I’m going to keep this brief.
Tomorrow I will shed my nymphal skin and exoskeleton and burst forth in all of my winged adult mayfly glory. I’ll have a tiny, vulnerable body and no functioning mouth parts, so if a fish doesn’t eat me within a few minutes, I’ll starve to death pretty quickly after that. If anyone who cares about me happens to read this message before my big day, here is what I would like for my birthday:
1. I’d like to fuck another mayfly.
2. Just in case that first wish wasn’t clear, I mainly just want to go to Pound Town with a nice lady mayfly before every member of my mayfly generation is ripped to shreds by some violent force of nature.
3. Don’t worry about cake or a candle. Being confronted with cake I couldn’t eat and a candle I couldn’t blow out would only send me spiraling down a black hole of depression and severely reduce my chances of fucking another mayfly. Some paper hats might be nice, though.
4. No sparklers, either. If one errant flash of fire were to land on my embarrassingly soft exoskeleton, I would pop like the head of that Nazi at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
5. I’d like to sit in the sunshine and breathe in the sweet, warm forest air. For just a few blessed moments, I would like to soak up the feeling of being alive, having eyes to see and wings to fly. I would like to behold the miracle of existence and ponder some of life’s great questions, like, “Where do we go when we die?” and “Why don’t I have a mouth?”
6. I guess a blowjob is out of the question.
7. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at watercolor, but not enough to jeopardize my chances of fucking another mayfly.
8. Springsteen tickets. Not because I’ll actually go to the concert, of course. I just think it would be kind of rock ’n’ roll of me to use them as a mattress if and when I fuck another mayfly.
9. If it’s not clear by now, allow me to spell it out for you: I JUST WANT TO ENGAGE IN SEXUAL REPRODUCTION WITH A FEMALE MEMBER OF MY OWN SPECIES BEFORE THE LIGHT OF MY CONSCIOUSNESS IS EXTINGUISHED FOREVER AND ALL TRACES OF MY BODY VANISH FROM THE EARTH.
By the time you read this, my mortal remains might be mashed together with those of thousands of other mayflies in the small intestine of a rainbow trout. In any event, I hope that before I starve to death or am eaten alive by any number of horrifying predators, I will have at least found another horny mayfly to go balls deep with. And though my special lady and I might be long dead, I expect we will have departed the earth with one final wish: That every single one of our offspring, from now until the sun’s light flickers out in a few billion years, finds another mayfly to fuck.
Happy birthday to me.
