The Day I Turn 30 As a Woman

This is when you wake up one day on a Saturday morning and realize that you have nothing, absolutely nothing planned that day. There arises a wave of overwhelming release of adrenaline crushing your aching body back to bed, leaving you both tense and lightheaded at the same time, like the almost ending of an ill-prepared orgasm. 

When you open your closet drawer, you find your baby blue soccer socks and Japanese print thongs are getting pushed further by the rows of neatly folded white ankle socks displaced in an almost OCD fashion, making them look like those puffy vanilla egg roles in a Chinese bakery (I have a theory that half of them are made of plastic). 

Your morning adventures involve deciding whether to wear a scarf that is two photography grades brighter than the rest of your New Yorker outfit. It is daring enough for a German guy to call it “grell,” but still too conservative to be considered “curious” in the gay community. Win! The tangerine/orange stripe one or the cherry blossom one? You always pick the orange one because it makes your pores look smaller. 

Talking about pores. You spend two minutes more than your self-consciousness allows in the Facial Products aisle in Duane Reades. Should it have aloe in it? Oprah said aloe two times this year, so I’m getting aloe. Duh. Should it be SPF 30 or 15? Maybe 45? That 45 bottle definitely has a more benign looking umbrella on it. 45 it is. Oh and it definitely should be alcohol free. Pssh, I’ve seen American Psycho, So well played, Neutrogena and your cute little purple bottles of alcoholic killing machines. 

When you are in a subway (a New York subway that is, as New York sets the example for everything in the universe, says everyone but Chris Christie), you are much equipped psychologically and physically to deal with the shenanigans there. You open up your five senses and detect the freshest empty seat; you make sure your music doesn’t blast out from your $199.99 Beats by Dr. Dre, not because you don’t want to bother other people standing next to you, but because you know that no matter what indie industrial techno songs you are playing, your playlist will always somehow shift to that Michael Bublé Christmas Special album and make you look (or sound?) like an ass wipe when it gets so crowded that you can’t reach to your pocket to change the damn song. 

You daydream at least five times a day how nice it would be to hold a cup of black coffee and just sit and do nothing. Maybe with some apple cinnamon donuts to dip into, so you can sit against the blurry windows in an overcrowded UWS Starbucks that smells like rain forest left in a car trunk when it rains and pretend to be in a music video as you brush your yellow rain boot against the other. The idea delights you for a surprisingly long time. 

You are not afraid to admit, even to a younger crowd aka. the meaner crowd that you prefer calling over texting, because (you don’t tell them the reasons though, who would really? They will just mock you no matter what you say because they are mean. See previous reference.) your eyes get dry from texting Brandon back and forth in Target, asking what kind of Bloody Mary mixer he prefers for the house warming party. Also because you simply want to hear your friends’ voices. 

Oh and going out! Your favorite late night activity since your body began to transform from teenage years into, well, compulsively doing whatever your cool friends are doing. It used to mean a little black dress so small you have to skip dinner to fit into so you can tremble in front of a club with your half drunk friends, wishing the bouncers don’t ask too many questions about your ID. You stay up until 6 am, slamming tequila shots and dancing your ass off and bitching about other girls with your girls in the bathroom and talking to guys and regretting talking to guys the next morning and sleeping it off until your stomach growls and wakes you up way pass lunch time. 

Now a party means a bag of family sized Flaming Hot Cheetos (If you want cheese-flavored snack, get Cheese Puff or Cheese Curl and NOT the Cheesy Cheetos. What’s wrong with people?) , a bottle of 2009 Malbec, and some leftover peanut butter from breakfast. You curl up in your bed with all the food and bottles piled in front of you like you are breastfeeding a baby panda while watching Anthony Bourdain and 30 Rock interchangeably until you run out of wine or your lower back starts to hurt because of your right hand’s mechanical motion of feeding Cheetos in your mouth for the past three hours. 

At this age, you no longer need to strenuously decide whether to get guys or curly fries on a Friday night. Curly fries, a thousand times curly fries! The voice of Tina Fey in your head screams. It has always been Tina Fey. 

But also, you realize you are simply happier in a different way.

        -  Excerpt from my book, "Mock; Life, Mémoire," a series of pieces imagining myself as a woman at different ages.