Birthday Humiliation

Whenever I am somewhere having a meal to celebrate my birthday and the waitstaff gathers around me and starts singing to me, then presents me with a free dessert, I am perfectly fine with it. I have always said that my birthday is the one holiday that the greeting card industry didn't invent, and it is the easiest holiday to celebrate: all you have to do is last three hundred sixty-five days without dying. I also say that my birthday is my day to be a diva. 

But tonight, things were a little different. Justin wanted to go to Freddie's for the drag show, which concludes with singing to everyone who had a birthday the previous week. What they do is pull a chair up onto the stage, and the birthday celebrant sits and is presented with a shot glass filled with whipped cream and topped with a cherry. Someone stands behind him or her and puts the stem of the cherry into his or her mouth, letting the cherry dangle. The celebrant then tilts his or her head back and is fed the cherry by the person behind (basically, the celebrant gets his or her cherry back for the year). Then, the host of the drag show (Miss Destiny B. Childs) sings "Happy Birthday" and the celebrant is to empty the shot glass of whipped cream using only his or her tongue.

Justin had alerted Destiny that my birthday had just happened, and at the end of the drag show, four of us were brought up for the rather odd ritual. I would have preferred not to have done this, but Destiny actually came to my table and told me to "get my ass up on that stage". Justin caught me in the act on his digital camera. He is planning to put it on YouTube. If he does, depending on how I look, it might show up on this blog.

With my whole "I'm a diva on my birthday" attitude, why didn't I want to do this?

Let's see. Today was my fifth day of work out of five. As I have mentioned several times before, I worked until ten last night and was back up at six or so this morning for walking and work. Now let's take into account the fact that I have been sick, so along with it being busy, I was also in poor health. So I was tired, and still am. Don't ask me why I'm writing this at one in the morning.

Then there is the whole business of having to sit through this drag show. I find them extremely boring. It's always the same thing: gay men dressing as freakish caricatures of women, lip-syncing to songs by pop divas. The music is too loud and the acts are too repetitive, and after a while it just becomes overwhelming to the ears and annoying to the soul.

Adding to this was the fact that I had given the crud to Justin, and he was still not feeling well, and got sent home from work for it. I told him this afternoon that if he was feeling to crummy to go, then to call me and cancel, but he insisted on going. I told him that I didn't want him to get sicker, infect the clientele at Freddie's, or re-infect me. I hope that none of these things happened. He did pay for my dinner, though, and got me a nice bottle of cologne for my birthday.

So with my mood, it should be no shocker that I didn't want to do this. But I did, and now that's it for another year.

My last main birthday meal will be tomorrow, when my parents take me to lunch, with Justin coming along. I hope that goes well.

So if I am going to get to walking tomorrow morning, I had better finish up here and hit the bed.

Eric Out.