Week 5 Day 1

On my birthday, from midnight to midnight, I was always right. It was a rule I made up when I was seventeen and insisted everyone followed. For a few years, I spent my birthday with Joel, mainly because he was the only one who wouldn’t tell me to go fuck myself by the middle of the afternoon.

Joel kept me out of trouble, which at the time, was like a full time job. In turn, I showed him how to loosen up and took care of him when he got too drunk, which at the time, was like a full time job.

He was a baseball player with the metabolism of a hummingbird and bordered on six percent body fat. Every time I picked him up, he’d have some kind of protein shake or two peanut butter sandwiches and inhale them while we were on our way to dinner. He’d eat a full meal and finish what I didn’t. On the nights I knew we’d be drinking, I usually saw some of that food make its way out the way it went in.

Though he loved them, he wasn’t allowed to talk about sports on my birthday and I would talk about how sports were dumb. And for one day, he’d tell me I was right. Liking the idea of being right, I went on to name everything about him I didn’t like and the things he did that pissed me off, and he told me I was right.

Unfortunately, his birthday was two short months later. He decided I could benefit from an interest in sports and he spent his birthday trying to teach me how to throw baseballs and footballs. As midnight approached, I told him he should tell me everything he didn’t like about me while he could, because it would be another year until he could get away with it.

“I don’t know. You’re fine.”
“Fine? There’s nothing?”

He thought for a minute. I had never heard him be critical before, but there had to be something. There always is.

“Well, it’s hard, because the only thing I’d say is also the thing that’s so great.”
“What is it?”
“It’s just that everything you do is It’s always pushed to the limit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way. I have fun with you, but sometimes, it’s, like, you have to see how far you can push things.”

“I’m pushy?”
“No. Well, yes. But what I’m saying is that you don’t have to live so hard.”

At the time I thought it was kind of a weak thing to say. I didn’t see anything wrong with pushing things and trying to get the most out of life.

“You’re right.”

I didn’t mean it, but it was still his birthday.

Joel and I were friends until I started pushing too hard. He called me on it a few times, but I couldn’t stop. When he started pushing back, we just pushed each other away.

I felt everyone owed me something. I deserved it. My life up to that point was fucked up and I had a right to get what I wanted. When I didn’t get things exactly how I wanted them, even if it was close, I unleashed a storm of anger and blame and finger pointing at who was wrong.

And because I believed I was always right, eventually no one was around to be wrong.

B