Do They Wear High Heels In Heaven?

Lily

My phone rang, and I reached a hand out into the blackness and fumbled for the receiver.

My best friend's voice spoke, singsong."Is this the decrepit old hag?"

I groaned and looked at the clock on my nightstand. "Payback's a bitch, Michael. Just remember that."

"Happy birthday, ancient troll."

"It's five-thirty in the morning."

"But you know the tradition." Ever since Michael and I discovered, nearly twenty years ago, that our birthdays fell a week apart, the tradition has been to be the first person to wish the other a happy birthday. Somehow, with Michael's latent gay frat-boy sensibility, this has disintegrated into phone calls at 5:00 a.m. and relentless teasing and Over The Hill black balloons. Rather than maintaining my dignity, of course, I have gone birthday for birthday with him, each of us escalating the idiocy. By the time we're ninety, I am sure he will be hiding my false teeth, and I will be sending buff male strip-o-grams — like the "cops" who yank their tear-away pants off — to the nursing home. If I hadn't answered the phone, he would have let himself into ... read full excerpt from: Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? ebook