2001-05-31 :: 11:36 p.m.

Tallboy said something that rubbed me the wrong way the other night. He said that a person would have to be insane to work seven days a week, especially at a cafe, waitressing and making coffee all the livelong day.

And I said, all in snark-mode, "Well, some of us don't have rich daddies who give us money and buy us a big-ass apartment on the Lower East Side."

Well, OK, I do have a rich daddy, but he's never in his life given me a red cent. OK, once. He gave me four dollars in quarters in July of 1984 to play Ms. Pacman at the OTB and stay out of his way while he cursed at the horses.

But I digress. So Tallboy said, "I just meant that there must be something else out there that's a lot easier for you to do, and pays more money."

And I just stared at him, blankly, because he obviously just doesn't. Get. It.

He has never been in this position. The one where you would rather eat fucking glass than ask your parents to fund your life because, hi, you're 26. 28 in his case. The position where, no matter how many bowls of Ramen and boxes of Mac and Cheese you go through, on any given month, you still feel oddly satisfied that you're at least living on your own, albeit shittily at times. You count your dollar bills in those dreaded weeks before pay day and allow yourself one pack of cigarettes, and try stretch it out, or two drinks at a bar. Or one CD and then you'll bring lunch from home all week.

Don't get me wrong. It's not as if my mother wouldn't help me out if I really needed it. And once or twice, I have. It would have been really easy for me to move back in with her, in these idiotic times of total financial insanity. Or to ask her to pay half my rent. But come.on.for.the.love.of.all.that.is.holy.already.

Anyway. Tallboy just didn't get it. Like, the thought of two jobs was so alien and foreign and repulsive to him that he was looking at me the rest of the night like I was growing an arm out of my freaking forehead.

Man.

Nights like that, I totally remember why I love and worship my friends. They get me.

Nights like that, the percentage of valid reasons to miss RSE was upped about 5, because he would have understood where I'm coming from without even having to talk about it.

I'm dragging my carcass to bed.

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