Two weeks ago my 40th birthday. John takes me to Orsa and Winston for a 5 course meal, the wine pairing perfection. It’s a Michelin single banger, in a small no frills space in downtown. The food is truly excellent but you can also tell that’s where all the money is going, the same shoe string, no-forgiveness budget of all restaurants. I get a candle on my dessert, we also see 4 of the five other dinner parties get candles on their desserts: it’s a popular spot for celebrations, and I wonder, if like a Chuck-E-Cheese the staff is totally inured to any sort of fête in their personal lives at this point. Anyway that’s what my birthday would have been like without John: me attempting to stoic it away as a “it happens everyday” sort of nonchalance, a not-convincing veneer on the solid mass of midlife crisis beneath. I’m feeling this birthday coming and I know I’m aging and life is brief and blah blah blah. Forty!

Laura flies into town just because, crashes with us for a few days. She and I make a clarified milk punch cocktail she designed for me called the Seven Wonders, after the number of spices she infuses the brandy with, but in reference to a shared moment of bliss circa 2018 where we see the music video for Fleetwood Mac’s song of the same name at Moby Dick in the Castro for the first time and are all agog. The alchemy of a schlock song with a schlock video in a schlock bar some how adding up to a moment of perfection that somehow makes me emotional. The VJ that night was a 20 something barista from the Verve near my house in Duboce named Alejandro, a young Poz queer who always cracks me up, we went to cheer him on at his first VJ gig. Somehow knowing he picked it with fresh eyes, pure uncut nostalgia from a time that has informed every aspect of his life adds to this true transformation of lead to solid gold.

We head to John’s folks for a weekday birthday lunch, where my sister’s fam will meet us. I’m nervous because John’s folks house is like a medieval museum full of breakable wonders that I know my nieces and nephews will love but also potentially demolish. I can’t wait for it though, because I know John’s mom has always wanted grandchildren and will simply not be getting them, not ever, and I know she will love my nieces and nephews and they will love her. The biggest tragedy of my life is that my mom will never meet John’s because I know they would have gotten on like a house on fire. I love John’s mom like I love my own, but I know John’s relationship is more fraught, and that our time is limited, and anyway that’s what I’m thinking about as we walk up to the front door, me John & Laura with our big jug of Seven Wonders in a Chemex when the door opens and it’s John’s fam and mine and wait also my sister from Utah and Jon and Danny and Chris and Ian and Pat and Dave and Taylor and Justin and Adam and David and Sam and Miles and Will and it’s a surprise party for me and I never saw it coming not for a single second.

I don’t know how John did it, but I’m glad he did. I would have regretted not doing anything, but I just couldn’t bring myself to put something together.