A spoonful weighs a ton
Coffee with G. at a Starbucks. Looking on as she fiddles with her chair, and then denounces the chairs altogether. What’s so weird about the chairs in here, I don’ t know. She makes fun of me some and then looks around for other people to make fun of, which there is apparently no shortage of in this environment. In the meanwhile, I size up G., looking on as she looks at everybody else. I’ve taken to the curious pastime of sizing up my various friends and trying to figure out where they would fit within the DSM-IV. What maladies would this biblical text render them with. My guess is some sort of confluent Bi-polar/ manic problem, with the corresponding medicine. What would it label me, I don’t know. I keep trying to figure out if it’s my own sense of stasis that offsets G.’s turbulence, or if I’m misinterpreting the situation altogether and it’s the other way around. Either way, it seems like one of us is not getting a favorable rating.

My birthday was this week. My mom made a big lasagna, and so I’m going to hang out around. I feel pretty bad about it, and I articulate this same thing to G., who gives me a weird look. My mother keeps producing the most bountiful spreads even imaginable, and all I can think about is how quickly all of that will give me a heart attack. The woman loves ingredients, I tell you: saturated fats, butter, cheese. It’s all in there. I grew up in a veritable bakery, the kitchen a production center for cookies and pies and cakes, all of which are now currently lost on me, here in the present day. It’s no big deal. It would probably take someone who was never allowed to eat these things by their parents to make them truly appreciate—the kind of person who thinks they’re putting one over on somebody by eating fast foods—the same behavior patterns which make people smoke cigarettes and snort industrial grade cleaners in the bathrooms of public bathrooms. I’m becoming increasingly stoical, I guess, but it seems like there are worse ways to be.

I end up arriving too late for the festivities, the dinner already a done deal, my parents having gone ahead and eaten without me. Minus one for me. My mom harangues me for missing dinner. Sorry, mom. You know, I mixed up the time. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. I keep expecting my parents to disown me, change the locks on the house, pretend they don’t recognize me in a crowd. They never do, but it seems like they should. A lifetime of bizarre behaviors and lifestyle choices does not seem to deter them, however. And I am thankful for that. Because actually, they really should. My mom packs up a spread that I bring home to my little domicile—cake, lasagna—the whole bit. I give these items to A., which he devours with no restraint, as I look on in amazement.

It seems easy to get down about another birthday, another year. Sometimes your life comes to resemble an unraveling ball of twine, which just continuously comes on undone. And your birthday only serves as a continuous reminder of the unraveling. But that’s only one point of view. And I keep thinking that maybe I could just elude the aforementioned descriptions of the DSM for a while longer, dodging and weaving. I contemplate the uneaten portion of birthday cake that my mom made for me sitting on the counter, the massive chunk of cake that I’ve been trying to give to everybody. I look at it sitting there in its plastic wrap, the fancy blue decoration around the perimeter all smooshed up against the plastic. I pick it up, unwrapping as I do, and mash a big bite into my mouth, the vanilla frosting sweet and light. It’s pretty good, actually. I probably should indulge more. Or at least increase my caloric intake.