Creative writing – The High Heeled C*ntessa

Tips for Surviving A Recession

***DISCLAIMER***

I started writing this post like two or three months ago (I want to say right around Thanksgiving), before Australia had totally burned to the ground and before Trump decided to provoke Iran, thus destroying any chance we have at all for a future. Let’s be honest here, I don’t think humanity is going to make it another five years.

Since this post was initially written, the holidays have come and gone, the New Year has arrived, and I have decided to stop buying fast fashion, or any new clothes at all… yes, I will continue wearing the same damn shoes until I receive warnings from HR about how my foot odor is offending people at work.

I have also decided to become a vegan (not sure how long I can last without cheese or eggs, but I will try), and give up alcohol and other illegal substances. I am also going to try to be more consistent with this blog. Cheers, kids.

Daydreaming about Robbie Williams….

TIPS FOR SURVIVING A RECESSION (Blog entry from November, 2019):

I wanted to write this blog a few months ago when I started reading about another oncoming recession all over the news. I figured I have some viable tips for those of you who were too young to really experience the recession of 2008 firsthand, or those of you who weren’t affected the first time around (consider yourselves very lucky). I survived the great recession of 2008 – just barely though: I haven’t touched my student loan debt, I don’t own a house nor can I afford to, I work just to pay bills, I throw money to the wind each month, renting an apartment I will never own, and at this rate (and given a number of other extraneous factors such as global warming, imminent nuclear war / terrorist attacks at the hands of Iran, and societal collapse on the horizon…) I doubt I will ever have children. C’est la vie…. at least I’ve got my cats.

Anyhow, I’m currently sitting here browsing slutty clothes and 7-inch platform boots on DollsKill.com. Hey – life is short, and no matter what, I’m not going to be able to afford a house or kids, so I might as well purchase some cheap thrills while I’m still semi-young (not that I’m young) and decent looking (not that I am that either). I can honestly say I never spend money on lunch or coffee… I don’t even eat lunch. I think I deserve some frivolous party shoes once or twice a year to compensate. The press is always bitching about Millennials wasting money on Starbucks and avocado toast, but when you’re $50K in the hole with no future in sight, you kind of have to live in the moment and treat yourself to the tiny luxuries that you CAN afford. If we never went out for a night of drinks once every month, or bought a new winter coat we desperately need, our quality of life would be even more miserable than it already is, just trying to save and pay our bills.

I digress though. I graduated in 2011 when the recession was at its’ worst and the unemployment rate at its highest. The times were basically rock bottom in terms of available jobs/work. I have two worthless degrees in fashion merchandising and theatre. I still sometimes hate myself for not swallowing my pride and my passions, and just going to school for engineering or to become a doctor. At least then I would have a lucrative career. JK…. I would never. I’d rather continue to struggle and live paycheck to paycheck with enough time to still pursue some of my passions on the side (i.e. this blog, a social life, cooking, my cats, etc.).

When I graduated, and I’m speaking generally here, one was lucky to even find a part-time RETAIL job. I’m being serious. This isn’t a lie or exaggeration, kids. Even jobs that required no degree and minimal experience were extremely scarce and hard to come by. And finding a job in your own home town (if you came from a small, rural town)???? FORGET ABOUT IT. I started working at the Shiseido makeup counter at Macy’s, which was a 30 minute drive from my parent’s house where I lived after graduating. I got “lucky” (I use this term very loosely here… ) to have a friend who worked for Abercombie & Fitch as a manager and hooked me up with an interview there after I’d spent the summer of 2011 playing with makeup. I thought I’d scored big-time, because at least the job with Abercrombie required a 4-year degree, had benefits like a 401K and insurance, and paid time off. Little did I know, I was in for a real ride….

One day, when life affords me the luxury of no longer having to work a 9-5 day job, you can read all about my days with Abercrombie/Hollister on my old blog, which is currently incognito on the inter-webs. I had to make the blog private for the purposes of my current, corporate job…. since I didn’t hold back in terms what I wrote about or discussed online back then. I could write a book about my time with A&F/HCo., and one day I truly hope to do so…

Enough about that though. I eventually saved up a decent chunk of money and moved to NYC with no job lined up in the fall of 2012. This is where the struggle truly began, and how I learned to thrive (or just barley scrape by, rather) in the midst of the economy’s worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1920’s.

It took me three whole months to find a “job,” and then, the job I had was working only part-time at a night club/concert venue as a cocktail waitress and weekend hostess. I never knew if I’d be working 5 seated-shows a week (the most lucrative type since people would order food and drinks), or only 2 standing-room-only shows with an audience of underage kids (the least lucrative shows… obviously). My paychecks ranged from $120 on a terrible week (i.e. 4 dark days and 2 nights of hostessing) to $480 on a decent week, working 4-5 seated shows. Of course there were take-home cash tips, but those were usually spent going out for after-work drinks at the Irish dive bars on 14th street with my fellow co-workers, where we would commiserate over how little we’d made that night, how awful the crowd was, and how depressed and poor we were working at this shitty venue when the lot of us aspired to so much more in life (i.e. artistic endeavors, full-time employment… sugar daddies…).

My rent was only $650 when I first moved to NYC (don’t ask… I literally had the most baller apartment for what is the BEST DEAL ever heard of). My rent quickly increased to $800 after a couple of months, and then to $1,000 after a year. My fickle work as a server wasn’t allowing me to even make rent, so I swallowed my pride and went back to HCo. on fifth ave, working as a manager, where at least I had a consistent paycheck and health insurance.

Between 2012 and 2016 when I finally landed a decent job, were the toughest four years of my life, financially speaking. This is when I really honed in on my skills as a chef, learning how to survive on one bag of frozen peas a week and a handful of uncooked rice. I learned how to scrape together just enough money to pay rent doing whatever it took – whether it meant counting spare change, taking on babysitting jobs in the morning before working closing shifts at Hollister, or forgoing what most people consider household essentials, like coffee creamer, paper towels, and well…. food in general.

Given the current state of the economy, and the fact that things have been slow as hell for me at work in the last month or so, I’m growing nervous that it’s true that another recession is on the way. This time, I’ll be prepared though…. bring it on baby. Nothing can hurt me now. You know what actually makes me feel even more carefree these days? The fact that we’re probably all going to die in a nuclear war or from complete global destruction due to climate change before I ever even begin to pay back my student debt….

MY TIPS FOR SURVIVING A RECESSION

There is no such thing as job security. Never get too comfortable – it can be taken away from you at any time through no fault of your own. Never take your job for granted either, even though you hate it (we all do). You need money to pay rent and bills and to purchase enough food to survive and/or enough alcohol and drugs to make you occasionally forget how fucking shitty and pointless your life is. No job is permanent and any job can be taken away in the blink of an eye (usually when you least expect it to). You could be laid off if the economy tanks and your company can no longer afford your position. This happened in the last recession… workers who’d been with the same company for 25 years and were only 3 years away from retiring lost their jobs and their 401Ks. Pretty shitty, right? This is why I wake up each day with the fear of God in my heart. It’s better to be scared about losing your job then it is to be too confident that it can’t happen to you. It can happen to you, and living life with anxiety over job security simply prepares you for the worst. It happened to me once and it wasn’t even the recession. The start up company I worked for in 2016 tanked after five months and couldn’t afford to pay me. No notice… no nothing.
Girl, you better WORK. One does what one must to make rent and put food on the table. Even if this means selling yourself short of your credentials/qualifications/education/desired salary, or, in some cases, literally selling yourself (I’ve never done it, but I know girls who basically have sex with someone they’re not really into, in return for having their rent paid or fancy dinners here and there or like, a Mysterland ticket and nice hotel). I’m not saying this is noble or respectable, but sometimes desperate means call for desperate measures. If you’re young and attractive and don’t have a family to hurt, stripping is always an option too. In a major city it will definitely be much more lucrative than elsewhere, and people less likely to find out if you’re trying to keep it on the down-low. If you’re attractive and young, in fact, I highly suggest capitalizing on it while it lasts – because it doesn’t last forever. You might as well make a decent living off of what your mama (or your plastic surgeon) gave you. There are always ads out for bottle servers, hostesses, bartenders, etc., and in this city at the right venue, you could make a SHIT TON of money doing any of those service jobs. You don’t really need experience if you’re young and hot and/or know the right person. It’s also good to be flexible in tough economic times, and willing to do shitty work. I mean, if your standards are too high and the economy crashes, you’re not really going to survive if you’re not willing to do some less-than-savory jobs to make ends meet. For example, I cleaned houses and a church on a weekly basis at one point in college, because it was impossible to even find a part-time retail job. I’m not making this up. In 2008-2009, I cleaned a church rectory on a weekly basis, and then a few older ladies at church inquired about me cleaning their personal residences, and I did. It honestly wasn’t a bad job – kind of gross to clean someone else’s toilet and bathtub, but the money was decent and not taxed, and old people are generally very sweet and lovely to talk to. I would do it again. Hell, I would probably do it now, if someone asked me if I had availability to do so. Could always use some extra spending money…
Learning to live on a bare-bones diet. Have you ever cried because you’re so hungry and all you have in your house is some white rice and mustard? I have. Have you ever had to choose between buying paper towels to clean your counter tops, or some coffee creamer so you didn’t have to keep drinking your coffee black? I have. It’s all about priorities – and sometimes we think that we can forgo food, or at least eat minimally to save money, especially when we also prioritize thinness. Well, when your parents already put some extra money in your bank account but you used it to pay rent and then foolishly bought a couple of $5 vodka sodas at McKenna’s (because you don’t know how to tell your friends that you’re broke), and now you don’t even have $6 to buy a box of pasta and some Prego at the local grocery store, shit really hits home. You’re going to have to learn how to get creative with some frozen white bread and a couple of teaspoons of Parmesan or how to make a meal out of lentils, curry powder, and some frozen corn last you three days. On the plus side, you won’t have to worry about the next time that you can afford to get drunk and order a pizza at 2am, since you’ll likely be malnourished as fuck.
Interviewing: It’s not you, it’s THEM. Just because there isn’t a real availability of viable, living-wage paying jobs, doesn’t mean there won’t be hundreds of listed positions and interviews which you’ll desperately go, on trying to make something work. You’ll probably apply for jobs you have no interest in whatsoever, just because you need a paycheck: part-time retail positions at a shoe store that sells ugly clogs, a dog-walking position, a nannying position, even though you hate kids…. the list goes on. If you’re like I was (and still am), you’ll apply for and go on hundreds of interviews and you won’t get offered any of the positions, even though you are mostly likely A) qualified, B) experienced, or C) could easily do whatever is asked of you. I started to think it was me and beat myself up. I decided I wasn’t getting hired because I was too old, too ugly, too short, too fat, too nice, etc., etc.. I honestly probably wasn’t getting hired, because they were saving the position for the assistant manager’s brother-in-law who just graduated and wanted the job. Jobs go to those with the personal/family connections when there aren’t many jobs to be had. Don’t take it too personally or it will really wear away at your self-confidence.

A Short Story – Written Dec 2013

Once upon a time in the land of a million hopes and a billion lost dreams, there lived a small, fragile girl with big, icey-grey eyes, icey-blonde hair, and enough falsely contrived charm to captivate and entrance even the coldest of hearts. She turned heads walking down the street, turned heads on the subway, and was never at a loss for dates out at the expense of whatever boy she was currently letting pursue her. She lived with her boyfriend of five years in a tiny apartment in the East Village, and regularly cheated on him in the hopes that one day, one of the dudes she was fucking on the side would provide her with the break she had been waiting for since she was 18. Her boyfriend, an aspiring musician, was consistently faithful and saving money wherever he could in the hopes that he could one day provide his girl with the life he believed she deserved. He worked three jobs to pay the bills, take her out to nice dinners whenever he had a night off of work, and put money in his savings account for the engagement ring he was planning to buy her for their upcoming anniversary. He was madly in love, and blind to her true nature, despite the fact that his closest friends saw right through her and regularly warned him as to their suspicion that she was not faithful in the least and a manipulative and conniving bitch.

The girl was an aspiring actress who just couldn’t get a break. She busted her ass waiting tables and doing bottle service at hot club where she was regularly hit on by New York’s finest douche bags, and often met the guys she let take her out and slept with in return for favors. She was a slut in the most basic sense of the word. While her boyfriend was up all night working at the 24/7 diner around the corner from her apartment, she could either be found flirting and dancing with an older gentleman getting bottles at the club where she worked, or out on the town at another club, grinding on some other old dude in return for lines of blow in the VIP section. She didn’t really feel much at all these days- it could have been from the years of rejection and having her hopes and dreams of becoming a star on the silver screen shot down time and time again, or it could have been from the grade A cocaine going up her nostrils on a nightly basis…either way, she was numb and lived her life in a blurred haze of drug use, alcohol consumption, and rich men that gave her what she wanted as long as she was hooking up with them. She had learned years ago how exactly to shut off her feelings. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried, and she couldn’t remember the last time that she was truly happy without the aid of synthetically manufactured drugs or the thrill of a ride in some investment banker’s hot car. There was no real punctuation, just a daily routine of sleeping late, working a little, and partying hard, the same routine day in and day out was growing old, just as she was growing old, and life as she new it was growing old.

Once upon a time, she had been sweet and her charm had been genuine. Once upon a time, she had also been madly in love with her boyfriend, the way that he still loved her even now. Once upon a time, she never could have fathomed falling so far from grace and cheating on him, she never could have fathomed nights of doing free lines in return for a BJ in the men’s room. Now, as she stood on the corner of 14th street on a busy Saturday in Union Square where she was going to meet with her agent to discuss an upcoming independent film she was going to be featured in, something triggered her memory. As she stood waiting for the light to turn, cars and cabs and bikes buzzing by in a flurry of movement, she stared into space and remembered the very first time she had stood waiting to cross the street when she was going for her first consultation with her current agency. She was a different person then; her dreams were so high, her standards were higher. She was hopeful and not run down. She thought with her heart and her mind, and she wasn’t fueled so much as she was now by her desperate desire for fame and wealth. These were the days when she didn’t give a fuck about being able to skip the line at the hottest night club, these were the days when she didn’t even know what a Birken bag was. The days when her grey eyes weren’t ice cold, but warm and sparkled with that brilliance that can only be seen in the eyes of someone who is pure of heart.

The crowd of people around her started to move forward across the street, and she awoke from her daydream and began to cross too without looking either way. As she stepped off of the curb, a rogue bicyclist clipped her and she jumped back and gasped in shock…. “Jesus Christ, watch where you’re fucking going!” she screamed after the mexican delivery boy whom simply turned his head to look back on her before he sped off down the street.

After her meeting, she went home to chill for the few hours she had before she her next appointment- a date with a 42 year old financial analyst who wanted to take her to dinner and out on the town in his sick Mercedes SUV. She was sitting on the couch watching re-runs of Sex in the City, when her boyfriend came in the door, fresh from rehearsal with his band. “Hey Babe, how was your meeting?” She turned to look at him, a vile look of disgust taking over her otherwise pretty face, “Take your fucking shoes off Jimmy, Jesus! I am tired of cleaning up after you, I’m not your mother!” she said, and then went back to staring at the tv. He leaned over to unlace his converse. “So, are you working tonight? If you aren’t, my friend is playing a show at the Rosewood- we should go.” Again she turned her gaze from the tv and looked at him, the same look of disgust coming across her face, her grey eyes cold and steely, “I fucking told you- I work EVERY night this week…. I go in at 9.” “Oh, Excuse me for not remembering your schedule on top of my own…” he said as he opened the fridge and scoured it for an readily edible piece of food to fill the hole in his stomach after another long day.

Later that night, as our main character was getting ready for her ‘date’, she found a baggie of coke she had stashed away in her underwear drawer. She looked behind her to make sure the bedroom door was closed and that Jimmy was occupied with his computer. She unscrewed the hidden coke spoon pendant that hung around a gold chain on her slender neck and did a bump before placing the rest back under her collection of lacy thongs and heavily padded bras. She put on her highest heels and took a look at herself in the mirror. She stared at her own reflection; her eyes seemed dead despite the cat-eye eyeliner and metallic shadow she had used specifically to make them stand out. She puckered her lips to apply a final coat of lipgloss and ran her fingers through her hair. She thought about the fact that she was no longer 20 years old, and the late nights of partying hard were slowly beginning to take a toll. The appearance of fine lines on her forehead and the dark circles she so expertly concealed under her eyes were a tell-tale sign of her frequent drug use, lack of sleep, and constant stress she felt at hiding the fact that she was regularly hooking up with other dudes all whilst trying to keep these secrets from getting to the attention of her naive boyfriend, who now sat playing Call of Duty. “Fuck the Chanel bag, I better ask for botox and collagen injections later… ” she said to her reflection before she turned to walk out the door. “Will you be home late tonight?” her boyfriend asked without looking away from the tv, “I can wait up and make you your favorite mac and cheese if you want.” “No, I might spend the night at a friend’s house since she lives right next to the place where I have that audition tomorrow.” I’ll call you when I’m out of work though.” She turned to walk out the front door as Jimmy called after her, “I love you, make sure you have someone walk you out of work, I don’t like you leaving the club with so much money on you alone.” “I will- see you tomorrow.” And with that, she closed the door behind her and ran down the three flights of stairs to the street below where she expected her date to be waiting.

She looked around for the matte black SUV she expected him to be waiting in. She got out her phone to send him a text and was looking down she heard a horn beep. She looked up as the SUV pulled over to the curb. She put her phone in her pocked and smiled as she headed over to climb into his car.

FAST FOWARD THREE HOURS….

She is drunk now, has already made three trips to the ladies room to blow lines of coke that her date happily provided her with, and is again staring into the mirror to reapply her lipgloss. As she puckers up and pulls out the wand, she hears a group of girls behind her snickering and turns around to see what they’re laughing at. One of the girls in the group- a tall, model-thin brunette stops laughing long enough to look her dead in the face and say, “Whore.” She puts away her lipgloss and and walks out back into the blaring music and dark of the club. As she approaches the table where her date has a bottle set up, she sees another girl sitting next to her date with her long legs draped over his own. She panics at the sight of this as her heart begins to race. “WTF?” she thinks to herself as she decides to turn around and walk away. “Fuck him, I’ll find someone richer and hotter to go home with.” She sees a promoter she knows from the club where she works and joins his table, smiling and dancing with a martini glass in her hand. He gives her some molly, and she gets even more fucked up than she already was. Her heart is racing and despite the fact that she is sweating profusely, she continues to dance. She climbs on top of the couch with a bottle of Chandon in her hand, and takes a sip from the bottle as she gyrates and moves in sync with the heavy base of the blaring house music. She feels her body overheating as she sways to the music, but she doesn’t care. Fuck it- nothing matters anymore. She takes another swig from the bottle, and looks back over at the table where her date is still sitting, the same skinny bitch still draped over his lap. He makes eye contact with her across the crowd, and she takes another swig of champage. Suddenly the world starts to close in and everything around the edges goes black. She attempts to sit down, but it’s too late. She collapses onto the bench, spilling champagne everywhere. She is dead.