is a big one too, since I can now apparently get cheaper car insurance and rent a car without having to pay an exhorbitant and unreasonable amount of money!
My birthday morning started with a 7:30am phone call from Kelsie, which I promptly ignored and silenced since I was trying to sleep in. She insisted later that she was only calling so early because she wanted to be the first one to leave me a birthday message, but sometimes I think that she forgets the Central-Pacific time difference.
With the amount of work I’ve been doing lately, I decided that I should at very least take one day to treat myself to some of the finer things in life — namely clothes shopping at Express, cake batter ice cream with almonds, caramel, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from Cold Stone Creamery, and a fancy-schmancy clay mask and some DKNY Be Delicious cologne from Sephora.
After my self-indulgent day of shopping and ice cream, I spent the evening consuming excessive amounts of alcohol (in the form of lemon drops, kamikaze shots, and Long Island iced teas) and singing my ass off at The Mint in San Francisco with friends and co-workers who went out of their way to make sure that I had a good time. Thanks to Nate, I had a drink in my hand for the entire night, which certainly kept things interesting.
The first (and only) member of my group (besides me) to go up to the mic was Andy, who did a stunning rendition of Sweet Transvestite from Rocky Horror. I had only heard about the magnificence of Andy’s well-rehearsed stage act, but finally getting to see it in person was quite the experience.
Thankfully, I had the forethought to capture part of his ground-breaking performance for all eternity so that I could present it here:
My songs were It Must Have Been Love by Roxette, and later in the evening, a very drunken rendition of Higher Love by Steve Winwood. What I remember most about the second song was that the words on the screen were highlighting a bit too fast for me to actually keep up with. I also could swear that a whole group of “fans” were clapping to the beat in the front, but I might have been having some sort of rock-star fantasy. Isn’t it sad that I would choose to have my rock star fantasy to a Steve Winwood song? … *sigh*
As the evening of karaoke tapered off and the posse began to leave, eventually only Andy and Adric and I were left. Someone had the clever idea to go to Badlands, so we stumbled for a few blocks to get there. I only really recall a few things:
- Andy meeting some Southern boy whose number he was upset that he didn’t get
- Adric wandering off to dance with someone he knew
- Discovering that there was a second bathroom at Badlands that I never knew about
- Feeling tired and wanting to leave (which Adric later described as me being “pouty”)
Andy drove us back to his place, where Adric & I crashed on his sofa bed and were awakened in the morning by Andy’s obnoxious roommate and his boyfriend, who felt the need to use every loud appliance possible while we were attempting to sleep. Before leaving, Adric and I had a lovely time trying to psychoanalyze the disfigured characters in the ugly art Andy’s roommate chose to hang above their television in the living room. The martini-holding, poorly dancing party-goers in the photo each had stories of their own — from the Romanian woman in the black dress who clearly was a manipulator, to the gay guy in the middle who was clearly the fifth wheel, to the subservient Asian girl in the red dress who would do whatever her Romanian friend told her to.
The burning question that everyone seems to ask at birthday-time is whether or not I feel any older. Honestly, I really haven’t had time to process it. I know that at this point I’m halfway through my twenties, but it doesn’t really bother me that much. I keep telling myself that thirty isn’t nearly as old as it used to be, but as I continue my march towards 3-0, we’ll see if I continue to feel that way. One of the things that I’ve learned from my father (who still looks great in his fifties) is that you’re really only as old as you allow yourself to be.
As long as I keep on singing, winning stuffed animals from claw machines, and watching cartoons, I don’t think I’ll grow up.
And that’s okay with me. Seriously. 
Tags: adric, alcohol, andy, badlands, birthday, cold stone creamery, dkny, express, karaoke, kelsie, nate, rocky horror, shopping, the mint, youtube