Random fan on Grouse Mountain: Hey man, thanks for the picture! Oh, and happy birth—
Mack: Today is the same as any other day. In fact, if you really deep it, birthdays are just society’s little contraption for forcing you to confront your own mortality and measure your importance to the people you spend all year pretending not to need.
And I, for one, am not important.
I have never been important. I am necessary. And yes, there’s a difference. Important would imply I am wanted. Necessary means I am useful. Needed in too many places, by too many people, for too many reasons. So here, take a piece of me. Use it to patch the leak in the ceiling, the crack in the ice, the fault in our game. That is what I’m for, apparently.
And no, I don’t think about him at all.
I don’t think about the boy who made me believe, for one stupid, shining second in my entire necessary life — dada’s finely tuned instrument, mama’s abandoned puzzle, my siblings’ benchmark for a valid existence — that I could be someone’s best part of the day.
His best part of the day.
The person he searches for in a crowded room and smiles at because he knows where sanctuary is. The shoulder he falls asleep on during the bus ride because he trusts me to guard him from every stray marker daring enough to draw a moustache on his face. The one he touches without safety gloves, like I am not something wired wrong and sparking in his hands. His fingers find every dip, every valley, every place I thought I had tucked away from view, and all I can do is stand there praying he might press a little harder. That he might break skin. That he might just reach through my ribs, open my chest, and hold my heart in his hands. It’s already exposed for him anyway.
And I would choose him.
God, I would choose him in a heartbeat. Over everyone I’ve ever known. Over everyone who came before him and everyone who will come after. I would choose him blind, choose him half-asleep, choose him from the depths of dreams where we are together and I am somehow more to him than he is to me. But he is a thousand miles away, tucked into the loving arms of the city and the people who loved him first. The people he loves best.
And it is not my turn.
My rights to his warmth, his unabashed affection, his unrestrained attention, they come with terms and conditions. A deadline. An expiry date stamped clean across the label: October to April. That is all I get. Unless, of course, I change it. Unless I drag us kicking and clawing into the playoffs so summer feels a little shorter. So the calendar loosens its grip and I get to keep him beside me for just a little longer. So I get to pretend, for a few more weeks, that he is mine.
Anyway.
I’ve never liked birthdays.
