Choose your own adventure

Thirty-two years ago yesterday, at one in the morning, I became operationally a person. Sixteen years ago, near the same hour, Ben Cruse introduced me to this song, and I became functionally a person. It was a raucous occasion, most of which I missed, unfortunately, being lured to the telephone in another room to mime adolescence to my girlfriend at the time; so, like a spectator at a Roman carnival, I saw little and knew less but presumed much. Through the void spaces of the hallway I heard two men repeatedly jumping over a couch. The logic then was as infallible as it is now. Stewart Copeland syncopates hard, Sting, wank rooster that he is, shouts "Yeah!" and Ben jumps over the couch. Or not. It mostly depended on our mutual friend's encouragement, and whether the concentration of caffeine in Ben's bloodstream rose or fell on the downbeat. Or so it sounded from the hall, as I, outcast, offender, sourpuss, like some homoerotic troubadour, cherished the night's delirium from a distance. Until, that is, I hung up the phone and committed my own legs to some couch-vaulting. Just in time for "Born in the Fifties" I sprang into action, my lithe Scandinavian lank coiling like cat's muscle, as my shoe caught the edge of the couch and I learned, all at once, the physics of being tall and falling hard. It was a lively denouement, hysterically, soul-stretchingly satisfying, and a true turning point in my old man's ordinary life. I knew instantly: trying and not succeeding at clearing the couch was a hero's task. Too simple, too animal, and too good to be anything but Napoleonic, it was virtue: tacit, universal, arcane. The kind of softness in your bones when, as a newborn child, you warp them to the world's curve.

Here's to thirty-two more years of caffeine, even if I no longer drink it. Thirty-two couches. Thirty-two happy failures. Maybe less of The Police but plenty of stupid pleasure. Ben, with all my heart, I thank you for that night. Sting, fuck you, and a reluctant bravo. To all the rest, let's find some furniture to stack and abuse. This year, being quite crazy, I didn't enjoy my birthday. But until I'm dead, I have my chances. And besides, sixteen years ago, around one in the morning, which was the hour I first arrived anyway, I felt what pilgrims pray and ponder about, and I felt it not in eroded bones, or drab ineffability, or wily chant, but in a scuffled, juvenile scrap of grief, a neural misfire, a whack-and-tumble, and my best friends laughing at me as I lay on the floor, illuminated by having fucked it all up.

And the Billboard #1 from August 25 through October 6, 1979? "My Sharona" by The Knack. I would have preferred retching and jackhammers to commemorate my becoming a person. What a ghastly song.