The Cost of Everything

Watching the mayoral debate tonight, I listened to nearly all candidates fairly confidently offering their solution to the least curable of all chronic urban ills: poverty.  One of them spoke of the high cost of being poor-- something I am well acquainted with, having worked with underserved populations-- begging and pleading with mothers, often, to change their habits-- with little success.  Good luck to all of these candidates; the problems are slippery and the recovery paths are lined with red flags and splinters.   

On the other side of the poverty coin is its economic bedfellow: wealth.  As opposed to poverty, which is well defined by government standards in dollars and cents, wealth is amorphic.  Its definition lies somewhere in the gap between 'what you need' and 'what you earn'. For the poor, their earnings or income are pre-sold to some ruined version of future, things beyond the necessities of existence which they have every right to covet or need.  My friend Tyrone managed to get an address for receiving his stimulus checks.  Far from using this for food (he gets SNAP benefits), he paid a huge fee to cash the thing at some storefront, and the rest of it went toward cigarettes, liquor, scratch offs...  a few grams of weed.  I suppose this contributes something to the economy; he's doing his job, as opposed to me who squirrels it away for a future maintenance payment. 

My English grandfather told me once if I could not die with a million pounds, I must die owing a million pounds.  His million pounds would be a billion pounds in today's money.   But according to my country-raised father, there was nothing worse than debt.  To be $10 overdrawn on my student checking account was a crime worth a visit and a massive threatening lecture.  Like murder, one infraction was nearly as bad as several.  Something in his tone warped me, and though I could never get his approval, I could avoid his wrath.  I'd also discovered independence was crucial to my life-dream... and debt, in my understanding, was a kind of slavery.  

Sure I had my years of 'plenty', of partying and generosity and expensive clothes and hotels and restaurants... but finding myself at 36 with a baby and no support, I quickly altered my outlook.  There was actually very little I required.  I figured out how to navigate the city on less than $5 a day... how to live, to get some footing... and yes, my requirements by any standards are uber-minimal... so while I am designated poor by government standards, what I need falls just far enough below what I manage to come up with. 

And yes, I am fairly smart, educated... I know I could have some kind of job if I sold out but I managed to exist with my weird priorities and occupations.  Among my friends who consider themselves middle class, many live with massive credit card debt, doling out a monthly minimum which does little to help their situation.  Meanwhile they spend masses on rent, various monthly subscriptions, quasi-compulsory activities like Hamptons weekends which half of them don't even enjoy.  

Several of the mayoral candidates want to give money to the poor... one to children, yearly, so they accumulate a reservoir for education later... or maybe, I'd suggest, the option to use this to buy some housing security.  I still find it strange they teach sex education but not much about personal economics in middle school when even kids have a choice and are still malleable.  

But the poor are stubborn.  Their habits die hard and who can blame them?  Certainly not me who has tried and volunteered and failed, even with my own kids.  What mayor will fix these things in a city of millions where the wealth gap is measured for some in acres-- in billions, in cyber-trillions? 

Last night I got to play live in a studio-- loud, plugged in, with my old bass that sounded like a motherfucker to my damaged ears that craved the assault of drums and guitars for so many months.  My strings are old, my cord is taped up-- my gig bag is cheap and light... I rode down in the elevator with another woman bassist who had an expensive instrument-- a good looking case, salon-dyed hair... who knows?  I could feel her condescendingly assess my worth on the descent.  I got paid $40 to rehearse.  Touched me.  Did I buy myself a slice of pizza?  No.  I walked home.  No subway fare.  That $40 goes into an old tin box where I keep my monthly money.  The city was sparkling in the late-spring night.  I kissed the proverbial sidewalk on 6th Avenue.  The band sounded whole.

On Madison Avenue above 60th Street the blocks are festive with sidewalk restaurants serving $800 bottles of champagne-- packed. People are well-dressed... it is impossible to tell the seriously wealthy from those that masquerade as such... the difference between millionaires and billionaires is measured in how many are trying to sidle up to that person.  They have beautiful friends-- people who can afford to sculpt themselves if they were not born that way.  I felt a little ugly and primitive.  Invisible.  

Passing by the Richard Prince outpost at Gagosian, a small cluster of men emerged... they were watched by security men dressed better than any of my friends ever are; they looked rich... but as I passed, the distinct stench of fresh vomit was overwhelming.  Irony? Further up, in nearly every retail doorway, there is a little 'bedsit' set up by various homeless.  It's relatively safe up here and they seem to have reached some agreement of territoriality.  Their blankets and quilts and cardboard arrangements are like works of art-- they are the sculpted figures of these building niches.  They are urban art personified.  

One of them is an older man who has been squatting on Madison for years.  He does this charming sort of naive artwork on pieces of paper. A few, touched with the magical inspiration of a kind of schizophrenic genius, verge on brilliant.  He sells them, although there was little business going on at 11 PM... he doesn't take the platinum credit cards used by the men who would receive their Richard Price souvenirs by messenger in the morning.  I could have spent a very small piece of my $40 on what I know is real Street Art.... but he was asleep.  

Twenty-four hours later I still have my $40.  It will cover almost one day in my place here... my home of nearly 24 years which has nearly everything... windows, kitchen, full bath, instruments-- a library, computers, a TV which allows me to watch the candidates duking it out on NBC, trying to manage the range of issues in a huge city which is maybe recovering from a sort of fairy-tale evil spell, waking up to the same reality of economic inequality, the rich who have everything and the poor who want more than they can afford.  The overserved and the underserved... and the hungry and the overfed... the restaurants tossing uneaten caviar and sushi, the 'niched' men with their styrofoam containers and their itchy swollen limbs.  Blocks away a building is burning... two men shoot an innocent bystander as they rob a Bodega uptown.  In Brooklyn Kevin Durant has 49 points.

There are things to celebrate here.  Rock and roll.... free museums for the poor even though it's too high-maintenance to make an appointment... and what's in there anyway? My friends even though I rarely go out for a drink these days, or even a coffee.  Kevin Durant. I have everything I need--- the tools to create and invent something, and a safe place to do this. Is this not what all New Yorkers want? Not, apparently.  Melissa Russo has never looked so beautiful asking these questions.  I believe in her.  The mayoral candidates?  Kathryn Garcia just mispronounced 'mayoralty'; not a good sign... But I am hopeful.  I will vote.  

Go Brooklyn.