My 40th Birthday Party: Prep and Con Report
"I know what you're getting for your fortieth birthday," said a room full of giggling women, hands over their mouths. "It's gonna be awesome."
The room full of women was the local book group, a women's-only party that met once a month to discuss a book for five minutes and then gossip and drink excessive amounts of wine for the next three hours. And apparently, one of the topics that had come up this evening was, "What should Ferrett do on his fortieth?"
The boozy collective of my female friends had delivered. Which was a gigantic relief to me.
See, Gini went to New Orleans for her fiftieth birthday party - but though I wanted something big and splashy for my transition into the big four-oh, travelling just seemed mundane. See, for me, the best way to get me to do anything is to tell me that I've never done it before. I'm a total Sensate, utterly at the mercy of any new experience - and while seeing a new city would be kind of new, the experience of travelling is something I've done a hundred times over.
No, I wanted to mark me waving goodbye to my childhood with something I had never done - some genuine first to mark the start of a new voyage. Problem was, I couldn't think of anything that I'd wanted to do that I
hadn't.
Which is not to say that I've done everything I wanted to, but I'm terrible with lists. There are a thousand books I want to read, but usher me through the doors of a competent book shop and I will forget
every last one of them. I kept thinking, "Wow, what did I say I wanted to do?" and it slipped my mind again and again... So I asked Gini. Between the two of us, we were struggling; it looked like it was gonna be cake and Rock Band for my birthday, which is cool, but kind of anticlimactic for a major event like this. Yet put Gini together with a bunch of creative, intelligent, and wine-lubricated women, and they can solve the Ferratic Equation.
Best of all, nobody would tell me what it was.
It was still four months until my birthday, but not a day went by when I didn't imagine what the big surprise would be. Was it harmful? Well, injury could occur. Was it fun? They didn't know whether I'd enjoy it, but I'd
remember it. Was it in Cleveland? Yes, and they were considering blindfolding me so I wouldn't see it before I got there. It was in an industrial complex.
The suspense was driving me happily mad.
Unfortunately, three weeks later, someone spoiled the party - as was inevitable, I think. Someone emailed me privately to say, "We were really hoping to make a day trip down there and be able to make it to your birthday party and the bounce house..." And there went the surprise. Bounce house.
I had never realized it was possible to be so disappointed and elated at once. The mystery had been popped like a balloon. But, hey! BOUNCE HOUSE!
Gini was being so good about keeping the party a surprise that I didn't tell her that someone had accidentally spilled the beans. Why ruin it for her? She'd worked so hard, so I kept my mouth shut and practiced my "Oh, it's a bounce house!" squeal. Yet one night three weeks after
that, she told me that our friend Kat's surgery wouldn't ruin the party, because "We'll just set her in the middle of the castle and bounce her slowly."
She was mortified, but hey. When you have a party with fifty-something invitees, secrets are hard to keep. But now I knew: I'd long complained about being too tall to bounce in the big inflatable castles at the various fairs, and now we had a place that would let me bounce around! Awesome!
Then my appendix ruptured ten days before my birthday.
Gini asked me whether I wanted to cancel. "No," I said. "Even if I can't bounce, I want to watch my friends having fun. They'll just have to bounce extra-high for me, is all." At the time I said this, I was so immobilized that I had to pee into little plastic jugs because I couldn't get out of the hospital bed three times a night. Moving was slow and painful. I fell asleep for no apparent reason.
Fortunately, by the time of my birthday, the stitches were out and I had just successfully bent over for the first time that morning, so I had hopes that I'd be able to do something. I was still a little weak - I had to excuse myself from a dinner with two friends I really love so I could go home and nap - but Gini drove me to the bounce house.
My gut still ached as I wedged myself into the car, and every pothole still sent bolts of pain travelling up my suture wound and into my torn abdominal muscles. But I was not going to let that stop me. As I said to Gini, "I'm probably going to hurt myself a little today." I had fears of winding back in the hospital, but I had to at least bounce a little
She quashed her meeping noises adoringly.
Bec and Adam were out front, gaily waving people in, and inside was Angie, so immediately all three of my favorite huggable women were right there. The entryway had people in space uniforms that reminded me a lot of the stewardess' outfits in
2001: A Sspace Odyssey. They had us sign a release form (always a good sign for fun), and made us put our shoes in little cubbyholes that were, endearingly, almost too small for our adult-sized feet. We were, apparently, the first all-adults party at
Zero Gravity ever.
To get into the bounce room, you are escorted into a small "airlock" and given a speech about how the bounce room is in zero gravity because - OMG - it is
in outer space. They have to transport you safely through the stars, and to get there safely you should all press your backs against the walls "So a meteor cannot hit you." You can, however, feel free to reach out and grab a star - which is when they dim the lights and start up the laser light show, complete with two glowing flux capacitors set into the ceiling.
Then I limped out into the room to find
everyone there.
I sometimes forget how many wonderful friends I have in Cleveland, but seeing twenty-five folks (none of whom I get to spend enough time with) shouting, "FERRETT!" as I entered a room made me feel totally fuckin' loved. But not all of them were paying attention to me - inside was a huge space filled with a bouncy castle, and an inflatable obstacle course, and a bungee race, and a small ovipositor-like dragon thing that we were all, sadly, far too large to get into.
I made the rounds, and then - a little terrified that my guts would rip open and spill out like some overfilled paper sack on trash day - I gingerly climbed into the bouncy castle.
The bouncy castle was, thankfully, not a purely open floor. It was Jurassic Park-themed, and as such the floor was studded with inflatable dinosaur heads and mammoth tusks, which meant that unsteady me always had something to grab onto - and more importantly, it made the usual "run across the castle and jump" tactics impossible. I bounced, and nothing really hurt, and I could fall to my knees without injury.
As more people crowded in, I discovered that the floor was littered with nerf balls - which, of course, led to a game of dodgeball, as everyone ran in and chucked nerf at peoples' heads, and hid behind the dino heads, and bounced around and fell to the floor to try to get the next balls, and leapt out of the way, and I was forty and playing nerf dodgeball in a bouncy house with my friends and
God life was sweet.
My side ached, but that was fine. I had to escape in a fashion a little less manlier than I would have liked - everyone else slid out, whereas I had to sort of crawl down, because I could not bend in half - but I stepped out with a fierce pride.
Megan Rose Gedris summed up my feelings perfectly at this moment:
I gimped over to the bungee cord races, where you are strapped onto a giant bungee cord and asked to run as far as you can down a bouncy corridor before the cord
yanks you back. It reminded me of the movie
Dodgeball, where I honestly expected to get bored of watching people get whonged in the face with a dodgeball, but it never got old. Likewise, it doesn't matter how many times you see it, watching a fully-grown adult run hell-for-leather down a hallway and then get this "SHIT" look on their face, and
wham, white socks flailing in the air as they go ass-over-teakettle, hauled backwards towards the source? IT NEVER GETS OLD.
But I did regain energy, and when nobody who would stop me was looking, I went through the inflatable obstacle course.
This was, it must be acknowledged, a sketchy decision. But I didn't dare try the bungee race, and damned if I was only going to experience a third of my birthday party. So I wriggled through a narrow circular opening, and started the course.
It was everything I couldn't do.
The course wanted me to bend over. It wanted me to crawl on my belly through small tubes. It wanted me to climb six-foot cliffs, then slide down on my stitches. And worse, it was mostly made for kids, so everywhere it was just a little too small. I kept getting stuck, with no way to get out.
Thing is, I never felt more alive. I felt weirdly like Spider-Man, injured from a prior battle, navigating a series of traps set by his enemies. When I got stuck in the inflatable tube because I had to go on my knees through it, I had to haul myself out with my bare hands. It hurt. Likewise, climbing the hand-holds of the final slide meant that I risked slipping, and if I did that, I might land my damn stitches right on the blocklike footholds.
I was sweating
far more than I should have. This was the most exercise I'd had in two weeks, and my body told me that I was too weak to do this. I felt the urge to call for help.
But I fucking didn't, and I fucking got up that last slide, and I fucking got my legs over so I wouldn't slide down head-first, and when I got out I felt like I had triumphed over the elements.
My friend Dmitri had an actual wrestling match on his thirtieth birthday; he wore a mask, and in a ceremony he had to fight a warrior to "win" his way through to year #30. I didn't like fighting, but I always did admire the fact that D. had a challenge to face to win through to his next stage in life. And though it sounds supremely silly, when I emerged from the slippery plastic bowels of the inflatable obstacle course, sweating and so weak I could barely stand, I felt like I had just
won the world. My surgery? Gone. My childhood? I got past it. I stood, trembling and free, having hauled myself out by my own shaking hands, and fuck yeah I won.
After which, Gini found me and asked, "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?" I couldn't answer. I was too proud.
So I sat down and talked (and dammit, with so many people there I didn't get to talk to everyone I wanted to for nearly as much time as I'd hoped), and after I'd recuperated I played some more dodgeball, and then I got to cut my cake - a cake from
the best custard place in Cleveland - and when I was too tired I played Ms. Pac-Man. I didn't beat the high score of 104,000 because that machine was set way too difficult, but I did get 60,000 and to the second post-banana board, which I consider a triumph.
Full of cake and candy and win, I went home. And sang Rock Band, and played guitar, and got hugs from lovely women, and eventually collapsed at 2:00 a.m. in too much pain but too much victory.
It was a good day.
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