The Middle Class Starving Artist

My mother once said that there were only two joys in life and they were her own two kids. She said giving birth was the other greatest joy but I’m not so sure about that one… am I right mothers? I feel that there are two more joys in life, at least they are for me and they are meeting old friends for a quick bite to eat and watching a brand new movie, never before seen.

I worked till five thirty today and met my friends at Panera mainly because, one, we finally had our own money to spend and two, because it was the closest to our places of work (my friend and I both work at the mall, he at Hollister and me at Macy’s.) My other friend goes to school in Pennsylvania and comes home for the holidays and I was so excited to see her because, in all reality, I miss her! I miss us, the squad, our inside jokes, our talks, us, before moving away, before college.

So we all met at Panera and instantly our talk turned from catching up to sex, like it always does.

“Tell me something… who do you think would work at the strip club?”

“Who wouldn’t?” PA says.

“Like for real. In thirty years, say, at our reunion will be the girl-”

“Or guy,” I chipped in.

“Girl, guy whatever, who stayed in town, lived off welfare and did nothing with her life?” Hollister asked.

“You should be talking you’re basically a starving artist yourself,” I say.

“Okay yes, so I sleep on a cot whatever I need space for my studio,” Hollister said.

“But you aren’t starving… you’re like a middle class starving artist," I put in my two cents again. 

“So… who would it be?”

We couldn’t come up with an answer not because it was hard, no, it was because we honestly didn’t know. Our class, in itself, was so different. Some are married, some have kids, some have three kids, some are pretty successful and others…

“Who do you think was the biggest?”

“The what?”

“The biggest… you know…”

“I’ve always wondered that!” I said, “I always thought it was that tall guy, you know, the lurch.”

“No the taller you are the smaller you are,” Hollister said.

“Is that why all the skinny guys have huge…?” PA said.

“And all the bigger guys, one tug and done,” Hollister said.

Remember how I said there were two new joys in life? I lied. There are three and the third is opening a new book and taking a really big whiff of that new book smell.

Am I right?