I F*cked Up My Mate's Birthday

and other thoughts on being single

There is an unwritten code among single women that if you and your bestie are un-partnered, you immediately become responsible for the organisation of her birthday.

Vibe, gift, activity - the entire experience lies firmly on your shoulders. You become a one woman party planning committee. You order helium balloons instead of meeting deadlines and Google “gluten free birthday cake” instead of doing your expenses. You develop an alter ego called Claire who has a diploma in event management, wears a headset and shops exclusively at Kookai.

Claire in the wild!

This is a niche corner of single life that rarely gets documented because (and maybe you’re already thinking this) on the surface it doesn’t sound very interesting.

But Claire and I think there’s something to be discovered about our humanness in this topic. Also last week it was my bestie’s birthday and I think I f*cked it and I have a (desperate) need to explore this and writing is my therapy so here we are.

Shall we?

I didn’t think I needed any more friends.

A bit like a Mother who doesn’t know if she has any love left over for another child, I didn’t think there was room in my life for any more “bestie” energy.

But then Suze came along and now I can’t imagine my life without her in it. Turns out your heart just grows to accommodate more love. How utterly joyous!

Suze is wise, quirky, hilarious, flamboyant, smart and driven - basically all the things I aspire to be. Falling in (plutonic) love with Suze has been easy. As two single ladies, our lives quickly fell into a comfortable timbre of intimacy.

“I’ve made too much, want to come over for dinner?”

“Shall we go and see this?”

“Will you come with me to this appointment?”

“I’ll call you on my way home.”

“How did it go?”

So when Suze’s birthday loomed my inner Claire came out brandishing a clipboard and flapping in circles.

It is widely known in the single community that there are three occasions when being single sucks.

1. Moving house

2. Being poorly

3. Birthdays

Outside of these three occasions, being single is tolerable at worst and rather fabulous at best. (The spectrum of how one feels about being single is vast . Where one is on this spectrum at any given time depends on menstrual cycles, the state of your friend’s relationships and how recently you watched “Nobody Wants This” on Netflix.)

Just so we’re clear, EVERYBODY wants this.

All this to say, we want our un-partnered mates to feel unburdened by the mantle of being “single” on their special day so we take on the role of chief organiser, a role that traditionally falls to a romantic partner. No one wants to book their own table, order their own cake or plan their own activity on their birthday.

This year Suze’s birthday fell on a Friday which is close enough to the weekend to be the weekend and everyone knows that weekend birthdays are more important than midweek birthdays, no matter how old you’re turning.

My inner Claire had an idea - an Instagram worthy beach picnic at sunset.

Armed with a great gift and a gluten free homemade cake (yes, homemade!) I borrowed my mate’s Jimny 4X4 which she uses for camping adventures.

The vision was to drive down the coast, music blaring, wind in our hair to a cute little cove. We’d park up, open the back of the Jimny onto the sand, lay out a picnic rug, pop the cork on the non alcoholic Prosecco (neither of us drink), eat cheese, cool off in the ocean (it was 35 degrees) and then share a flask of tea as the sun set. We’d talk and laugh and it would be like a scene in a movie - one of those treasured moments we’d remember forever.

I’m not gonna lie, Claire was pretty smug as she flicked onto the last slide in her Powerpoint presentation pitch in my head.

Okay this is a camper van, not a Jimny but you get the idea!

I pick Suze up and we hit the open road. Except it’s rush hour on a Friday afternoon heading out of town towards the peninsula so it’s less “wind in our hair” and more bumper to bumper traffic.

When we eventually get to the cove there is no opportunity to “pull up on the sand.” We have no choice but to park in an overpriced car park on the top of the cliff and hike all our picnic stuff down to the cove. The cove is packed with approximately 146,987 people who’ve also had the idea of a romantic evening on the beach. Suze and I secure a small patch of sand, crack open the cheese and watch as the flies come. Sand gets everywhere. The wind picks up but fails to provide any reprieve from the heat. The lads next to us start playing music like they’re in da cluuuub and the Prosecco begins to taste fake.

“Happy birthday” I say limply to Suze, holding my tin cup of warm fizz up to toast her as yet another fly lands on my face.

“Thanks” she smiles weakly.

Gahhhhhhhhh Claire where are you? You’re FIRED!

The disappointment of disappointing another human needs its own word. Something like

OMGvomitmakeitstophorrorwhy!

I can see Suze grappling with her own anticlimactic feelings whilst not wanting to make me feel bad for doing such a shitty job.

I’d promised her the “best night” and here she is on a packed beach with sand in places it shouldn’t be and warm cheese sweating on a plastic Tupperware lid. Hardly the celebrations fit for a Queen.

If the roles were reversed I would be throwing a small but mighty tantrum.

Clouds rock up from nowhere and obscure the sun, ruining any chance of a decent sunset. We turn and look at each other. I want to cry. For her, for me, for Claire.

As I open my mouth to apologise a fly gets drawn in by my inhale and shoots to the back of my throat. In an unfortunate turn of events for both the fly and me, I start choking and spluttering and the only thing that can save me now is a gulp of tepid Prosecco to wash the fly down. Suze begins to giggle at my misfortune.

“Are you okay?” she laughs.

I look at her, my face red and my eyes watering. I begin to laugh too and suddenly all the stress melts away. We laugh as we pack up the pathetic picnic and gather up our things. We laugh as we hike all the way back up to the Jimny and we laugh as we drive home, our flasks of tea still full.

We go back to Suze’s flat and I light the candles on the gluten free birthday cake I made. We drink our tea and watch the sunset through her living room window.

I give her my gift and show her the spoken poem I’d written and recorded just for her.

Then we laugh some more about the disastrous evening that was.

At home I shower off the sticky sand and clear my throat for the thousandth time because although I know I’ve definitely swallowed that fly I can still kind of feel it, just like I can still kind of feel the disappointment of the evening.

It occurs to me that in my desperation for Suze not to feel disappointed about being single on her birthday, I had created even more disappointment for her!

Instead of trying to cos-play her romantic partner for the evening, I would’ve done a better job if I’d just been her mate.

Dinner and a show with a squeeze of her hand on the tram on the way home that said “I know you feel a bit more single than normal today and I get it and I love you.”

I should’ve trusted both of us to have that moment. It would’ve been far less painful than trying to avoid it.

“Next time I’ll give resident party planner Claire a better brief”, I think as I drop wearily into bed.

And then I smile because today I made a gluten free birthday cake and it didn’t taste too bad. It didn’t taste too bad at all.