I stopped being thirty a few days before leaving Berlin. I was asleep at the time, probably in the middle of some idiot dream, but I remember the feeling when I woke. I remember the low, humid feeling that followed me from my bed to the park-facing window, where I stood scratching my chaste navy boxers. There had been no warning, no fanfare, no streamlined e-form to complete; I just woke up and there I was—not thirty, but in my thirties, standing nearly naked by the window of a journalist's room in Prenzlauer Berg.
I don't so much mind the ticking over of years. Though I'm not convinced growing older yields anything other than poorer health and conservatism, it hardly helps to fight it. Not when you've nothing to wield but your impotence. No; what I mind is the accumulation of waste that birthdays—especially birthdays—call attention to, the lost time that heaves under every well-intentioned wish, the fat of hours spent in thrall to Bobby Flay's Barbecue Addiction. The effect would be lessoned, I'm sure, with achievements behind you—if you had managed to make something of those foolish, energetic years. Because who would deny you a relaxed decline then? Without the spectre of failure to haunt over you, you could really settle into your remaining days, plump and placid, exercising the old talent only when, or rather if, you felt like it. You could stare out from your veranda with a bottle of shiraz (ranked best in its bracket) and frown at the changing demographics in your neighbourhood. Perhaps you'll have children and grandchildren who you've suffered and who now suffer you, familiar faces that sometimes appear and sit opposite you at your kitchen table and dole out bits of their lives. And when you die—cirrhosis, surely—you'll get an obituary from an actual journalist instead of some ignoble family-authored scrap. Because you worked when you were young and foolish and you made yourself immortal.
It was below ten when I left the apartment and I was typically underdressed. Rounding by the park, I saw tiny snowflakes drift down and vanish on the footpath. It was only the second time in my life I had witnessed snow.
When evening came I headed out to the bar featured in Parquet Courts' 'Berlin Got Blurry' video, an old-fashioned drinking hole filled with crusted-on regulars. It had changed hands since the video was shot, and the new owner, whose English was poorer than your average Berliner, had never heard of the band. He got me to write down the details for him before I left, as apparently I had not been the first to make the pilgrimage. We talked here and there but mostly I kept to my tall draughts, and my tangle of thoughts.
It was one of my more subdued birthdays, certainly. But maybe this is how birthdays should be. Wake up feeling terrible and find a couple of things to do that you enjoy. There's no need to involve other people.