Sunday Top Ten: I Was 27 I Was Sure I Was Growing Pains Like Lead in my Feet

Firstly, doesn't my brother look just like Michael Cera? I saw this article about Cera in the times today and it reminded me of this important thought, one of many important thoughts I have in my head every single day:

Anyhow, onto the Sunday Top Ten on the topic of aging. During my oft-discussed tenure at the Olive Garden Times Square I dated an older man. I was 18 -- a young spry maiden in the fresh poppy fields of her youth -- and he was 27; a freshly divorced law student. I've never been so acutely aware of what it meant to be my age as I was then -- "18" was imposed upon me like a personality trait, and it was the focal point of many relationship discussions with Mr. 27. Consequently 27 has become, in my mind, the age at which one becomes "older." 27 is the age at which I arbitrarily decided people became old enough to have their shit together.

18 was a good age to be. Ripe and on the cusp of something grown-up and fabulous but still charming. Now I'm 27, when youth loses its charm and becomes an old old song in need of a DJ Carlytron Mega-mix. Have I gotten my shit together? Obvs no, I was closer to having my shit together in 2003. But today I spent four hours in high heels, fishnets, gold-hot pants, a corset, and a giant blonde wig and insane drag queen makeup for a sex blogger calendar shoot. I mean who would've guessed? That's way better than a mortgage [which I just had to look up as I don't know how to spell it], which I hear aren't good investments these days anyhow. I'm gonna be whatever month Hedwig and the Angry Inch copulated with Celene Dion and birthed a spry shimmery Mousekeeter named autowin. So that's something.

See I progressed at a highly abnormal rate most of my life. Reading before kindergarten, writing novels before the invention of computers as I was born in the land before time. I started researching colleges and taking myself seriously as a professional something before I even went through puberty. I tried to get into college a year early but my Mom was like "No way, Josè." Basically I was on a fast-track and was convinced that if I didn't go straight to Manhattan at 18 and make it STAT, I'd let the best years of my life pass me by. I slowed down a little bit after that.

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Sunday Top Ten: When I'm 27


[stephen nibbot ]

10. Married!

I figured, at 18, that I had about 10 years of effortless sveltehood and charm left. My high school sweetheart had praised me for making him feel "like a boy again," and my 27-year-old paramour said I was "immature" and "SO 18." I wanted to keep that up.

See -- obvs I intended to spend my Cialis years in a perpetual never-never land of processed snack foods, vodka, carrot cake, anachronistic footwear and My So-Called Life marathons, so I knew I'd have to get married before I began that phase of my life so that I'd be settled in with my fried chicken babies and therefore rendered unleave-able at the precise moment I'd become unbearable and plump. I'd sit on the couch with my nuggets of children, reading great literature out loud like everything was a fairy tale and my husband would be like "I'd divorce that bitch, but she won't get off the couch," and then I'd be like, "go eat a apple pie!"

Instead I just went gay.¹ Marriage is illegal and "letting yourself go" is de rigeour, so I'm good to go.

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9. Live in an unbearably cute apartment on a cute tree-lined block.

I think I've been over this a few times already.

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8. Be a fabulously successful writer, associate editor at New York Magazine, the next new thing prize-winning young novelist, news journalist a la Lois Lane or have started my own magazine, which is still my number one dream, although it's now starting my own online magazine, obvs.

Reality: 2nd Place in the Hot Blogger Calendar Contest, 2nd place in the Lesbian Blog of the Year, 2nd place in the 50-yard dash 1990.

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7. Have a savings account with actual money in it

I think I'm going to start one before I turn 28.

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6. Enter a fabulous job market, flash my diploma all the way to the top.

When I was applying for schools in '98-'99, the future wasn't just bright, it was blinding. Kids like me -- smart, well-read, completely pretentious asshats from academically inclined families -- believed the world was totally our Oyster 2.0 and we were gonna grab it by the horns and make sweet love to it, call it performance art, and collect our big fat checks. Within two years of matriculation, the world became a very different place. Also there's just a lot of us now. Like, by the numbers? A lot of kids in the city who want the same things.

My best friends were entering schools to study the following trades: acting, art history, directing theater, piano, set design, poetry, filmmaking, violin, modern dance, women's studies, etc.

When I transferred to University of Michigan to get a B.A. in English Literature, I thought I was being really fucking responsible, 'cause I'd left Sarah Lawrence where I'd planned to shell out $160,000 to get a degree in "Liberal Arts." In retrospect I should've learned a trade I could stick my hands in like they had in the Olden Days before the economy was invented, like basket-weaving or glassblowing.

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5. Some version, however abstract, of the [Artist]'s American Dream. Warhol-ish. Obama-ish

And maybe that's what I like about Obama. That he seems to believe in the dream we were sold -- the dream of a meritocracy. But our government for the past 8 years hasn't been a meritocracy, it's been some bizarre combination of theocracy and aristocracy. Bush wasn't even elected, but his arm weilded its power and the people fell in line.

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4. Have massive amounts of ass-kicking fun/adventures!

You know what I just fully wholly 100% realized just now is that in the mess of things that so many things have become over the years, there's also the other things, as in, all the things I never ever thought I'd have the chance to do in a million trillion years that I've done in the time between then and now, like some of the purest funnest fucking fun I've ever had like ever. So much fun, seriously, so much fun. Crazy fun. A dream world for everyone involved so much of the time, but maybe that's what makes it feel like so much magic, laughable magic ... that so many times, if you closed your eyes and tapped your shoes it could be a dream world that beat the hell out of any other dream worlds I've known. Years of memories of adventures burning way too bright to last the night, but believing every time that it would was half the fun.

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3. Watch Amèlie

I bought Ameliè in like 2002 I think, 'cause I thought I would watch it on my laptop on our way home from Ohio one Thanksgiving. Unfortunately my boyfriend was being an asshole and said it would be rude for me to do that when I could just be awake listening to him annoy me with assholery. Now I'll never watch it, 'cause it has subtitles and that means I'll be doing two things at once, which makes it hard to do yet another thing, like write my blog or clean my room , while I "watch" the movie.

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2. Get a six-pack

I think I want more apple strudel.

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1. Have health insurance

SCORE! Howevs, if I ever accomplish any of the other things on my list, I'll stop qualifying for my health insurance. You win some, you auto-lose some. Vote Obama! Then we'll all get health insurance!

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¹ I still identify as bisexual but often play with facts for the purpose of a good sentence. Even for a mediocre sentence. The point is that we're all queers, labels are for pineapples that have labels on them. Cans of pineapple.