Of Pears and Men
Rejoicement
The cake was smooshed, nothing like what I envisioned it to be. Half of it concaved inward, icing giving way to the soft spongy flesh, cherry jam oozing out like vomit, or sweat. It looked like it had been sat on by a very nice butt, or that it was fished out one of the nearby trash cans. Nearby restaurant staff were casting dubious glances at our table and the mysterious object resting upon it. This lump of cream was what Annie and Truth had brought me as my 18th surprise.
"Definitely tastes better than it looks," Phoebe offered. No way not to be in the direct line of fire between me and the ugly cake. I decided to let it go. Today was a glass-half-full sort of day, I decided. I tried to rejoice at the quality of my friends and ignore that of the cake.
There was much to be grateful for at that moment. On the special day in which one is born, there are many things to rejoice about. In my particular case, I should be thankful for the (alarming) surprise of a cake my friends had brought me, no matter how disheartening it looked. After all, my little high school sophomore clique had always been 50/50 on birthday celebrations. As the restaurant trembled underneath the clamor of rush hour, I gripped the cake knife and took my first stab at adulthood.
The blunt tip of the plastic pg-knife sliced through layers of thick cream and hinged itself within a slab of caramel. I swung the blade back and forth, sawing at the brown block until the cake layers became lopsided. What's the point of deliberately making a utensil serve its purpose less well? Meaningless. Meaningless knife, Meaningless cake, Meaningless day. I love my friends. But, if I was being completely honest with myself, I've always found birthday celebrations to be a little pointless. Sure, 365 days was a full rotation our planet makes around a scorching heat-ball, but why should that mean anything to us? Just an arbitrary day assigned to be something by us so we have an excuse to feel special for a few hours. The second year away from home, I'm still struggling to fit into what's been defined as normalcy within this strange country that dips everything in ketchup. I already feel special when I trip over my syllables and bomb pronunciations of words like grapefruit. I hand the knife over to Truth.
Truth is determined. She is set on making this right for me. She loves both weapons and celebrations. She wounds the cake like it's her nemesis, and the slice comes out in a perfect cylindrical chunk. I understand immediately that she is the culprit behind the surprise, her precision handling all elements of the event apart from the cake itself flawless, impeccable. Truth lives for celebrations. 6 months before her 18th, she knows she wants cream cheese icing on her cake, a two-layer, red velvet calorie-free. This is what she aims for, even though she claims her interest in birthdays is waning—"celebrating birthdays grows lamer as you age," she reasoned, "the only birthday I was really satisfied with was my 9-year-old one." Back when the recession hadn't hit her family's transportation business, 9-year-old Truth had the best celebration while her guests suffered in ineffable pain. A three-layer wedding style cake and an English poem recital contest were what her mother had in mind for extravagance. Coincidentally, watching other kids stumble over limericks in Chinglish was what Truth had in mind for fun. I picture 9-year-old her, in space buns tied together by two red scrunchies bossing other kids around in a marble-floored ballroom, an incarnation of the devil herself. I thank the heavens for only meeting Truth in high school. I also thank the heavens for the one who kept her from buying a three-layer, most likely Phoebe.
Unlike Truth, Phoebe harbors unresolvable animosity towards birthday celebrations. We have come to a consensus that this is caused by her fucked-up childhood and boarding-since-young experience, her coming of age characterized by moving from bunk bed to bunk bed, across rooms, cities, time zones. She hates that things are exclusively done for you on your birthday. Doesn't the happiness seem more artificial and insincere due to its temporal nature? Poof, twelve am and you're Cinderella. 24 hours later, you'll be back to your regular self with the rats, lizards and pumpkins, an extra inch closer to death. We all agree that she'd implanted the spite within herself, manifesting the hatred before she actually felt it, same as she does towards her parents, calculus and certain types of mushrooms. Better to close yourself off before expectations kill you. Phoebe was wearing a dress, I noticed, an occurrence rarer than her running across the streets naked. A pleasant surprise since the Marilyn Monroe incident during 9th grade matriculation. She looked absolutely stunning in pink.
The cake dissection drew to an end thanks to Annie and Summer's argument. No, the cake wasn't supposed to be cut before the candles were blown and the wish thought. Yes, because this was the universal way of doing it, Annie would know because that's how her family always did it. Annie's lips pursed a little at the line and I knew she was thinking of home. All 17 years of her life she had blown out candles under the neon lights of Puxi, Shanghai. She hadn't wanted to know more about suburban America than what the textbooks taught her, but there she was with the rows of little white picket fences, without steady access to either double-eyelid tape or k-dramas. She couldn't even have it her way preparing for my celebration. The cake-surprise plan was bound to have a stupid turnout, but she wasn't nearly as physically strong to stop Summer from its execution. At present, she lit the candle on my slice and handed it to me grudgingly.
I took the plate. When I was in Beijing, I envisioned my 18th to be celebrated in a variety of ways. In all those visions, never was I away from home, nor did I hold a squished piece of refreshment in my hand. None of it mattered. Today was a glass-half-full sort of day. I rejoiced at the presence of my friends and my anti-climatic lump of cream. It most definitely tasted better than it looked.