18

It was on my birthday night, we were walking home from the pub and my dad was telling me about his different birthdays. 18 was great because he was at that rave. 30 was shit because he wasn't in his twenties anymore. 40 was great because, as he'd told me earlier in the night, everyone (all the old gang) had shown up at the bar him and me had just left, and had all agreed it was just like 'the good ol' days' (said unironically). I never know whether I should believe people who say they feel different on their birthdays - he said he felt different when he woke up on his 18th birthday - I certainly didn't feel any different that morning. Don't even know what it is I was supposed to be feeling: added maturity? greater intelligence? the horrible throes of responsibility?

I didn't feel older but I did (do) feel old. I have a feeling when I finish school I'll feel younger again - the beginning of something else and not the end of something like I'm at now. It's why so many people seem to drop out near the end of education. It got me thinking about a section from the newest Tao Lin book, Taipei, where Lin describes how the years of school, the actual segregated blocks of 'year 3' and 'year 4', create a sort of easily quantifiable set of stages back to birth. Like levels in a video game (probably the reason kids like this); easily being able to say I was there, now here, and there next (something I imagine adults would like too). And then, as Lin puts it, you're left to drift off into an endless stream of year after year, no clear way to trace how you got there. It's probably why people cherish their 'milestone years' so much: being able to have sex at 16 (I'm from the UK so obviously so are these); 18 and you can drink (yah!); and then 21 and from what I can tell you celebrate and call yourself an adult (a real one; not the one I currently am, apparently) for no other reason than that your milestone years are over.

It's a pretty gloomy way to look at things but celebrating being young makes me think about being old. I remember reading that Pete Townsend wrote My Generation during a train journey on his 20th birthday. It makes sense actually, there's such a fear in that song, clearly Townsend's fear that soon he was going to be too old to rebel and make a statement and even be a part of the generation that was making all the noise. He was 20 and picturing himself as a zombified white-collar old man. And who even cares that he still sings that on stage as an old man who plays nothing but old hits, because when he wrote it it made sense to yell out 'I hope I die before I get old'. Me too; maybe I don't hate the thought of being old, just the thought of being an old person.

I guess talking about turning 18 is really talking about drinking. Some of my friends have been talking online with their American Exchange students that they're going to be visiting later this month; some of the Exchanges said they'd never tried a drop of alcohol. Basically our version of blasphemy. My friend works as a barman at a gentleman's club and me and some friends have made it a weekly thing going out drinking there (we have our own spot in the corner and a friend of mine joked we now count as 'regulars'). I've hardly used my new 'freedom'. I guess the most ironic thing about being able to drink whenever you want is that those who haven't drank because they aren't 18 are probably the least likely to once they are (or, conversely, anyone who was going to 'go off the rails' as people I know call it, would have already done so). The freedom of being 18 is so easy to see as romantic when you're a little kid but not quite as magical when put into the context of your 18 year old life.

My actual experience of being drunk is an immense topsy-turvy-ness; not just of my body (which looks like a rag-doll being thrashed from side to side by invisible forces) but of my thoughts too (which my mouth then transmits out to the whole world). I actually see this as a virtue to being drunk; especially when I spend so much time sober second-guessing what I'm going to let out of my mouth. I wish I could get 'lost in the moment'. I imagine some can do this without alcohol - those annoying people who claim they're getting 'high on life' must be lost in something just to be spurting such crap. But people who get lost in being drunk: spouting gibberish to the people carrying them home (who, unlike the person being carried, will actually remember this the next day), they're the lucky ones. I once read an article on the show Girls - it was about a sex scene where Adam Driver's character gets completely lost in the sexual fantasy he's acting out, while Lena Dunham's character, the plaything of this (somewhat twisted) fantasy, and also a writer, can't let herself forget what's really happening. If Dunham's like that in real life then she's probably like me: the sort of person who even remembers everything from the night where you ended up passing out at the end. It's a blessing and a curse.

I was actually a little worried about turning 18. I felt like a Friday night in when I was 18 - and had no real excuse for being stuck in the house - would feel like a much bigger disappointment than a Friday night in the house at 17. Although who I would be disappointing I'm not even sure anymore. I like the thought of being 18, even more of being 19 (although maybe that's just the start of a pattern) but like I'm saying: growing up and feeling older are very different.