Hello, Dolls!
Well, it’s that time of year again. The stockings have been hung, the tree has been decorated and the department stores have been blaring holiday songs for the third consecutive month. Joanne’s Fabric has had a star on top of their conifer tree since at least the Fourth of July. Now with Black Friday out of the way, the emergency rooms are less-crowded, and most of the blood has been wiped off of the flat-screen televisions at Wal-Mart.
It has been my experience that only once the collective nation has reached the end of their garland rope and is ready to bludgeon a family member with the business end of a fruitcake, only THEN is it time to celebrate MY birthday.
I turn 45 this year. I know, I know! I’m a medical miracle. I attribute my youthful appearance to a diet high in fiber and I drink plenty of water — well, as a mixer. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m pickled and I probably deserve more swag from the bigwigs at “Fat Tammy’s Orange Blossom Liquor Emporium”.
Anybody who is born in the last three weeks of the year need not be clairvoyant to see where I’m steering this article: DECEMBER BIRTHDAYS SUCK! The general idea that’s handed to many of us is, “Birthday? That’s nice. You know who ELSE has a birthday just around the corner? Your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Yours is good too, I guess. Cater a lot of buffets with five loaves of bread and two fish, do ya’?” So, while I may be Divine, Chick-fil-A ain’t gonna be closing shop to honor MY day off.
Adding to the misery is the math a late December birthday has to second-guess every time they try to figure out how old they were during a milestone. “Start at ‘75. Those last fifteen days of 1974 don’t matter.”
The icing on the cake, that I normally don’t get because “there’s a tin of cookies from Aunt Joyce in the mail and a tree full of candy canes in the den,” is that I’m a twin. I’ll give you all a moment to consider emergency procedures and escape strategies upon discovering that there’s ANOTHER one of me running around out there. If you think it’s hard to compete with “The Prince of Peace” on your birthday, try doing it in tandem with a sibling who has never consumed a slice of cake in his life without complaining that your slice was bigger; a direct indication that our parents loved me more than him.
Aside from my friend Michael busting his ass like a CHAMP, my birthday has been largely ignored for decades and I stopped caring. It turns you into a total Scrooge, but you get used to it after a while. I was a slut in the late 1900’s, and those of us with parts looser than our morals just assumed that we would never see 40 — as sanctioned by law and Jerry Falwell. To further this full disclosure, I’ll inform you that also over the course of these 45 years, I have (and I’m not joking) died an awful lot. Literally, and not “Millennial ‘literally,’” either. LITERAL literally.
At two, I choked to death (flat-lined) on a hand full of nuts. At four, I became a true American statistic when my 10-year-old brother found my father’s “unloaded” Army rifle and emptied it into my lower gastrointestinal tract, putting the “ME” in colostomy. At 16, a carjacking ended with attempted murder and me naked and hog-tied with a shopping bag tied over my head in a forest in Decatur, Georgia. At 27, a bad wisdom tooth (which is so ironic considering how stupid they are) had me on life support and a liver transplant list. And then last February, after apparently walking around and performing with pneumonia for at least four months, my lung collapsed just in time for my mother’s stroke and subsequent death.
I’m so blessed. No, seriously. I’m not even kidding.
Ladies and gentlemen, aside from everything I have just disclosed here, aside from all of the horrors, the sickness, the terror and heartbreak, I am demonstrably the luckiest person I know. Hell, I’m the luckiest person YOU know! I challenge you to name one person in your life that has survived as much crap.
Forty-five years of this mess has made me acutely aware of just how wonderful my life really is. I mean, I get to do what I love and perform with people that I genuinely care about. I have a roof over my head, food in my belly and a boyfriend that makes me feel like a size queen. I am surrounded by an orbit of the most incredible, fascinating and talented people who care about and genuinely love me.
How many can say that?
I don’t mind getting older. I’ve never been one of those queens and I don’t get what the big deal is. I mean, in one breath, everybody gives thanks for “one more day” and “living their best life” and in the other breath they are refusing to announce a birthday beyond 29. Well, which is it? Me? I’m so glad I’m bragging! Good times and bum times, I’ve seen ‘em all and my dear I’m still here! Somehow, inexplicably, I am still here. Like Pokémon and Cher.
I guess it isn’t too much for me to take a back seat to the King of Kings this Dec. 16. I have everything I need, really. And I share a birthday with Beethoven, Margaret Mead, Benjamin Bratt’s fine ass and Bette Midler celebrates her wedding anniversary on Dec. 16, proving once and for all that she’s obsessed with me.
So go right on ahead and don your gay apparel, Mary. I have no idea how many more birthdays I have ahead of me but I am so very grateful of the copious amount I am storing in my saddle bags.
Happy Holidays everybody! I’m wishing you all the happiest of New Years!
Amen,
The Divine Grace
