Before Thirty

     by Patrick Ramsay

I streak through a golf course in nectarine light and self-destruct a little bit.  Not in a Salamander Letter type of way, but like an old truck whose engine blows right after the warranty is up.  I cancel the party.  Detonate my relationship.  Call in sick.  Call my old therapist with the tattoos.  Ask him if he’s still engaged.  Send up a flare.  Can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realize the word hello and help are one autocorrect away from twinhood.  I kiss everyone.  Kiss goodbye to my savings account.  Greet one thousand new hobbies with the fervor of a young dog.  Tongue out.  I only have so much time left to be reckless in my twenties.  I was twenty-eight the first time a twink told me he loves older guys.  This.  This is why all the queens call thirty gay death.  I feel too young, too childless, too cut loose to be someone’s daddy.  But maybe he was right.  My mortgage, the chicken coop, the poodle-mutt rescue dog.  I used to be stupid.  Gloriously, aimlessly stupid.  But at some point along the way:  A bungalow, a career, a real live-with-me, go-to-weddings-and-farmers-markets-together partner.   Someone must have tricked me.  Tricked me into learning what a 401k is.  What a deductible is.  How to become interested in interest rates.  I’m going to be sick.  Sick and grown up forever.  And thirty is a perfectly fine age.  It’s the death of the I did this in my twenties thing that I’m mourning.  Who damned me to grow up this fast?  To man before I really was done boying.  This is the part where I’m supposed to assure you that a job can be a dream, and mowing your own lawn, also a dream.  But gut laughs, mushroom trips, occasional sex with strangers—also, also a dream.  I know I know, that growing older grows on you, but youth is a temporary meadow with soft scruff, and I guess this is the long way of saying I’m afraid of losing something I didn’t know was worth anything.  Anyway, call me when you get this.  Need to borrow your drill again.

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