This is what you need to bear in mind for this tale to pay off: First, I don’t like to cook. The fridge in my apartment is filled with obscure cuts of beef and chicken – beef belly, chicken’s feet, that sort of thing. Second, I just turned 40. Which isn’t really freaking me out. I am proud to say. No hysterical overreactions. No panic attacks. No idiotic make-ups or fancy contact lenses signifying the midlife crisis. Well, I did buy some new wardrobes — one of those expensive and eye-catching ones you see around in downtown Riyadh. That’s the third thing you need to remember, besides the Big 4-0 and the fridge overflowed with beef and chicken.

Pretty cool! So here I am, turning 40, and not exactly interested in celebrating. Unfortunately, my close friends and even my family back home felt differently. “Say some people were going to celebrate your 40^th birthday,” said my bestfriend, Basil, a few months ago — just hypothetically, he emphasized. “And said that they’ve already invited everyone they can think of.” Repeating that this was just hypothetical, of course, he then suggested that maybe the person turning 40 could make a list of people he might like to see at his 40^th? I groaned. Facing relentless army: ex-love, close-friends, officemates, co-toastmasters — I surrendered. “Please, please, please,” I pleaded, “no speeches, got it?”

The night of the party rolled around. A shiny white stretch Mercedes arrived to pick me up. Totally mortifying! And there were, in fact speeches. And gifts! And songs! And about 40 special people! The whole thing was so embarrassing, and over the top and affectionate and moving and wonderful that I forgot why I didn’t want a party in the first place. And then, when they wheeled in the cake, I remembered. You see, I am uninvolved, unmarried, uncommitted and alone in my 40’s. I used to be alone yet very happy in my 30s. But to be uninvolved and alone at 40’s is perhaps, just sad. It’s not that I don’t want to get involved (get married!). Perhaps, it is just that nobody is ready to give his lifetime commitments to me, or perhaps, I just don’t want to have it done. “Not as yet!” But standing there, among my trusted-friends and special people, holding a glass of apple drink for a toss, looking at a huge cake, it was impossible to think, “This is like a wedding. This is me, getting married to myself!”

That’s when I felt a twinge of middle-aged-person regret. I mean, I am 40. What have I done with my life? I’ve spent 16 years working in Saudi Arabia as a corporate staff at a certain office of a Royalty, a freelance writer-documentarist; saving money and helping all my extended families, but what’s that all about anyway? On our way home, I shared my (mildly) freaked-out thoughts with my friends: Leonard, Basil, Terry, Ricoh and Joel. “Don’t think of the impossible, and don’t think of it as your wedding,” Terry, said. “It wasn’t anything like a wedding,” Basil agreed. “Think of it,” Basil suggested helpfully, “as your funeral. Your pre-funeral. I mean, your 40, after all. How many years do you have left?”

After the party, I went away for a few days to Al-Khobar (Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia) to hang out at Half-moon Beach and work on my new ideas for articles and a short-film-script. Then I went back home to Riyadh to discover that the fridge plug got off hooked, for some reason, and that all the beef and chicken in the fridge had spoiled. The entire apartment was filled with the eye-watering, stomach-churning-odor of rotting meat. And my new sets of expensive wardrobes had sort of soaked up the smell. It penetrated deep into the floor mats, carpets, sofa sets, everywhere. My beautiful-expensive wardrobes absolutely stank.

So now, I am a corporate personnel, writer-documentarist, and soon, a filmmaker at 40, who walks and roams around Saudi Arabia to various meetings and news interviews in an expensive designer wardrobe that reeks of death. Which is a metaphor I am trying not to linger on. (J. Nava Cruz, an OFW, is a writer-documentarist. E-mail at bashamel007@yahoo.com )