Feed the birds, tuppence a bag

HolyshitholyshitholySHIT.

I'm currently squatting on my living room floor wearing my (non-)running pants and three days worth of post-Nair chest stubble, in the midst of a mental breakdown and breaking out in hives as the world comes crashing in on me because I have suddenly realized that I am, in a word, poor.

I, Groom Zilla, privileged little white boy from suburban New England, who ordered his first Filet Mignon and shrimp cocktail from a highchair, who finished prep school and college without a single outstanding loan, who didn't know a car could smell like anything but brand-new because his parents' cars were always brand-new, am as poor as..........I don't even know what I am as poor as - - and really, where would I even get off pointing a comparing finger at someone or something else for being poor when I'm so very destitute? Poverty leaves no room for comparison or simile. I should be cashing in on my metaphors, not throwing them around like they grow on trees.

Seriously, I'm po'. (And also, seriously, breaking out in hives.) I have been treading water in the deep and murky waters of overdraft protection for several months now, drifting farther and farther away from any visible sign of financial viability, to the point where I am beginning to forget what it felt like to be on dry land. And all I have to show for it, other than an uncanny knack for metaphor which simply refuses to quit despite my own exhortations for conservation, is what? Do I hold anything concrete in my hands at the end of the month? My rent? My grad school loans? My half-used yoga membership? My tumor-inducing cell phone? My overpriced cable bill? Into what, exactly, am I feeding all of this money every month? The gaping, wet mouth of the capitalist cash cow? The razor sharp teeth of gluttony and sloth? Empty promises? Broken dreams? Unnecessary takeout meals?

O the money I've wasted! The early years in Manhattan spent going out to the bars four nights a week! The thousands of dollars I made from my freelance writing job which has since ceased to exist but which I have nothing to show for! The drinks and the dinners and, come to mention it, the overpriced cable bill!

I have no right to be living in this city, or even in this country, really. I should be sleeping in a refrigerator box in New Delhi and eating beans out of a can and selling my hair every month.

Honestly - - my whole body, by the way, is now itching, and it is doing so in places which cannot be blamed on post-Nair trauma, like my scalp and the backs of my knees - - honestly, I am more than a little freaked out. Where does one even begin to think about having a house and babies and dogs, when one cannot even afford to step outside one's apartment, for fear of the twenty-dollar-bill monster that lurks on every sidewalk in New York City?

I opened up a mutual fund account last year because I felt it was time to grow up and own stocks, except my father's stock guy said I didn't have enough money for that, so I had to start with a mutual fund. Anything having to do with stocks or mutual funds or anything of or related to these causes me great agita and discomfort, as it is an area in which I hold absolutely no expertise, or even basic knowledge (those watching over my shoulder will note that I just replaced "money market" with "mutual fund" after carefully checking the Smith Barney statement beside me to recall what, exactly, it is that I have). Because of this, I do everything humanly possible to avoid interacting with my father's stock guy, which results in me leaving him garbled messages at 11 o'clock at night telling him my latest idea for my mutual fund, or sending him emails which he never receives. My latest scheme involved leaving him a late night message suggesting that I'd like to start transferring $250 each month directly into my mutual fund from my bank account, in order to force myself to save something. And now, one month into this monthly transfer plan, I find myself $350 short in available bill-paying funds.

So what's the answer? Do I do what makes sense? Cut the cable bill, stop the mutul fund scheme, trade our bed in for a refrigerator box? Or do I look for a second income? Take on some extra work, write that novella I once heard myself talk about writing? Or do I stick with Plan C, where I just ignore it all and hope for the best and wait for pay day and roll with the occasional angsty punches every couple of months?

Perhaps Plan D, in which I dedicate 1000 words of publicly accessible internet real estate to my Failed Finances, thus alienating the few readers I had left, including my mother?

In other news, the Halloween bash was a success. Following are some photos which might understandably beg the question, But why doesn't he just start up a tranny goth hooker catering and housekeeping dance company? To which I might reply, Why not indeed?

Please send jobs, suggestions, cash, money orders or canned beans to the nearest 9th Avenue refrigerator box.