Nacho 29

May 2003:  Flashback

There we go! I’m writing this in April, but it’s all about turning 29
on May 10th. Weird…kind of like those people who have a “living”
funeral when they know they’re going to die. I’ve been to a few of
those and I find them morbid and disgusting. Come say goodbye to so and
so. What a retard. It’s like forcing all your friends into one room and
saying “Be nice to me because I’ll be dead before the end of the year.””Ah, get stuffed, George. Dying or not, you’re still a fuckup and I’ll
never forgive you for sleeping with Melissa during sophomore year!”

My attendance at those events has always been as an employee.
This big mansion in Chevy Chase that rents out space to weddings, Bar
Mitzvahs and other stuff pays me $15 an hour to drink rum, snarl at
caterers and hike through the woods. Can’t go wrong. Actually, they pay
me to watch the house and “put a smile on the face of the
organization.” But I can only smile if I’ve fulfilled my drunken
abusiveness quota for the evening.

The one “remembrance” that I was at was this guy who was about to drop
from cancer or some such thing. They had to wheel him around so he
could go talk to all the woman who never loved him when he was whole.
Everyone put his or her name on a rock and made this lovely rock garden
out on the manicured lawn, most of which is still there five years
later. The groundskeeper at the time had a few choice words about that.
Of course, he’s the same guy who drunkenly mowed down the sapling
planted by a young couple on their wedding day.

“May our love last as long as this tree.”

A year, folks. Then a groundskeeper twisted on rum at 8am tore it to pieces.

The other “remembrance” was for a friend of the then bossman. Everyone
wore black armbands and, sadly, I was forced to be sober on the job
because all of my immediate supervisors were there. I watched these
people eulogize a man who was sitting in front of them and I couldn’t
help but wonder if he was going to keel over as soon as they were done.
That’s what I would have done. Thank you, everyone, I’m – ugh! (thud).
It would have been good for a laugh and, with a distraction like that,
maybe I would have been able to sneak a drink or huff some glue or
ritually scar my arm to break up the goddamn monotony.

“Howard, do you remember the time in college…”

“No, I don’t, Tommy. I’m fucking dead, remember? Don’t speak directly to me.”

But I’m not here to talk about that! I’ve stopped celebrating my
birthday, for the most part. Despite my protestations, my grandparents
still go out and buy a rubbery cake from Giant Food and stick those
candles in the shape of numbers in it. The candles are green and grey,
now. They’ve been using them since my mom was a child. The “2” and the
“9” and all the others were bought nearly 50 years ago. I’m always
preoccupied with the “If those numbers could talk” thoughts. They’d
probably say “Another goddamned grim birthday, I wish Nacho would douse
us in rum and torch us.”

This birthday, I’ll be away on vacation. This happened once before, in
2000, when I attempted to avoid my birthday by flying down to New
Orleans. My grandmother, insisting that we had to celebrate the
occasion, forced us all to have a party on April 30th.

Now, I can’t say I would mind having a birthday party — or any sort of
celebration — with my family. The big problem is that it feels like
those “remembrances.” This grim silence settles over the room, a
mumbled “another year down” (or, more popularly, “another year closer”)
over the inedible heavy sugar cake, and a heapload of presents — 80%
of them knick knacks and 20% fulfilling the Wish List we’re all forced
to hand in a month before any gift giving event. The list is filled to
the letter, and every item on it is often the source of complaints
while you open them.

“You and DVD’s! They’re impossible to find!”

“Now, your grandfather had to go to 10 bookstores in Baltimore and
Washington to find that title — YOU’D BETTER READ IT AND ENJOY IT!!”

“We looked all over for that DVD but we couldn’t find it, so here’s the video.”

“We had to special order those Johnny Cash CD’s. They’re on the way,
but they won’t be here for another three weeks. That’s the receipt from
the special order. Hang on to that and you can pick up the CD’s when
they’re delivered to the special DD-Plus Shipping Depot down in Howard
County.”

The knick-knacks were fun when I was a kid but, 29 years later, and
with three yearly gift-giving occasions, I start to see duplicates. I
have shelves full of wind-up, sparking nuns, talking parrots, flying
pigs, girlish glitter pens, penny snatchers and whirling UFO’s. I have
growling Godzillas, punching puppets and cola can race cars. I have
leaping frogs, ooey-gooey space slime and singing lizards.

The knick-knacks, inexplicably, are ordered through the mail or the
Internet. Why the books, DVD’s and CD’s are not, I’ll never understand.

It’s the attitude that gets me. I feel as if the cake should be black.
As if, at any moment, family members will stand on their chairs and
talk about me. “I remember the time Nacho called me at 2am and
tearfully talked about Jennifer, then he said he had to go because the
police sergeant was about to hang up the phone. I’ll miss him dearly!”

Wrapped presents are something of a thorn in my grandparent’s sides.
The wrapping paper must be disposed of immediately. For birthdays and
Easter, we can pile the wrapping paper in our own discrete corner. For
Christmas, my grandfather hovers over us with a giant garbage bag,
snatching the paper as soon as it’s free and jamming it into the bag.
The tree will be down before the trash men even come to pick up those
bags of paper the following week. Everything about Christmas is
dismantled and vacuumed away within days after the event. All that
remains is a tray of Christmas cookies, all of them with peanuts in
them. I’m allergic to peanuts, but I have to nibble at the cookies
anyway. The allergy, you see, is “all in my head.”

Birthdays have something of a rigorous schedule. Dinner (usually carry
out pizza for my birthday), cake, present opening, done by 6pm. Time
for the news! My grandparents leave the table, grunting and
complaining, and sit down to the prime time news. I gather up my loot
and tiptoe back to my cell, closing the door behind me. By 6:15,
everyone in the house is sound asleep, either because they’re old or
because they take handfuls of Prozac every hour. Even so, how anyone
can sleep with three TV’s going at top volume is beyond me.

Celebrations and social events aren’t big in the family. I can accept
that. I feel the same way whenever I go to parties. Many of my critics
(read: “friends”) say that’s because my family is slightly loopy.
Personally, I blame my anti-social behavior on a lifetime of retail,
customer service and dealings with my “friends” (read: people who
constantly point out any irreparable flaws) .

What I don’t understand is the need to celebrate events if they make
you uncomfortable. So what if there’s no Christmas at my house, or no
birthdays? I think my grandparents need to have celebrations only
because everyone else does. It’s the rare acknowledgement that our
family is vaguely unhealthy.

Of course, none of this even begins to address my own deep-seated fears
as I turn 29. That’s the worst part. The “remembrance” style party
blends with my own troubled heart. 29 and what do I have to show for
it? Well, a lot, really… But my goal was to have a statue that urinates
champagne and huge parties where women like Catherine Zeta-Jones throw
themselves at me, breathlessly clawing at my belt buckle and muttering
incoherently about hair-raising sexual activities.

When I was 19, I pictured myself as a producer for TV and film. I had
all that worked out. I even daydreamed my ultimate downfall and an
assassination attempt. Of course, I worked that out while I spent the
summer planting azalea bushes and digging a pond. I certainly didn’t
picture myself as an office fuck with no prospects and, worse, no
particular desire to pursue a career.

My current goals involve rebuilding the Lego town set I had when I was
a kid and writing Magnum PI fan fiction. It’s not that I’ve lost
ambition, it’s just that I hate working. If I were writing jack off
novels all day, that would be fine. Detective Fuzzbucket, his talking
cat and his crime-solving parakeet. 250 pages a pop, a new story every
six months. Pow, pow, pow!

All the lonely housewives at Wal-Mart would pick up the latest book
while they were checking out. They would come to my 11am readings at
the local Mystery Fucks Bookstore where I would show up drunk and,
inevitably, coerce 14 housewives to participate in a vicious, degrading
cocaine orgy.

I would also like to be a schoolteacher at the college level. History.
Then I could go get employed at some crappy liberal arts school with no
more than 2000 kids and be the resident freaky professor, writing 180
page books along the lines of “Are we Descended from Vampires?” “Do
Spacemen Do It Best?” “To Jessica, Who Sits in the Front Row, I Want
Your Ass.”

But, outside of that, I have no career goals. A girl once left me
because she said I wasn’t going places. I was 25 at the time, so you
can imagine how I felt about that. I figured my dick was good enough to
keep her around while she climbed the ladder of corporate stardom and,
eventually, she could keep me. I could sit at home in a bathrobe and
write novels that never seem to make enough money and, in return for
supporting me, I would satisfy her whenever she requested and obey all
of her orders. Easy enough. It’s a good plan, I think.

She was the last woman I actively pursued. I’ve been vaguely
dissatisfied with women ever since. Not in a sexual way, mind you,
though they do need to improve their methods (generally speaking). I’ve
been dissatisfied with the female mind. All the crazy girls, as you
advance through life in the post college years, are weeded out.
Darwin’s laws apply and the patchouli-scented goth girls with deviant
minds and pockets full of mushrooms are either dead, married to faggots
or in Zoloft lockdown at some institution. Only the mealy mouthed “I
need to settle down” conformists and the militant lesbians make it
through college in one piece.

I never understood the need to settle down. The female capacity for
being needy, whining maggots is always shocking. Even the strongest
female minds appear to suffer from shuddering, tearful breakdowns after
the sun sets. The whispered promises in the ear don’t mean anything,
though. I want to be with you, so I’ll take this half of the closet and
this chest and this other chest over here and these five shelves in the
fridge, which leaves you room here where you’re supposed to put the
eggs. I’m doing this because I love you and we should be
together…forever…and ever…and ever. Come play with us, Danny! AHHH!
Stay away from Room 218 if ya know what’s good for ya!

Then they start the change. It never fails. You give a woman a mile and
she takes a lightyear. You drink too much, Nacho. Nacho, I’ve cut out
these job openings at AssFuckCo. It says right here they’re looking for
a creative 29 year old who is willing to accept low pay, emotional
abuse and termination without notice on December 24th. You need to eat
right. You need…you need…you need…

Sometimes, the changes are welcome. That’s even worse. If they see you
taking to the routine, then they freak out. Now I can convince him to
saw off his legs and start every day reciting this poem I wrote to
Jesus!! And if he doesn’t, then I won’t have sex with him and I’ll
terrorize him emotionally and mentally! Yay! I love him!

Not that all women are like that. I know there are exceptions out there.

As I get older, I find myself thinking more and more of women. Not in a
settling down, starting life sense…more a general, seething anger about
all the girls I was nice to when I should have fucked them silly for as
long as possible. I turned down so much free pussy when I was young and
now, at 29, pussy is never free. It comes with responsibilities. It
comes with the neediness. It comes with strings attached. Instead of
“Fuck me in the ass whoever you are, I’m soooooo drunk!” you get “Where
do you think we’re going?”

I don’t know, sweetheart, I haven’t even gotten your pants off yet. If
I like your pussy, we’ll go till at least next week. But if you’re no
good in the sack, I’m going to sell you to the Hell’s Angels.

It’s not them, either. It’s me. It’s my age. I start undressing 19 year
old girls and they act like this. They expect me to have matured now
that I’m staring down the barrel of 30 when, truth be told, I’m less
mature now than I was when I was 19. I had respect for people back
then. I was trying to find my way in life. I said it was wrong to take
advantage of women or have meaningless sex without love. I believed in
things 10 years ago. Now I know the truth and I want to spend my days
drunk on rum, high on pot, having lots of sex and, goddamnit,
rebuilding my Lego town set. There’s nothing else important out there.
If I buy property, it’s going to be a lonely writer’s cabin in the
woods. Retreat there on the weekends and write, tear up the
floorboards, shoot at squirrels and pass out, naked, in the woods. Or
just hunt down Blair Witch Project kids and scream at them in a drunken
rage at 3am.

So here I am. 29 at 2:45 PM eastern time May 10th. As you read this,
I’m on the road. Right now, it looks like I’ll be in the first leg of
my trip up the Pacific Coast Highway. I might even stop off and get a
rubbery, sugar-laced cake, take it back to the hotel room and deliver a
eulogy to myself. Nacho! I loved him so! I remember once, when we were
younger, Nacho and I – What? Sorry, it’s time to clean up the table and
get ready for the six o’clock news. Go back to your room! AND NO
DRINKING!