It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to

Wanted: entour­age to help cel­eb­rate mile­stone birthday.

Stream­ers, party hats and liquor provided.

Applic­a­tions now open.

I’m reluct­ant to blame the gov­ern­ment for all life’s troubles, but in this case it really is John Key’s fault. You see, for the last three dec­ades, 20 Septem­ber 2014 has been set aside for my big birth­day bash. I turn 30 two days earlier.

That night, I was plan­ning to cor­ral my friends in one room and force them to tell me, in detail, how I’ve touched their lives. I’ve been prac­tising in the mir­ror that look that just man­ages to say “shucks, thanks” without pre­ma­turely end­ing the flat­tery I secretly think is long over­due. I’d checked the cal­en­dar and thanked the god of rugby that he’d blessed me with the one Sat­urday free of an All Black game.

John Key checked the cal­en­dar too. He spot­ted the one rugby-free Sat­urday too. He got in first. He reserved my Sat­urday as his elec­tion day.

I can’t go up against elec­tion day. All my Wel­ling­ton friends and I are out-of-town work­er bees drawn to the hon­ey­pot at the end of Lamb­ton Quay. Our lives are dic­tated by the polit­ic­al sea­sons. On elec­tion night my friends in the Bee­hive will be munch­ing through their fin­ger­nails in front of a bank of TVs. My friends over in the gov­ern­ment depart­ments will be drunk by 4pm from the sheer men­tal tur­moil of try­ing to decide which is the worse pro­spect: anoth­er three years under that troll min­is­ter or the new-boy swag­ger of the poten­tial replace­ment. My media friends will be scattered from Black­ball to Par­nell, spit­ting into their micro­phones. I’ll be out there too, some­where, far away from home.

If I could throw my party, it’d be a good one. My last big birth­day — my 21st — was… oh that’s right. There wasn’t one! The politi­cians stole that too. It was 2002. Helen Clark was PM. She called the elec­tion for the day before my birth­day. I should’ve been suf­fer­ing my way through embar­rass­ing par­ent­al speeches, doing too many shots, head­ing to town with squeal­ing girl­friends try­ing to act adult and sexy before one of us inev­it­ably stumbled in mummy’s high heels and had to be taken home. That should’ve happened.

Instead, I spent the even­ing in a too brightly lit hall covered in red stream­ers with Blu-tack oil seep­ing through. I bumped too much of my body against crowds of Young Labour, sweaty with the thrill of being in the same room as the woman they’d lis­ted as ‘per­son­al hero’ on their Myspace pro­files. I turned 21 at midnight.

Still, I learnt one thing that night. I learnt that life is a whole lot cheap­er if your big dates coin­cide with major polit­ic­al events. So, as I said: entour­age wanted to cel­eb­rate mile­stone birthday.

Stream­ers, party hats and liquor provided.

Ven­ue? Well, we’ll be wherever John Key’s booked for his elec­tion-night party, of course. That’ll teach him.