24 May 2006 - three o'clock pm

I have this thing where I don't like having birthdays. They're kind of stressful for me. Nevermind the whole existential problem of dealing with age, and the impending Alzheimer's disease I have to look forward to.

People always ask "what do you want for your birthday"? and I'm at the age where if I want something, I'll buy it. So the answer really is, "nothing". Unless you're talking about something either I can't afford or is extremely difficult to find, which task I couldn't in any polite way ask someone else to do. So that leaves me with having to agonize over, okay what, of all the things I don't want in the world, is something inexpensive and easy to locate that I'll actually be able to make use of so they don't get offended by my disuse of their gift? As if there wasn't enough clutter crowding my very tiny basement apartment that I share with my roommate/ex.

When I was a child, you could drop any gift on me and I'd be delighted, but at that age I had no qualms about listing off hundreds of gifts that I wanted, regardless of cost. Since ponies and diamond tiaras were in equal standing with cheap barbie dolls and audio cassettes, I was nearly guaranteed a happy birthday. These days no one surprises me by just picking me up a little token, not even my mother. I wouldn't expect it of anybody, so I don't even want that lingering juvenile expectation to trouble me anymore, even subconsciously.

This year I successfully obscured all birthday information and carefully planned around it so that we would be so busy during that week that the question would never come up. After it passed and things slowed down again, someone remembered to bring it up. When one of the few people in my tight-knit circle of friends heard it had passed, they asked "Well, how was it?" That's when you shrug and say it was okay, but this was a remarkably stupid question to ask after I had made a point to everyone that I didn't want it acknowledged in any way. That doesn't change afterward.

Now my roommate keeps wanting me to tell him a restaurant that he can take me to because he wants to buy me a birthday dinner but goddammit I hate birthdays and I just want to be left alone. The happiest birthday will be the one where I don't even remember what day it is.