If I weren't already feeling depressed about my birthday, the Lion’s Den certainly won’t help. The minute I walk through the Budweiser flag-adorned entrance, I smell cigarettes and lemon pledge. Frowning faces litter the bar, alongside years of dashed dreams and expectations, swathed in flannel. Old men’s sagging faces slurp overflowing pints, which I can only imagine are not their firsts of the night. The bartender bursting through his belly shirt giggles with a Hispanic man in a black Matrix coat at the edge of the bar. A very flat rendition of “Your Own Personal Jesus” perseveres from the other room.

Stepping around the corner, I see a room full of the usual Portland mix; beards and gauged ears, flowing Saturday Market skirts and middle-aged women with hair that hasn't known its real color since the ‘80s. A girl that looks like she just turned 17 is singing "Baby Got Back." Monica is sitting at a table at the back of the room, with a few other girls. My friend Angie seems to have already found them. If there’s one thing Angie knows how to do, it’s find friends.

“Hey Ang, how do you know Monica?” I ask, setting down my coat on the empty chair next to her.

“Monica, actually, hooked up with my brother, and dated his friend haha,” she says. "Happy birthday, by the way!"

“Wait, it’s your birthday? Why didn't you tell me?” Monica asks. The concern on her face makes me want to roll up into a ball, for some reason.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m just not that into it this year, I guess.”

“Are you going to get a drink? Let me buy you one,” Angie says, getting up.

We walk back over to the bar, and Angie shouts at the bartender, “It’s her birthday!", pointing at me. He pours a shot that could make Charlie Sheen blush. If Charlie Sheen could blush.

“It is? Oh, we’ll take care of you, don’t worry,” the bartender says, his t-shirt revealing a window into his hairy belly.

I’m worried.

Twenty minutes later, while I’m sitting at a table with mostly ladies tee-hee-ing with each other, the karaoke jockey announces through his mic, “Some-body’s got a BIRTHDAY… Will JUNE come to the stage? And bring a friend!”

I get up and walk to the front, feeling the room’s eyes on me as Angie follows. From the dark kitchen door, a waitress with cat eye glasses emerges, carrying a chair, and a shot smothered in whip cream. She sets the chair on the the tiled floor and hands the shot to Angie, sulking off. This is clearly not the first time she's done this.

Angie sits down in the chair, placing the shot between her legs. “Ready, June?”

Suddenly, my memory transports me back to the first time I took a shot off of another girl, when I was eighteen. I remember the whole scene very vividly; it was the first time I used my fake ID, and I had never been more proud of myself. I walked into the mostly Irish bar, my new Ukrainian girl friend from the dorms handing me a shot glass containing a liquid that looked like a very positive urine sample, saying, “Hold this.”

Being three shots to the wind already, I very willingly complied, watching her lie down on one of the long wooden tables. She snatched the shot out of my hand, and lifted her shirt to expose her stomach, placing the glass on it as she lied back down. Her stomach was so flat; mine hadn't looked like that since I was 5, before I even knew I wanted that.

“Take the shot,” she demanded.

“What?” I asked, stumbling.

“Take it off my stomach. You can’t use your hands.”

With my head cocked forward like a hungry pigeon and my recently-bought lace shirt struggling to cover my boobs, I shuffled over to her, suctioning the edges of the shot glass to my lips. With one singular swoop of my head back, I felt the burning liquid collide with my throat, immediately heating my chest and face. I placed the shot glass back down on the table after it was emptied, and looked around. A group of balding men smiled at me, clapping, hollering, “That was so hot!" and, “Nooiiiiice!”

At that moment, I felt like I had the power of the world in my hand. I was the pinnacle of youth and vitality, the desired object in the room, the thing we use to sell tires and toothpaste. I was the hot college girl that took shots off of bellies and wore short skirts and received applause at the bar. And I only just discovered that I could do that.

Now, staring down into the pile of whipped cream and Bailey’s tightly placed between my friend’s thighs, I’m suddenly sad. At that wooden bar in college, with my fake ID, I had the entire world in front of me. Now, on my 25th birthday, all I have in front of me is the same shirt I've had for five years, and some quickly deflating whipped cream.

I cock my head forward, pursing my lips, taking the shot back like so many before me. Everyone claps their hollow, obligatory claps, while laughing with their friends, cream decorating my face. These claps sound off like the sad reminder that I’m here on my birthday, with a bunch of vague acquaintances that probably don’t remember my name.

After sitting back down with Angie at the table, Monica asks, “So, how does it feel to be 25?”

I shrug. “Not what I thought.”