Happy Birthday

Well the year has passed quickly and already it's time for another birthday greeting. This year's comes with two gifts: reality and anger. The first will be provided here. You'll supply the second.

Reality?

It doesn't get much more basic than this: a writer writes. Somewhere along the way, you seem to have forgotten that.

Since, what, 1995?, you've rewritten the same piece of crap year after year. The diminishing returns should have tipped you off to reality but somehow, as usual, it was everyone's fault but your own. Then you got the notion that you could slide over to cable TV. Why?

Because you met two 'geniuses' at a party who'd 'crossed over' to broadcast TV. Everyone warned you how that would go down. Everyone pointed to examples of their portrayals of women. But you knew best, right?

They appreciated you, you swore, they got you, really got you. No, dear, they had you. They both had you.

Then when they were both through with you -- and the fact that they were both doing you at the same time should have been a warning sign -- you went off into 'religion.'

Sweetie, it's not 'religion.' Not even an agent expects 45% of your income. It's not the Lord, it's the Leach.

That should have been your first clue. The worship required of a living person should have been your second.

As you dash from meeting to meeting tossing off terms like 'self-empowerment,' does it ever strike you that true self-empowerment would mean providing you with the tools to make your own decisions?

Now they've tapped you out and they're done with you. Yet you still swear it's a 'religion.'

And you search your circles for another brainwash victim because they'll bring you back into 'the flock' if you can provide them with someone else to drain.

It's been three months since then and you're kind of angry with a lot of people who won't return your calls. You've taken to making statements which, when they find their way back -- and they always find their way back, portray all your friends as avoiding you because of what you term your 'creative dry spell.'

Reality, after a decade or more, it's not a dry spell. In fact, this period has lasted longer than your 'creative period.'

Here's some more reality: you still have your health and your home.

Now you've taken in yet another loser who can't hold a job. You get upset when anyone points out that he's a loser but the truth is in the details.

In the last seven years, he's worked six months. That's if we're generous. And that's not six consecutive months.

You've taken to saying that all your friends are hung up on money. If 'hung up on money' means not turning over nearly half their monies to a cult, then, yes, everyone is hung up on money. If opposition to worshipping the Leach and lodging the Mooch equals 'hung up on money,' then, yes, everyone is hung up on money.

You're all about 'peace' these days, you say.

And, you whisper, everyone else is just 'caught in the currency.'

Your little sermonette on Wilcox Ave. might have carried more weight if you'd dressed your beau before the two of you went out. Now that doesn't mean well dressed. That doesn't mean stylish. It does mean clean. It does mean the stain, wine or grape juice?, taking up two-thirds of the front of his shirt didn't translate as 'night on the town.'

The Mooch isn't about peace. Like yourself, he voted for the Bully Boy in 2004. So maybe you thought it was kismit?

Last month, when you crashed a party, the host didn't ask you to leave because he was 'caught up in the currency.' When he referred to your new beau as "trailer trash," he wasn't even talking about the dirty clothes. You were both asked to leave because your Prince Charming apparently can't string more than two sentences in a row without tossing out the n-word.

The friend you called mid-week to whine too? She didn't care. She lost all interest and all respect for you when you explained that you woke her a little after three in the morning because Prince Charming's 13-year-old daughter called you a bitch. In your own kitchen. After you dared to suggest that (a) she was too young to be 'dating' a man who was 27-years-old and (b) three in the morning was really too late to be coming home at her age, especially smelling of booze.

As that friend explained, listening to you whine about how you must be a bitch because this out-of-control, barely teen screamed it at you was the last straw.

"Why is she letting him and his brood live with her?" was the question on everyone's minds.

Brood.

Six children. By six different women.

None of whom he ever paid child support for.

(You can't pay when you have no money.)

So it's not surprising that when the mothers learned he landed a meal ticket they packed off the kids to live with you.

It is shocking that you've taken them in.

The eleven-year-old's a pot head who cuts school and zonks out in front of the TV all day. Maybe you see his father in him?

You, who once made friends remove their shoes for a six month period after you installed new carpet, now have six 'in door' dogs. Not a lot of people consider German sheppards in door dogs.
Word is the dogs eat a lot. That's known not just from your bragging about the food bill but also due to the fact that one person actually attempted to visit the first week of November to do an intervention. Somewhere after stepping into the third dog dropping, he lost any and all interest in an intervention. Despite your explanation of how you'd learned to let them dry because it made them easier to pick up. As kindly as possible, and he's known for his kindess, he made a hasty exit.

And you trashed him on Wilson. You explained, apparently rather loudly, that he and everyone else had 'sold out, man.'

"Whatever happened," you were heard to wonder, "about peace, love and understanding?"

While it's good to know you can still recall the lyrics of Elvis Costello, no one's forgotten that you cheerleaded this war. No one's forgotten that and no one will.

Your attempts to pass yourself off as the modern embodiment of all things hippie was laughable during times of peace. "John Lennon, man," you'd say, "that's where it's at."

Which might have carried some weight if anyone ever heard you listening to him. With Dylan, at least, you were sort of listening when you sang along with the Counting Crows' "Mr. Jones."

But with the nation at war -- and you're excusing of that and the Bully Boy -- don't kid yourself that you're the last modern day hippie. Don't kid yourself that you've found Prince Charming either.

While you have a variety of excuses for the fact that you caught him in the hall of a seedy bar making out with some woman, the fact remains he can't get it up with you. Everyone's tired of hearing about it. Everyone's tired of hearing how he's 'stressed' and so 'concerned' about the world that Fox "News" plays nonstop on your bedroom TV. We think the heroin habit he's dabbling in explains the 'dry spell' (your words) that now passes for your love life.

You're about to be another year older. The best gift anyone can give you at this point is the truth.

Everyone has doubts that you can admit to it. But until you do, no one's interested. Yes, the "last real friend" you had blocked you after the early morning call/whinefest.

You can contine to point the finger at everyone else but you've given yourself the bird. That's the reality of your life currently. Happy Birthday.

[All quotes and stories retold with permission.]