The Last Twenty Six Sixths Of June

I remember never hosting a party, then hosting one. My mother put together an obstacle course in the backyard - through some old tires, the sandbox - and was the official timer, holding our black stopwatch.

It's the only pre-high-school birthday party I can recall; as you can see, even its memory is clouded. There were two campout birthdays. The first was a small affair, when Robert, Shawn, and some friend of Robert's (and casual friend of mine) who had a lazy eye. Shawn brought his guitar, and one of the middle strings broke. We stayed up all night, lighting leftover fireworks - Saturn Missles, to be exact - after daybreak.

The second campout was a much larger affair, with many tents and people to fill them, including girls. There was a fire, courtesy of the fallen limbs near the Cowskin Creek, and there was even booze. Brian returned home that night, busted, forced to pour the cheapest vodka available down the kitchen sink. "Are you sure you don't want to save this for when company comes over?" he asked his dad. "Brian, this is Viaka. None of our friends is going to want to drink this stuff." I don't remember where I slept that night. I had a girlfriend for that birthday - she gave me a Bananas in Pajamas figurine - but I'm sure she didn't stay overnight, certainly not in my tent.

I spent most of my 21st birthday on my bathroom rug, useless to the guests I could hear in the living room, a victim of poor judgment and a gigantic gin & tonic. In the same apartment the following year, attendance was much lower, and I can't blame them.

During my first (and only) full summer in Minnesota, I decided that I would surround myself with the things I loved for my entire day of birth. I listened to my favorite albums (I'm certain Weezer's blue album, In Utero, and Either/Or were among them) that afternoon. I watched Rushmore. Later, my girlfriend treated me to an early bird steak, with a side of mushrooms. Jeff and Ben bought me several shots of "The Doctor" at Sally's. I shot pool. When the jukebox played "Paranoid Android", I calmly excitedly drunkenly explained to everyone that it was about the fall of the Roman Empire.

I think Pat's wedding fell on a birthday weekend.

The T-Birds first match (and the strange events afterward) was just before June 6, 2004. The following night, Brian, Kelly, Floyd and I took shots while playing Hungry Hungry Hippos and Scrabble - I didn't make it past 10 p.m. On the actual birthday, Floyd, Sarah and I ate at El Mezcal, then went to a few bars in downtown Lawrence. I spouted Rattle & Hum quotes most of the night. "This song was written in a hotel room in New York City. 'Round about the time a friend or ours, little Steven, was putting together a record of artists against APART-HEID!"

I've already mentioned last year in Albuquerque. This year, I'll be at work all day, and probably watch Rushmore in the evening.

And if it's like any birthday I've experienced in the last 10 years, I'll think of this when I wake up June 6:

Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year's gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake we know it's not to be. That for the rest of our sad, wretched, pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably. Happy birthday? No such thing.