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Birthday Boy—Part One

I’m a sucker for holidays, I admit it.  Even National Pet Rock Day would have one celebrant at least if they had such a thing.  Hmmm----maybe they do; I’ll have to check the Internet and get back to ya on that one.

But birthdays aren’t my fave thing on the planet, my own I mean.  Maybe because my actual birth date is kind of a mystery, thanks to my parents.  They had been something rarer than unicorns in their day, real hippies in the ’60’s.  And since they were against every Establishment organization known to man, I hadn’t even gone to school until the System finally located us five kids and forced my parents to send us or else.

For me, that was in sixth grade, and man, did I feel like an ignorant boob for awhile.  Don’t get me wrong, my parents were intelligent even when stoned.  Their home-schooling hadn’t been bad, in fact I knew a smattering of five different languages, a lot more science than most kids my age (though I was dumb as mud on the math part).  I’d read classical literature that probably wouldn’t be assigned till college level, and they tested my I.Q. at 165, which I gathered was fairly frisky for a doper kid’s brain.  My parents of course were annoyed that the school rushed to measure such a thing.  That was organized education for you, so into charts and graphs and nailing things down!

I woulda been more comfortable if Mom and Pop had nailed a few things down themselves. My grasp of American history suffered a little from their prejudices against The Man, and the class frankly gaped at me explaining that the cowboys were the Bad Guys and Custer a murdering fuck-head on the same par as Hitler.  But that was nothing to the hilarity that ensued when Mrs. Jordan, the very nice young teacher, frowned at her roll-book and said, “Keith? When exactly is your birthday?  The nurse needs it for her records, and your parents seemed a little---confused about it.”

“It was one of the years The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan.  I’m not sure if that was ’65 or ’66 though.  Maybe ’67.”  I shrugged. “I was more of a Stones fan to begin with, so I’m not sure.”

A few snickers trailed through the room, but Mrs. Jordan’s frown quashed them.  Young and nice though she was, she had control of her class and they rarely messed with her.

“Um.  Well, I’ll put 1965 until we get it straightened out finally.  Day and month?” She gave me a smile I immediately fell in love with.  “We have a treat for birthdays in this class, you see.  Chocolate.”

Chocolate sounded nifty to me.  “Spring equinox,” I said happily.  “I’m a Pisces/Aries cusp with Scorpio rising.”

Not even Mrs. Jordan’s control could cancel the shouts of mirth that greeted this idiotic statement.  One big retard with a buzz cut actually fell out of his desk onto the floor with the force of laughing at me.

“Wow, the new ass-hole is into ass-trolgy!” this bastard had the gall to remark.  I’m sure Teach woulda gone for him with a vengeance, but unfortunately for him my parents had been markedly unsuccessful in convincing me of the whole “Peace love dove” thing.  It mighta been because I was always needing to protect my younger siblings from buttheads like this while Mom and Dad were playing acoustic guitar and gushing over Crosby Stills and Nash.

Point is, I saw red at the insult and jumped his ass.  Yeh, right there in class; I had no concept of grammar school etiquette as yet.  So sue me.  I was a small kid for my age at the time, thanks to the organic diet I guess (I still gag if I see a box of rice or a chunk of tofu.)  When I started hammering crap out of this big lug everyone seemed astonished, especially the lug.  He started wailing almost instantly like he was being drawn and quartered instead of just pounded by a scrawny punk in hoot-owl glasses held together by duck tape.

I got peeled off him finally and sent to the principal of course.  But Mrs. Jordan went with me; I may be wrong but she seemed to be fighting back laughter, and not the kind that the class had indulged in.  Anyway she explained that although I’d bloodied someone’s nose, I’d kind of been provoked into it.  And she stoutly observed to the bored-looking principal that she’d stake her teacher’s rep on my future excellent behavior.  Kinda cool since she’d barely met me.

Kinda dumb, if she’d known me better.  But lucky for her, I fell---hook line and hoot-owl glasses.  I woulda done anything to please her.  Even tolerate assholes.

But the point is--and as usual I’m getting to it by a round-about way---I’m not totally sure when my birthday *is*.  Documents for some reason weren’t filed; you wouldn’t believe the crap I went through just to get a driver’s license.  I finally had someone Dad knew from the 60’s make me a fake birth certificate, and then all was cool.  At least as far as the government was concerned.

The window on “spring equinox” is from March 20 to 23rd, depending on year.  Since I was hazy on the year, who knew?  And then when I was around 16, shazzam!  My parents informed me that, erm, well, I was adopted.  That was why they were kinda unclear on the dates, because they’d lost all the paperwork, probably the same week they got it.  No doubt they needed something to roll a doobie with and nothing else was available.  And all my brothers and sisters were adopted too, except for Free, the oldest.

Free.  Yeh, they cursed him with that name.  And then when they got religion, they cursed him because of it.  Their own kid, so much for the tolerance crap!  “Does it bother you to have a fag brother?” he asked me once.  We were both in our twenties then, leaning against the balcony of his apartment and sharing a smoke.

“Bothers me more you bogarting that joint,” I told him, and he laughed and passed it.

“Mom’s cool with it,” he said. “Dad---“

His remark trailed off, and I snorted for him.  “Dad’s changed.  He’s repenting his sins and crap.  He about has a kitten when I say ‘fuck’ now.”

He nodded, and studied the skyline.  “He called me a monster,” he observed in his quiet way.

I felt fury grip me, but didn’t let it show. “He calls me Satan.  I’m a rocker, y’know.  I just figure blah blah blah Ginger.”

He laughed again, reached over.  Gave me a hard hug.  I pretended to be nervous.  “Ewww, gay and a brother-lover.  Turn me on, dead man!”

He cracked up as I meant him to.  He’d be for-real dead in less than a year.  I didn’t know that then of course, I was just quoting John Lennon.

I’ve come to think, though, that nothing in life is really random.

Nothing.

Which is probably why I made such a deal about the pizza delivery.  It seemed to have an eerie significance, at the time.