Looking at my bills I thought to myself, "this is clutter," and ushered them into the garbage. I think they are better suited there then on a desk, especially a desk whose back I plan to spawn a career on. The bills though are whispering to me through my trash can, which was hand crafted using an artisan touch, from the box my new fan was purchased in. The lifetime I've spent in lower middle class, (and for the bulk of my entire adult life, in boundless destitution) has more or less commanded of me an outrageous sense of frugality. Sometimes, this means I use a manufactures fan box because I can't afford a trash can in which, I discard my bills in; and sometimes (and most recently) this means wiping my ass with coffee filters for a week because I can't afford toilet paper. It is not my intention to be vulgar but I will say that the week I ran out of toilet paper was the week I embarked on a 7 day self mutilating cleanse, and I learned rather quickly that coffee filters are not sufficient tools for wiping one's ass during a rapid cleanse.
Thankfully, my artistic sensibilities which are abundant in nature, overshadow my financial integrity which is abundantly none. Between my flashy silver lain jewelry, my handsome structure and my confidently tight clothing, people gather upon first meeting me, that I am a man of stability. I wonder if those people would be shocked to learn that the only material wealth I posses, is in the illusion my wardrobe affords me. To find out that my life is surrounded by so little belongings that I have moved 4 times in a year across the continent carrying three suitcases that have finally dwindled down to two. What would my co-workers think? I wonder what my family thinks? I wonder if I would care.
I've been considerably poor before, but just poor enough that all I could afford was beer, cigarettes and a diet consisting almost entirely of macaroni and cheese and friend bologna sandwiches. There was one week in Chicago though, when I was so poor I could only afford vodka and conventional bell peppers, on account of cigarettes being 12 dollars and of me having mono and my body begging for some form of vegetation found outside a can. Contrary to what you may be reading, I almost never identify myself as poor. It usually doesn't occur to me that I may be poor, until someone asks me a question like, (as someone not long ago did), when the last time I stepped foot in a church was and my answer is, "the last time I couldn't afford groceries."
Among the nights I spent holding Dustin under Minnesota stars or making love to him in the rivers of the Ozarks, walking to the 39th street Catholic food depository on Tuesday mornings to get our groceries for the week are memories I will forever guard from the sinking memories of that relationship's end, which ended terribly over the span of 3 years. The food depository opened at 7:00am and closed at 10:00am, and I swear to God it took every ounce of will power we had in order to drag ourselves out of bed and walk half a block away in order to barrel through the doors at 9:58am to collect our charity wearing nothing but gym shorts, dirty shirts and flip flops.
"Are we to late?" One of us would plea to the man holding a clip board with poor people's addresses and drivers license numbers written on it.
"No, have a seat and sign in," he would say.
We were not the only people who showed up when they closed and we would sit in the waiting room with crack whores and meth users, Dustin usually saying something like, "oh my god, look at that one by the book shelf, she's a train-wreck!" He would laugh and I would look, and indeed what I saw was a train-wreck. We would laugh not because we found humor in the black teeth or crying babies cradled in the bones of its drug addict mother, but because we found it so sad that all we could do to accept that we were not much better off than them, was to laugh. After we were given a bag full of expired canned food and other American food staples like Spam and crackers, we would slowly walk back to his apartment.
Sometimes we would switch brown paper bags while we sat on the curb smoking cigarettes and like kids trading playing cards, negotiate our groceries.
"I'll give you my box of pasta if you give me your popcorn," I once said.
"Fine but I want your grape jelly too, they gave me bread but nothing to put on it," he said before throwing his hands up to God and shouting, "WHAT KIND OF WORLD DO WE LIVE IN WHEN YOU GET BREAD BUT NO JELLY?!" We laughed then too. I don't know why but the memories of us laughing while spreading out our free groceries on the sidewalk in the stillness of those Tuesday mornings makes me not so spiteful at my abysmal wallet. Being poor with Dustin created a gentleness between us, a common understanding that we were drowning with air masks in the waters of our addictions and that when we were together we didn't have to expend much energy towards swimming or floating but instead found comfort in running out of air together and staying just deep enough in the slope of our concreate pools that the tips of our toes still touched the bottom.
Some time has passed since then and now. I'd like to think I've made some considerable financial strides along with a new found sense of responsibility and integrity. Of coarse, that integrity is not of the kind that will inspire me to pay those Goddamn bills in my trash can, they would just clutter my desk anyway. Besides I can't afford to pay them, how can I be expected to pay thousands of dollars in medical bills when I make just enough to put food in my mouth and hardly pay rent in California? How can I pay them with nothing? Why is it so hard to be so poor in a country where poverty is the norm?
What kind of world do we live in when you get bread but no jelly?
