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I'm almost 25. Having a birthday that falls mid-week (mid school week, still finishing projects from last semester, blah blah blah) means that celebration must either be shuffled forwards or shuffled back. It's one of those marginal things that convinces me that I still have a modicum of professional responsibility, and I cling to it amidst the loafing and treacherous procrastination.

So.
Yeah.

25 and some things remain the same. Constants prevail. Immediately at the forefront of my mind is the hardwired fact that I will always throw up on my birthday, be it from heinous illness (childhood) or vigorous alcohol intake (not childhood). Either I'm a pussy and can't drink, or my friends are awesomely awful and actively have a hand in my yearly destruction. Either way shit happens.

Friday night we went to Barrie, mostly for Czech Republic Jen's birthday. We share, isn't that cute? The Pac-Man Eyed Girl inadvertently destroyed a fish bowl, we went to the detritus that is the Queen's Sports Bar, and some friend of Kyle's called me a gangster and pretended to shoot me with his finger-gun. Alicia was pissed that I said I hated my friends, which is untrue (although apparently a wondrous source of provocation), and then we danced to shitty music.

Saturday night we were back in Toronto, the most Torontoist of cities. I had a whacking headache from Kyle's house being renovated with a hammer at 9 am, and so I naturally played Gears of War all afternoon and screamed incoherently at asshole kids from Texas who sawed me in half with their stupid fucking cheating chainsaw guns. Then we went to the Phoenix, an event promoted and executed by the lovable duo of Kyle and Pac-Man Eye. EDGE 102 LIVE TO AIR with that insatiable homosexual, Martin Streek!

It occurs to me that birthdays are a lot more simple when you're in university - everyone lives close, feels the booze and has similar interests (what's your major, getting raped by financial aid, etc). In these uncertain 20-something years, the lines of division are inked across the bar floor. Some people are consummate professionals while others have a lot of growing up to do. Maybe you'll talk about grassroots social movements, or maybe someone will surruptitiously buy you a Prairie Fire shot just to be a good-natured asshole. Happy it wasn't another godforsaken Jaeger, you'll fire it back, only to be surprised by a generous dose of unexpected Tabasco and fire it, in turn, in a fine mist onto the girl beside you at the bar. Through your nose. Through my nose.

Responsibility struck. The bar was left behind.

I was okay, actually, surviving, until Pac-Man Eye and her evil companion Oriental Lollipop Kid got me high as a kite. I then felt sick as shit, and the pair of 'em gleefully mocked me and called me "Casper the Transparent Ghost." They are tarts and I hate them. Then I lay down and threw up and then threw up a whole lot more and then became impotent. Somewhere in the midst of all this throwing up I realized that 25 is really quite the same as 24... and 23... and 22. You throw up and begin the new year - your year - with a fervent desire for God to prove His mercifulness and find a way to kill you with a toilet brush. At what point does this cease to become meaningful? When do you get too old for this kind of horrible insight?

It hurts, but maybe it wouldn't be my birthday if I didn't begin the next year with a customary humbling, reaffirming my mortality in the swirling drain of a toilet. And, of course, if all you people hadn't made it happen yet again.

Posted by Chris at 08:44 PM >> Commentations (8)