#nycwritinggroup

At the time, $900 seemed like an unfathomable amount of money. That much money seemed liked happiness itself, or at least like insurance against unhappiness. $900 was how much money I had per month, after taxes. I would take joy in allocating it. $475 for rent. I was still on my parents’ health plan, so nothing there. $150 for groceries. Literally, I would take $150 out from the ATM and go to the supermarket, and buy everything for the month. And then my part of the utilities was like $50. Everything I’ve mentioned totals $675. That left me $225 per month to do whatever the hell I wanted with.

This felt indulgent, extravagant. This felt like expendable income. You should know that at my favorite bar in my town at the time, a vodka tonic cost $2.50.

I got paid twice per month from my job as a work-study editorial aide to the kids in the editing lab learning how to use Avid editing equipment. The direct deposit usually dropped on the 5th and the 20th of every month.

On September 3rd, 2002, I woke up with a terrible hangover and $17 left in my bank account. Side note: I truly believed this to be a terrible hangover because I was 22. With this terrible hangover, I got up at 8am after having gone to bed four hour earlier; I showed up on time to my shift in the lab, and competently assisted three students with their first-ever editing projects. I assumed that I would spend the 3rd trudging through work and then watching whatever was on television, and I would spend the 4th doing laundry, which cost $7 total, because it had been literally a month and a half, and then on the 5th I would wake up with a fresh $450 in my account.

At approximately 4:27pm on the 3 rd , this assumption was proven incorrect. That is the precise moment that Billy knocked on my front door. I know because I saved the email I was dutifully writing to my mom at that moment, telling her, incidentally, about how long it had been since I’d heard from Billy. I saved my draft and got up to answer the door.

Billy was holding an ice pack to the right side of his mouth.

What happened, I asked him?

Do you have any beer? 

He answered, shoving past me and into my house.

Ugh, Billy.

He got a can of beer out of my fridge, took the ice pack away from his face, replaced it with the beer, then took the beer away, cracked it open, and took a huge swig. Now I could see the weird purple welt he was cultivating.

He saw me seeing. This is nothing like you think it is, he said.

Okay, then what.

He rolled his eyes and then just sort of swooned onto my couch. I need to borrow $200, he said.

I don’t have $200, I said. I have $17, and I need seven of that for laundry tomorrow.

Okay so you have $10. If I don’t find $190 more by tomorrow night I won’t be able collect the $400 for my gig two days from now.

Ugh, can we go get a drink and talk about this?

We did, and this is how Billy and I were left with zero dollars and a need to get from St. Louis to Chicago within five hours, because his rich aunt lived in Chicago and would be willing to front us the money, but only if we came tonight so that she could take us to her favorite breakfast spot in the morning. Front him the money. I wasn’t clear why I was involved, except that it was clear I was involved now.