What Being Poor Has Taught Me
Photo by Alex E. Proimos
I’m 27 and I spent the better part of my life in an upper middle class home surrounded by the rich and middle class alike. So it was with much chagrin that I embarked on this project known as adulthood, bill paying, and technology sales.
I had spent the first several years of my post-college freedom having a pretend college isn’t over pity party and I was left without the all important safety net. I had traded a foundation for booze, bud, and adventure.
It was all worth it. For a month or so. Then the long haul set in. For four months I lived the dirt poor life. Here are the things I learned.
Cans Are Pretty Worthless
When my wallet was fat and the bills were nil, I threw back quality brews like Sierra Nevada and Arrogant Bastard. The idea of drinking the canned swill that made me wake up with a fuzzy head and a blanket full of swamp gas seemed as unacceptable as Larry the Cable Guy.
When my two week budget was reduced to two digit numbers, I quickly regained my affinity for the can, under the inane rationalization that somehow I’d be getting some value back for all the slop I was slugging. All I got was a pair of man-tits, some saddlebags, and, after every wasted weekend, enough money to buy the Post and a cup of coffee on Monday. If the environmental lobby really cared about recycling and the poor, they’d put a 25 cent stamp on those cans. You know that homeless schmuck on your block pushing the garbage can? He’s angling for two Double Quarter Pounder with cheese meals at McDonald’s, a coffe, and the New York Post. There are no Aluminum Astors.
Nutrition is for the Wealthy
Certainly this is a point that’s bound to be disputed by the Brooklyn art set, but after six years of working in restaurants and dining on expense accounts, it’s not so easy to transition to beans, sprouts, and cheap tea. After scoffing at obese poor people for years I quickly began to understand the method to their morbid obesity. Fatty food fills you up like nothing else, and on the cheap side, it can trigger a catatonic couch ride where the only thing you’ll be doing is watching cable television(or the bastard ass channel guide if you’re unable to pay that bill, teasing you with some obscenely good movie schedule that only exists when you’re out of service!). You can only eat tuna so often before you get sick of it, but those free donuts at your office can fill you up until at least 4 o’clock. The high quality cuisine of the poor man is peanut butter and jelly with bananas, and spaghetthi with store brand marinara. A Baconator washed down with a Slurpee is the dinner of kings.
Material Possessions Ship Well
When your paycheck isn’t cutting it and you don’t want to resort to the bank of mom, look to your possessions. My library lined the walls like asbestos in NYC elementary schools. When the bills came knocking, manila shipping envelopes stripped me of my books like Strip Tease stripped Elizabeth Berkley of her dignity. I shipped off 90% of my library. The only reason I didn’t ship it all was because people weren’t interested in copies of The Nazi Germany Source book or beat up copies of Tropic of Cancer. I was left with a collection more paltry than NYC’s public library. I don’t think I could have sold those books to the homeless as kindling; either way, I wouldn’t find out because my bills were paid for that month.
Your Parents Love You Again
When I moved out my parents saw right through the whole freedom and maturity thing. I wanted to drink without being asked if I planned on driving somewhere in the next century. I wanted to wake up in the morning and smoke pot while watching Sports Center. I wanted to fornicate loudly without being walked in on and utterly emasculated.
When I walked in to my parent’s house for a home cooked meal they knew exactly what was up. There was no money for booze and bong hits. Women are not attracted to the gaunt fellow with his pockets turned out and the Natty he snuck into the bar.
All of a sudden I was mommy’s little boy again and my dad couldn’t wait for me to go to church with him or talk about how Hollywood is full of soft nancy boys. They knew I needed their bucks and so there I sat, watching Steven Segal movies and listening to the hot church gossip.
You Can Live on Twenty Dollars For Two Weeks…
Assuming you work in an office and have more than a half a tank of gas, it is entirely possible to get by on this paltry sum. I had three days worth of one meal in my refrigerator, some canned beans, one can of soup, and a few boxes of spaghetti. Some dubious bread, some passable jelly, and a big jar of peanut butter. That added up to two weeks worth of dinner.
I still had a job and a suit that separated me from the homeless methadone addicts outside of my office, and so I still had access to an endless supply of watercoolers. My hunger lead to a quick discovery: a half dozen cups of water an hour is both an extremely cleansing and extremely filling experience. For lunch, a banana downstairs cost 75 cents if it looked a little dubious, and that, coupled with the free flatbread that they hand out would get me on the train, in a malnourished slumber, at 6 o’clock.
My social life was equally as ghetto. With my supply of cans and my bank account equally pathetic, I turned to old, reliable two for four dollar Budweiser 40 ouncers. I would chug as much as I could and put the cap back on and re-fridge it for the next night. I couldn’t even afford the luxury of pouring a single drop in memory of my dead homies. Even worse, I’d follow up said blasphemy by being the skeevy guy who shows up at parties without bothering to ask “you want some money for this beer?” Nope. Just slugged ‘em back in the corner hoping my financial situation would improve before people started referring to me as Dirtbag Bob.
Ultimately I made my way out of the financial doldrums. A loan from a mom, a loan from my grandma, and a sugar mamma girlfriend who refused to accept Ritz crackers and Carlo Rossi on the couch as “a night out on the town” helped me get my sad little act together and now I can proudly say that I one day look forward to having a bank account more substantial than my nickle collection.
Anyone got a quarter to git me started?
