My Birthday

This story was a school assignment meant to read like Catcher in the Rye. It is a documentation of the events on my birthday this year. Enjoy!1

The first thing you’ll probably want to know is what my lousy day was like. To tell you the truth, I was in the shower shampooing my goddamn hair and I kept pulling out strand after strand. It depressed me because all of my pink hairs were coming out in handfuls. I read once that a person loses about a hundred hairs a day. Can you believe it? A hundred goddamn hairs! That kills me.2

So anyway, I am in the shower and these hairs are coming out a thousand at a time and I put them on the shower wall because I like to make pictures with the hairs as the outlines. I sort of enjoy it. And I am depressed because it is my birthday again.  Birthdays are just reminding me of how old I am getting, how close I am to death. I don’t like to talk about it with other people. You gotta be in the mood for that kind of stuff.3

I was getting ready to dress all fancy because that is what people expect you to do on your birthday. They’re so phony that way and you have to be phony too and dress to the goddamn nines, for heaven’s sake! So I put on this crumby yellow dress and put on these fishnets and my black dressy shoes. I also styled my lousy hair; and when I say lousy, I don’t mean I have lice in it but because it is so wild all the time. See, I have psoriasis which is this epidermic disease and all so it causes flakes in my hair and I really didn’t want to be brushing my shoulders off like it was a goddamn snowstorm or something! Like my shoulders had become the Swiss Alps or something!4

I was sitting on my chair in my room trying to tug up my tights when my mom walks in. Now, I love my mom and all but she has these things about her that, if I told you about them, she might just have six heart attacks on the spot. My mom is sort of touchy about things but she always has liked birthdays. She goes all out for birthdays with my family. I remember once she gave me a Little Mermaid-themed party for my six or seventh birthday. I can never remember which, mostly because I was so young and all, and kids don’t really pay much to details, like how my little sister Paige- she’s a real gem- always is running into walls and things cause she doesn’t look before she leaps, so to speak. Old Paige is so funny.  I remember the party had little cupcakes with crabs on them and pears with thin licorice strings for tentacles to look like octopuses, no, octopi. I mean, can you believe it? Goddamn sea creatures made out of sugar on everything, for heaven’s sake! 5

So, my mom walks in and says, “Happy Birthday, Arielle. What are you doing for breakfast?”6

I started feeling really depressed from thinking about my old parties. I told my mom I was going with my older sister, Alyce, to get breakfast at Panera or somewhere like that, except that I called her Alice because we all have nicknames for each other. Like Alexis is Alex and Andria is Branchito and I am Gold. No one ever knows why they call me Gold but I remember it was because they started calling me “Ariole” which rhymed with “Marigold” which sounded sort of like “Mary Golden” which was shortened to “Gold.” And that is how I got my nickname.7

Alice pulled up in her Jeep Cherokee and we went to get a bacon, egg, cheese biscuit sandwich. Alice told me about how her and Andria and this fight which really made me sad because she punched Andria in the face. Now, Andria deserves it but it still makes me depressed because they were so close of sisters…something I have never had.8

I went to school. Not really much to say about goddamn Buckeye. It’s full of bastards and perverts and phonies anyway. 9

I came home and I was listening to Godsmack on the radio. I don’t really like Godsmack, but their lead singer, Sully, has a small tattoo of a star underneath his eye. I was thinking that I wanted to get a star on my shoulder but have it a few shades darker than my skin color so it could look like a birthmark. Sometimes I’m so intelligent. Then I thought about this one time that my gym teacher was talking to me about tanning and how it makes scars darker and since tattoos are just scars practically, I thought that wouldn’t be good. Not that I would tan anyway because I like my pasty pallor. I’m sort of short and like I said before, I have pink highlights in my hair that are fading out anyway, and since everyone else likes to darken they’re skin, I prefer to be melanin-less. So tanning reminded me of this one cheesy, teenager horror movie where this girl is lying helpless and unaware in the tanning bed and the villain sneaks up on her. The Movie is called, “I Know What You Did Last Summer…” which was actually a book first. I like books more than their goddamn movie counterparts because the sonuvabitch directors always butchered literature. I’m no genius at math or anything but I like English. It is practically the only class I’m not failing anyway. So the book and the movie end up having two very separate plots. 10

While I was chewing the cud, I was drawing some pictures of many different people. Old Paige was next to me coloring with crayons and shouting out orders to my other siblings who were supposed to be cleaning the kitchen but were squabbling instead. It depressed me to see them fighting and yelling and whatnot. I almost wanted to laugh but I didn’t because it reminded me of this one time when I was at Austin’s baseball game. I am not a big fan of sports because it is like you have to commit suicide or something if your home team doesn’t win, but since I’m going around with Austin, I went to watch some ball. 11

Well, this one time, it was very sunny outside and I had seen a dead bird and I was poking at it with a crumby stick and then I saw the players sitting on a bench so I casually approached them. I asked one of the kids, Tipton is his name. He is a real bastard and thinks he is some kind of hot-shot, and I asked him what the score was. He said it was 1 to 8 and I knew we were losing because you’re supposed to say your score first. I laughed. I know I shouldn’t have but I wasn’t exactly enjoying our defeat. Tipton looked at me like I was a madman and said, “Are you fucking retarded?” because I had laughed. I didn’t mean to and I tried to explain why I was but I was honestly lost for words. So that is why I didn’t laugh, but instead put my headphones on and listened to some good music, not Godsmack.12

Austin showed up with a dozen yellow roses to match my dress that I wore but had taken off when I came home. I thought they were pretty but they just thoroughly depressed me because this one time when I was watching a movie called “The Bachelor” which was a half-decent movie, the one lady on it said that flowers were symbolic vaginas because that is where the plant is pollinated and that it showed men’s intentions to women. I didn’t find it too sexy though, because Austin probably didn’t even think of that when he bought then for me, which made me even sadder.13

I was starving because I hadn’t eaten since 12:35 P.M. and it was already 6:13 P.M. I was so hungry but I didn’t want to make anything. I thought about eating a banana, but then again, you have to be in the right mood for bananas. You really do. I walked into my mom’s bedroom and she was all jazzed-up like she was going somewhere and she asked me why I wasn’t ready because we were going out to eat. I hurriedly dressed in a pair of silk pants, a black t-shirt and a black scarf with a million metallic sequins on it. I loved looking at that scarf because it reminds me of a kaleidoscope with all of its damn colors and all. I liked my silk pants and all and my shiny scarf and the Cadillac that Chuck, my step dad drives but these things are so phony because they make us look bourgeois. Maybe we are bourgeois, but I thought that we were maybe just middle class, without the fancy French word.14

We went to Macaroni Grille which has the best goddamn bread, and no, it wasn’t crumby. Austin likes Olive Garden bread and said that this bread was better.  The whole time I was there I was so depressed. It had rained on my birthday. Now, I don’t mind rain one bit but, I hate the coolness of the air after the shower has passed. It is so sad to see the sky so gray and all of the things underneath it so bland.15

I wasn’t feeling up to sitting at the time so I went to the restroom. You really have to be in the mood to sit for so long and all. The whole damn restaurant had such class. I mean, the bathroom was red and black and had all these mirrors and was playing this Italian music that sometimes stopped to tell you Italian words and how to say them. I’m talking classy. So I am looking at these mirrors which are pretty much covering every goddamn surface in the whole place and I feel like I am in a House of Mirrors at a carnival. I am trying to smile or look pretty, but my smiles just look phony and you can see my lousy braces. 16

I left the whole damn restaurant entirely and sort of walked around the perimeter of the whole damn building. It was cold as hell out and I was freezing my ass off and it sort of made me sad. I started crying a bit, over what, I don’t know. But then I heard some people’s voices and I saw a family get out of an SUV so I turned away from them so I wouldn’t look like a pansy. This one time I was just watching my little sisters play outside or something, and I just started crying and I felt like the biggest pansy. 17

As I was walking to the front of the building, I saw old Austin and he was waving me in like some kind of airplane director because our table was ready. I walked in ahead of him and opened all the doors myself. I don’t have a problem with chivalry, but if it is overdone, then you know the kid doing it is being phony. Seriously, one of the phoniest things is pretending you’re a nice guy when really you are just a bastard hoping you’ll give someone the time or at least get sexy with them.18

I like Macaroni Grille because you can draw on the tablecloths. They put this paper over it and give you four crayons and I always like to write my name and draw pictures and mix all the colors up. That was like the shaft of light through my goddamn cloud of a day.  So as I was coloring, my mom was just talking up a storm to rival the one that had happened earlier on the anniversary to my D.O.B. I looked at the table next to me and I could only see a chubby woman talking animatedly with someone who was being blocked from my view by Austin. He’s really skinny and athletic and all but he always is blocking my view. I looked at this woman and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. I mean, real fat people have it tough. Sometimes I can’t even look at them especially if they’re moving their arms about as they talk and you can see the fat underneath their arms waving about like wings and all.19

I leaned into Austin and said, “Hey, Austin. Don’t you ever want to get away?”20

“What do you mean?” he replied.21

“What I mean is do you hate school and having to do what everyone’s always asking you to?”22

“I guess school is a real bore.”23

“But what I mean is, have you ever thought of just ending it? Like maybe, there is some sort of goddamn restart button, you know? Have you ever wondered about getting second chances at life and all?”24

He started to look really worried. “Arielle, I don’t like what you’re saying. You know I don’t like it when you curse.”25

“I mean a goddamn restart button is all. Like maybe this life is just my free phony trial? Maybe I can just end it and get a new one.”26

“Arielle, honestly. I can’t even hear what you’re saying! One second you’re practically screaming at me and the next you’re speaking below a whisper.”27

Which was ridiculous. I wasn’t screaming or whispering. I was talking normal. I let it drop though. I remember one time I was trying to describe my depression to him but he only replied by saying, “No, I don’t know what you mean because I haven’t ever felt that way.” I mean, it depresses me more when people don’t understand and so I don’t ever  want to tell them how I feel because they will say they don’t feel that way and I will just feel like a jerk for putting myself out there. 28

We left the restaurant and we went to the mall. I kept thinking about our waiter who was such a phony. He talked to our table in one voice and to the fat lady’s table in a completely different voice. Like a sugary saccharine-sweet high pitch. You can tell someone’s a phony by the inflections of his voice and how he uses them to different people. My step dad, Chuck gave me some dough so I could buy myself something for my birthday. All of a sudden I felt so joyous. Like I was skipping about the parking lot and running around even though I was wearing my nice black dressy flats. I couldn’t wait to buy something as I hadn’t bought myself anything special in a while and all. I only bought a few things and I still had like twenty buckaroos left. We went to the pet store and I ogled like a real pansy at the tiny little kittens. Then we went home.29

But the most depressing part of my day, by far was having to write about the whole madman business that went on. Don’t you hate it when you gotta write about depressing stuff all the time30