My
Birthday
It's my birthday on Monday. I'll be 33. That's
nice – in a symmetrical, mathematically appealing kind of
way. But it's not so good in a fuck-me-I'm-three-years-past-30
kind of way. On my thirtieth birthday, my wife gave me a badge
which said: "I used to be 29!". It's great, because
I can wear it every birthday from now on, and it will always be
true.
I used to be lots of things. ‘Thinner’
springs to mind. There seems to be some kind of weird, algorithmic
relationship developing between my age and my pants-size. When
I was 18 I was probably a size 30 or so. At 21 I had expanded
to a 32. By 25 I had moved up to a 34. When I hit 30 I was a size
36, and I'm currently a 38. My age is getting closer and closer
to my girth but it just can't snatch the lead. If I keep expanding
at this rate I should have a circumference of around four-feet
on my 50th birthday, assuming I make it that far.
I also used to be a gamer. A serious gamer.
I once had three teenage friends around for a slumber party and
the entertainment I provided was a game of the classic RPG Ultima
3: Exodus. I chose to be the party leader. I generously let my
friends choose which of the other three characters in my longstanding
party they wanted to be. Characters whose names and skills I had
allocated many months before. How they must have revelled in the
battles we fought. Their characters valiantly followed my orders,
given directly via the keyboard and without consultation with
their real life counterparts. Surely they had as much fun as I
did…
”We’re trapped in
this big wall. We’re gonna die here!”
I lost gaming for a while. Life seemed to get
too serious. But I've since been discovering that games and life,
however serious life may become, aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
Over the past couple of months, there have been
two major issues I've been dealing with. One is my lack of a Gamecube.
The other is the fact that my wife and I haven't been able to
have a baby.
I've been pestering my wife to let me buy a
Gamecube for ages. She's run a gallant campaign against it, I'll
give her that. Her main argument has been to point to the less-than-a-year-old
PC she let me buy last year and the just-under-half-a-dozen-strong
pile of unplayed, not even installed, games next to it (from memory
– Jedi Academy, Tron 2.0, Neverwinter Nights, Battlefield
1942, and Diablo 2). But a Gamecube's different. It doesn't pretend
to validate its existence by performing other mundane tasks. It's
just a pure, undistilled games machine. It's elegant. And it looks
fucking cool.
Ergonomic Bliss.
We've been trying to have a baby for much longer.
Years, in fact. Recently, we established that I'm OK, she's OK…
everything is OK. But it just hasn't happened. ‘Unexplained
infertility’ is the technical term. For years and years
before we started trying, we took multiple precautions to ensure
that we didn't have a baby. Maybe we'd wasted all that money on
pills and condoms…
Over the past fortnight, we've redoubled our
efforts. We're undertaking ‘assisted conception’.
Every morning, I've been giving my wife an injection in her tummy
to stimulate her ovaries into producing an egg (the first time
was the worst for us both). Yesterday morning, the tell-tale two
lines on the test kit informed us she had ovulated. That meant
I had to give her the big needle, which we'd been told would be
very uncomfortable (it was, but we both survived). And this morning,
I had to have a wank, collect the resulting ‘emission’
in a sterile container, and present it to the nice lady at reception
in the clinic.
”Kids, eh? Who’d have
‘em?”… “You ARE one, pal. Well, ideally”.
A few weeks ago, my wife pretty much agreed
to let me get a Gamecube for my birthday. But that's not going
to happen now. I was walking past Electronics Boutique last week
and saw they were offering a Jet Gamecube, an extra controller,
and a free game for $199. So I bought it. And Viewtiful Joe. It
made me feel better.
But I know what I’d really like for my
birthday.
Why your waist-size should correspond
with your wrist-size
A spunky read
A wanker
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