[30]

ms. b: your boobs look huge!
ms. k: what?!
ms. b: is your bra padded?
ms. k: lil’ bit.

ms. b then spent the next hour staring at said huge boobs, freaking ms. k out from across the room. they did look bigger than ever. so last night was ms. k’s surprise birthday party at her mom’s. good food. crazy 8s with playing cards as big as your head. broccoli and cauliflower, yum.

it’s weird going back to a place you spent so much of your late teen years and early twenties growing up in. the night we burned an obscenely large black patch into the yard. yeah, there was no covering that one up. mixing the world’s biggest amaretto sour, in a plastic bowl, and then sharing it with straws by the pool. that was the night we decided to put the tent together on the deck and sleep outside. that came to an abrupt end as ms. k spilled what was left of our bowl drink on the floor of the tent. kissing dirrrty girls on a dare. long walks around the neighborhood on warm summer nights. smoking clove cigarettes. sneaking backpacks filled with “borrowed” movies and beer down the hall to a bedroom. a drunken new year’s eve in a dark bedroom lying on a bed, making our own strobe light on the ceiling with a flashlight, as we listened to old 45s. discovering streets of fire. yukon jack, with a hint of weed. priceless memories. countless exes. but a friendship that remains. after twenty years, growing, changing, bending not breaking. a friendship remains.

and in a little over two hours i’ll be 30. that’s scary and hard to wrap my mind around. i remember when my favorite cousin turned 30. i remember thinking how old that was. distant. so far away. and now as i approach it i still feel like a sixteen-year-old kid. awkward, unsure, insecure. i’m the age my mom was when i was born. that’s crazy.

and tomorrow night is the big party night out. in theory i’m to meet G for a couple pre-party drinks. then we’ll meet ms. k and ms. b for dinner at luigi’s. if time permits bowling, this year’s theme is white trash. after that everyone else is invited to meet up with us at the bars downtown. a night with good friends, and lots and lots of alcohol and a drunk dial here and there for good measure is how i want it to play out. with low expectations at least i can’t be let down. good friends and pretty clothes, what more can you ask for?