Lord Byron’s “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year”

by Mallory Ortberg · March 2, 2016

Originally.

Oh My God You Guys, I’m Fucking Thirty-Six Now
Thirty-Six
I Have To Like…Oh My God

I’m officially too old to love, I feel like
No one is even in love with me right now,
which is garbage,
okay some people are obviously but none of them count
oh my god what if I’m too old for sex, I’m almost F O R T Y
are there even ages after forty or do you just turn into a tree

Is anyone ever going to have sex with me again
oh my God, my body is like autumn
like when all the leaves are falling off the trees
only what’s falling off of me is hotness
why don’t I just DIE
why don’t you all just set me on fire
that’s the same thing as being thirty-seven

ugh who could have guessed that repeatedly abandoning my sex partners would result in so much loneliness
UUUUUGHHHHHHH

 

maybe I will just move to Greece
honestly I could just move to Greece and die in battle like a Spartan
and then everyone would want to have sex with me
only it’ll be too late
because of how dead and in Greece I’ll be

oh my god my life is a mess
I need to just be more like Greece
and then I’ll be fine
or dead
or both

 

THIS IS HAPPENING TO ME

being thirty-six and embarrassed is the worst thing I can think of
I used to be twenty and not care about anything
if I start caring about things now I’ll be ruined
the hottest thing in the world is not caring
and then being like, seventeen
a seventeen-year-old who’s never had a feeling is the only acceptable way to live, sexually

honestly if I’m not careful I’m going to end up being thirty-seven
better just go die in a field
in Greece or wherever

lol Annabella is gonna feel so bad when she sees how dead I am
Lukas too
turn ME down
does he even know how many things and people I’ve not cared about hotly
I’ll get stabbed by some Ottomans or whomever
that’ll show em all

N.B. Lord Byron died in bed.

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


55 Comments

  3. awnutts +188

    “a seventeen-year-old who’s never had a feeling is the only acceptable way to live, sexually”

    Is this Mallory’s take on Byron, or is this the leaked script of all of Jesse’s lines from the new Gilmore Girls episodes?

  4. crawlkill +141

    I still cannot believe that this self-pitying fop with his egg face and continent coat was Ada Lovelace’s father [editor’s note I almost said both Luna and Linda Lovelace]

    1. moxycrimefighter +26

      What wait what? How did I not know that?! That’s amazing. And apparently her awful mother encourage Ada’s love of math and logic so she wouldn’t be a crazy poet like Byron lolllll. Also, she and Byron both died at 36, freaky.

  5. thewhelk +297

    My favorite Byron anecdote was him going to dinner parties and dramatically refusing everything but ice water to show how otherworldly and wan he was and then like, going to a tavern where no one knew him and devouring an entire pig.

    2. lauragraceroberts +156

      Byron combined eating disorders and petulance in a REALLY, like, poetic way, man.

      1. thewhelk +69

        I find his weight obsession to be the most relatable thing about him!

        It’s on the other end of “commissioning thousands upon thousands of dollars in custom clothing and objects and then not paying for them and getting really petulant when called out on that”

    3. Polkas +42

      My favourite is that they had to watch him at Shelley’s funeral (funeral pyre on beach) because he liked to drink wine from human skulls and they were worried he would grab Shelley’s for that purpose.

  7. AliceIsHopeless +22

    But like… BYRON
    I can talk endlessly about Byron and maybe this is because I am youthful
    But BYRON

  8. zapfizzle +28

    Apparently I periodically become Lord Byron. and not even in any of the awesome ways.

  9. bighairnoheart +64

    So I’m pretty much Byron on every birthday only minus the sex and have been ever since I turned nine. Well then.

    1. Ethylbenzene +16

      Wahhhhh me tooooo I turned 38 this year and I had, like, ALL of these thoughts even though I’m married? Wahhhh.

      1. theshehulkchef +22

        Did you know that you can now have your remains turned into a tree sort of? Because you can. Which isn’t as cool as just turning into one with no dying first but is still pretty badass in my opinion.

  10. Angelan_ +143

    “are there even ages after forty or do you just turn into a tree”

    well that’s my retirement plan, so here’s hoping.

    1. theshehulkchef +88

      Sorry, the age for receiving full tree-transformation benefits is 67. If you cash out early you can maybe turn into a small hedge of some kind.

      1. bighairnoheart +54

        I think I might be ok with being a shrubbery as long as it’s in a nice location.

  11. hippopotropolis +50

    I am always down for Byron-mocking. He’s the Trump of poetry: he goes around like
    “If I just keep telling everyone I’m amazing and sexy, it will become true”, even though obviously no, gross — but then somehow it seems to work for some people? A lot of people, actually??

    1. moxycrimefighter +37

      Liked for the (inadvertent?) pun about Byron being a classic Regency rake.

  13. dorianneemmerton +27

    I am 37 and it’s true, my sex life is a ghost of what it once was.

    But it’s only half age and half being exhausted from parenting a three year old.

  14. queenofbithynia +158

    I thought turning 35 was distressing cause I was Mozart’s age and hadn’t really done quite as well as he had musically speaking, but now I am Robespierre’s age and when he was this old he had guillotined every single person who ever gave him a look he didn’t like. the older you get the more daunting it is to live up to your peers. all you young people mock because you don’t know what it is to be like us. us, that is byron and me, us.

    1. Virginia +80

      I am so far behind on my guillotining, I don’t know why I even get out of bed in the morning.

    2. Mrs_Peel +82

      “It’s people like that who make you realize how little you’ve accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.”

      – Tom Lehrer

      1. mbculver +32

        “I took it up because I very much wanted to play the music of Mozart, in particular his wonderful horn concerto in E-flat, Köchel rating 495, which he wrote at the age of about 18 months.”

        – Michael Flanders

        1. Unreadaethel +6

          That was the first time I’d heard that, and I still remember the whole movement.

          2. Unreadaethel +4

            Bet you a quid 
            Somebody did,
            Knowing I had a concerto and wanted to play it,
            Afraid of my talent at playing the horn.

          3. mbculver +4

            My neighbor’s asleep in his bed
            I’ll soon make him wish he were dead
            I’ll take up the tuba instead WAH WAAAH

    3. caatness +28

      Keeping up with guillotining is just *such* a time sink. I wonder why I even TRY. Then I remember that look that person gave me. Or I imagined. Or I gave them. And they must continue.

      I feel for you. I do.

  15. mialro12 +12

    I identify strongly with like 35% of this, which is alarming considering it’s Byron

  16. _ellison +56

    Cerie: Congratulations, Liz. It’s inspiring that a woman in her 30s can still find true love.
    Liz: I’m 42, Cerie.
    Cerie: I don’t know what that is.

  17. green +15

    yes, we will recall this too-hot-for-consciousness portrait of byron in said bed –

  18. Phasma Felis +17

    I really love “funeral pile” in the original. Like, that’s what the Vikings gave you if you were a jerk Viking that nobody liked.

  19. adriftinchina +4

    I made a point of reading this poem the day I turned 36! and that wasn’t the end of love for me, though it came pretty soon afterwards for Byron.

  23. Household_Opera +8

    oh my god what if I’m too old for sex, I’m almost F O R T Y
    are there even ages after forty or do you just turn into a tree

    Weirdly, Byron’s OTT angst about being 36 makes me feel a lot happier about being 40.

  24. Bittersweet

    My neighbor's asleep in his bed
    I'll soon make him wish he were dead
    I'll take up the tuba instead WAH WAAAH

  25. Trixr

    Plus one for the joy of avoiding your idiot "friends"' self-manufactured drama with maturity.

    Mind you, some people never seem to get the knack.

  26. Trixr

    Whereas I don't have a three year old, and I have to say mine is consistently better in my late forties than it was in my twenties and thirties (partly due to being in long-term relationships without big droughts in between).