happy birthday!

Tuesday, jun. 24, 2003   |   0 comments

Last week, for the first time ever, I turned thirty-three. As an early present, Sunny gave me one of her backstage passes to Nick Cave on Tuesday, which was fun even though I’m not the biggest fan of NC’s sad, sad stylings. I actually think not being rabidly into him made it ESPECIALLY fun because I got to enjoy the kooky, blouse-y crowd and backstage dynamics without being starstruck dumb.

Backstage Sunny, backstage Evany.

My actual BIRTHDAYbirthday was Thursday, and even though I took the day off from work, my day still started off rocky — mostly because I managed to make it all the way to noon without eating. When Jonathan called to wish me a happy birthday, I was in tears about something dumb, my computer crashing? And he said, “have you eaten anything yet today?” “No,” I said all sulky and small. He laughed, haha, and said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that first thing!” Then, “A country full of Evanys would be SO easy to conquer. All you’d have to do is stand between them and their elevenses.” And then, “Don’t you have a pot of honey in the house?”

But then Sunny called and said she was ready to take me to lunch. After potatoes and biscuits with sausage gravy, etc., which really helped matters, we went back to her house and watched Old School. (Haha, but jesus christ, could Vince Vaughn be any creepier?)

When we got back to my apartment, lucky dogs Mimi and Leelee were running around on the sidewalk out front, and we got to sit down there on the warm cement and pat them for like fifteen minutes. Treat! So by the time people (Jill, Liz, Adrienne, Caroleen, and Jeff) came over for tacos and beer and ice cream cake and Center Stage, my birthday had officially turned the corner and I was genuinely “happy.”

My birthday PARTY was Saturday night, over at Caroleen and Jeff’s house. (Yeah, I know, could they be any nicer? Weird!) The very first thing I did, before even having one drink, was fall down their stairs. Something about the combo of my gripless high-high-heels and the paint on the stairs made it like walking on ice, and I had only gone down a few stairs when woosh!, I was on my ass, total crackdown. After a startled second or two, I struggled back up, took one more step, and then woosh! Down I went! Again! Right on the exact same spot of my ass. The second time really hurt too, like, am I going to have to spend the night in the emergency room, nursing a cracked ass? But I managed to SCOOT myself down the rest of the stairs (because clearly walking down wasn’t working).

Once I was on firm ground, I stood up and did a few tentative shakes of my ass and it seemed to be in working order, but sore, so sore! Fast, fast I knocked back a bunch of Advil and drinks, and managed to remain at least serviceable for the rest of the night. In fact, I think the busted rump prevented me from getting really drunk — the pain sponged up all the booze, so by the end of things, around 3:30 or so, I was totally sober. Nice.

Two days later, I’m still like the ingredients of a hotdog, all bruised asses and elbows. Notice the two separate lines in the bruise on my ass … one for each time I landed! (I was kind of hoping the “kiss my” message — from the crazy underwear that Jill gave me that has a string along the top rim that you can thread letter beads onto and spell out words — would have branded into me, too, but no soap. So far. The bruise gets bigger every day, so maybe it’ll show up soon!)

Lots and lots of my all-time-most-favorite people in the world showed up, and I spent the first hour or so just squealing and squeezing.

Nice fur ear holsters! Nice Rob Cockerham!

But somehow, and this is my one big regret of the evening, I didn’t get a chance to really talk to anyone. Once the dance music started, and once I switched into my dance-sensible outfit (complete with different shoes, hair accoutrements, ring, and bracelets, uh huh), I pretty much spent the rest of the night shaking my cakemaker.

The four hours of DANCEDANCEPARTYUSA music I’d burned went down pretty well, but I learned a valuable lesson about how some songs may be GREAT on the headset (Crazy Train, Hot For Teacher, Xanadu) but just freeze up a dance floor. Keeping people dancing was kind of like stoking a fragile fire — I really had to use my birthday-girl tyranny to keep people shaking, especially for songs like “Oops, I Did It Again” — as Britney sang “I’m not … that … in … oh … cent,” Luke leaned over and said, “consider my dancing to this a birthday present.”

Apparently once I hit the dance floor, I didn’t close my mouth once.

Pretty much the only time I stopped dancing was for cake. Jill made me this amazing yellow cake with chocolate frosting, which I think I ate at least three pieces of that night. And then there was Liz‘s Cake Trough:

Frew, Greg, and I were just a few of the many who spackled their cakeholes full of frosting, no hands!

The next morning, Liz and I went back over to J and C’s to help clean up (I managed to spill coffee in my crotch on the drive over), then we picked up Jill and went over Berkeley for hamburgers (I got catsup on my right tit) and Beck. (He covered “Hot in Herre”! I sat in the sun for three hours! On a plastic cushion! And the sweat stain on my ass after all that looked just like I’d peed in my pants!) Then we came home, ordered pizza, and watched Mumford and the season premiere of Sex in the City, which was better than I thought would be (the irritating “Oh So Quiet” ads, with Carrie running around with that bunch of balloons?, that they’ve been running for months didn’t exactly give me that warm, anticipatory sensation … more they just made me want to shit everywhere, so the show was a mildly pleasant surprise).

All in all, a happy, happy birthday. Thank you easter bunnies!