The Cake Had an Opinion

Thirty-eight arrived on a Thursday, which felt right. Thursdays don't make promises.

Simone picked the restaurant, somewhere on the east side with brick walls and the kind of lighting that makes everyone look like they're in a film about themselves, and I showed up thinking we were just having dinner. We were just having dinner, mostly. And then the cake appeared. I want to be precise here: it was not a simple cake. It had at minimum four tiers of frosting flowers in colors I cannot name, a fondant decoration I am choosing not to describe in detail, and more candles than I have years. Simone watched me clock all of this with the expression of someone who had planned extensively and was very pleased with herself. She had. She was.

The slice. Aggressively decorated.

I ate two slices. That's the full story. The prints are still leaning against the kitchen wall at home and Gerald added what I think might be a fourth leaf this month and none of that was relevant at the table. At the table it was just the cake, and Simone explaining the cake, and the explanation making things worse in the best possible way, and thirty-eight feeling like something I could actually work with.

Happy birthday to me, I guess. The bar has been set aggressively high for next year, and I have twelve months to think about what I'm going to do about it.