The Unexpected Birthday Gift

None of my friends knows when my birthday is. And that’s exactly how I always wanted it.

I’m not saying that to make this into some kind of sob story, because I don’t see it that way. I’ve paid a psychiatrist plenty of money to not see it like that.

I guess I’ll just get it out: my parents passed away when I was 12. A vulnerable age, as you might say. And before that, I loved my birthday. My parents weren’t big on gifts or parties, but they would always put together some kind of activity for my birthday. One year, we went to the zoo and had a scavenger hunt (that they had somehow roped the zookeepers into participating in by placing random objects and clues around the zoo). Another year, we went to the beach, and I saw a whale for the first time. That night, we made my birthday cake together and decorated it with whales.

You get the idea. There was no way anyone was going to top the kind of birthdays I had with my parents. And when they were no longer around, and I went to live with my aunt and my six cousins, my birthday slipped by year after year without acknowledgement.

Again, I’m not trying to turn this into a sob story. I’m a 56-year-old man. I’m long past the days of caring about birthdays or crying over my parents. I’ve created a successful life for myself. I enjoy the company of sugar babies. I rent a private plane to go to work meetings (okay, yes, a jet, if we’re going to be specific.)

And yet, every once in a while, one of my cousins, Jackie, who had become more like a sister to me, nudges me gently and says, “Come on, Ray. Open yourself up to someone. You’ve got abandonment issues, brother. Get over it.”

She’s probably the only one who actually knows my birthday and gives me a card every year.

I’ve tried to take her advice from time to time. I opened myself up to Brenda, a nice enough gal that I met on a sugar dating website. She ended up leaving me for someone richer. I tried being more emotional with Karen, also a sugar baby of mine, but she broke things off because she decided to get married. Good for her, truly.

But it wasn’t until I met Shannon that I felt like actually taking a leap, opening myself up. We had met in the wild, not on a sugar dating website, but had established early on that we both wanted something casual. It wasn’t that she wasn’t open to love, she told me, but that she had kind of lost faith in men and in relationships. Plus, she was young. She wanted to have fun. She wanted to sip champagne on a private jet.

Given these early conversations, I figured that Shannon was quite shallow. And I didn’t hold that against her. I’ve never been judgmental towards sugar babies who know that they’re in it for the perks of living the high life. This was a comfortable kind of connection for me.

But the more time I spent with Shannon, I learned that she was a romantic under the surface. Once, when she had stayed over at my house, I woke up to catch her sitting at the kitchen island, sipping coffee and writing poetry. Seeing her sitting there in a column of early morning sun, her dark brown hair tangled in a messy bun, I wanted to tell her that she was poetry. But, I, deep down, am not a romantic. So I told her I had an early morning and that she would have to scoot. Not to be rude.

Shannon didn’t take offense easily. Before she left that day, she said to me, “By the way, when’s your birthday?”

I told her not to worry about it and planted a kiss on her forehead before ushering her to the door. Her Uber was out front.

I knew things had gone too far when one night, while I was in the shower, Shannon answered my house phone. Who does that? I came out of the shower to see her sitting cross-legged on my couch, chatting it up with Jackie.

To be sure, Jackie knows about the sugar babies. She teases me endlessly about wanting to meet one of them someday, but I’ve never introduced her. And now here she was, buddying up with Shannon over a five-minute phone call.

When Shannon saw me, a big smile lit up her face.  “Shoot, he’s here, quick, tell me when his birthday is, please, I’m begging you.”

Luckily, Jackie has always been loyal to me. She knew I wouldn’t want her to share it, so she kept the secret. I snatched the phone from Shannon with feigned anger and told Jackie, “I hope you had a nice chat. See you for dinner tomorrow night, goodbye.”

Before I had a chance to hang up the phone, Jackie added, “You’re not invited unless you bring her.” She had said it loud enough for Shannon to hear. I was cooked.

I thought about cancelling the whole thing, but there was a part of me that did kind of want Shannon to meet Jackie and her family. I could feel myself connecting with Shannon on a deeper level, and that was both frightening and exciting. Ultimately, I left it up to her if she wanted to go or not.

To my chagrin and delight, she said yes.

What I didn’t tell Shannon was that this was my birthday dinner, even though Jackie never called it that. I always came over on the day of my birthday to spend the evening with her and her husband and two girls, ages 5 and 9. We always made pizza. And Jackie and I always ended the night with a nightcap while her husband put the kids to bed. This was the moment she typically took to slide the birthday card across the table, without saying a word.

Shannon, to my surprise, hit it off instantly with my nieces. They paraded her around like a princess, asking to brush her hair and refill her cup with imaginary tea. When it was time for bed, they demanded that she read them a bedtime story instead of their dad. I gave her a look that said, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” But she was happy to comply.

As Jackie poured our cocktails and set them out on the dining table, I could tell something was off. She was acting cagey. She said she adored Jackie and wanted to see her more often.

“What’s up with you?” I asked immediately. There was something weird.

“I’ve been keeping something from you,” she said. “I met Shannon weeks ago. You dropped her off at a pilates class, and guess what, it’s my same pilates studio. I introduced myself, and we exchanged numbers. She’s really special, Ray, really. And she wanted to do something for your birthday. Please don’t take it the wrong way. Don’t be a stubborn idiot. Enjoy it for once in your life.”

Before I could react, my nieces burst into the kitchen singing Happy Birthday and holding the swinging doors open for Shannon, who had a cake in her hands. The cake, I saw immediately, was decorated with whales that my nieces had clearly drawn with blue frosting.

I wanted to be mad. I wanted to say that this was expressly against my wishes. I wanted to say that it was a betrayal that they had kept a secret from me.

But I could only smile and hold back tears. Jackie’s husband threw his hands up with a look of, “They forced me not to tell, sorry bud.”

After the cake was eaten and the kids put to bed a second time, Jackie, Shannon, and I had our nightcap. As was tradition, Jackie slid the card across the table and said, “This time, I want you to open it in front of me.”

Great, another surprise.

Inside the card was a single sentence: “Take this girl to the beach.” Along with the card, the envelope included a printed-out map to a beach town not too far away, as well as printed-out receipts for whale watching expeditions and a gift card for a restaurant in the area.

I tried pushing the card back, this was a step too far. But Jackie was stern, and I knew I had lost the battle.

A week later, Shannon and I were en route to the beach. We had decided to make it into a roadtrip. It wasn’t the same beach that I had gone to with my parents; I think Jackie knew that would be too intense. It was, after all, time to make new memories. It was time to put the past in the past.

I reached over and grabbed Shannon’s hand and said, “This is the last time we celebrate my birthday. I hope you know that.”

It wasn’t, of course.