Twenty-One, and the Clock Already Running

My birthday was yesterday, so I know exactly what’s coming for her: the minor annual grief, the unsolicited inventory of everything not yet done. And today it’s Ines’s turn—twenty-one years old, which means the stretch marks are already circling the block and the menopause is somewhere on the horizon, penciling in an appointment. That’s just the math.

She wrote some of the stranger things to appear on this journal: pieces about destroyed Tamagotchis, girls kissing, low-grade ambient terror. They fit here. She had a way of finding the specific absurdity in a moment that most people would let slide past as ordinary, and she made it funny without making it harmless.

That autumn in Munich was one of the good ones. Village parties that were profoundly fucked up in the most unpretentious way, alcohol consumed in quantities that implied poor judgment and excellent company, and a general level of filth and recklessness that I remember with affection rather than regret. And for a short while we were something more than two people happening to share the same stretch of time on the same planet. We were good at it, briefly.

Happy birthday, Ines. Pour yourself a big vodka-orange and drink one for me. The best years—I refuse to believe they’re already behind you.