They Say It's My Birthday

When I turned six-and-twenty, my girlfriend Patti gave me a TEAC-3340 four-track tape recorder, on which, for the next 19 years, I recorded countless hundreds of demos. It was probably the most generous gift anyone has ever given me (in 2010, it would cost around $4000), and that which I’ve enjoyed most and longest. I felt so loved.

When I was nine-and-twenty, my girlfriend Marie threw a wonderful surprise party for me in our apartment high above Sunset Blvd. I was shocked at how many people liked me enough to attend, but the best part was the proud, adoring smile Marie gave me from across the room at one point. I felt so loved.

When I turned five-and-thirty, future First Missus and I were in Siena, Italy. After traipsing around a variety of open-air markets in the morning and having a wee lunch, she invited me to make myself scarce while she went up to our pensione and put on the scandalous attire in which I loved to see her, and laid out an array of Coca-Cola-related gifts (I was a collector, you see) she’d bought for me a few cities back, and manage to gift wrap artfully when I wasn’t looking. I felt so loved.

When I turned 40, by-then First Missus and I and our daughter went to Yosemite (which I’ve always wanted to spell Yo, Semite!), and had a heart-ripping screaming match en route. I felt pessimistic about our marriage, which in fact was finished within 60 days of our return home.

Turning 50 was even worse. I’d told and told and told Life Partner 4 how much I hoped she’d make a big deal of the event, but it was Mothers Day too, and she made no fuss at all. Hurt and angry, I drove home alone from her mom’s, guzzled a great deal of vodka, and leapt on my rowing machine, hoping to exhaust myself physically. Then she and my daughter arrived home, and I quit snarling long enough to learn that a bunch of friends from my first design job were waiting, at the instigation of my friend Kathleen, to surprise me at a restaurant in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset. I felt so loved — and such an asshole, for being so drunk when we arrived at the restaurant that my little girl burst into tears of embarrassment and alarm.

When I turned five-and-fifty, Claire gave me a UK mobile phone and took me to dinner at a tapas bar in Hampstead. I felt so loved, and six days later we were bride ‘n’ groom. When I turned six-and-fifty, she took me to Paris. We saw persons of African origin peeing quite unashamedly in broad daylight against the sides of our hotel, and she showed me where her handsomest early boyfriend had once attracted a mob of young Parisiens who imagined him to be Keith Richards.

We flew to Cyprus the day I turned seven-and-fifty. While she donned the sort of attire in which the birthday boy most enjoyed seeing her, I trudged over to a little market near the hotel to buy her a bottle of wine. Trudging back through a field, I wondered which mythological figures’ footsteps I was walking in. We had at it and then listened to Al Green’s greatest hits, which sounded like the best music in the world. I felt so loved.

When I was 60, Claire took me for a birthday getaway to…London. We saw Spamalot in the West End and went to bed dreaming of the Hilton Breakfast that awaited us the following morning. (I’d believed the Hilton Breakfast to be one of the best things in all of life since our visit to Malaysia the previous year, when I’d been able to say things like, “Another huge trayful of smoked salmon, if you please,” to beaming servers who were delighted to oblige.) I felt so loved.

Today I will celebrate my birthday without Claire for the first time in 10 years, and it feels as though I’m lacking a vital organ. But a great many who are dear to me — and some I wouldn’t know from Adam — have conveyed their felicitations electronically or even through the post, and the best new friend I've made in the past several years has sent me a gift of flabbergasting generosity, and I will dine tonight with my two best friends in New York. And I feel so loved, and blessed.