Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America (7 page)

Assuming, of course, that they fit at all. I have one favorite pair of jeans, which I’ve had for so long that they’ve gone soft from washing. I’ve worn them when I was a size 12 and when I was a size 16. If I wash them in really hot water and then throw them in a hot dryer, they’ll shrink enough that I can belt them to stay up when I’m skinny. And if I wash them in cold and stretch the waistband while they’re drying, they’ll expand enough that I can zip them when I’m on the top side of my usual range of sizes. So yeah, when I put them on, I am wearing pants, but they’re the kind that make you look weirder than you would just leaving the house without any pants on in the first place. At least if you’re pantsless you’re given the room to be crazy. Bad pants just mean bad taste for most people.

I’d never had occasion to walk into a makeup store until recently, when I was going on camera and desperately needed something for my face. I figured that if I went to a special makeup place, they could help me choose foundation and maybe lipstick, because I never know what color to get. The salesperson not only helped me with that, but she also hooked me up with free makeup application lessons, and gave me more free shit than I could have imagined. Samples of this, samples of that, here try this face cream. Just because I walked in with twenty bucks. It’s insane, the perks you get at specialty stores.

I’ve heard my whole life that I should spend wisely, invest
in my appearance, that it will make people take me more seriously. Buy a few key pieces, the style authorities say, which would be great if I could ever scrape together $300 of disposable income to spend on a suit. A $20 bottle of makeup, okay, I can do that every now and then. I’ve got $50 sometimes, but it’s still not enough to buy a suit with. If I could put away $20 a week in a little piggy bank marked “nice suit for Linda,” then I’d have enough to buy it about fifteen weeks from now. And who am I kidding? By the time I have $40 saved, I can think of ten other things that $40 could be spent on. Stuff like milk and toilet paper. How often am I really going to wear a suit, and how important might that suit be the one time I need it?

More than once I’ve shown up to a professional event wearing something entirely inappropriate. I’ve gone too casual to formal events, and I’ve gone the other way too. I’ll show up to a casual event in heels. I don’t have the time or resources for style handbooks and fashion magazines, and I don’t get the social cues and niceties. And even if I did get them, I couldn’t afford them.

Let me clarify: I’m not saying that all poor people don’t know how to dress. There are certainly those among us who do better than others in this area (we have our share of aspiring fashion designers who watch
Project Runway
and all those makeover shows, and you can learn to put on any kind of eye shadow in the world on YouTube). But even if I knew what to wear, I couldn’t afford it. I once wore a suit two sizes too small because I’d gained some weight and didn’t have anything else
that fit. It didn’t occur to me until hours into the thing that the only people speaking seriously with me were men looking for company that evening. What I actually had to say was never heard. Then there was the black-tie event to which I wore a light summer dress. Of course I knew it was the wrong season for it, but it was the nicest thing I had. I wasn’t taken particularly seriously at that event either.

So, if first impressions are as important as everyone says they are, what do you think my chances are of getting a professional job if I’m competing against someone who dresses the part? I guarantee you that even if that other job candidate is a little less qualified than me, the boss is going to feel more comfortable hiring the person who she’s not afraid will stick out like a (poor) sore thumb at the weekly meeting with the CEO.

I didn’t really realize that I was fully lower class in both sensibilities and presentation until I found myself at what was the last of my professional social engagements. I was attempting to resurrect something like a career during the worst part of our stay in Ohio, when we weren’t getting our GI Bill stipend, and I thought maybe I could scrape something up. I was invited out to dinner by a bunch of old political work colleagues, and I found myself with nothing to say. I had no insights on the new restaurants or movies or bars, nothing that you typically reach for to make conversation. Every single addition I could have made would have been inappropriate: I couldn’t have talked about my neighbor getting in a fight with
his truck while he was drunk because it wouldn’t start and he thought punching it might help. (His roommate had disabled the thing. Friends don’t let friends drink and drive, and smart friends let friends punch the truck instead of them.) I couldn’t talk about which food banks were best for produce and which for diapers. I also didn’t order any food or drinks, which was pointed out repeatedly by the waiter. (“Are you
sure
you won’t be ordering? Can I tempt you with this/that/the other?”) I finally had to leave the table, track him down, explain that I couldn’t afford anything on the menu, and ask could he
please
stop making a huge deal out of it? And after that, I never called any of those colleagues again. Nor did they call me.

I understand why that happened. But what I don’t understand is why people who walk into a fast-food restaurant often seem to think I should put on the same smile and elegant demeanor they could expect at Saks or the bank where they put their money. I think the sorts of people who honestly think that service workers should be more smiley and gracious just don’t get it. They don’t get it because they can take so much for granted in their own lives—things like respect, consideration, and basic fairness on the job. Benefits. Insurance. They’re used to the luxury of choosing the most aesthetically pleasing item on the shelf, of caring what color their car is rather than simply whether it runs or not. They don’t understand how depressing it is to be barely managing your life at any given moment of the day. So forgive me if I don’t tell you to have a pleasant day with unfeigned enthusiasm when I
hand you your fucking hamburger. You’ll have to settle for the fake sort.

In my world, we don’t have the time or the energy to bullshit about our feelings or worry about anyone else’s. When I’ve found myself in professional situations, I’m driven nearly to distraction by how much fucking effort is wasted making sure we all feel nice and fuzzy and comfortable. I don’t get that; it’s not part of work to me. And it keeps me from getting ahead. If someone asks me my opinion on something, I simply give it. I don’t bother spending five minutes talking about the weather and how lovely your shirt is first. I am thinking about the question I was asked. I figure nobody’s getting paid to win the office nice competition. And it’s amazing to me that some of the same people who can walk by a homeless person without even blinking are obsessed with what everyone thinks of them at work. Meanwhile I know that if I wasted half as much time in my service jobs talking about my feelings as I have in my professional life, I’d be out of work and lying right next to that homeless guy my white-collar friends just skirted past.

Maybe feelings are something that only professional people are allowed to have. My friends and I know that no one gives a shit about ours. We’re constantly told to know our place and not make a fuss about the insane conditions we’re expected to deal with, both at home and at work. And yeah, this discussion about attitude is coming back to the subject of work a lot, because guess what? It’s what we spend a huge percentage of
our lives on. And how we’re treated there isn’t something we can just shake off when we leave. It becomes a part of us, just like that armor we wear.

But still we’re told to keep smiling, and to be grateful for the chance to barely survive while being blamed for not succeeding. Whether or not that’s actually true isn’t even relevant; that’s what it feels like. Unwinnable. Sisyphean.

Responsible poverty is an endless cycle of no. No, you can’t have that. You can’t do that, can’t afford that, can’t eat that, can’t choose that. This is off-limits, and that is not for you, and this over here is meant for different kinds of people. More than once I’ve spent money I couldn’t really afford simply to state that I
could
,
if only to myself. Just to say it.

To be told that you deserve nothing more than that, are entitled to nothing more, is enraging. If poverty is supposed to be like prison, then why don’t we kill two birds with one stone and put prisoners in all the low-wage jobs? All the private prisons would be wildly profitable, and the poor people would deserve their poverty because it would be their punishment.

Sure, we can beat the odds. Sometimes we can climb out of it. You’re reading this book by a service worker, after all. But the irony of my success here is that I didn’t get this chance because I worked my balls off for some asshole who thought me ungrateful for my sub-living wage. You’re reading this book by me because lightning struck, because my story went viral. And by definition, that can’t happen for everyone. You can hope for your one real shot, but you sure as hell don’t plan for
it. It hurts too much to plan and plan again and keep waiting for the magic day.

So that’s been my American dream. And it’s reality for millions of us, the people who are looking grumpy behind the counter. Our bodies hurt, our brains hurt, and our souls hurt. There’s rarely anything to smile about.

I’ve Got Way Bigger Problems Than a Spinach Salad Can Solve

W
e all cope in our own special ways. I smoke. My friend drinks. In fact, I’m highly confident in betting that you and many of your friends cope by drinking as well. Come home from a long day at work, and what do you do? Pop open a beer? Or a bag of potato chips? Or maybe you take a Valium when you’re feeling stressed out. Or get a massage. Or go to your gym and sit in the sauna room.

Why are other people’s coping mechanisms better than poor people’s? Because they’re prettier. People with more money drink better wine out of nicer glasses. And maybe they get a prescription for benzos from their own personal on-call psychiatrist instead of buying a pack of cigarettes. They can buy whatever they like and it’s okay, because retail therapy is a recognized course of treatment for the upper classes. Poor people don’t have those luxuries. We smoke because it’s a fast,
quick hit of dopamine. We eat junk because it’s cheap and it lights up the pleasure centers of our brain. And we do drugs because it’s an effective way to feel good or escape something.

I get that poor people’s coping mechanisms aren’t cute. Really, I do. But what I don’t get is why other people feel so free in judging us for them. As if our self-destructive behaviors therefore justify and explain our crappy lives.

Newsflash: It goes both ways. Sometimes the habits are a reaction to the situation.

And now I have to add one big caveat: Sometimes, sure, the stupid shit we do does explain our crappy lives. Are there meth addicts out there from nice middle-class homes who ended up homeless and far worse off than I’ve ever been? Absolutely. And if you want to believe that addiction is a person’s fault and not a disease, then you can go right on ahead and judge that person for having brought about his own downfall.

But unless you’re prepared to convince me that smoking and smoking alone keeps me poor, then please, spare me the lecture. I know it’s bad for me. I’m addicted, not addled. There are reasons that I smoke, and they’re reasonable ones. They keep me awake, they keep me going. Do they poison my lungs and increase my chances of getting cancer? Obviously. Does that stop me? No. Because the cost-benefit isn’t a simple
I like it
versus
I’ll possibly live longer
. It’s
I will be able to tolerate more
versus
I will perpetually sort of want to punch something
.

I once talked to a neighbor about the fact that people who lived on our block were statistically likely to die earlier than the people who lived five blocks over in the wealthy
neighborhood. He told me that it was just life, it was the way it was. He’d stopped questioning it. So if you already figure you’re going to die early, what’s the motivation for giving up something that helps get you through the here and now?

Look, I’m not saying that getting in a cage match or smoking copiously and with glee is exactly good for my longevity. But I don’t much see the point in worrying about the end of my life if stress will kill me first. If I don’t vent, don’t perform some kind of self-medicating, there won’t be an old age anyway. I’ll wind up dead or in jail or institutionalized when I finally lose it.

Let me be clear: I am not all poor people. Of course there are wholesome people in every class. There are poor people who would never dream of doing anything as déclassé as using drugs. This whole book could be called
You Can’t Put an Entire Third of the Country into One Group of Behaviors
.

Often, those folks who are unlike me are religious. I tend to think of religion as the same sort of thing as smoking—a soothing ritual that brings someone a moment of peace. But if I don’t want to be judged for my habits, I’m sure as hell not going to judge anyone else for theirs. That’s why I always defend religious people against those assholes who act like they’re too good for anything so magical as religion. We all think magically about something.

So, on the one hand, sure, poor people have been known to engage in some unhealthy behaviors. It’s not as though we, the unwashed masses, are doing anything that
everyone
doesn’t do. It’s not like drug and alcohol and cigarette sales just stop once
a consumer hits $75,000 a year in income or something. It’s a bit galling, actually, to be lectured about my self-destructive habits by someone who’s fighting his own hangover. You’re still getting drunk, friends, whether enjoying a bottle of Bordeaux or drinking a can of Mickey’s. But it seems that the disapprobation of excessive drinking is meant mostly for those of us on the rotgut end of the scale.

I think the reason for this is that people are less moralistic about the vices themselves than they are about the cost of the vices. The logic is that if you’ve got excess money and throw it away on booze and cigarettes, then that’s your business. But if you’re poor, then that’s a sin and a shame. Because if you’re poor, rich people assume you’re on welfare, or you’re getting food stamps or some other social services. Once you take a penny from the government, a morality clause goes into effect, where you’re never allowed to have anything that you might actually enjoy. It’s the hair shirt of welfare.

I have trouble understanding why taking a few grand a year in food stamps is somehow magically different than taking trillions as a bailout. Food stamps cost $76.4 billion for 2013, compared with trillions, possibly hundreds of those, for the banks. And that’s just
one
instance of handouts for the upper parts of society; it’s not like the feds handed cash to the banks and the rich are otherwise left to muddle on alone in the wilderness.

I do not see a difference, the way many people do, in the federal money. Whether you are getting your benefits in the form of SNAP cards or deductions, it’s the same thing.
There is this money that you otherwise would not have had, that the government gives you. Stimulus spending can happen in proactive or passive ways; whether it’s a block grant or a tax break, it’s still the government investing money in a thing because it wants to ease some burden for someone somewhere or to encourage or discourage certain behaviors. It wants people to not starve? Food stamps. It wants people to buy houses? Interest deductions.

The one difference? Rich people get way more from the government than poor people do—see above-referenced mortgage interest, capital gains, light inheritance taxes, retirement savings breaks—but the poor are the only ones getting shamed for it. You want to know how I could justify relaxing sometimes while I was on benefits? The same way you justify blowing a reckless amount of money on a really nice dinner while you take a business deduction because you talked about work for ten minutes.

People bitch about double taxation, where corporations are taxed for their profits and then they give money to their shareholders, who are also taxed. This is apparently hugely unfair, and the only reasonable solution is apparently to exempt people from having to pay taxes on their dividends. Because some kinds of income just don’t count as income? Because someone, somewhere, already paid a tax on this particular individual dollar? By the same logic, I shouldn’t be asked to pay payroll taxes because my bosses already paid taxes on it too.

Capital gain, by definition, is money you make for the simple fact of having money. That’s it. No work, no nothing. Just
have some money, wait for it to grow, and then you have more money. Which you clearly should not have to pay taxes on, because that would be unfair. Somehow.

This, of course, is nothing like unemployment, where an employer pays a tax for every employee, and then if I pull unemployment, I have to pay tax on that as well. But sure, keep thinking that we’ve got all the cushy non-taxation going on down here in the lower classes.

—

All humans chase good feelings. It’s just that people with money chase them in ways specific to the upper classes, which makes it okay. You can’t argue that a pair of expensive shoes or an expensive steak is actually something you need. It’s just something that makes you feel good.

According to a study published in
Science
magazine, which is a place I trust about science things, your brain actually has less capacity when you’re poor. The theory is that so much of your brain is taken up with poverty-related concerns that there’s simply less bandwidth available for other things, like life. It’s not the only study like that.

At Princeton, they’ve found that the effect on the brains of poor people from the stress about money alone is equivalent to losing a bunch of IQ points. And they’ve also found that if you remove the stress, our brains snap back and perform at the same levels you’d expect to see in a wealthier test-subject pool. The same goes for the short-term memory impairment and
trouble with complexities—skip a night of sleep and tell me how well you’re performing the next day; you’d be functioning on about the same level we do every day. We’re not dumb—we’re conserving energy.

They’re even starting to find similarities between people in poverty and soldiers with PTSD.

Poor people didn’t need to wait for the science to know this, though. We feel it. We could have told you that being always tired and distracted wasn’t great for higher cognitive activity. I stopped thinking in higher concepts, gradually. I feel stupid when I realize how long it’s been since I thought about anything beyond what I had to get through to keep everything moving along: no philosophy, no music, no literature. We know we’re not at capacity, and it rankles. So we fix it, best as we can. I know a few veterans, dealing with mild to moderate cases of PTSD, who have turned into potheads. It keeps them from getting too jumpy, keeps their memories from being too sharp. I hear that bankers like coke to stay focused. College kids take Ritalin to study.

I flirt with addiction, drinking too much coffee and smoking too much, but I’ve never let myself go there because I think it’d be too much of a relief and I’d never be able to come back voluntarily. And if I were dragged back, I’d face a lifetime of having to say no to one more thing that I knew would make me feel good. I doubt I’d do well with that. I’m not particularly strong that way.

Self-medication is a thing that exists. We fake rest and nutrition like we fake everything else to make it through the day.
Mostly, we do it with chemical assistance. I smoke because it keeps me calm, because it keeps me awake, because it keeps me from feeling hungry, because it gives me five minutes to myself, because it just feels good and I like it.

Have you ever felt tempted to go to one of those places where you can pay to smash china? I never have, but then I never saw a reason to pay to smash things. I just did it. It feels good, really good, to break things when you’re frustrated. It doesn’t actually solve anything, but for a second you feel better. I like breaking glass. It’s therapeutic. It was my favorite part of working as a picture framer; we had to smash the flawed glass into tiny bits for disposal. More than once, I popped in to help on my day off just to smash things. It’s the same logic that explains mosh pits.

One day, when I have nothing but free time, I will start a mosh pit for old people. I quit jumping into them only when I started to realize that I’d become the creepy old person in the corner. For years, though, mosh pits were my anger therapy of choice.

Sex is also therapeutic when it’s blissfully mindless. Orgasms for orgasms’ sake. It makes your muscles relax, your headaches lessen. It makes the stress go away for however long it lasts. It’s kind of amazing to have some outlet, somewhere, that you don’t have to work for; that’s the whole point of having a fuckbuddy. It’s effort-free. As long as you’re attracted enough that sex is a possibility and you feel safe, that’s all that matters. Sex, done properly, makes you feel wonderfully accepted.

It’s different from love. Maybe in the upper classes it’s
called a fling, but down here where I live it’s a pressure release, and no love or imitation Hollywood romance or delusions of long-term commitment are required. It’s not like I fuck everyone within arm’s reach, but I don’t expect to fall in love with everyone I’ve ever been infatuated with either. It’s just nice to be in a pleasant spot for a while, that’s all.

—

The coping that I and many of my friends do via medication isn’t just about emotional relief. For me at least, it’s just as much about physical pain management. I’ve stopped paying attention to how much ibuprofen I take in a day. More than I should, certainly. A reckless amount, even. I’m a pill popper, just not the narcotic sort. I start my day with ibuprofen and cold medicine, because I get sinus headaches from pretty much every part of nature and my jaw is always killing me. B
₁₂
for energy, vitamin C as a prophylactic measure. The ibuprofen starts to wear off in a couple hours, so I take some more. Repeat as necessary. Add in a pot of coffee and maybe a guilt-ridden switch to naproxen in the afternoon for pain management, plus whatever nicotine I get in there. And if I absolutely have to sleep well, I wind up taking something that says “p.m.” on it, whatever that might be. If the pain is bad, as it often is for people with serious back injuries and dental problems like mine, alcohol or some kind of narcotics might be taken too. That, friends, is what pain management looks like outside the health care system.

Miraculously, I’m not dead yet, and as far as I know, my liver hasn’t started to fail. My husband comes from healthy stock, the sort of people who maybe keep a bottle of aspirin around for emergencies. He was horrified at my intake, to the point that he once asked me to try not to take anything for a while to see if it would reset things for me. After a couple days I wound up in bed trying not to breathe too much because moving made the headache worse, and he’s never mentioned it since.

I know that any actual cure of my chronic pain would have to at least partly involve lifestyle changes that simply haven’t ever been logistically possible. Any kid who watches
Sesame Street
can tell you that it’s important to sleep well, drink lots of water, and eat a balanced diet. And I can guarantee you that I can drink lots of water. The other two are trickier, if not mostly impossible.