Black and White Birthday Night

So it’s official… I survived three decades. Thirty years I’ve been on this planet and I’m honestly not sure what to think about it. But that doesn’t change the fact that it happened, and that I’ve done my best to embrace it with style.
I pretty much skipped over being twenty-nine. Some how I managed to turn everything into an age joke and I was most assuredly taking credit for having already reached thirty. Hell, when I was at my sickest the night after “opening” for Bar Grooves, there I was bitching about being thirty years old and didn’t I think I would be smarter about my alcohol consumption by now! I was ready then to be older, but now that I’ve passed that specific birthday I wished I had taken more joy in being in my “twenties”.
Since graduating from college it seems that I’ve spent most my time with people that were either ten to twenty years older or five to ten years younger. Now since my high school reunion I am back in the company of those who graduated from high school the same year as I, and from college the same year as well. We’ve even listed each other off in order of who is making the leap to middle-age next. Since the summer SJ has been talking about going on a cruise for the sake of not being in the country when she turned thirty. MN wasn’t even in the state anymore but she would have her usual costume party for Halloween and her thirtieth, I was so envious. None of my attempts to have a costume party ever worked. Then again I had a difficult date to work around.
I’m not sure how I came to my final decision of trying to book a show for my celebration. I had heard and seen other people, better connected in the music scene than I, being able to throw a bill together and getting the night of music in their name. Three of my closest friends were all in amazing local bands and yet they were all completely different: Americana/folk, reggae/rock, electronica/down-tempo. No booker in their right mind would even ponder such a bill. I knew right away that if I was going to make it work I had to start looking early for a spot to rent out. How expensive could that be?
Pretty damn expensive as it turned out. Even thought I was starting this search in early September I knew that I was still facing issues with finding a date that would work for everything: the bands, the location, and my friends. The earlier I started the better. The first spot I emailed was the restaurant that the high school reunion had been held. The second floor was exclusive and interesting, with a stage and sound system at the ready. After several awkward emails back and forth with the manager, the price tag of four hundred dollars and the requirement of catering at eighteen to twenty dollars a plate was more that I could honestly tell myself was worth the effort. My parties are never well attended, not even when it was a nearby location and open to the public. It would be ridiculous to convince myself that I could get two hundred people in the room, even if I tried to charge a cover in order to deal with the rental charge.
So that led to emailing all sorts of locations and getting prices both north and south. The date as I’ve said before is a difficult one. I felt like I should at least nail down a location before I made the bands commit to playing. With several locations giving me similar prices for both a private function or rental that I could open out to the public I was starting to wonder if I should walk away from another outrageous and impossible idea.
On a whim I emailed LC the owner of the club Lena and I had once spent so much time at. I wondered how open minded he would be, but I knew he’d have a weakness for the fact that Lena’s band was to be my headlining act. I was actually surprised how receptive he was. But then my plan hit a snag. My opening act was going to be out of town for the end of December. Although totally willing to play, I had to decide to replace the band as an option or change my time table. Deciding that the three band bill was very important to me, I figured I was back to square one and told LC that it wasn’t going to work out.
But he kept emailing me. It was almost like a car sale, the way I would refuse and he would come back with another deal for me. In the end he gave me exactly what I wanted and I was so excited. I would take care of paying the bands, and he would take the cover charge to cover his costs. No rental fee and open to the public. I was responsible for advertising the show. It couldn’t have worked out better. But when I reminded him that we had yet to decide a date in January that would work for both of us, his response crushed my hopes. He had some how missed my email explaining that the end of December would no longer work for me, and had created this offer all on the basis of the original date. I thanked him for his time and went back to emailing rental spaces.
Out of the blue a week later LC emailed with the date of January 10th. He was still interested in having this show and I couldn’t have been happier! My crazy plan was actually going to work out and it wasn’t going to cost me a million dollars. I could do this! With those details locked in and all the bands confirmed to play shortly after, I was set! Hell, I even had plenty of time to get KT to make posters and I could plan my attack on the town of Fremont in order to promote and advertise. But that was January… my birthday was in December. I still wanted to do something on the actual day.
My original plan got split into two nights. The elegant dinner party and night of music that I had originally planned when I had thought I could afford the space from the reunion made me go back to look at the other spaces available in that restaurant. And I found it. The two times that I had been to the restaurant I had totally been enamored with the glass encased theater that sat in the center of the main floor. It was exclusive and yet fun. I could show a movie and people could come and go as they pleased. After reading the specs on the space it was perfect: seating for seventeen, space for up to twenty-five. It was just the right size with the option of watching a DVD, satellite TV or hooking up a Wii. I paid the rental fee for the HD Theater in early October and felt like everything was in place.
Then shit hit the financial fan at work and at home. Unpaid time off was required for the next three months, which meant I was losing something close to a hundred dollars a paycheck. I had paid the rental fee the theater just in time, but I had had grand decorating plans which now appeared to be unreasonable. My car also decided that it wasn’t happy with its boring existence and ended up costing close to fifteen hundred dollars before Christmas on four separate trips to the shop.
Yet in the face of adversity I prevailed thanks to my family, JoAnn Fabrics for having MASSIVE sales on their Christmas supplies, and the Dollar Store for just existing. That’s not to say I didn’t down scale my original ideas to something much more creative and festive, with a lot of brainstorming from my friends.
I had made lists, I had checked them twice. I had packed the night before to make sure all my decorations and supplies were ready to go. I wracked my brain to be sure I had thought of EVERYTHING. I even started my day an hour earlier than I had planned for in order to make sure everything worked out. And it didn’t…
All I had to do was find four dozen red roses, but I had planned to check a couple places in order to make sure I got the cheapest or nicest roses in town. The problem I began to notice was that no one had roses and if they did it was only a couple dozen that looked long dead, most weren’t even red. Panic started to creep in as I visited store after store. Stopping into a florist shop the lady there said that none of her shipments had come in. Whether it had to do with the holiday or what, she had a feeling that everywhere else was having the same problem. I wanted to cry. Everything had been perfectly timed. I was to pick up my roses, then my cake by noon and head home to prepare in the most girly of fashions. Now it was almost one o’clock and time was slipping away from me as well as the most important part of my decorations for the night.
In the end I gave up my hunt and headed over to pick up my cake. I had seen roses there before and could only hope that they had something left. I was desperate. I was both extremely relieved and angry all the same when I saw the most beautiful roses right as I walked in the door. If only I had just come straight here I would still have the day ahead of me!
So the rest of the day unraveled from me. Almost two hours behind I tried to sit patiently under a hair dryer as I watched time tick away from me. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. I didn’t get to the restaurant until six forty-five when I was supposed to have been there at five and my guests would be arriving at seven. I had so much to set up and I knew it would never be done before they started showing up. I put on a CD that I had specifically made for this night and did my best to calm down and focus.
The final product, with the help of my friends came out looking exactly as I had hoped. Ten of my good friends came all dressed in black and white as I had asked. JN had even worn a suit and tie for me. We didn’t end up watching the movie, because it just seemed too much of a change from the table hopping and conversation that was happening in the room. The cake was beautiful and the sparklers that I had found in the shape of a three and a zero were just as I had hoped they would be.
Going home that night I was pleasantly and perfectly drunk. I was pleased with how everything had worked out and yet I was sad it was over. I do that though; get struck down with post-event depression. I had planned and saved and anticipated this night for almost four months. Now it was over and I was actually thirty years old.
Now I’m suffering from both the renewed anticipation for the show on the tenth which I have turned into a Snow Leopard benefit, and the melancholy attitude of someone who got old without realizing it. There’s something terribly social about being thirty. It’s like a barrier that cannot be uncrossed. Over the hill as it were. It’s another bench mark that makes me stop and wonder about my life and where I’m going. Do I really want this job for another ten years? Will I ever get of debt and be able to stand on my own? Is there a man out there who wants to love me and be with me forever or should I start collecting cats now?
I have “lived” my life and I don’t look back on my twenties with any regrets. Will my thirties be just as exciting? I guess I need to tackle these years with the same enthusiasm. It wasn’t about being twenty-five or any other age in between. I was just living. Thirty doesn’t mean I should give up what I like doing or stop trying to experience life. I need strive even farther.