NOTES AND DISCLAIMERS: Completely made up. Based on imagination with no intersection with the truth. Inspired in part by the article "So You Want To Throw A Hollywood Party" in Movieline's Hollywood Life (Sept. 2003) issue, by The Editors. Thanks to Younger, kel, Katie and Missy.

ONE HUNDRED STEPS TO THE PERFECT FORTIETH BIRTHDAY PARTY

November has tied me to an old dead tree
get word to April to rescue me - Tom Waits

1. Move to LA when you're young, get burned, go home to lick your wounds and then you'll know that LA lies, all the time, and is completely untrustworthy. If you want the perfect LA party, you need to know LA first, in and out.

2. Buy a house when you're twenty five, a large, perfectly placed house that demonstrates how much you've made of yourself since you left and shows how you can handle all of it now. Know that LA is everything.

3. Move permanently into the house when you're thirty two and your big moment is fading so you can be in just the right place for the next big moment or for the slow retreat into enjoying the weather. Be prepared for both, you're in LA now.

4. Realize when you're thirty nine years and six months old that you're about to turn forty. It's a good time to panic. Evaluate your life. Look at what you've accomplished. If you've been in LA long enough, and you have by now, you'll first think of hits, money, and size of house. If you've been raised right, and you have been, you'll think about love and of the people who care for you and the people who used to care for you and the complete lack of a real partner in your life, or anyone who gives good head on a regular basis.

5. Think that maybe now is the time to buy a sports car. People do that. You did that when you were in your twenties and already have three. A fourth would be silly. Consider getting a much younger girlfriend or even boyfriend, because people do that, too, and it would solve the lack of regular sex thing.

6. Notice the really hot barista at the coffee shop by the place where you study yoga four times a week. Dark dark hair that isn't even dyed and eyes to match, short and hot. Realize in your head you're comparing him to a really good cup of coffee and think it's a tired metaphor.

7. Call your friends. They're there to help. Start with your bandmates, they know you best, after all these years. The youngest one says, "Dude, age is just a number." Resist the urge to point out that his girlfriends started out eight to ten years older than him and are now ten to twelve years younger than him. He sucks. The second youngest one, who is also your ex-lover of nineteen years, says, "Maybe you should buy a sports car." The oldest, who turned forty five years ago with a blowout in New Orleans says, "Why are you attaching meaning to this? Man. The only reason it's bumming you out is because you haven't worked in two years and you haven't had a real relationship in three. If you had that shit going on, you wouldn't be upset about this shit at all."

8. Stop calling your friends before you call your friend who will be turning forty six months after you because he's probably really well-adjusted to it and doesn't care and his kids are going to buy him a sports car because they're great kids and you don't have kids at all. You have nothing.

9. Send out a mass email that says that no one should make plans for you. No celebration of the day or the event. You will spend the next six months concentrating on your yoga and writing music.

10. Read an article about how passé yoga is these days in LA and how everyone is doing Tai Chi again. Decide you don't need to be trendy like that, you'll stick with yoga. You're about to be forty and you're already passé, and your teacher is really nice and has a great body for forty-nine so you feel no need to leave her class.

11. Pass a month ignoring everything and writing songs about the light in the sky and the value of breath. Decide none of the songs are any good.

12. Get a call from one of your oldest friends who will be forty six months after you and hear that he and your other friends have decided to throw you a party "because you're looking at this all wrong. Chris is flying out, he'll plan everything. It'll be a blow out, man, it'll be off the hook." Bite back the urge to say that no one says 'off the hook' in 2016.

13. Don't be passive-aggressive and "forget" the flight info of your friend's flight. That's tacky.

14. If you do "forget," when your friend arrives at your house, don't offer a lame excuse like, "Oh, was that today? I just forgot. Um, dude, you look good."

15. If you do "forget" and have no story ready, be prepared for your friend to see right through you and make fun of you for being stupid for two days.

16. Remember it's good to see your friends. Remember it's perfectly okay that Chris is not only planning on spending two months planning your fortieth birthday party but that he'll be living with you that entire time and he's already decided to have the party at your house. This is a good thing. If you repeat that to yourself for twenty minutes while looking in a mirror, you might believe it. Make sure Chris doesn't catch you.

17. Help Chris with plans. It's your party! First, decide on the guest list. How many people, how many exes, how many friends, how many friends' exes, how many family, how many people you hate that you call friends because of business deals ten years ago.

18. Don't despair at what a potential clusterfuck this could be, with exes of exes being friends and/or hating each other and all invited to your party. Remember, Chris is the official host and he gets to deal with it.

19. Take a few days off from the planning. There's still a little over three months. Chris can deal with all of it, after all, he's the one who's insisting on this.

20. Don't worry about why you think the cute barista is no longer cute and that when you do see him, you feel a low level buzz of annoyance. There's no need to analyze, you're about to be forty!

21. Read that sugar is in, so plan on sweet cakes and chocolate confections and maybe even an entire sculpture of your head made from marzipan. When Chris proposes the latter, shudder and say no, because you'll be picturing what a half eaten sculpture of your head would look like. Nose missing, eyes gone, hair chopped in half, that's not an image you need on your special day.

22. Participate in the planning! Testing the caterers means you get to sample free food of the highest quality for a week straight.

23. If you think Chris is flirting with the hot blonde caterer who has small, pert breasts and smells like lavender, urge him on. Loudly. While she's in the room. Annoying Chris is fun.

24. Try to remember Chris is the best at annoying people. Maybe in the country, sometimes in the whole world. It's not his cheap associate's degree in psychology; it's his innate understanding of people. Maybe he doesn't even have a degree in psychology, maybe it was art. Maybe his skill is genetic. Maybe he's Satan. He's planning an entire party to annoy you, if you think about it right.

25. So don't be surprised when you wake up on a Sunday morning and see the person Chris spent the Saturday night with after the week of catering tests and it's not the blonde caterer with real breasts, it's the barista you used to think was attractive.

26. Make sure you haven't told Chris you thought the barista was attractive.

27. Since you haven't told Chris, feel free to yell at Chris after the barista leaves. A real bone of contention might be that Chris knows you like to do your yoga nude on the back lawn in the morning and he still let the barista come downstairs for breakfast in the morning and therefore see you.

28. Tell yourself you should have known that this will not strike Chris as a good reason to be angry since he keeps saying your body is amazing for nearly forty and the barista was probably just jealous when he quickly left after seeing you.

29. Don't be mollified. Chris is only here for your party and the planning. This is your LA life and it doesn't include Chris. He's not LA at all.

30. If things are only settled because you both agree to disagree, don't be immature and stop talking to Chris for three days.

31. If you do decide Chris deserves the silent treatment, make it easier by taking an unscheduled vacation to a film festival in San Francisco.

32. Be prepared to run into one of your old ex-girlfriends, the one who just won an Academy Award, all these years after everyone forgot she was ever in My Boss's Daughter.

33. Don't hit on her, she just married that insurance analyst she met in rehab two years ago.

34. Do have a nice conversation with her, she knows people.

35. Don't get your hopes up when she introduces you to a director/producer who's looking for someone to score their film and the producer/director wants to meet with you about doing it. It's probably a porn film.

36. Schedule the meeting anyway. Film scoring is exciting and demanding, it requires matching music to emotion and feeling, and you want to do it, maybe even make a second career out of it. Lots of people start in porn.

37. Because Chris is the world master of being annoying, know that he will meet you at the airport when you come back from San Francisco. He will not mention that you did not tell him where you were going. He will not mention that you didn't call. He will drive very safely and tell you he's picked a caterer. It's not the catering company with the cute blonde. He will have decided to go with the marzipan sculpture, but not of just your head, your whole body in marzipan for the party guests to hack at and eat.

38. Yell at him about the sculpture. Don't mention the porn film.

39. Ignore Chris rolling his eyes. He always does that. He thinks he's so smart. Ignore the voice in your head that tells you he is so smart.

40. Don't yell when you find out that during the four days you were gone Chris has taken up Tai Chi. Be calm. Surprise him for once.

41. Remain calm even when Chris has his teacher come out to the house every morning when you normally do your nude yoga. It's not like you don't own pants. It's fun to watch Chris trying to move slowly without talking.

42. Be open to new opportunities. When Chris invites you to some "alternative," "edgy" poetry reading where no photographers will be present, say yes.

43. Enjoy the reading, all the different poets and their experiments with words and sounds and projected images.

44. Remember that it's okay to think that the presentation would be better if some of the girls wore bras. It's okay to also think that half these people could use a shower.

45. Tell Chris you enjoyed it. Have a discussion with Chris about the one poem that seemed to be about the futility of art while Chris thinks it was about the importance of the art. Mention to Chris your feelings about the showers and the bras, it's fun to let him laugh at you.

46. Don't forget that sometimes, Chris will surprise you. He might even say that he contemplated slipping gift certificates to a decent hair stylist to half the audience.

47. Meet with the producer. Discover the movie isn't porn but an indie film starring Eva Phillippe and Angelina Jolie's second adopted Nigerian son about refrigerator recycling center workers. It might even be good.

48. Take the job; work is fulfilling. Don't mention your fantasy about a three way with Ryan Phillippe and Angelina Jolie after the premiere.

49. Decide not to tell Chris about the job and the fantasy.

50. Have dinner with Chris where you both talk through how hot a Ryan Phillippe/Angelina Jolie sandwich would be. Let Chris be the one to laugh about the term sandwich. Just smile and say thank you when Chris goes on about how great the job will be and how great you'll be at film scoring.

51. Don't make an issue of it if Chris still hasn't broken up with the damn barista, Chris deserves sex. Someone in the house should be getting some.

52. Be happy when Chris tells you he is breaking up with the barista after three weeks of dating. Just remember to be happy in private.

53. Your party is in two weeks, are you ready? Have you talked to all the friends and guests who are coming and made sure they don't secretly hate you? Have you told them about your new project that you've just started and love? Have you asked if they know any hot guys you could bring as a date?

54. Decide your fortieth birthday party is a bad place for a first date.

55. Chris isn't bringing a date, why should you? Remember that Chris is in charge of making sure no fights break out so he has responsibilities that preclude entertaining a date.

56. Spend a week locked in your state-of-the-art home studio scoring the film. It's just the beginning, but it's the best week of the last two years. Or at least the most stimulating.

57. Maybe let Chris listen to your first noodlings of the score, but no one else. Chris always tells the truth.

58. Maybe it's time to wonder why you and Chris never hooked up. You two were really close back when you were very young and your most exciting birthday was when you turned twenty-one. But back then you were already thinking Lance was sort of hot, and something about Lance kept calling to you.

59. Don't call Lance and ask him about why you never hooked up with Chris. Lance is in another bitter phase after breaking up with his thirty-second boyfriend.

60. Don't call Justin and ask him about why you never hooked up with Chris. Justin and Chris broke up fifteen years ago and Justin still refuses to accept that Chris might ever have sex again after him, even though Justin has walked in on Chris having sex since then. Justin is weird.

61. Calling Joey is always a good idea. You might not think so after Joey tells you Chris thinks you're too weird for him, always has. Don't argue with Joey, you'll see him in person in a few days.

62. After you argue with Joey, wait a few hours to call back and apologize. Make sure Chris wasn't anywhere near the living room when you were shouting into the phone that you're not too weird for Chris and Chris would find you the sanest boyfriend he'd ever had.

63. Verify that Chris is nowhere in the house and is probably meeting with the people who are erecting the tent in your backyard and tell Joey that anyone who thinks a full body marzipan sculpture is an "awesome" idea has no right to call anyone else weird.

64. It's your party, in two days! It's too late to panic.

65. Try to convince Chris to change all the decorations and cakes to Happy Thirty-ninth Birthday! Call your mother and ask how much it costs to change birth certificates.

66. Ignore the way Chris laughs at you. He has an annoying laugh.

67. Spend your last day in your thirties sleeping. Sleep the whole day.

68. Wake up at midnight and turn on the harshest lights in the bathroom. Stare at yourself, look for wrinkles that are already there and gray hairs you haven't found yet. Go back to bed when you start wondering what marzipan is made of and how the sculpture is made and whether they'll make your nose slightly smaller.

69. Let Chris wake you up on the big day. Let him enjoy the fun of jumping on your bed. Then tackle him and for his big surprise of the day, kiss him. Then go shower for an hour.

70. Dress with care. The party is semi-formal so don't wear a tie. But do wear your Armani. It's vintage now, and you look like a billion bucks. Hum your score under your breath.

71. Hide upstairs until you hear the guests start arriving. Avoid all contact with Chris. It's your party, but you're not the host. You don't have to do anything but show up. Plus, avoiding Chris means not talking about the kiss or how theoretically weird you are.

72. Come downstairs and hear applause. Lots of applause. People genuinely happy to see you, here to celebrate that at forty, you're still alive. Also, whistles of admiration.

73. Hug all your friends and family. Wait until you've had some champagne before hugging the people you hate but you invited anyway.

74. Tell Justin he looks amazing and that his last single was the shit. Let Justin tell you that no one in 2016 calls things "the shit" anymore. He's smiling and almost blushing, he appreciates it.

75. Tell Lance he looks amazing and he must be the most well connected person here. Kiss Lance on the cheek before he says he's the most well connected because he's dated everyone and he hates all of them and they were all bad in bed. No bitterness on your special day. Introduce Lance to the barista, whom you now hate but who Chris insisted was great in bed.

76. Tell Joey he looks like crap and you can't believe he's the father of such attractive children. Let him hug you until you can't breathe.

77. Find Chris and ask him if he's noticed the fight about to break out between Justin's ex and Lance's ex by the marzipan sculpture.

78. Have a piece of marzipan JC. The elbow. They didn't make your nose smaller, someone just took a piece of it already.

79. Drink more. It's time to be nice to people you dislike but invited for professional reasons. Maybe drink a lot. Avoid Chris who is mediating fourteen different near arguments. Do give him a piece of your thigh, the marzipan version.

80. Dance and sing and do both of these things dressed only in your Armani pants. It's your special day!

81. Put your shirt back on even after the many compliments on your dancing and overall muscle tone. Tell everyone they should take up yoga.

82. Even intoxicated, keep an eye out for who goes upstairs with whom, because tomorrow you and Chris can compare gossip.

83. Remember not to mention you intentionally hooked up the barista and Lance to anyone but Chris.

84. Take time to notice the giant tent, the flowers on every table and attached to the tablecloths, the special-ordered champagne flutes, the gourmet chicken and vegetarian and macrobiotic dishes, the perfect music from the string quartet and the very expensive DJ. Take notes so you can tell Chris how perfect it all is.

85. Note that the menu is written in experimental verse by one of the poets from the reading.

86. Find said poet, showered and with a new haircut, in the bathroom giving Lance a blowjob.

87. Give Briahna the key to your bedroom and tell her she needs to use your bathroom so she can see how big the shower is.

88. Make sure she locks up and gives you back the key.

89. Find the barista making out with Lance's thirty-first ex-boyfriend on the couch in the third guest room.

90. Wonder if you're going to get laid at your own party.

91. Look for Chris.

92. Find Chris getting people safely in cabs. You didn't even realize the party was winding down. Help Chris wrestle drunks away from their keys.

93. When everyone conscious who's leaving is bundled off, take Chris inside and make him coffee. Tell him thank you and list all the great things about the party.

94. Listen to Chris when he tells you that you're weird but in a good way. In a JC way, which doesn't actually make sense. Maybe he's hitting on you. Maybe he lied to Joey. Maybe he meant it when he told Joey he wasn't into you, but, really, that could have been years ago. Tell yourself that before you kiss Chris again.

95. Since your bedroom is still locked up, it's definitely safe to take Chris there and have sex with him on your 500 thread Egyptian cotton sheets. Hope the maid service changed them while you were down at the party. Realize they couldn't have. Decide it's not important.

96. Enjoy. Think, but don't say, that those Tai Chi lessons really paid off, because Chris is amazing in bed and not at all too fast or twitchy.

97. When you wake up in the morning, kiss Chris's cheek and take a shower.

98. Put on a pair of pants, the maid service to clean up the party has already arrived.

99. Walk out to the back lawn and stand at the edge of your lawn, looking out over the mountains and LA and think about how far you've come. Think about the city you can see under the haze and things you still want to do. Think about all the people you love who came to your party and all the people who hate you but still fear you enough to come to your party. Smile. Enjoy the morning and the sunrise. Hum your score and think it's good.

100. Decide forty is going to be a great year. Decide Chris isn't leaving. Go back to bed so you can wake up together.

The End.

Back to Stories