December 7, 2016

Celebrating 25 years of life and inappropriate behaviour

christinelouise Oceania, Personal 2016, 2017, Australia, birthday, Drinking, party, sydney, Word Porn

Australia, Sydney: What do Walt Disney, Saint West and I have in common? Probably not a whole lot, but we do share the same birthday. 

My mom was 24 and my dad 25 when I was born. Now that I’m the same age as my dad was when he had me, I feel a bit stressed out by the fact that I have a useless degree and I can’t even keep a houseplant. Should I have it all figured out by now, like my parents had? Or is it completely normal to feel more confused than you’ve ever felt in your life?

25 seems like a scary age to me. It’s a reminder that I’m an adult, even if I don’t feel like it at all. I shouldn’t still be drinking the cheapest wine and owning so much unicorn merch, but I do. At the same time, 25 is an exciting milestone in that I am a quarter of a century and I have to start putting on eye cream every night.

Since leap year is a bitch and has pushed my birthday to a Monday, I decide to take the whole weekend to humbly celebrate myself. For our Saturday night out, I’ve bought a dress online, that after a month still hasn’t arrived, which makes for a couple of fun trips to the post office and calls to their customer service line. Dress-less, I have to go on a last-minute shopping trip, where I shell out $60 on the first dress I don’t look fat in. This is both great, because I finally have a nice dress to wear when I go out once in a blue moon, but also annoying, because I’ve spent almost $100 just to avoid going naked to my own birthday party. Jeez.

Both Sharon and Tanya are being the best friends ever by taking the whole weekend off work. They usually work on weekends, which means they have to work even harder on other days just so they won’t miss out on their usual pay. This itself is the best gift they could have gotten me, but it gets so much better. We all spend the day out at Madame Tussauds, where I spent Valentine’s Day with Bernie (which you can read about in my blogpost Shit I Do In Sydney: All Of The Tourist Attractions, Wine And Lesbians). Even though it’s a small and slightly disappointing museum, we still have a lot of fun just hanging out for the first time in what feels like forever. Also, we have caramel sundaes, which would make even a father who’s just found out his daughter is a stripper less disappointed.

We get home and the girls force me to shower, because they claim they have a surprise for me and they need me to leave the room. Or maybe I just smell terrible; it’s a hot and clammy day. Since I don’t take that long in the shower, they cover my eyes and push me into my bedroom to think about life while they finish their surprise. Finally they let me into the living room, which they have decorated with pink banners and balloons, and on our dining table there is a cake with sparklers, snacks and most importantly, lots and lots of presents.

They have gotten me all these little and not so little things that I have mentioned throughout the past few months, and I’m amazed by how they seem to have read my mind, to which they respond: “You talk way more than you think.” Touché.

We have homemade burgers and Passion Pop (because I mentioned a few months ago that we’d never tried it and that was a shame), before squeezing ourselves into our tight dresses and high heels and dance around to The Bachelorette song (it’s amazing, have a listen). Brace yourselves, lots of pictures of me coming right up.

Around 7, we make our way down to Coogee Pavilion, where we’ve planned to meet up with everyone else. Of course it’s packed and there’s no hope of getting a table, so we end up at Coogee Bay Hotel, where we join Tanya’s boyfriend and a couple of Irish guys that are stereotypically drunk. After getting kicked out for loudly singing Brother by Matt Corby even after two warnings, we’re left without the Irish guys and our friends show up. Everyone’s being so nice and paying for my drinks (and halal snack packs – thanks Henry!), and epicly recreate Sia music videos with me (Craig, who is supposed to be in Melbourne for the weekend surprises me by showing up, proving once again that he is the master of birthday surprises). At this point, the back of my dress rips, and continues to unravel as the night progresses. By midnight, I’m exhausted, barefoot, and if I wasn’t wearing underwear, you would be able to see my butt crack. I’m also stupidly not wearing double-sided tape, so my tits are probably out too. 25 is looking real classy.

Sharon and I wake up fairly early on Sunday and we are too excited to go back to sleep. Probably still drunk as well. We are goofing around and in a really good mood, until we discover that someone got schwifty in the bathroom last night. Not only is the toilet completely clogged, there’s also shit on the flush button and the floor. We clean it up and try to unclog the toilet to no avail, so we are forced cross the street, hand in hand and still drunk, to go to the mall and poop. That’s right, girls poop too.

On our way out of the mall, we pass Cotton On, which has those hip, round beach towels on display, and as we’re just about to leave the mall, Sharon literally stops me mid-sentence to state that she has just decided to buy one. So we both go back, spend $35 on stupid towels and go home, where we convince Tanya to do the same. We pack and esky with ice, alcohol and food and head down to Coogee Beach to keep this good feeling going. Tanya joins a party for her colleague, while Craig and Siobhan join us as we listen to throwback music and play Disturbed Friends and roll down grassy hills and drink to Harambe and get serious sunburns. The flags is a Danish birthday tradition.

In Denmark, it’s tradition to publicly humiliate an unmarried 25-year old on their birthday by tying them to, say, a lamppost and cover them in cinnamon. Because we are a kind and modern people. It’s awful, degrading and I will be super disappointed if my friends won’t do it to me. So I subtly hint at it for months, until I find myself in an alley by our hose, tied to a pole and covered in a spice that smells amazing, burns my skin and closes my throat to the tune of Toto’s Africa on repeat. Of course the neighbours come out almost immediately after and complain that there’s cinnamon on the ground, so they make us clean the street afterwards. What buzzkills.

After an eventful weekend with a lot of socializing and torturing of my liver, I spend my actual birthday at work and then on the couch with some good food, a cider and my family on the phone. After 3 showers in 24 hours, I still find cinnamon in odd places, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you to everyone who showed me love on my epic birthday weekend. It means so much to me. Cheers!