Happy birthday to me is what I sang when I woke up which is typically around 4am most mornings, even weekends, but this day is different, and not just because she is sleeping beside me but I am turning, or have turned another year older, but it didn't happen just then like flipping a light switch but it was gradual and somehow yesterday I was a year younger but today, a year older and I’ve hit that age where people say they’re actually much younger than they are but when I was in my twenties at my first job a coworker, who was in her forties and “not very attractive” as she put it, turned 44, she told everyone she was 54 because “if I told them I was 34, they’d say ‘life has really beaten the hell out of her’ but if I tell them ten years older, they'll say ‘for 54 she doesn’t look half bad.’”
I told you that story to tell you this story….my girlfriend was set to leave this morning, leaving on a jet plane, I didn’t know when she’d be back again…she’s an actress, a mighty good one and she has real talent while I’m just pushing numbers around a spreadsheet but she also does modeling, the face and hand kind because even though she makes my eyeholes open wide on those early mornings after a sleepless night, she’s a vertically challenged outcast at 5’5”, at least for the walkie models, but she’s always wanted to act, really act even though she was quite successful in NYC, Hollywood, which I consider a cesspool, is the dream, her dream, and although I couldn't join her, I wouldn't stop her.
It was either she stayed for me or we'd be apart and alone. Last weekend was, quite literally, our last weekend, so I thought, but she had other ideas which is why she is, right now, sleeping beside me but she so sucks at surprises, and I told her so, because instead of coming straight home after work yesterday, I ran a few hours of errands and when I arrived home, two hours after normal time, she was fast asleep on the couch. I just stood there watching her sleep and thought about how this would be the last, could be the last, and then she’d be gone. Sometime after midnight, I carried her to my bed, our bed, and still sleeping, she wrapped herself around me like Sophie's child and I kissed her on the head, and we’re still here, she’s still here, and life doesn’t move on, at least not for another hour or two, and even though it's 5:30am, I’ve got time, we’ve got time, just before life goes on.
