I've tried for 3 years - seems like 30
It was the birthday of bileograph a few days ago and I got to be at the karaoke bar again. I performed the role of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus, conveying my simultaneous fear of and and longing for God through through movement and song. It went well! I felt like I rolled a "20" on a "perform check." I even got the tune right some of the time, and the rest of the time I could just scream about wanting MY LORD (that song, Gethsemane, is basically one screaming climax after another). It was pretty much as though the second coming had arrived, said these attractive girls who were there.
I diminished the impact of my initial performances with a terrible, embarrassing, ill-timed attempt to sing "Nights in White Satin." I had forgotten how, uh, especially sentimental the words to that song are.
Earlier that week, I myself had a birthday and turned 25. I was sad for a while, because 23 was maybe the oldest I'd ever been able to imagine myself at any point in my life, ever. Turning 24 was troubling, but I could still say, "oh, I'm not that far from 23." Turning 25, however, feels like passing the point of no return. It is when you stop being "a recent graduate" and start being "poor" or "downwardly mobile." Similarly, 25 is the age when it stops being ok to be mistaken for a 15-year-old boy or weird teenage androgyne. Yet the alternative is not desirable. I do not have many options here.
However, my black thoughts were dispelled when my friends took me to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire and later to the adult arcade! By "adult arcade" I do not, of course, refer to a porn theater, but rather to Dave and Buster's--an establishment that has fascinated me since my youth, an unsettling mix between a TGI Friday's and a Chuck-e-Cheese's intended for, I guess, young professionals. In any case, it was the perfect place for a man of means to celebrate his 25th birthday with a group of his friends, or perhaps his teammates in "touch football." And I got to be that man.
I diminished the impact of my initial performances with a terrible, embarrassing, ill-timed attempt to sing "Nights in White Satin." I had forgotten how, uh, especially sentimental the words to that song are.
Earlier that week, I myself had a birthday and turned 25. I was sad for a while, because 23 was maybe the oldest I'd ever been able to imagine myself at any point in my life, ever. Turning 24 was troubling, but I could still say, "oh, I'm not that far from 23." Turning 25, however, feels like passing the point of no return. It is when you stop being "a recent graduate" and start being "poor" or "downwardly mobile." Similarly, 25 is the age when it stops being ok to be mistaken for a 15-year-old boy or weird teenage androgyne. Yet the alternative is not desirable. I do not have many options here.
However, my black thoughts were dispelled when my friends took me to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire and later to the adult arcade! By "adult arcade" I do not, of course, refer to a porn theater, but rather to Dave and Buster's--an establishment that has fascinated me since my youth, an unsettling mix between a TGI Friday's and a Chuck-e-Cheese's intended for, I guess, young professionals. In any case, it was the perfect place for a man of means to celebrate his 25th birthday with a group of his friends, or perhaps his teammates in "touch football." And I got to be that man.