The Birthday Man

Ichben

Today is my birthday. I am 29 years old today and I am 29 years older than I was before. “This is a momentous occasion!! You should be happy Ichben!! You should be PROUD!!” “But I’m not!!” I tell them. I am not happy and I am not proud of turning 29 because at the age of 29, I have accomplished nothing.



What in all my 29 years of living on this earth have I done? What do I have to show for my actions and behavior? What have I become in this world? What have I done to be happy about? Why do I feel so mad all the time? Why do I feel so sad?



Suicidal thoughts race through my head all the time. Thoughts of masturbation run rampant in my scrotum. I have a nagging stammer that just won’t go away and a monster in my closet pounding on the walls of my mind refusing to be quiet when I try to sleep and dream of better things to come because I know there are better things out there over the rainbow of time and space.



I know there are roses on the other side of the universe that lay at the foot of the dark tower, waiting for me to come and hold them, to love them and to caress them with all my heart and joy. “But I don’t HOW!!!” I say, screaming at the top of my lungs, yelling at the man in the mirror, shouting at the gunslinger behind the glass. He tells me to go to the dark tower and he begs me to find my way home before the clown does it for me, before the clown takes me away to another place in time where there world is ruled by a man in a picture on a wall in a room where two plus two equals five.



A place where pigs can talk and walk on two legs. A place where people watch your thoughts, listen to your memories, monitor your dreams and control your spirit in ways that are cruel and wrong. “You don’t wanna go there boy” the man in the mirror says, “over there war is peace and hate is love son, you don’t wanna love to hate do ya boy? Do ya?” For some strange reason I get mad and extremely upset. I throw an object at the mirror smashing it into a million little pieces, smashing it until the gunslinger was no more.



“How do you know what I want!!!” I scream at the shattered glass. What do you care whether I live or die?!? I’m the one with the birthday!! I’m the one who’s turning 29! I’m the one whose getting old! I’m the one who’s unhappy and I’m the one who’s depressed and I—“



I stop speaking the clown, the nightmare in my mind stands in the doorway staring at me with his dark empty eyes, staring at me with a smile that says I got ya boy, I f*cking got ya you little sh*t!! I look at the shattered glass on the floor in the bathroom and wonder if my life will end up being this broken and this shattered. The glass on the floor is so depressing, the broken mirror is so unclean.



I look back at the clown. Balloons are everywhere now and the demon is holding a large cake in his hands with a red candle in the middle. The candle is dripping blood on the frosting and I am reminded of the rose at the edge of the world, sitting next to the tower and I tell myself there has to be better way of living than this. There has to be a better reason for getting out of bed every morning to face a day that is often uncertain and more often than not unclean and dirty. I know if I really try I can make my world cleaner and more pure. And I know in the process I can help my loved ones as well.



“Getting older doesn’t have to be a crime baby” this is something momma Detta would say to me if she were one with this world, but she is not, so I’ll say it for her. “Child you can be the birthday man, but you got to understand that every day ain’t gonna be a party hun. Everyday ain’t gonna be as sweet as the day before.”



I think about them often, Roland and his Katet, his gunslingers, his friends and I think about the tower, the roses and the dream reaching that place of glory and fame. Today is my birthday but I wonder how many more birthday’s will it be before my time runs out and the birthdays become something out of a horror movie? For now I will accept the praise and cheer of the public and adoring fans. I will accept that I am a year older and wiser than before. But it’s getting scary being so close to thirty not knowing what the future will hold. I hope I make it to the place where I want to be and when I do reach that place of grandeur I’ll be more than a man, I’ll be a gunslinger and every birthday will be a blessing instead of a curse.

Praetoriani

Tell me about the dark tower.