when the world turned thirty

i went to bed at twelve thirty. i woke up and i was thirty. there.

thirty minutes to get ready. thirty steps down the stairway. thirty more soldiers died in iraq. thirty cents short in change for coffee. thirty songs on my ipod playlist. thirty men standing along the track. thirty seats on the second deck. thirty stocks plunging, thirty rising. last thirty pages of factotum. thirty crazy years behind. thirty dirty thoughts on my mind.

i've been with thirty women, some of them in my head. i've lived a day with less than thirty dollars in total assets, much more in debt. i've killed thirty spiders, crushed thirty snails and smashed thirty flies. i've drunk thirty bottles of whiskey. i have thirty shiny degrees piled up on my desk and thirty dusty pictures on my wall. i know thirty people and some more. i fell in love with thirty of them, and i cried for thirty months when the first one left me. I've told thirty million cheap lies and thirty really good ones. i felt really bad when I lost thirty cents to a slot machine, and spent thirty grands on fine dining that felt really good. i had thirty golden opportunities to make it big in life and wasted all of them, i had thirty perfect opportunities to commit suicide and failed on all of them too. i have thirty pieces of new york steak in my fridge and thirty bottles of wine on my rack, thirty more reasons to live.

the mexican girl who'd truned thirty sat next to me for the thirtieth time. she wasn't reading the bible like she used to, she had thirty ways to improve your relationship in her left hand. i spent thirty seconds trying to read thirty lines from her book, but her cleavage proved too distracting at the bottom of the page and i gave up: she had small breasts, thirty a, or b. i thought of thirty lines to start a conversation with her, and i found thirty reasons why we'd break up in thirty days or less. i counted to thirty and back, and i was outside walking on thirty celebrity stars on thirty pavement tiles.

i ordered thirty lattes and thirty croissants and only paid for one, and i realized what the world feels like at thirty. it feels like thirty thousand reasons to live and thirty thousand to die, and a most seductive indifference towards all of them, and the rest of the reasons in the whole thirty year old world for that matter. it feels like thirty venezuelan topless strippers on one side and thirty horny zombies on the other, and me walking in trance in the middle, oblivious, indifferent and expressionless, simply so careless that they can't tell, as if i'm too good for them, as if i'm too smart for them, as if i own more than thirty dollars in cash, as if i'm everything they are not, as if i'm thirty. there. i am.