I was born on January 20th, 1978. Thirty-nine years ago. I was two weeks late. There are stories that surround our births. I don’t know mine.
My birthdays of the past are different colors and sizes. My 9th birthday was the best slumber party of my life. I was bullied at a private school in Milwaukee and I finally put Christine Phillips and Maureen Carney to shame. On my 11th birthday, I attended my grandfather’s funeral. On my 20th, I fell in love with a vapid guitarist who broke my heart. Among the worst, George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2001. I was just dumped by a recognizable British actor who promised me a post-break-up birthday breakfast. He must have forgotten. Another car was parked in his guest spot, with a bottle of Evian and a purple umbrella. He would not answer the door. My sister took me to Ocean Beach, we drank the pain away while reading about George W.’s aversion to broccoli.
Birthdays become a kind of a trapdoor as you get older. There are high expectations and dread twisted to the end of an open wire. What happens on the actual day ends up as either an explosion or failed experiment.
This year, Trump was inaugurated. Facebook was a flurry with dread, misery and anger. When Bernie Sanders “lost” the primaries, I checked out of the election and watched quietly as the loudest friends faded into the sliver of blue on the election map.
This story is not about my politics. I consider myself more liberal than most of my friends, but I do not join them in pantsuits or hashtag mantras. My interest is in freedom, personal and otherwise.
It was after midnight when Michael let himself into the bedroom with an old version of “Happy Birthday” squealing from his phone. He was working late at the local saloon and smelled of forgotten breadcrumbs in kitchen friers. He crawled into bed doing his best Marilyn Monroe impression and fell asleep next to me with his feet on my pillow.
Michael and I have lived together for almost five years. Our relationship has been turbulent but tender. Firey and fantastic. He is my best friend. When you have a baby, it feels like you keep smashing your relationship apart and piecing it back together just to get it right. At first you fall in love and it might be a clear window, really used as a mirror. We want to see and be seen as flawless creatures. People want to feel perfect. Once you start a family, that glass is cracked and broken. Pieces fall out. You can either walk away and look through someone else’s window, or take those shards of bloodied, stained-glass and fit them back together— sideways and upside down— until it all works again. In the end, you don’t need a glass window. You need a cathedral.
We woke up early.
“God, damn it,” I said from the bathroom.
“What?”
“I got my period… Happy Birthday to me,” I said. It was the second one since my daughter’s birth. Finally, the violent cramps from the week before would end in bloody resolution.
We watched the Inauguration together in bed while sharing an eggless tofu sandwich on rye and a banana cashew smoothie.
“He looks terrified,” I said.
I was not filled with hatred toward Trump, like most friends. I was tired of hate, tired of disappointment and constant anxiety. My body could not process all the possibilities of war, irreversible damage to the planet or other. A mother can only shoulder so much before she simply stops sleeping. The venom oozed through my Facebook every single day. I deactivated. Until my birthday.
“You may have picked the wrong day to activate,” someone wrote.
“It’s my birthday… so fuck it,” I responded.
“Oh! Is it really?”
Obama was at the airplane hangar, making his final speech before departure to Palm Springs. “Michelle and I, we’ve just been your front men and women. We have been the face--” He was cut off as the screen immediately went to a quiet Trump, signing papers while his youngest son stood behind him and played hide-and-go-seek with an infant in Ivanka’s arms.
“Wow,” Michael said. Then there was silence. That was it.
My favorite Rolling Stones cover band was playing that night in Los Angeles. It was the first time they had ever played on my birthday and tonight it was at the Aspen Village, a family friendly venue.
Michael suggested we stay in because of the rain. I had missed the last few Hollywood Stones performances. There is a small group of us who follow tribute bands around Southern California. It is a sacred bond, the tribute groupie to the tribute band. The Hollywood Stones were my first, back when they were called Sticky Fingers. Over 15 years ago, they introduced me to the music of the Rolling Stones.
A decade later, I danced to another live performance on the Queen Mary and realized this was something I had to do as frequently as possible. It became my temple. To dance was to soar.
It was my priority for five years, until my daughter was born. Never, in the last seven years of my faithful following, did the Hollywood Stones ever have a show on my birthday. Tonight was the night.
We drove slow and steady down the hill and across the desert to get to Los Angeles safely.
We arrived to our hotel an hour before the show. Michael found the Adventurer on Expedia. We checked in and walked outside, past vending machines, a tiki bar and large pool with palm tree debris and other unidentifiable matter floating in it.
“The pool looks inviting,” I said.
Outside our hotel room door, two plate sized puddles of spaghetti were thrown down one right next to the other. We entered the room, and there were two queen sized beds in two rooms. They both had pink leopard print covers on them.
When we arrived to Aspen Village, Jeph was already there. He and I met in 2004, while working together at a pet food store in Mar Vista. He is unlike anyone else on the planet: generous and unforgettably quirky. I describe him as an Atheist Ned Flanders. Jeph will always lend me money if I need it. He will always bake me a fresh batch of vegan cookies to hand deliver each time we meet. And he will always go dancing with me. He actually biked his way to Joshua Tree from Los Angeles after the baby was born to help out, clean my yard and go blueberry picking with us.
Alpine Village is a German restaurant with one of my favorite dance floors. The restaurant struggles to balance entertainment and family dining in a growingly unsocial culture.
Dick Swagger, the leading man, ran into us in the lobby and took a picture of the three of us. The rest of the band found us at a table next to the stage where we put baby in a harness and got her ready for the dance floor. We all know each other. While I waited to see if anyone else I invited would show, a portly man in a button-up white shirt rushed our table. “Excuse me, it is going to be very loud for a baby!” he said. He was nervous for some reason.
“That’s ok, we brought infant headphones,” I said, putting them on the table.
“Here, might I suggest you move to a table further from the stage,” he said.
“Sure, as long as we can dance,” I said.
“No, no…” he started. My face twisted in horror. “Just kidding,” he finished.
He moved us to a handicapped booth in the far back corner.
“Don’t you want to save this for someone who is handicapped?” I asked.
He looked around, bowed over the table directly next to it and offered a toothy smile as his skin began to grow slick with perspiration.
We ordered mashed potatoes for the baby and when she finished her meal, Michael took her out to the dance floor, securing her in a front facing harness. She smiled big at me, in the way that folded petals in her tulip nose. My circle was complete. The music rose up and drowned out the civilian rage, the bombs falling in Syria and a rising earth temperature. A six year-old spun around with a grown-up partner. Everyone was smiling. The bitterness stomped out of my feet as we all splashed around in perfect freedom.
Then, the same portly gentleman rushed over to us on the dance floor. He grabbed Michael by the elbow and said “You have to take the baby off the dance floor. The baby can not be here.”
“Why?” I asked. “She is in a harness.”
“We just can’t have her there for safety concerns.”
“What safety concerns?”
“A drunk person might bump into her.”
I looked around at the handful of middle aged dancers. A man in a suit. A much older woman with a velvet poncho, heavy jewelry and silver hair slowly spinning around. A few tribute band groupies I knew. “She goes hiking in national parks. I take her to concerts. I don’t think she is in any danger. At least no more than she would be anywhere else in public.”
“We can’t take the chance. But she can be back there, at a table. Just not on the dance floor.”
It bothered me. And it bothered Michael. “I don’t feel like we are wanted here,” he said. “I feel very uncomfortable.”
Later Michael said the management was “afraid, they just didn’t know of what.” After all, it was an early show at a family restaurant.
Jeph, Michael and I all stuffed ourselves in a darkened booth in the far corner of an empty dining room. Michael started dozing off. So I pouted in the corner as one of my favorite songs, “Tumblin’ Dice”, played. Then I started to cry.
LeAnna suddenly came in from the front door with a scarf around her neck and her arms already out to embrace everyone at the table. LeAnna and I met in 2007 working on a webseries. We both endured the misery of working for Hollywood sadists and spent years in a two person self-help group coping with the aid of mixed cocktails. In 2009, she drove out to comfort me the morning after my cat died, even after she had to leave her broken down car on the freeway. She babysits for free whenever the Hollywood Stones are scheduled to play. I always think of how she stood by me in 2008, even when I insisted on staying in a relationship with a bipolar alcoholic. She didn’t judge. She didn’t give advice. She just listened, shook her head and emailed me a picture of a tumor hanging off the trunk of a tree.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Michael is falling asleep, they won’t let me dance with my baby and… Trump,” I sobbed.
“I am falling asleep because I am holding this big ass baby,” Michael said.
She put her arm around me, “It is a loaded birthday.”
“Next year, I turn 40 and it will be a year into the presidency.”
“That will be a piece of cake. This is the rough one. Come on, I have been looking forward to dancing it out all day. Let’s dance it out.”
Jeph, LeAnna and I rose and reassembled on the dance floor. And then, to the saxophone, the harmonica and the lick of the güiro, we danced it out. Between each song, LeAnna shouted “Happy Birthday, Vita!!!” trying to hint that the band should say something.
Dick said, “This is for you,” right before “Let It Bleed”.
The song starts with a single guitar played with a heavy arm. Constant. Almost carefree. Like a child drawing in bigger and bigger chalk circles. Then the bluesy vocals:
“Well, we all need someone we can lean on,
And if you want it, you can lean on me.”
“This is what I have been waiting for. This is it. This song,” LeAnna said happily.
“Take my arm, take my leg,” Dick sang.
“Oh baby don't you take my head,
Yeah, we all need someone we can bleed on,
Yeah but if you want it, well you can bleed on me…”
It felt like a wake. It was the death of what we knew our country to be. It was the death of knowing that everything would be the same tomorrow. It was now time to let go of the United States we were and seek out the United States to be. With that jaded, faded, junky nurse.
The band never wished me Happy Birthday. And only two friends came out for my birthday this year. For what it was, on that day, on this year, it was just what it was supposed to be: intimate, heartbreaking, pathetic, real.
Michael, the baby and I headed back to our hotel. The tiki bar was closed so we popped a few quarters in a vending machine for a soda and some candy. On the way back to our room, a large man cornered Michael and tried to buy his opened soda off of him.
The three of us all piled into one, pink leopard pattern bed. I found a tiny champagne bottle in the mini fridge and we drank it with the TV on, giggling over icy bubbles.
“Do you think this place is haunted?” Michael asked.
I looked over the Yelp reviews. “Yes. (reading) ‘The owner and managers literally went on after a young man drowned in their pool as if nothing was wrong. They left vomit and blood poolside, letting witnesses to relive the horrible incident that happened the night before. It's absolutely disgusting the lack of respect and human decency these people have.’”
“Holy shit.”
The next morning I woke with a migraine. I texted my friends that I was leaving town despite plans to stay and we drove back home to our dogs, the wet sand and my Mother-in-Love’s care package. Sometimes you need a cathedral.
“Birthdays are not what they were from our childhood. Nothing lives up to that expectation,” Michael said.
The migraine spread from my left temple, down my throat and into my left shoulder. The next day it would cross my forehead, putting my hairline in a vice. The baby and I watched as hundreds of thousands of women marched for our voice.
And then Trump started signing executive orders.
More marches were organized. It took a man like Trump to get this country out of hibernation.
On my 39th birthday, Trump became president of the United States of America. Nothing was ever the same.
This was how it was always meant to be:
A failed experiment. An explosion.
