About year ago, I was waiting in a movie theater lobby with my friend Pat. A Queen song was playing, and Pat said, "Sometimes I think about the world, and I get sad that Freddie Mercury isn't in it." I have been thinking about that a lot lately. Freddie Mercury was the first, and I think only, star that I really felt connected to on a deep level. Sure, as a kid, I was into Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and Paula Abdul (all of whom turned out to be so remarkably stable!) and I wanted to meet them so they could take me shopping or whatever. But as I grew older, my musical tastes shifted. I started listening to Queen right before Freddie Mercury died. The tabloid covers announcing his death are emblazoned in my memory — I felt cheated out of ever even having the ability to fantasize about being his friend. Even as a fantasy-prone kid, I knew there was no use in pretending to be friends with dead people.

So, why did I feel such a strong connection to Freddie Mercury? Because when I was about ten years old, I realized that I would never be a Paula or a Whitney or a Mariah. I connected with freaks and misfits and queers. And Freddie Mercury was, arguably, all those things, with bad teeth to boot, and yet he could charm and excite tens of thousands of people at a time. He was my hero. Lindsay ("You're the best friend that I've ever had. . ." ) and I used to listen to Queen together all the time in middle school when we both began to realize and appreciate that we were unusual. But there was one poppy, happy song that I was never really into as a kid that I have been listening to nonstop lately. And that is "Don't Stop Me Now." Every time I listen to it, I get a teeny bit sad that Freddie Mercury is not in the world anymore. But I get excited that I am.

The thing about having a birthday in the end of August is that usually, no one is around to celebrate it with you. [Of course, I suppose one could argue that it's not as bad as having a Christmastime birthday and being a constant recipient of the old standby, the combined gift.] When I was growing up, my friends were usually away during my birthday week, and sometimes my family went away during that week also. So I only ever had big birthday celebrations when someone else planned them for me, which happened once as a child, once when Owen threw me a surprise party, and once in college when we celebrated after the fact.

I never thought birthdays were really that big a deal, except for the fact that you can use them to say, "Be nice to me, it's my birthday!" I especially resent the birthdays that are supposed to be "significant" — but that might be because I spent my 16th birthday in a secluded cabin in Maine watching Toy Story with my parents and 8-year-old brother. The highlight of my day was scoring enough quarters to tearfully call my boyfriend from a beach payphone. And my 18th birthday was spent on a slow-moving train from Maryland to Connecticut, in the company of two young children who did not seem to tire of chanting "Ch ch ch ch choo choo!"

One significant birthday — my 21st — seemed like it was going to be horriffic but ended up being awesome. It was on a Wednesday, and Liz had come up to spend the day with me in Port Chester. She took me to the mall and bought me a lipstick at Stila, which cost $17. I don't think I had owned anything better than Wet n' Wild at that point. I had to work in the afternoon and when I returned, I found that Liz had made me three belts. We planned on going out to this tapas place in Greenwich, which was pretty hip and happening for the area. We spent forever getting ready, only to drive to Greenwich and find that restaurant was closed. Liz wanted cigarettes and I decided to go buy them in a bar, using my real i.d. for the first time. I pointed out my birthday to the bouncer and he just sort of grunted rudely at me. We ended up in some lonely cafe with a terrible croony lounge singer. Liz had brought candles shaped like a 2 and a 1 and she stuck them in my bean dip for me to blow out. I think at this point we both thought my birthday was going to be the lamest 21st ever. Then we went to a club that my roommates were promoting and all of a sudden there were tons of people buying me drinks and I'd had too many whiskey sours and a whole bunch of us were dancing to wonderful terrible music like Nelly. Somewhere around 2 a.m., my super hot roommate Rey and Liz and I decided it would be a good idea to sneak into Rye Beach which involved a lot of climbing and squeezing and manuevering. Once there, they both gave me extended massages. The three of us ended up passing out, around sunrise, on my living room floor — but only after digging into a chocolate cake that Liz had brought, sans utensils. The next say, we all woke up craving huevos rancheros, but it was too late to find a restaurant that was still serving them. We went to El Tio anyway, and Rey, who was a total fast talker, made up this elaborate story about how Liz was from Paris and it was my birthday and all we wanted in the world were some huevos rancheros, and it worked. Rey bought me some cupcakes and had the waitstaff light them and everyone sang Happy Birthday to me. At the same time, someone stole my bag from my car, which contained, among other things, the $17 lipstick. With the theft and all, I never thought another birthday would compare to that one. But I had a pretty fabulous one again the next year with my roommates Kristy and Cari and my friends Sara and Marissa. We spent it having a picnic at Rye Playland (with delicious food and plenty of wine) and Cari's brother, who worked there, treated us to a free boat ride. Cyndi Lauper was performing and we danced around happily. Someone won me a CareBear with a rainbow on it and when we came home, A. joined us for some delicious strawberry shortcake cupcakes.

Tomorrow I am turning another age that people think is significant - 25. Since it's a Monday, I will go to work and then go to a really nice dinner with A. Then I will see Little Miss Sunshine again, because I liked it just that much. I won't do anything crazy and I won't be around of people and I won't drink alcohol. But I'm really looking forward to it — at the very least, it will be a great Monday. I have mixed feelings about being 25, but since I have no choice in the matter, I am going into it smiling. I hope it's a great year.

I can't believe I never saw this movie until now. Last night, I was flipping through the Comcast On Demand movies to find a good one to watch with A. The plot summary read: "A young man on the verge of marriage returns to his hometown to reconsider, hanging out with old pals and seeing the ruts they're in." A. didn't want to watch it, noting astutely, "That sounds too much like your life." So I watched it this morning, before he woke up, and it's been a long time since I related to a movie so much. I am Timothy Hutton's character in this film.

So Timothy Hutton's character goes back to his hometown to reevaluate his life, which is something I've done many times. Almost as soon as the movie started, I was practically screaming at the TV: Go back to your steady girlfriend in the city! You're not going to find what you're looking for! What you're looking for doesn't even exist anymore! Quit chasing fantasies! You have to grow up! These are all things I should be telling myself, but it's a lot easier to tell a fictional character. Some of the lines he said were so absolutely perfect, like when he is telling Uma Thurman's character he is wary about settling down because in the beginning of a relationship things are so exciting, and eventually that excitement fades. He wonders if maybe he should try to sneak in a few more of those exciting relationship beginnings before he settles down for the "big fade." This is the kind of warped thought I have sometimes — warped because it totally disregards the fact that in between all those exciting beginnings is usually a ton of sadness and heartache. One of the best things about the movie, aside from the fact that it ended exactly the way I needed it to, is that they kept the beautiful girl characters as fantasies. The whole movie is basically about growing up and accepting reality, leaving youthful fantasies behind. It's something I really needed to see.

The thing about memories is that sometimes you think you miss the things you were doing or the people you were around at the time, but often you miss the person you were at the time, because you know you can never be that person again. Do I wish I was 15 or 17 or 21 again? No, not really. I did a lot of stupid shit back then. Did I have to do stupid stuff in order to become a functional adult? Probably. But I don't think I had to do the same kind of stupid stuff, with different people, but the same terrible results each time. Even though I think I had some kind of ideal teenage life and that college was so fun because my responsibilities were so limited, when I read the actual words I wrote back then. . . I was not happy. I was a teenager in love, but I was limited by so many forces beyond my control and I just couldn't wait to break free. And when I was no longer in love, the heartache was so incredibly intense because I could not imagine living life any other way. I had absolutely no sense of perspective, no idea that life existed outside my little circle and my carefully thought-out fantasies. In college, I didn't realize that having so much time to just hang out was actually a luxury. I wanted to be doing something grand and meaningful. Now I would settle for getting to hang out more. Because honestly, being an adult and working a job that you don't really like to pay the bills is not fun. But it's a lot better than being a financially dependent and emotionally unstable teenager. That's for damn sure.

Something prompted me to look up a specific event in my high school diary yesterday. I never found what I was looking for, but I got so absorbed I read the whole damn thing. I don't know when the last time I read it was; I'm not sure I ever read it after I graduated high school. Unfortunately, reading it made me realize that I have been remembering certain events wrong all this time. Timetables are jumbled. I thought I was very mature for my age, but I was actually quite needy and exasperating. I thought my high school love and I drifted apart and I forgot all about him my senior year. Actually, he broke up with me (partly because I was less than faithful) and I had an incredibly ill-advised rebound boyfriend, who also broke up with me shortly thereafter. It was only then I realized how much I loved the first boyfriend, but he had, of course, moved on. I had some heartbreaking conversations with him, which for some reason I transcribed in my diary as if in preparation for filming My Teenage Life, the movie. I also spent at least sixth months writing tortured letters that I never sent (Thank God!). All of this was just so awfully painful — almost comically painful — to read. Because my teenage self could never have conceptualized that a decade or so later, the boy who broke my heart would cheerfully contact me through Friendster, and I would reply happily, because I wouldn't remember that I'd sat, crying, in the passenger's seat of his car, begging him not to end it like this because we would never speak to each other again in our lives. Teenage heartache is not something I wish to relive.