Today I am Happy

Today, I'm in the midst my third decade and I have all my teeth. When I laugh, the lines on my face add character and that character is not Elmer Fudd. I have an ass that gravity has not pulled below the back of my knees. Half a breath is all it takes to hold in my stomach. And though my hair is slowly eroding, I can still use my muscular chest to distract you.

Today, I have a job that I do well and I don't hate. Sometimes, there are people who make it unpleasant, but by and large, that is infrequent and quickly over. We have casual Fridays which can sometimes stretch to casual Mondays and Tuesdays. This saves me a lot of money on dry cleaning, which is my third largest expenditure, behind the rent and the credit card payments for the trip to Italy ten years ago. When I get home from work, I can forget totally about it.

Today I still have both my parents, who are elderly but young enough to fret about being called "seniors." When I call them, they are healthy enough to complain of their various little ailments, which I commiserate with them about. They have not resigned themselves to the inevitable decline, but still harbor hope, which is evidenced by their efforts to marry me off to an unsuspecting young woman at their church.

I want to describe to you this day so that you will remember. I am sitting in a Starbucks, waiting for my best friends Joe, Matt and Annie. It is a sunny day; the sidewalk is white from the glare of sun, reflecting into the cafe. A pretty girl is standing outside, in a denim skirt and a jaunty ponytail, her hand covered in a plastic bag, waiting patiently for her pug to finish taking a crap so she can pick it up. I am enjoying a piping hot cup of Calm, a chamomile tea, which my boyfriend Brian has bought me. I blow into the cup to cool it off.

Today I am in love.

Today, I am writing this post, which my friends around the world will have read. I will read their comments with excitement, I respond with enthusiasm.

Today I am alive, right now, key by key, letter by letter. These are my marks in the world. This is my pee in the alley behind the dumpster, my scrawl in a bathroom stall: FOR A GOOD TIME CALL PAUL AT 773.555.1212.

You, who are me tomorrow, a week or twenty years from now--I don't know where you are, whether you're lonely, unemployed or sick in bed, a tumor growing inside of you--there were days when you were happy, this being one of them.

Remember that there was a day like today.