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When personalities were being assigned, I think I had passed out before the “maturity” portion of the ceremony. I firmly believe that ‘The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button’ is a documentary or that F. Scott Fitzgerald anticipated my life.
“She will be born with a concept of right and wrong, she will take on responsibilities, but eventually, she will give it all up to blow bubbles and have cigarettes for breakfast…”
The older I get, the younger I become. Every time a new number is added onto the twenty-one years I insist I have been alive, my mind becomes fascinated by anything that should really only amuse the seriously young or the mentally retarded. I have actually argued, passionately, that I would prefer to have cigarettes for breakfast than, say, have a baby. At eighteen, people thought that was cute. At twenty-five, I am the only one still standing.

I can’t fathom what it will be like when I am thirty. But, then again, I prefer to believe that such an age doesn’t really exist. It is just a cruel joke told to us to scare us into getting a job or getting dressed.

When you’re a teenager and your friends start having babies, they are considered to be ignorant, stupid and wasting their life. When you’re in your mid twenties and your friends start having babies, you are considered to be ignorant, stupid and wasting your life if you are too hungover to wipe your own ass let alone anyone else’s. About two years ago, my friends started to get married, have some baby friends or, at least, get into those relationthingys. I mean, I think it was two years ago. I have been chasing my own tail the whole time so dates are a little scattered.
When I was a teenager, I was in a serious relationthingy until I was twenty-one years old. I cooked dinner (total lie. I ordered dinner from restaurants. But the point is in the essence). I did the dishes. I woke up when my alarm told me it was time to start the day. Everything I did was completely understandable to the outside world, it was all considered to be mature, right and responsible.
“That will probably be the longest, most sound relationship I ever have,” I have told Him, now a friend who has not only grown apart from me but grown up.
I am not sure what happened between then and now, but lets just say that I got more excited over my new beanbags than any expectant mother would get over a new baby friend.

I was about to start building a fort in my lounge room, so that I could drink scotch in a safe place, when I found out that my London Girl Friend has a joint bank account with her boyfriend, more people from my high school class are having babies and somewhere, people my age have jobs and so can’t actually build a fort at midday on a Friday.
Surrounded by pillows, I had to stop and think. Partly because I was hideously hungover so the sheer labor of the task was exhausting. But also, I had to consider,
“Am I making the right decisions in my life?”

As a society, we usually align ourselves with similar minded people. You don’t find too many right-wing republicans in West Hollywood, for example. My immediate social circle includes my LA Boy Friend, a twenty-eight year old who has the kind of life I want to have when I grow up. Lots of phone numbers, lots of sex and very few responsibilities. There is my twenty-four year old Boy Friend who builds forts with me and has the individual freedom to get on a plane and visit me in any country.
“People with jobs can’t do this,” he had alerted me.
“Job? Whats that? I don’t understand. Use it in a sentence.”
The hoards of other people who wake up on my beanbag, or in my bed, share my attitude that age is just an illusion and we discuss the concept of maturity while eating Happy Meals. Like how nature is a self-correcting system, it is a self-validating evolution of fun that would actually become extinct if any of us were to procreate.

It is right, responsible, even, to occasionally take a step back and view your life from an objective level. I firmly believe that other people exist only to challenge us and force us to consider if we are making the right choices for our own life.
If other people didn’t have babies, I wouldn’t know for sure that I would rather poke myself in the eye than have a miniature version of me.
If other people didn’t have traditional relationthingys, I wouldn’t be certain that I was not built for such an endeavor, thereby building a fort of noncommittal reasoning around me.
And if I didn’t live my life like Benjamin Button doing a cameo in ‘Groudhog Day’, other people wouldn’t know that they do want the baby friends and the relationthings and all of the other stuff that is aligned with traditional maturity. I can’t fathom what it would be like to not have the insight of other peoples decisions to help us define who we are and what we want. If I had known that at eighteen, life would have been even more fun between then and now.

My mothers friends tried to wake me up to the ticking of my biological clock but I hit the snooze button.
“Oh, you will have children eventually,” they insisted.
“Do you not think that I have, maybe, spent some time considering this? I didn’t just go, ‘Kids a stupid’ and have a drink.”
(Total lie. I did. But then I started considering the proposition in reverse.)
“Maybe when you are older?”
I lit a cigarette, called it breakfast, and basked in how great it is to feel twenty-one and getting younger.