Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America (14 page)

Tell me, how many of you were virgins when you got married? So, our sex lives are up for discussion how again? For all the concern about underprivileged people fucking with reckless abandon, you guys sure don’t seem to hold yourselves to a higher standard.

• I know this argument has been made everywhere. But it’s valuable. So here it is: You cannot cut access to birth control and then act surprised when people get pregnant. I am fairly certain that few wealthy people walk around with that infamous cheap aspirin between their knees. Poor people are allowed to fuck sometimes too! And we do! Because we’re human!
  Just like you!
  
• You really need to start using condoms or something. Your STD rates are pretty much the same as ours. It’s
  hard to listen to you guys on public health issues when you’re getting the clap as often as we are.
  
• I know that we, the lower classes, tend to speak more frankly and openly than you guys do, as we lack a proper sense of rich-person propriety. So it is very possible that you do not know much about BDSM, and that would explain the success of the
  Fifty Shades
  franchise. But I worry about you without any plainspoken poor people to tell you what’s what, so please listen closely:
  You need a safe word.
  Do not, rich people, attempt bondage on your own. Please find a high-end sex club for your wanton romps.
  

I disapprove of about as many of the upper class’s child-rearing habits as they do of mine. Rich and poor are different, you see, and as such, we value different things. I have trouble with the way you’re raising your kids. They’re not all special precious unicorns, destined to cure cancer. And if you tell them that they are, they feel entitled to act as though it were true.

You can stop this cycle, rich people. Just teach your kids that they’re human like everyone else. Maybe a special snowflake, but one that will still get in trouble if they misbehave on
the playground. I have faith in your ability to heal the next generation. I am counting on you, rich people. Don’t let me down.

• One word: nannies. You cannot call anyone out on their parenting skills if they’re doing as much of the parenting as you are—or more of it. It’s great that you hired someone with advanced degrees and multiple languages to sing Junior to sleep—more power to you. But I don’t see the difference between hiring a nanny or two so you can attend to the rest of life and dropping your kid with a sitter for the same reason.
  It’s the same thing.
  
• And the kids’ accessories! I know I already talked a bit about this, but how much shit do you actually think an average toddler really needs? I have a weakness for bouncy balls and coloring books, and my kids get a ton of those. You know what they don’t have? Anything that says Giorgio Armani on it. Because it’s fucking silly to put designer anything on a kid.
  
• We feel bad for your kids, rich people. Your kids aren’t allowed to be kids. Your kids have tutors by the time they’re three and start taking standardized tests in preschool. Your kids have parents who seriously think it’s a bad idea to just let them play with sticks
  and rocks, who think that’s actually objectively bad parenting. Loosen up a bit. They’ll survive it, and so will you.
  
• I promise you, you don’t need a titanium stroller. You just don’t. I thought I had the Range Rover of strollers when I got a normal-size one instead of the folding metal-pipe travel kind. But then I recently spent some time in upscale neighborhoods, and I realized that I had been wrong. I’d had the midsize stroller; the super-big ones come with not just a place for your kid but a place for your groceries and an attached activity center for Junior and wheels with extra shocks. I had the perverse impulse to ask a woman how much hers had run, and she told me. After that, I am assuming that this stroller also picks up the dry cleaning and will murmur sweet nothings into your ear on command. I’ve bought cars for less than half what an expensive stroller runs.
  
• Science disapproves of your antibacterial-spray fetish. Kids need to develop immunities, you see, which they do partially from coming into contact with germs. Not to mention, you’re actually creating superbugs, bacteria that are resistant to our killing methods. I’m gonna be pissed if I get some superflu because you were afraid Johnny might catch a cold, that’s all I’m saying.
  
• I am seriously disappointed in you for bringing back measles with the anti-vaccination kick. And whooping cough. Get on that, rich people. You need to self-police. Seriously, guys, I’m a mother. I understand wanting to protect your children. All I’m saying is that maybe, you could protect the kids from the mumps. Maybe we can start there.
  

I hope that at this point you are feeling like maybe you hadn’t thought this whole stratification thing through all the way. You guys don’t really ever talk to us and have no idea what our daily lives are like. But we watch and notice what you do when you are politely ignoring us. And I have some parting words of wisdom: When you think of your stacks of cash, remember that they are gifts, simple things put into your lives to make them easier. You get to have those things. Fucking enjoy them or pass them to the left, man.

• You guys completely take the little things for granted. If you are sleepy while you are driving, you just pull over and find a hotel. If your car breaks down, you call a shop. If you are sick, you go to a doctor. If you break a heel, you get a new pair of shoes. Appreciate that, assholes.
  
• Money doesn’t buy happiness. It buys ease. You can make your life pleasant and enjoyable, get yourself a decent mattress and thus a decent night’s sleep. Will it make you happy? Not a chance. But it doesn’t hurt.
  
• If you guys are so good with money, then what do financial planners do? Put another way, maybe you’re good with money because you’re paying someone to sort out the details?
  
• Warranties are awesome. They only come on things you buy new. This is why all our shit is broken and yours isn’t; you get a grace period after you buy something in which you can be pretty sure you won’t have to buy it again, because if it breaks it’s under warranty.
  
• As long as you keep holding me accountable for not making it when I was well under the national median income, I’ll hear no whining about how difficult it is to find good help. (Pro tip on the help, rich people: Treat us fairly, pay us decently, and make it clear that you give half a fuck whether we live or die. We’ll kill ourselves for you.)
  

And there you have it, rich people. I hope it helps.

Afterword

Y
ou’ve got a thousand more questions than you did when you started the book, don’t you? When did we start reliving the Gilded Age? What do you mean they can fire you for no reason? Why bother trying at all if poor people are so fucked from the start?

Well, because we don’t have an option. Millions of people every day aren’t feeling particularly hopeful that today will be the day it all turns around—but we still look for a job that’s marginally better than what we’ve got. Just in case. When all of your options are as bad as the next, you take your pick and, yes, you hope for the best. Sometimes those decisions turn out to be less than great. Occasionally that’s on me. I’m only human, after all, and I make mistakes. But as often as not, the poor outcome was destined from the start. You can’t choose between a terrible option and a dreadful option and come out
of it whistling a happy tune. You can try to dismiss my depiction of poverty as being representative of just one person’s experience, but I am not an aberration. Millions of people have had to shake their asses for Wal-Mart.

Hopefully that last paragraph answered some of your questions. I’m sorry that I don’t know the answers to all of them. But I know exactly how you can find out: Ask someone.

There are poor and working-class people everywhere, guys. You can just have a conversation with one, like a real human being. Give it a try. You’ll like it. We’re entertaining. We have to be; we’re stuck entertaining each other because cable is ridiculously expensive.

I don’t claim to be an expert. I don’t know what we do to solve the problems of stratification. What I do know is that we can and have to do better than this. We’re so far behind the curve on these issues that we’re having a public fight about whether or not the poor are too comfortable. (Hi, Paul Ryan!) It’s not fucking pleasant to be poor. It’s not a free ride, a gentle swing in the hammock. It’s what’s left when you’ve lost everything, when you’re fighting to survive as opposed to fighting to get ahead.

If you feel that something must be done before the villagers find their pitchforks, here is what you can do: Stop being a dick to service workers whenever possible. Start filling out those stupid surveys when someone’s done their job well, because they really do make us get a quota of them. Stop pretending you’re doing us a favor or performing some high moral
duty by refusing to tip. And start admitting that you need us as much as we need you.

And the next time you feel as though you’re shouldering more than your fair share of society’s burdens, ask yourself: How badly do I have to pee right now, and do I need
permission?

Mollie Glick, at Foundry, decided to be my agent and I wish her nothing but best-sellers in the future. I additionally hope that the next person she decides to make into an author has more idea what she is doing than I did. Amy Einhorn has a wicked sense of humor and is an amazing editor, and any praise you care to name should go in her direction. Thankfully, she put me in touch with Peternelle van Arsdale, who not only knows where to find good food but is adept at pulling half-formed thoughts from your brain and turning them into sense. Rodney Staton deserves thanks for patient questioning and teaching while I tried to get my brain in order.

I’d also like to thank:

Sara Benincasa, for keeping me posted and sending me into the best sales pitch in history; Alexis Welby, for being incredibly patient with me in general and also for an insane amount of stress tolerance; Kirsten Neuhaus, for coordinating details through time zones and making it work somehow; and all the people at Foundry who
worked on my stuff that I don’t even know about. Emily Brown and Katie Grinch, for taking my calls even when I had that tone and emailing me things endlessly when I lost the last thing in my inbox. And the people at Penguin: Ivan Held and Kate Stark, Andrea Ho and Lisa Amoroso, Linda Rosenberg, Meredith Dros, and Maureen Klier, as well as all the people I don’t know to name, because all of you spent time making this thing come together. I won’t pretend to have a clue how, but I really appreciate it. Finally, Liz Stein, who picked up the baton and ran with it like a pro.

Barbara Ehrenreich, who spoke for me without knowing it years ago, and whose encouragement came at just the right time.

John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman, for Hotties from History.

To everyone I have met along the way: You are all amazing in some way. I’m sorry for the times I have not been my best self, and grateful for the times you have been yours. Mostly, I am probably glad to have met and hung out with you. Four of you can seriously go fuck yourselves.

To my parents: Thank you for making me read. That getting-me-to-adulthood-alive thing was pretty hairy. I mean, looking back,
I’d
have put a leash on me too. Sorry about the tattoos. I’m still not ruling out another one. And to my children: I damn well waited until
I
was eighteen. You’ll rule everything out until I’m not legally responsible for your stupidity. I love you, but sadly for you, I love you too much to let you be stuck at seventeen forever. That would be hell.

Nancy Stalnaker, Crystal Corrigan, and Jacob Leonard, for things they know about as well as general awesomeness: You’re all ninjas. Ryan Clayton: The inscription was right. I can’t say it better than that. Brianne Grebil: You renewed some much-needed faith in humanity. Thank you for random awesomeness.

Tom: I don’t even think there are words. Thank you for giving me the time I needed to write in, keeping the kids from destroying my work, and insisting on silly cartoons when I needed them. You’re the best, and the Independents will be on my playlist until I die.

Chritter, Slay Belle, and all the other mods in the places I was hanging out last fall: You’re the best. Internet people in general: I have learned more about the world from interacting with you in the last few years than I had in my entire life. If ever I conduct myself correctly and with grace, it’s because I’m thinking of the stuff you all had the patience to teach me. And if ever I land a hell of a one-liner, it’s because I learned from the best.

Finally, to everyone who has read this and known exactly what I was talking about: You have earned more than you think you have. It is your right to demand it, and you do not need to ask for favors. I hope that you get a decent gig and get on top of things soon. You work for your paycheck, but you have earned dignity and respect. That is yours, and fuck anyone who tries to tell you
otherwise.