Every so often, about every 6 months or so, I look at my life, blink back the tears with my false eyelashes and say, "Brad, we can't go on like this."

Who wants to put up with indignity of it all? After all, I've got a gas stove, why not get on the Syliva Plath Express outta here? But luckily for me, I've been conditioned by a life of relentless disappointment and can eat this stuff for breakfast.

Today is my first 39th Birthday.

Now I rail against Ageism. I make no effort to hide my age, nay, I even flaunt it. I've got an untouched gray streak. I reference the Carter administration. I routinely say things like: I haven't ridden a bike in 25 years. Or: I've got shoes older than you. Still, even I am feeling a bit bummed out about the slippery slope to 40.

Of course, in the scheme of things, 39 is still young. Just ask my mother, Esmeralda, who's 78 and she'll tell you: 39, feh, just a baby. But by my age she had already had 2 children, 3 husbands, and a wild time in Cuba (details still remain undisclosed, but I hope they make it into her unexpurgated memoirs).

I was too busy producing and performing in off-off-off broadway flops to get an actual career. Is a smidgeon of success too much to ask for? I'd settle for a few drops of grease from the pan where success was cooked. Okay, just a sniff. No? Well, alrighty then. I am a fatalist. I mean, you can't drown if you are meant to hang. It is what it is, as the kids say. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

After all, things aren't so bad (pfui! pfui! pfui!). I've got a handsome, sweet Akhenaten. I've got wonderful friends like Spartacus, Modesty Blaise, Rita Hayworth and Mrs. Diamond. My apartment no longer has a carbon monoxide leak. Things are looking up (pfui! kaynahora, keep the evil eye away).

I just need about 4 more years before I could say I was 40 without being embarassed. True, I have made great strides over the past couple of years. I learned to play the ukulele, bought a couch (my first piece of furniture not found in the garbage) and finally found a foundation that matches my skin tone. These are not accomplishments to be sneezed at.

In 4 years I think I could: 1) clean my apartment 2) get an actual job 3)pay off some debt 4)write a novel 5)visit Indonesia 6)waltz through a winter season in Vienna. I've got a list of things longer than my arm.

Can I have 3 more 39th birthdays, please? That's what I'd like as a birthday present. I've often said that I should be allowed to deduct the 4 years I spent in graduate school from my age (since those years were like being in a coma). I know this undermines my assault on Ageism, but am I not allowed to be a little contradictory?