Okay. Fine. It was my birthday on Friday. Are you happy now? I am twenty-fucking-five which, in gay world, means that since I have not launched my own fashion line, condo building, reality show, or gold-digging affair with a figurehead of a vocally anti-gay religious network, I am entirely irrelevant and insignificant. It’s pathetic really.
And yes – I get it. I’m doing just fine for my age, I should feel proud of myself, and blah blah blah when you were my age you were doing lines of cocaine off the skeleton key that Hobo Joe insisted would open the door to his cardboard shanty pimpshack so I should shut up with the Bridget Jones shit but NO. There’s more to it than that. Being a twenty-something today means holding yourself to much higher standards than ever before.
For example, I see no flaw in the logic that suggests that next to 24-year-old Lady Gaga, I am a complete disappointment. And the fact that I only have three years to catch up with 28-year-old Beyoncé does not bode well for the amount of no-pants outfits I’m going to have to rock starting immediately. Don’t even talk to me about Mark Zuckerberg – he’s a goddamn billionaire and is not nearly attractive enough to deserve it, if you ask me. I was voted Sexiest Blogger for crissakes! GIVE ME $4 BILLION!
But unlike them, instead of watching my bank account slowly surpass those of most third-world countries, releasing a new number one album, or wearing teacups and coke cans in my hair, I spent my 25th birthday cleaning up pug feces, and delivering a social media seminar to a room of 25 people during which I blamed Twitter for showing us all that John Mayer is a complete and utter rottencrotch, and used the term “all up in this” at least twice.
And frankly, the lot of you aren’t helping either what with your book deals, being full time self-employed, traveling the world on the daily, and generally putting my life into terrible perspective. Whatever happened to the twenty-something bloggers who would spend their last $20 getting into a club so they could have a one-night-stand so someone would buy them breakfast the next morning? THOSE ARE THE STORIES I NEED TO HEAR RIGHT NOW.
On the plus side, this birthday has resulted in a Starbucks gift card that is ballin’ out of control. I’m starting to buy Ventis just to throw at teenagers running around like their sixpacks and skinny jeans will last forever. They won’t. Eventually, you’ll be me and it will suck for you. And it’ll probably suck for me me since I’ll be dead by then. And by dead, I mean thirty.
Respect your elders, bitch.
[Photo Credit: Libertinus]
{ 70 comments… read them below or add one }
As a representative of the “OMG, I am so over the hill that y’all are too young to fit into my Cougar territory” contingency, I have to say that I vividly remember (Damn it! The ECT didn’t take) the week I turned 25. It was also the week I found my first gray hair. I don’t think there was a day that whole week that I didn’t cry (but, hey, I didn’t need to salt my margarita glass, the tears worked nicely).
You’re rockin’ it, Ben… don’t let some damned overachiever, gonna be DEAD before they’re the age I am now whippersnappers make you feel bad about your home owning, puppy lovin’, happily(?) suburbanized badass self!
I can handle grey…I can’t handle loss. We’ll see what life deals me next.
If it makes you feel any better? I just turned 28 and still in college. Granted, it’s a master’s degree, but I’m already on my second career path because the first one pooped out (I have a bachelor’s in business management…Hate business!). Aren’t I too young for that one?? I also found two grey hairs a few weeks ago.
Geezus. Now I’M depressed. :p
As long as the greys are on your head, you’re fine.
Too far?
Lol, not too far. No grey hairs “there” yet, THANK YOU GOD.
Then you’re FIIIINE.
I don’t see the flaw in your logic, either. Happy Quarter Life Crisis! For my 25th, my live-in boyfriend decided to fuck off on a 3 day bachelor party bender with his best friend. He left a half-written poem on his beside table, threw my gift at me as I cried in a heap on the bed, and signed his card “I wish I could be as good to you, as you are to me.” Does that make you feel any better by comparison? 26 will be waaaay better. Trust
Whoa….is he still the live-in boyfriend??
I’m dead. Just turned 30. It hurts. Hurts so bad. We’ll get through it. We can get through this. Let’s just not care anymore and get fat and move to Idaho and live in a trailer. You first.
I plan on getting fat.
You ins?
Oops, I bumped you up a year when I posted birthday wishes on the dog blog. It won’t happen again, I promise! I do still hope this is your best year ever, though.
I have high hopes meaning that turning 26 is going to be a disaster all over again.
oh, is it complaining time? where to start…
-i turned 30 for the first time a few months back. we’re so underground in debt, we didn’t have money for a big “30′th Birthday Party!!!” everyday, i dream about that totally badass party i’m going to have “one day”.
-i can’t even go shopping in my favorite, totally age-appropriate store- Forever 21 without wanting to slap the pimplecream off the faces of all the stupid little tweens shopping around me.
-my “career” consists of working for a corupt thief who creates aliases so he’ll never get caught and can continue to scam everyone in his path for the rest of his life. as shitty as this is, i don’t have the luxery of quitting until i can find another job.
-i was just having lunch down on Melrose and easily had hate to spit on every emo/ hipster/ club kid/ rich kid/ model wannabe/ idiot in a clown wig that had the pleasure of crossing paths with me.
welcome to the end of your life.
Thank you. Thank you so much for understanding.
Happy Birthday!
don’t be so hard on 25 – it’s actually a pretty good year. {apparently}. i was the broke-drunk-slut you described in option B when I was 25, so i don’t really remember. but 29-year-old me has decided that this means it was GREAT. so live it up!
Maybe if I were the drunk slut it wouldn’t be so bad.
YOU’RE feeling pain?! I’m 26.
Tell me it gets better?
Happy Birthday, Ben.
I turned 25 in 1993.
I hope that makes you feel better.
Because I feel like slitting my fucking wrists now. Way to go, birthday boy.
I DO feel better!
Happy Birthday Ben!
Just to be clear, this email is sent by a OuiJa board. I´m 34 and gay, so that means that you are reading an email from dead people. (I let you even say it as the boy of 6th sense).
But common!. The 30s are the new 20s, so you have been given a couple of years of youth. Another thing to keep in mind is that we, the pocket gays, seem always younger than the ones around us. I know what I am telling you, you will find out very soon that everybody around you will get old, but you wont.
But you wanted stories, and here is one: For my 30th birthday, my boy decided that he wanted to receive me at home with a romantic hot tub. That was a good idea, but I arrived a little later than usual, and he kept the candles unattended… No harm was done, but the following day I had to buy bathroom curtains as the previous caught fire!
As long as I stay skinny, I may be able to let go of ‘young’.
Also…my birthday did not include pyrotechnics. So…that’s good.
My birthday was Saturday and I turned 25 too. I played with my kids, who because I had them before it was legal for me to drink, I got to think about how when I am 30 my son will be 12 and my daughter will be 9. By the time I am 40 son will be 22 and daughter will be 19. At least you still get to party.
This is true. I’m far too selfish slash busy slash drunk to be trusted with children.
Maybe you can train them to be bartenders for you soon?
“Son – fetch mama a gin and tonic.”
Win?
So glad to hear that you’re coping with being 25, if not embracing it lol
Honestly, I think the only way to approach this is that if you were voted sexiest blogger this year, that $4 billion is really only a matter of moments away. It has to be, what else are these damn internet awards for?
THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING!
I didn’t stop majorly messing up my life until I was 33. And the jury is still out on whether or not I’m still doing it. Try to enjoy your 20s, my friend. Because they will look so much more fabulous when you turn 37 and your friends say, “Bring cupcakes to UFC Fight Night” when you ask them if they want to help you celebrate your birthday.
Clearly, I need new friends.
Cupcakes and men rolling around in their skivvies?
Good birthday.
I get it. A bit too well. My bday was June 12 and I turned…ugh, I can’t even say it…but it rhymes with schmirty dive. Which means I may or may not be a full decade older than you are. As if that isn’t bad enough, I live in a god forsaken state called Minnesota. Which frankly is a lot like Canada. So we’re even there.
I spent the bday nursing my soar back (no joke), wiping diarhea off our stupid sick dogs bum because he ate god knows what this time(no joke) , and had to run to the emergency vet because the cat formerly known as smart managed to somehow break his god damn pelvis (for real). So now I am off to return the shirt my man got me (kind of glad to have an excuse to do so really because its filled with glitter and butterflies and I am not 12…WTF), but I can’t get even return it to get something cute, oh no, I have to return it to get money to pay for the friggin pelvis hip surgery for said cat that will run us a thousand god damn dollars.
And don’t get me started on how my golden years have impacted my metabolism. Add in the fact I spit out a baby 3 months ago (my 3rd time doing so which means i’m practically a Duggar) and it’s not a pretty situation. You know that video of Will Ferrell in Cow Bell? The one where his belly is flopping all over? Well I could be his body double. His slightly bigger body double.
So happy belated birthday you skinny young thang.
Love, Will
Oh sweet jesus. You need a hug.
My deepest and most sincere condolences on the whole “live in Minnesota” thing. I recently escaped and hope never to return.
Whoever put the Ice cream in a cake form has got to be on the short list for greatest inventors.
Somewhere after The Internet maker and before the Tickle Me Elmo.
I invented it.
ME.
GIVE ME MONIES.
Um, I turn 29 in August. No sympathy. NO SYMPATHY!!
When I read this, I thought it was Jenna Jameson posting a comment and I was all, “Fuck you. I’m not feeling bad for someone who slept her way to a millionaire empire of porn.”
But I guess I take that back. Most of it anyway.
Funny, because my fiancé mistook my name as Jenna’s the first time he saw it in print. Oddly enough, that was our first night together. Do you think the two are related? Oh, and happy birthday!
I was just about ready to sleep with you.
Dammit!
It is impossible for me to feel sorry for someone who spent his birthday in Hugo Boss and who I myself heard on the radio one time ( I think. That was you, right?) when I was driving to Canada. That makes you both fancy and famous. Or at least marginally more fancy and famous than the rest of us slobs. Suck it up, dude.
I say that with love.
I’ve only been on the radio twice. If you heard it, the universe has smiled upon us both.
I don’t have book deals, massive amounts of followers, a boyfriend, or my own place right now. (i’m living at home, though in my defense I’m saving up dough to buy my own house.) Does that make you feel better? I will say though: 25 was my favorite year yet. Probably bad to have a favorite year since it’s surely setting up the other years for failure, but I did. I have no doubt you’ll rock 25 in only a way you can and that it will be fabulous =)
I would DIE to live at home. In a good way. I’d be rolling in cash for the first time since I had daddy dearest’s credit card.
Lady Gaga is TWENTY FUCKING FOUR?!!??!!!
*world crashes down around me*
*reaches for tequila*
It’s just all so terrible.
Um. You had your picture taken with Richard Simmons. If that were me, I’d be pretty much ready to die because it doesn’t get any better from there.
I’m going to be 36 soon.
I mean…I guess I can be proud of that.
Cept he was wearing pantyhose under his shorty shorts which made me more aware than ever that I was not.
HA-HA! I’m still 23!
I mean, Happy Birthday!
Or … late birthday.
Although I wished you a happy birthday on Twitter so I’m not late, really.
Wait, DID I wish you a happy birthday on Twitter?
.. No, I definitely did.
I could never forget the sexiest man.
IN THE WORLD.
Why aren’t we married?
When I turned 30 it was EPIC. I mean, all the pretty lights from the fire trucks and police cars trying to talk me down from jumping off the roof in despair, like having a disco party EPIC.
Just kidding, it was as about exciting as your day picking up dog poo.
I say we recreate it specifically in an attempt to get to the sirens and lights and fires.
happy birthday, my love.
if it makes you feel any better, i’ll ALWAYS be older than you.
ours is a may-june romance anyhow, much like that of Karen Walker and Jack McFarland.
minus lots of money, plus extra small dogs.
on second thought, maybe we’re more like Will & Grace.
you know, neurotic and self-absorbed.
or maybe that’s just me.
(as proven by the fact that i’m replying to my own comment.)
ok so, Will & Grace.
minus red hair and fabulous apartment, plus blustery significant others.
minus law degrees and failed “before you came out” relationship, plus need to share our failures on the internet.
hmm. that might not be enough. and i don’t know why i suddenly feel a compulsive need to define/describe our relationship. (NEUROTIC)
whatever. i’m awesome. i commented twice. happy birthday or some junk.
At least now I don’t have to reply because you pretty much covered it.
YAY FOR EFFICIENCY!
I turned 25 on Monday.
Then I read my celebrity gossip, and I want to punch Lindsay Lohan in the face for accomplishing and squandering more in her 24 years, than I will EVER be able to accomplish OR squander in my entire existence.
I got a cat to make me feel better. I think it’s working.
That’s SO true. There are people out there who have already wasted everything we’ve wanted to achieve! And by everything, I mean flashing our girly parts to hungry photojournalists!
The fact that Lady Gaga is only 24 makes me want to just die already. 25? HOW ABOUT 27?! Fucking 27. Worst age, ever. I boycott birthdays from here on out.
I want ice cream cake.
Lady Gaga is once again ruining my life.
(The last time was when she tried to bring shoudlerpads back. clearly.)
Yup. Shoudler.
Aww, I feel your pain. I turned 27 on Sunday….I’m now in the mid-to-LATE-twenties-range and it is scaring the F out of me! I am envious of your mid-twenties status….oh so very envious.
So I bought a ridiculous amount of expensive shoes to make me feel a little better. I figure if I’m going to be old I might as well at least rock 5″ heels while I’m doing it. It’s nothing compared to Beyoncé’s no-pants and heels and platinum records, but it’s a start
YES. Your shoes, are my hugo boss.
I would also like $4 billion.
I’ll work on it.
Bitch, please. I’m going to be 26 this year. I’m doomed.
The late twenties suck apparently.
happy birthday! 25 aint so bad, I mean, wait til you get to 28 & then all you can think about it SHIT IM GONNA BE 30! At age 28, I’m 3 months into my 1st official full time omg I’m in the real world now job, a little later than what I’d have liked, but I blame my dad for telling me to go to grad school, so I guess that’s something, oui?
You now have 5 years to become ultra amazeball phamoous, go to some ultra hip club, do a few nip/ball slips, or go to youtube telling everyone to LEAVE MILEY CYRUS alone? Sure fire way to go from zero to hero in 24 hrs!
I like it, I like it alot!
P.S: just came across ur blog & I love it!
I love that you’re new to the blog and as a gift, brought me a life plan to get me to 30. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
good! i shall check in to see your progress
I went to a club last weekend and witnessed an actual, literal, imsoserious three-person orgy in the bathroom while drunk dialing my best friend.
THERE.
Move to Pittsburgh with that boy who I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT LIKE MORE THAN YOU and let’s all grow old together. Andrew has a head start, the poor fool is turning 29 in August. Maybe he can teach us how to use our walkers and cover our grays.
The newf turned 29 this month too. He’s coping well despite me calling him old on the daily.
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