May The 4s Be With Me, Get It, Because I Turn 44, Never Mind, Shut Up

I don’t think there should be birthdays during the pandemic. Time has melted into a waxen lump, and I don’t feel like we should have to acknowledge the passing of time. Honestly, I think I should get to turn 44 next year, not this year, and this one is a mulligan, a freebie, a practice run. Scrap the calendar, forget the school year, dump all deadlines into a shallow grave, and we will wait out the end of this thing whenever it may come.

But alas, it’s not to be, so a birthday I shall have.

HAPPY BLIGHTSDAY TO ME.

*lights candles on trashcan lid with a flamethrower, extinguishes them with spray cheese*

TA-DA, ‘TIS CAKE

Birthdays are not usually a day I take with great significance anyway, but now I wish I had made a big deal out of each of them before this one, because this one, I’m just sorta here. Floating in the sensory deprivation tank. Natal and womblike in its warm bathwater oblivion. Birthdays by their nature have always felt a little anti-climactic, but I had no idea how anti-climactic they could be until you have one in lockdown. It suddenly makes all the ones prior feels weighty and precious, while this one is naught but a lead fishing weight plonking without fanfare to the bottom of the river. I’m not sad about it, exactly, but it feels especially hollow and strange. My wife made me a cheesecake, because we were lucky enough to actually find cheesecake ingredients out there in The Wasteland, and my kid has been extra attentive this morning to me and the birthday, which is honestly a delight and provides some light in these… if not dark times, let’s call them gray times. Gray like a mist, like a fog. Again, I’m lucky and fortunate, I don’t mean to downplay it — things for me could be considerably worse. It also still feels really weird and off-putting, like you’re smelling food that’s only one day off, one day rancid, and you can still detect the scrumptious ghost of the good food it was, and you’re like, “Maybe I could still eat it and not get sick if I microwave it enough?” This is that. A day not all the way rotten, but one that has begun to break down. All of life now a half-assed sourdough starter.

At least someone could’ve sent me some birthday toilet paper.

Also, it’s Earth Day, because my birthday is an Earth Day birthday, and maybe at least with all of us humans stuck in our homes we’re giving the Earth a small reprieve. (I know there are arguments that note that the pandemic might be overall bad for climate change, but for now, I’ll take solace that the price of a barrel of oil is somehow less than the price of a kick to the gonads. I’m pretty sure that with every barrel of oil you get a roll of Ski-Ball tickets.)

I shouldn’t complain. Things are good. I have a great family, a yard, it’s sunny out, I’ve got books to write, and edit, and write, and edit. It’s honestly been a nice year with WANDERERS out there — if book sales are a thing you care about, it’s sold considerably higher than most of my other books, with the exception of the AFTERMATH trilogy, and even there it’s creeping up on the sales of EMPIRE’S END. I was initially a bit sad that the next book I’ve got coming out, THE BOOK OF ACCIDENTS, isn’t coming out this year (thanks to the election), but now given everything, I’m glad to have the space. It’s hard launching a book right now and it’s good to get as much runway as you can get for it.

What will 44 bring? No idea. Obviously more lockdown. This thing isn’t ending overnight, and really won’t go away until we’ve a treatment or a vaccine or by some miracle a robust herd immunity. I’ve got a secret book to edit, a secret book to write, got friends and family, got whiskey to drink and good dogs for company, and hopefully a world changed and improved at the end of all this. Maybe a few hill cannibals or COVID-mutants to slay. Who can say?

I will say, if you’re in the mood to get me a present, I have a polite request:

Go buy a book today from an independent bookstore.

Not Amazon.

But an indie. A local if you have one, or any one nationwide.

Many ship right to you. Doylestown Bookshop and Let’s Play Books, my two locals, do. And Indiebound and bookshop.org are both good resources. So, buy a book. I’m not even saying to buy one of mine. (Though here I shamelessly note that the Washington Post just said WANDERERS is a good book to read during these Quarantimes, ahem cough cough cough.) Just buy any damn book. Help bookstores and help yourself to, well, a book. Samantha Irby’s newest. Or Sarah Kendzior. Or Claribel Ortega’s Ghost Squad. You got options is what I’m saying.

Failing that, if you want to get me something different —

Just fix it. Fix all of this. We’re done with it now, so please fix it. Thank you.

Also tip all your delivery people very, very generously.

OKAY HABBY BIRDDAY TO ME