My creative writing professor gave us an assignment a few weeks ago about giving or receiving advice. She asked us to read Girl by Jamaica Kincaid (a phenomenal short story which every cultured reader should know) and then to write our own little story loosely based or inspired by Kincaid’s, limited to three pages double spaced. I thought about advice that my mother might give me. I thought about advice that my mother might give someone else. I thought about advice that I might give myself. And then I thought about advice I might have given myself on my twenty-first birthday, which I had celebrated just a few days prior to receiving this assignment. I meditated on life, love, and appropriately, on alcohol. The following is advice written to myself, and perhaps to anyone else turning twenty-one and reflecting on the passing of another year and on experiences past.
NB: It is called golden birthday advice because I turned twenty-one on the twenty-first of January, which my family calls a golden birthday.
When it is your twenty-first birthday you don’t have to get shit faced. You could just as easily ease your way into legal drinking; do it with grace and dignity; drink water between every beer; sip, don’t chug; laugh, don’t cry; invite the girl who used to be your friend in high school who randomly transferred to your college; reminisce with her about the old days and don’t nose-dive back into the stalemate that’s kept you apart for so long; hug her; remember the way you used to joke together; joke like that again; don’t mind that it is facilitated by flaxen drink upon amber drink upon honey drink; just go with it; let your friends sing happy birthday to you and let the random others at pint night sing too; eat the whole piece of salted caramel chocolate birthday cake; have another beer; don’t be too embarrassed when you start knocking drinks over; let the bar tender flirt with you in that sympathetic way; don’t be a bitch when your room mate starts being the attention whore that growing up as an only child has ingrained in her; smile for the camera; have another piece of cake; it is your birthday, after all; laugh with your old friend and tell her you missed her and mean it; do a shot of tequila and don’t wince–well done; do another and drink some water; go to the bathroom and squat above the toilet seat and feel your quads burning like the burn of tequila and don’t even think about throwing up; strut back to the table and be thankful that you decided not to wear heels on your big night; fall down onto the chair’s lap and let your friends put their arms around you and kiss your cheek because you’re finally a responsible drinker now and you can finally come out to bars with us now and you’re so mature you’re an adult now and ignore the texts that start piling up on your phone screen and like some people’s posts on your Facebook wall but not others and don’t think about the ex boyfriend who hasn’t called you to wish you a happy birthday and don’t think about your best friend from home who hasn’t called you to wish you a happy birthday; think instead about all of the people who are with you right now and about all of the people who are dying to meet you and about the date that you’re going on tomorrow night and about all of the people who will fall in love with you later or of all of the people who would fall in love with you now if only they would get to know you; why smile when you could laugh why walk when you could run but don’t fall on the ice that lines the sidewalks count the snowflakes that fall in your hair remember two years ago when there was a blizzard on your birthday remember two years ago when you declared I hate my birthday and don’t think about him think about now think about tonight–it is your golden birthday: twenty-one on the 21st and even though you have class at 10 a.m. the next morning and even though you won’t have birthday sex and even though not everyone you invited showed up to the party it was still the best birthday still your golden birthday golden golden like the beer in the pitchers golden like the color of the way you feel golden like the best age golden like you’re the youngest you’ll ever be again and golden and perfect and drunk and with old friends and new friends and the people who matter will make sure they’re there and the people who matter will tell you they love you and fuck all the rest because they were never there for you anyway or if they were things are different now because things change but you’re still golden you’re magnificent like a fucking sunrise and you’ve got you’re whole life ahead of you and here you are at your prime on your golden birthday and all along its snowing snowing and when you walk out of the bar you swear that by the light of the streetlamps it’s snowing gold and gold is piling up on the sidewalks and gold is piling up in your eyes and gold is in your hair, on the tip of your nose, coating your eyelashes like gilding; you’re outside of your apartment and it is late now; you’re tired; you hug everyone goodbye and some of them tell you they love you and kiss you on the cheek; you swipe in to your apartment and push like a storm front through the door, shed your clothes in a pile on the floor–you can pick them up tomorrow. Then you’re alone in your bed. You close your eyes and you see gold, dark gold, restless gold; you are older than you were this morning.