I've always had a thing for dates. Among other things, I could tell you the birthday of almost every person I've ever met (and even some people I haven't), the date I started dating my high school boyfriend, the date my sister and my then-best friend started dating their high school boyfriends, when both of my sons started dating their high school girlfriends, the date I first kissed both my ex-Glenn and my ex-Virgo, and so on. Because I've always been this way with dates, September 4 has been on my radar (date-dar?) since 1987 when two of my best friends from middle school and I snuck out in the middle of the night to meet up with some older boys we had been talking to all summer, and one of us (one of us who wasn't me) lost our virginity.
Since that night in 1987, whenever September 4 would roll around, I'd think of the monumental night that had occurred however many years earlier. It was always the day X lost her virginity. Years later, though--thirty-three years later, to be exact--it became something else. Thirty-three years later after we matched on Bumble, met irl, and fell in love, instead of September 4 being the day X lost her virginity, it became the date my ex-Virgo was born.
Three years ago tomorrow, I spent the first of three birthdays with my ex-Virgo. I remember being so nervous the whole summer leading up to it, wanting it to be absolutely perfect and so afraid I'd somehow mess it up. I can't even tell you the number of hours I spent not only looking for the perfect present but even for the perfect wrapping paper, but lest you misunderstand how much of a nervous wreck I was, let's take a look at my Facebook post from August 19.
The day before, I spent the night baking him a cake from scratch (chocolate even though my specialty and preference is white because it was his birthday, not mine), and when he came over the following night after having spent the day with his mother at the beach, I surprised him with what I hoped was the perfect present wrapped in the perfect wrapping paper with the perfect cake.
The next year for his birthday, my second with him, we went to Orlando and met up with my older son and his friends. Chasing perfect again, I got a room for my ex-Virgo and me at the same hotel downtown where we'd stayed on our first Orlando trip, took him to Kres Chophouse, a steakhouse Griffin had raved about, and then to a hidden speakeasy, and although my feet hurt horrifically because wanting to look perfect, I wore heels for the first time in over ten years, it was a close-to-perfect night.
Year three, when my ex-Virgo turned thirty-three, a grandiose idea popped into my head. Instead of just buying him a present as is the norm, I would do something significant and heartfelt, something that would show him how much I appreciated and loved him. I would make my ex-Virgo a room.
Okay, so I know that sounds like more than what it was, so let me explain. Since I've lived in my house since 2002, when my ex-Virgo moved in, to him, it never really felt like his house. No matter how much I told him it was his house, too, and tried to make him feel like it was, it just never did. He hung posters and pictures up on the walls, put little statues and figures everywhere, helped me pick out furniture and paint, but he'd commented on how he only had small spaces for his stuff. He also had a ton of stuff in storage still that had nowhere to go, so for his birthday, I decided to give him his very own room, a place where he could put all his gaming consoles, his TV, his games, his posters, his everything and his anything. It was really important to me that he felt like my house was his house.
And, of course, I wanted it to be perfect.
For about a week and a half, whenever my ex-Virgo wasn't home, I covertly went into Keifer's old bedroom to renovate. I spackled and primed walls. I painted. I bought some cute little Metal Gear Solid rubber keychains that I'd been scouring the Internet for since seeing him comment about them on Twitter months before and put the unopened boxes on floating shelves that I hung. I also went onto his computer and picked out some wallpapers he'd made, had them blown up into posters, framed them, and hung them on the walls. I then took a small yellow Post-It, wrote I Love You on it, and stuck it on the door, a "tag" for his gift (a Post-It that adorned the bedroom door for the next six months and twenty-one days until he moved out, and let me tell you, the first time I saw that door without that Post-It, I'm surprised I didn't drop dead right there in the hallway from a broken heart).
The room went from this (Idk why, but he hated that blue!)
to this (please forgive my bad photography skills)
It wasn't as perfect as I'd hoped it would be, but I felt like it was close.
Last year on my birthday when a friend of mine who's a month older than I am called to wish me a happy birthday and asked what I was doing, I said something about not knowing, that it wasn't a big deal, I'd already had forty-seven of them, and my ex-Virgo, who was in the room, replied, Well, I've only had two. It was a really sweet thing for him to have said, and never when he said it would I have believed that he'd only end up having three or that I'd only end up having that many of his.
It wasn't enough.
Now, I know you think I'm just saying that--It wasn't enough--out of sadness, out of reflection, nothing more, and while I am sad, and I am reflecting, when I say it wasn't enough, what I mean is I couldn't leave it at three. I had to have more.
And so (<--------- there it is!)
I set out to make one more birthday perfect, or at least the weekend before it.
I know I didn't make it clear since I only mentioned making my ex-Virgo that first birthday cake, but baking is my thing. If I love you, if I care about you, want them or not, you're getting baked goods. At first I planned to make my ex-Virgo a chocolate cake, but then I remembered that once he'd commented about loving this pizookie from BJ's, saying it was too bad I'd never be able to have it since it wasn't vegan.
I knew that was what I had to bake.
A little more than a week before his birthday, I started researching vegan pizookie recipes until I found the one that looked perfect. I then ordered a cast iron pan, bought my ingredients, and on Thursday night, went to work (and really did end up baking the perfect pizookie if I do say so myself. Jesus Christ that thing was good).
The next day, Friday, as soon as the bell rang, I raced out of work and headed to Jade Tea House to buy him a taro milk tea. When my ex-Virgo lived here, he fell completely in love with their taro milk tea, and when I say in love, I mean in love; in fact, in light of everything that happened, I think he probably loved that taro milk tea more than he loved me. He even commented after moving out that one of the worst things about living in Kendall was not being able to have his drink.
I then got in my car and drove forty-something miles in rush hour to Kendall, to the place where I thought he might work based on things he'd said over the past two months since he started a new job--don't worry; I was right!--and the same way I left little notes and gifts on his car throughout the entirety of our relationship whenever I was near the doctor's office where he used to work, I left the perfect pizookie, the perfect taro milk tea, and the perfect birthday card on his car.
And now I have to--have to--be done.
That perfect pizookie, that perfect taro milk tea, and that perfect birthday card have to be--have to be--the last perfect birthday accoutrements I ever give my ex-Virgo because making him perfect birthdays is no longer up to me.
Four isn't enough--no number of years is ever really enough when you want to spend your entire life with someone--but I have to--have to--accept that four is all I got.
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