Now that I’m 34

I’m going to eat my vegetables; I’m going to go to bed and get up at a reasonable time; I’m going to finish my damn degree and graduate and find a job.
Birthdays don’t really feel like milestones anymore, just an excuse to go to the pub with friends. Or sometimes they feel like a yardstick, like by the time my parents were my age, they were actually kind of in the same sort of space I’m in now, so I guess that’s ok. Still, no PhD, no tenure track post, no CDs out. I might not be the young hot shot I thought I was.
My laptop has been broken for almost 3 weeks. Apple support in Europe really bites. I have borrowed a laptop running Ubuntu Stdio, which is very nice. But I miss having RAM. Also, I’m somewhat shocked to discover that the phone in my pocket is probably as powerful as the laptop I had before the current, broken one. It’s certainly more powerful than the one I’m borrowing. So I’m trying to compile SuperCollider on it. It’s very strange to be installing developer tools on my phone. I keep stopping with an overwhelming, “oh my god, it’s the future” feeling. And since the Brit police actually used a hovering drone thing to arrest some poor sod last week, it’s not the Asmiov future I’d wanted.
I’m sometimes kind of amazed by the date, like, holy shit, it’s 2010. I’m too young to be old. And yet.
The time is coming soon when I will have a 3rd date with a non-queer straight cis woman and need to disclose and I still have not figured out what to say. “Have you heard of Buck Angel?” seems like a poor opening gambit. So does invoking the pregnant man. I don’t know how well people here have heard of Chaz Bono.
I’m entirely assuming that people are cis though. I remember when I came out as gay to my highschool boyfriend. I agonized about it for some time. How to tell him? Would he be hurt by this revelation? I called him up. “I need to tell you something.” I said, and hemmed and hawed and finally, “I’m gay.” In a casual voice, he said, “Oh, me too.”
It’s probably somewhat more unlikely that disclosing my trans status will lead to a ‘me too,’ alas.

. . .

When my dad was 34, he married my mom. He asked her to marry him on the first date. She said yes on the third. I seem to remember that he told me that she had decided she was going to say yes even before he’d asked. They knew each other already, through a group for Catholic singles. Everyone in the group coupled off, which was, of course, the point. But in the mean time, there was group socializing, camping trips, bike trips, going places, doing things. The days before OkCupid seem like they were a bit more fun, or at least more likely to lead to lifelong friendships.