Day 55 - Birthday Story

Birthday Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Phil turned his alarm off without opening his eyes. It was as dark and cloudy inside his head as it was outside in the rain. 

He told himself there were days when you faced the world and then there were days you bury yourself under a blanket. Today was a day where you buried yourself underneath a blanket. He told himself he would call in sick to work later.  But he knew that wasn’t going to happen.  That wasn’t him.  He knew he didn’t do things like that.

Phil had gone out with his very good friend Steve in order to celebrate Phil turning thirty-one.  Instead of celebrating, what they ended up doing was getting very drunk.  The drinking part Phil didn’t mind.  The drinking too much was the real problem.  Phil decided that he had simply invited too many friends to the party.  If he had just stuck with his regular friend Sam Adams instead of mixing it up with Jack Daniels, he would be in much better shape to face the day. But today he was in a bad way and there was nothing he was going to do to change that now.

After far too long he made himself roll out of bed and with eyes mostly shut he stumbled his way to the shower.  He was not a happy camper and this would not be a pleasant day.  At least he didn’t have anything due at work today.  Or so he thought.  He wasn’t sure.  He was having a tough time remembering most anything at that exact moment.  He had some nagging feeling about something, but he couldn’t place it.  Too much too much to drink, he thought.  Next year he promised himself to get things right and not make a repeat of this morning.

The day before Phil decided that turning thirty-one was not nearly as difficult as turning thirty.  In fact, it was fairly easy – all he had to do was wake up. Of course, that was technically the same thing that had to occur one-year prior, and in fact as far as he could remember it was pretty much what happened for all of the previous thirty. But Phil wasn’t focusing on the simple commonality of previous year over previous year. What he had chosen to focus on one-year prior was the immediacy of the pending day, the imminent sense of dread he felt, the threat of getting older, of life’s fragility and the ultimacy of death. He knew ultimacy wasn’t a word, but it did most adequately summarize how he felt in the moment.

Maybe it was because turning thirty was so often regarded as significant, a measuring stick in regards to adultness. Maybe it was because television and movies had always told him turning thirty was supposed to be a psychological crisis, youth being over, and men afraid of aging suddenly behaving irrationally. Maybe it was because his friends had gathered to celebrate the significance as if somehow surviving thirty years was an actual achievement. Whatever the case may have been, real or imagined; turning thirty had seemed like a big deal at the time.

Turning thirty-one did not feel like much more than just another normal day.

Yesterday, Phil had woken as he always did, completed a thirty minute workout as he sometimes did, and gotten to work early as he almost never did. His workday had headed in much the same direction as most workdays did. Much repetitive motion to which he never saw the larger application of, directives issued and followed that had no actual bearing on how well he did his job, and a fair amount of making it look like he was doing something when he really wasn’t.

At work Phil had made little effort, little effort really meaning no effort, to publicize the fact that it had been his birthday. In fact, he had gone to many lengths to make sure to avoid the topic.  Phil hadn’t talked about his birthday in a long long time.  Some old friends might have known the date, but certainly no new ones did.  Phil didn’t post it on any websites or list it anywhere meant for public consumption.  He made a point of getting an assistant in the HR department to remove his name from the monthly newsletter that also happened to included company birthdays on it.  He didn’t like being the center of attention. It made him uncomfortable. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness as the day progressed.

That night at a quarter to seven his doorbell rang. 

“You didn’t think I forgot, did you?”

It was Steve.

“Go get your jacket – we’re gonna go get you in some trouble.”

Phil smiled a hidden smile, not wanting to reveal his secret pleasure of being remembered.

Last night Steve had decided to take it upon himself to solve all of Phil’s problems.

“Do you know what your problem is?” Steve asked Phil over their third round of beer.

“I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to answer that.” Phil wasn’t lying. He felt that he had a long enough list of problems that there could be no one singular problem to define himself by.

“You wallow in self-pity, thinking that it makes you special and therefore, you don’t do anything to change your current state of existence, because if you were no longer miserable you think you would no longer be special.”

“Wow. That was a lot of words there.”

“Fine. Whatever. I’m just saying.”

And so they drank and discussed the mysteries and miseries of single life at thirty-one.

Last night Steve had decided Phil's biggest problem was his lack of sex drive.  Jeff knew his problem wasn’t the lack of a sex drive. If anything it was the lack of trying to fulfill his sex drive. But Jeff didn’t want to talk to his friend about that. Instead he just sat and drank while Steve talked about all the things he could be sucking on or licking on or the various positions he could be trying out.  All that talk did was make Phil lonely. He hadn't been with someone since Shannon.  How long had that been?  He couldn't remember. Maybe that was a good sign, he thought.  At one point he could remember the exact day and the exact way it felt.  Maybe that meant he was healing quite nicely, if he really couldn’t remember everything there was to remember about her and her body.

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth.  Not the whole truth anyway. Phil might not remember the exact feeling, the physical sensation, but he certainly remembered the emotion of his last time. If he had known that would be the last time with her, he would have made sure to do it again. Instead, he just listened as Steve told him all the ways he could be getting laid if he just tried.

Phil almost fell asleep standing up in the shower.  He closed his eyes and his chin started to drop.  He leaned in and fell against the wall.  If he had tipped the other way he might have fallen to the floor and cracked his head open.

This was not going to be a good day.  He was not happy about having to go to work.

He carefully toweled off and got out of the shower.  No sense in slipping and falling now and getting himself injured or worse.

Phil returned to his bedroom and nearly tripped and fell again when he was suddenly shocked to see the semi-naked young woman lying on the other half of his bed.  Phil rubbed his temples, his head still aching.  There was obviously a story here that was somehow lost somewhere along the way.  Just how many drinks did I have, he wondered.  Just what did I do and who did I do it with?  At least he now knew that Shannon wasn’t his last.  Or so he thought.  He couldn’t really remember.  He’d have to wait until this woman woke up to find out her name and find out what really happened.

Slowly, quietly he crawled back into bed and wrapped himself up tightly in his covers.  Phil didn’t really believe in calling in sick to work, but there was just about no way in hell he was going to leave his apartment right now and miss out on whatever this might turn out to be.  He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.  Maybe when he woke up this time it would no longer be raining and his head would be clear.