What does it mean, to be rich? I have never had money, so the idea that shopping or buying a car would be rewarding is foreign to me. My family doesn't have a lot of money and although my parents are comfortable, there were times when they certainly were not. Putting two kids in private schools and college stressed them and although I never noticed it at the time, we had a few christmases with considerably smaller piles under the tree.
Although I have never spent money without thinking, I have lived alongside people who can, and do. Growing up on Cape Cod, I went to high school with Walt Disney's grandchildren and nannied for people like Nicholas Cage. When my family invested in a snow plow, my neighbors bought the LA Dodgers. It never bothered me that my parents didn't give me a credit card at age 16, or that they didn't finance my college education or buy me a car when I graduated. But when I moved out of their house and into a tiny six floor walk-up in New York City I planned to do a few things differently.
After living on an income near, or below, poverty level for two months while I interned at a small design company I was offered a job as a freelance designer for a giant marketing agency. Although it would be long hours, working late into the night, I agreed to take it. I would be making considerably more than any of my friends who had found full time work in the city. I knew it was going to be tough, but the idea of being able to buy groceries or pay for electricity was music to my ears.
On my first day I left my internship and headed to my new job. I climbed the stairs from the train station on Houston St and noticed the marked difference in environment. Away from the hustle and bustle of Union Square, here the buildings grew straight up from the concrete and the sidewalks were packed with people walking in straight lines, to and from work. Once inside the building I had to be x-rayed by the security guard and my lunch began to turn to bile in my stomach.
When my roommate and I had come to New York to find an apartment we had gone to a few realtor's offices, big rooms with high ceilings but no windows, filled with monitors and computer chords and the hiss of ringing phones. At the time I had sworn I would never live like that and when I stepped inside the design studio, the same feeling of anxiety overcame me and I felt short of breath.
On my first night I sat next to the shift supervisor who did not stop swearing, even to sip his coffee. I looked around me and saw only tired, puffy eyes, glued to the computer. Someone in the office next to us was playing ACDC and as the veins in my forehead constricted, one single tear slid down my cheek.
The next day I left my internship again to go to work. Day two. My feet felt heavy on the pavement but the two block walk to the train seemed to fly by. I stood on the corner of 27th street and looked at the subway station lights. Next to me, the train uptown, the one that took me back to my six floor walkup in Harlem every night. Across the street, downtown to work, misery and riches, all rolled together in a nice, easy to swallow time sheet.
The white walk sign flickered on and people started to move past me, across the street as I turned and rode the local line all the way home, poor, unemployed, and the happiest I had been in two months.
