Thank You So Much For Being With Me Tonight to Celebrate My Twenty-Five-And-Twelve-Month Birthday

by Julia Meltzer

Ahem, ahem [clinks champagne flute daintily]. Can I quickly get everyone’s attention just for one second? Does everyone have a beverage? Because I’d like to say a few words.

I just want to thank you guys so much for being here with me on my twenty-five-and-twelve-month birthday. It really means a lot that you’ve all come out to help me celebrate this important milestone.

There are big changes coming down the pike, you guys. But those will happen when I turn twenty-six. But for now, today, on my twenty-five-and-twelve-month birthday, I feel like I’m in a really great place.

To my wonderful friends: naturally, as a twenty-five-and-twelve-month-old, it is completely appropriate that I spend Saturday nights locked in my apartment with the five of you and two boxes of Franzia playing Settlers of Catan, Drinking Rules Edition. Max and Joe, I still think that longest road trade was sketchy! No but seriously, when I turn twenty-six that will all be over. I will start going to casual dinners at sophisticated restaurants with friends I haven’t seen in soooooo long, having One or Two Cocktails, and heading home to watch an independent film with my serious boyfriend before knocking off a quick journal entry and falling asleep in a haze of contentment.

Which reminds me, I also want to thank those of you I am casually sleeping with for being so capricious, appealing, and unavailable — let’s keep things interesting, am I right? Right now I have one basic principle: anybody who wants to make out with me gets to make out with me. I’m twenty-five-and-twelve-months, you guys. I’m still getting my yayas out. When I turn twenty-six I will of course join JDate, extricate myself from romantic entanglements with my close male friends — you know who you are! — and address the mortal, physiological fear and baby-bunny-spotted-by-hungry-fox-if-I-don’t-move-you-can’t-see-me panic that courses through my veins when I meet a man I’m genuinely attracted to. Cheers!

I also want to thank my co-workers who are here tonight: as you guys know, when I turn twenty-six, I will no longer have the halting, unfulfilling, and vaguely disappointing career of a twenty-five-and-twelve-month-old. At twenty-six, I will be a veteran of our field, a respected colleague, an in-demand collaborator. People will marvel at how successful I am for a twenty-six-year-old! I will be compensated handsomely for my work, and I will use that money to buy a new computer, some interesting art for my walls, and, most importantly, a sense of self-worth. But for now, I’m JUST a twenty-five-and-twelve-month-old, you guys. I just got out of college. I’m on my way. I’m doing great.

Mom, Dad: first of all, thank you for the beautiful party. I love you guys a lot and want your approval and money, which is totally normal for a twenty-five-and-twelve-month-old. But when I turn twenty-six, naturally, our dynamic will have shifted, and you guys will consider me a completed creation on which you can gaze with pride from afar. You will respect my decisions, I will be able to tell you I disagree with your advice, and we will all have a good laugh about it. You will say, “Well, you’re twenty-six years old; you know what’s best for you.” I will pick up the tab when we go out to dinner and stop buying you birthday presents with the emergency credit card that you pay for. When I spontaneously burst into tears in the middle of the day due to the sheer overwhelming pressure of being a person in the world and therefore having desires and challenges, I won’t call you, Mom, and demand that you step out of your business meeting to talk me off the ledge. I’ll call my boyfriend, sister, or journal. Scratch that — fiancé, sister, or journal. But actually, you know what, you guys? I’ll be twenty-six, so I won’t find being a person in the world so overwhelming anymore. I will have it all figured the fuck out. I won’t be some pathetic, sniveling, twenty-five-and-twelve-month-old. I will have ARRIVED.

Hear hear [pours entirety of champagne down gullet, smashes flute on floor, drops mic, raises arms like Eva Peron]! L’Chaim [takes elaborate bow, French kisses passing caterer, runs away]!

Previously: Beauty Secrets: Human Tears

Julia Meltzer is a New York-bred, Los Angeles-based writer-performer who has her shit 100 percent together. You can follow her on twitter here.