How To Ruin Your Own Birthday Without Even Really Trying

"How To Ruin Your Own Birthday Without Even Really Trying"

a novel

by Jake Kilroy

AN EXCERPT:
My birthday was an unfired gun ready for some sure-fire, ready-aim-fire, friendly-fire against a fiery wall (that I can only imagine God built during a time-out from a game of freeze tag with the Devil). All I remember in my lazy and sick daydream the following week was the scars on my wrists. No, not from any kind of weak suicide attempt. I'm too good for a cheap death.

Instead, I slept a week straight with balloons tied to me. I didn't want the party to leave my body. My lungs were filled with helium and my throat was laced with licorice wine. My chest was rocking like a tugboat in a storm. It was pounding pride and fear for a girl I met in a lazy attempt to revive my own mental cave-in. Call it what you want. I call it integrity with a side car.

Was this what my birthday was to be? Was I to indulge myself until my nerves were rattling inside the caverns of my own stifling heart?

Hmmm...

Isn't your birthday just one disgusting benefit where you starve the charities and feed your own ego anyway?

Good. My thoughts as well.