I’m still like this: Still buying hardcover books with no discount, still daydreaming about what I’m going to spend my 401(k) on when I withdraw it early, because who are we kidding, I’m not trying to live to 65, are you nuts? I don’t have any debt because I’ve never owned anything and I dropped out of college before my loans got unmanageable. I pay for everything in cash because I don’t understand A.P.R.s. My credit file was so thin from so many years of living pretty much off the grid that when I finally got around to applying for a Discover card, Experian thought I might be dead.
Will my yawning internal pit of desire ever be full? Is there any amount of cash that’s enough to fully satiate this ravenous beast? Will Netflix and Spotify and HBO ever stop providing me with unlimited access to hours upon hours of entertainment to distract from the ennui that awaits me in real life? How many lipsticks is too many?
I was feeling bad about my shoes at a fancy cocktail lounge the other night while talking to a woman I know. She is, I am pretty sure, greater-than-slash-equal to me in terms of poverty. She made an elaborate show of heaving her giant designer purse onto the bar so that she could dig through it to find the laundry money she was going to use to pay for her Sazerac. “That’s a really nice bag,” I said, taking a sip of my light bill. “Did you recently receive a settlement of some kind?” She laughed heartily and poured her Obamacare deductible down her throat in one long swallow. “Girl, naw, I bought this with money I should’ve spent on my car payment.” I clinked the ice in my checking account overdraft fees and nodded solemnly in agreement.
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