It's My Party and I'll Lie If I Want To

I turned 21 again. Let's call it turning 21 part four. Don't get me wrong, the first time around was fantastic, it included all the right elements: drinking, dancing, puking, but fate intervenes and decides to turn an ordinary Friday night into an extraordinary birthday extravaganza. It happens so fast, a stranger asks your table whose birthday it is and someone points to you. The next thing you know it's being announced by the deejay and some stranger is sending over a shot. And another. And another. For a moment you think, maybe you should come clean. It's not your birthday. You've already celebrated being 21 four years ago. But then, who am I to mess with fate?

It is a mathematical certainty that fun people like to hang out with other fun people. Add some vodka and several shots of some sweet concoctions and you have a ready made par-tay. Special occasions such as fake birthdays turn strangers into friends, spazzes into dancers and an Avril Lavigne song worthy of bopping around spewing lyrics that rhyme 'damn precious' with 'motherfucking princess'. I know what you're thinking-why would you tell a stranger something that wasn't true? How about because to say you're from Hollywood, that you're named after a stripper and are a bar virgin is far more entertaining than saying you live twenty blocks down the road and you work a job that actually seems to be the antithesis to intelluctual enlightenment. Haven't you ever pretended you were someone else? I have my whole life. As a kid, I used to pretend I was famous and conduct interviews with myself in the mirror. I pretended I was a gymnast and would jump off the couch trying to perfect my landing. In 4th grade, my friend and I pretended we were running away from home and packed our bookbags with sandwiches, beef jerky and CapriSuns. We only ran away to the golf course to run through the sprinklers and went home when our snacks were gone, but it was fun while it lasted.

Enter the alter ego which encourages fun while it lasts. The alter ego is a Friday night's booty call. You call on your alter ego to liven up your night, to do something extremely foolish and forbidden just because you can. Every day all day you're you. It's fine. But not fun. It's safe but not exciting. That's where your alter ego comes in, so that if you do something, say something, think something so off from who you are, you have an explanation. This is not lying to yourself. This is helping yourself from reaching the point of mindless insanity. The insanity that ensues only after a life of mundane routine has grayed your spirit. It's taking life's lemons and adding vodka for a very delicious cocktail.

But what happens if someone finds you out? What if someone threatens to rain on your parade and tell people that it is in fact not your birthday? Then, you offer that person a drink, give them a wink and smile. One day they'll understand. They'll get what it's about. There are four and a half days a week when there is inevitably going to be downers that forget what it's like to go with the flow, have a good time, enjoy life. There are four and a half days for life to take contol of you instead of the other way around, when things like bills and debt and general stress threaten to age you in such a way that you become morphed into said downer who causes others to decide to have fake birthdays. Then comes Friday afternoon, four and a half days have been survived and that in itself is reason enough to celebrate. Even if you think it's silly to have pretend special occasions, there will come a time when you will feel like being someone else, when you will feel like creating a party for no reason. It will come around the time you realize the only rules that need to be followed are your own. I don't know if this will happen to you anytime soon. But I sure hope it does.