If I Am to Die on a Trapeze

I will be turning 27 at the end of this year. While 26 fell firmly into the camp of Good, But Dumb Years along with 22, 23, and 24, 27 has a special magic to it.

It's not the square year 25 was, a simple 5². No, 27 is 3³. That's three to the third. It's perfect. You could write it in base-3 as 1,000. It's so mathematically beautiful I appreciate it without even comprehending its exact importance.

For the rest of the world, 27 means I am going to die.

No, this is not some preemptive strike à la Logan's Run. The Twenty-Seven Club is a collection of famous and sometimes infamous persons throughout rock & roll history–though it is often expanded to include film and other media–who have all died at the age of 27. Principally among them Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Brian Jones all within three years of each other, then later Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and a number of other musicians without a J-name.

Just as I had gotten over the nagging suspicion I would be struck to death by a bus before I turned 25, I have discovered a wonderful new sense of paranoia. And a deadline:

I must achieve fame and notoriety in the next 18 months so that my "untimely" death will include me among these delightful degenerates. I must also knock out my bucket list in this time, which means I have to make a bucket list.

Right now, the only thing I want to do before I die is take a $586 ten week trapeze workshop at the end of which I put on a "recital" for all my friends and family.

You heard me. I went for the first a friend's birthday recently and loved every terrifying minute of it, and it turns out I was pretty good. $586 is a lot to lay-out for a couple months of fun, certainly more than a gym membership, but my time is short and I certainly can't take the money with me when I go. However, this does pose something of a problem for me:

That is one hell of a good way to die.

I don't mean to imply any safety concerns, far from it. The class I had was highly monitored and seemed safe as anything else. Batman-level catastrophes would have to simultaneously occur to defeat the safety precautions put in place by this school. I mean to say it is such a fun way to go I almost want it to be my sign-off.

"Dave died? How?"

"Oh, it was an unfortunate trapeze incident."

Yes, please. It definitely sounds better than "drug overdose" or "drunk driver," the preferred methods of 27 Club alumni. You say, "Cancer," and people just make that pitying sigh. "Oh, that sucks." You know what to say about cancer. You know what no one shy of a ring master has ever had a prepared response for?

"Unfortunate trapeze incident."

If I get to heaven and they ask me how I died, and I said, smirking of course, "An unfortunate trapeze incident," they would usher me backstage with my VIP tickets and tour jacket, and tell me that Jimi wanted to meet me after the show.

Or they'd call me a bullshitter, because who ever dies in "an unfortunate trapeze incident"?

On Spontaneity

My friends are not very good planners.

Sure, we prioritize, set dates in advance, but when it comes time to actually get shit done, we're not exactly the army corp of engineers. The best laid plans seem to be set only a few days in advance. Maybe four or five, max. Anything longer will require excessive planning that will change repeatedly, then again the night before and usually involves large cash expenditures for gas and admittance and food-slash-drink.

Somehow we've all adapted, though. It's gotten to the point where I'm pretty sure we all leave our schedules open because we know something is coming. I've been invited into The City with a half hour's notice. I've been invited upstate the night before. I've been invited to a theme park in New Jersey of all places on maybe three days grace. I've been invited to someone's prom two hundred miles away with maybe a month beforehand.

But today was a new one. Today I was invited to be a bridesmaid's date to a wedding on Long Island thirteen hours ahead of the ceremony.

Thankfully, this was somewhat facetious, but somewhere in the infinite void is a universe where I end up going down to Lawn Guyland and partying with a bunch of people I've never met. I think I'd like to live in that universe, but my responsibilities for tomorrow were set by my own volition weeks ago. Would that I could, but I'm already seeing the dozen tiny sings that the universe has seen my altruism and is pleased.

The Universe is an everlasting river with lulls and eddies and currents, and if you listen carefully to the sound it makes you will hear its multitudinous voice, forever speaking, "Ohm."

Either that or The Universe is a fickle bitch, created in my own vast but tiny mind too terrified of emotionally dealing with the rest of humanity on anything but my own limited terms.

But probably the first.