The Curious Affairs Of Atherton Bartelby

I can’t carry it for you.
But I can carry you.

I hate birthdays.

Wait. Allow me to clarify: I hate my birthdays. The birthdays of close friends, I can handle, and enjoy, even if they are those types of friends who loathe birthdays as much as I. I love selecting The Perfect Gift, taking them out for special evenings (or, in a few cases, extra-special all-day-long events), and cheering them up should they happen to be moping, as I generally do, about turning another year older.

But I hate my birthdays.

I suspect that this happens every year, with me; that if one were to delve deeply into my blog archive one would discover at the very least one blog entry composed during the week immediately preceding my birthday, full of weeping and wailing and general malaise regarding the event, followed by an ecstatically happy article chronicling the fabulous birthday I eventually ended up having. [Update: I actually just did this, for fact-checking purposes, and in fact found it to be true. Sometimes I am such a predictable emo fag.]

Rather mercifully, I have always had someone there for me who has at least kept the emo at bay throughout the actual birthdays. Gavin established a traditional annual birthday dinner complete with several bottles of wine at the now-defunct Padovani’s Bistro. Tristan, upon discovering that the approach of my thirtieth was traumatizing me immensely, set out to purchase thirty-one unique birthday gifts for me, one for each day of the month, so that I would be happy on every one of the potentially tragic thirty-one days. And last year my good friend Bartholomew planned a day-long, island-wide extravaganza that had me smiling from ear to ear from its beginning at six in the morning to shedding tears of happiness at its conclusion under the light of a full moon. Unfortunately, however, anticipating what I now know will always be a fabulous birthday on the actual day does not negate the emo of the days leading up to it.

Unfailingly, no matter how happy, fulfilled, or generally fabulous I consider my life to be when the first day of July arrives every year, I invariably turn to focus on those things, however insignificant, that aren’t so fabulous. I’ll smile when I look around my fabulous apartment, feel fortunate when I think of the professional position of which I am able to boast, and consider myself blessed when I count just how many amazing, talented, and beautiful people I call my close and trusted friends.

But it is always what is missing that conjures the pausing…and the pondering.

I suppose the phrase “what is missing” could mean any number of things: having those close friends who live far away actually living in my own city instead; much-needed vacation time spent Off The Rock doing any number of fabulous things in any number of fabulous cities; or the dubious acquisition of a highly anticipated and coveted first generation Apple iPhone (no, I did not spend my weekend waiting in impossibly long lines in order to score one; even this Apple aficionado does not purchase first generations of any Apple hardware).

No, what this particular phrase most likely means when employed by me during this first week of nearly every July in recent years is: “Someone To Come Home To At The End Of The Day.” It no longer means “Boyfriend,” nor “Partner,” nor even “The One”; I’m kind of over all of that. It simply means, “Someone Who Is There.” Someone who will be there at the end of the day to laugh with, as we’re making dinner; to cry with, as we’re watching an emo film; or simply to just listen…and to hold. Of course I already have all of these things, to one extent or another, with one friend or another…just not in The Initial Caps sense of the phrase.

Also, I watched The Criterion Collection DVD of Chris Marker’s “La Jetée” late Saturday evening. I topped this off (however unwisely) with a Sunday-long marathon of the entire “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy, of which I had only ever read the novels before, not viewed the films. None of these films, of course, helped me shake the emo. They caused me instead to focus even more intently on the passage of time, and on the relentless persistence of memories, and on the longing for that which (or whom) I do not have; three themes that are always particularly close to my heart, but even more so during this particular time of every year.

So I will begin this week by irrationally blaming all of my annual birthday malaise on Chris Marker. And on J. R. R. Tolkien. And on Peter Jackson.

Certainly not on my own irrational habits of wallowing in memories of things past and of longing for things future, at the beginning of every July.

Don’t leave me here alone…
Don’t go where I can’t follow…

[Edit: All right you know things are bad when you actually post a blog entry that features the word "emo" five times in reference to yourself. But whatever.]