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Authors: Michelle Tea
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lunacy.
It had been a dream, a sort of joke dream, to go to Paris Fashion Week, and inexplicably, it had happened. Once I knew I wasgoing, I jokingly told my friends, âI want to see Kanye West and score a purse,â never really thinking that I would find myself in multiple closed spaces with Kanye and Pink, and Kate Moss, and the Kills, and Paul McCartney, and those wicked Geldof girlsâand find myself cuddling a batshit crazy Fendi purse that I was sure went for no less than five thousand dollars on the open market. Surely it was part sleep deprivation and part protein deficiency, but after I returned from Fendi I wept, there at the desk in my room at the beautiful Westin. I felt like I needed to reach out to someone, so I e-mailed the person who knows me best: my little sister.
I shoved as much of my otherworldly week into my e-mail as I could, and ended on the quasi breakdown I was having with my Fendi purse.
I must be crazy
, I typed.
But itâs all making me emotional. I guess Iâm overwhelmed.
My sisterâs reply was swift.
Sometimes
, she wrote,
I sit back in the house that I live in in Santa Monica, where I can see the ocean, where I live with my incredible husband and our beautiful baby daughter, where Iâm not struggling, where I get to be a stay-at-home mom like I dreamed, and I go back in time and I say to the thirteen-year-old me who felt so out of place and trapped and hopeless, Donât you worry. Youâre going to grow up and get out of here and have the life that you want.
Michelle,
she continued,
you used to get
beat up
for the way you looked. You and Ma fought every day for four years about how you dressed. You need to go back to teenage you and tell her, Donât worry. Youâre going to grow up and get out of here and have the life you want. Youâre going to get to go to Paris and go to the shows and youâre goingto get an incredible $5,000 purse for free because that is just what is going to happen to you. Youâre not going crazy. Itâs a big deal.
Gazing out my window at the Tuileries, the grounds littered with Fashion Week tents, I took her advice and spaced out and talked to thirteen-year-old me. I told her all about Paris and Annie and Jo and the purse in my hands, and I cried even more. Then, I snuck outside my door, grabbed the end of a strangerâs baguette from a room service tray left out for pickup, ate it, and passed out.
Thatâs what Iâm going to talk about on my deathbed.
3.
My $1,100 Birthday
Apartment
T here are many head-fucks a person who grows up broke will contend with for most of her life, and one of them is not really understanding what things cost, or what things are worth. My understanding has always been skewed, and Iâve seen this confusionâoften accompanied by fear and a bit of defensivenessâin other broke folks, including my mom.
Once, on a visit with my sister in Santa Monica, we stopped at a Whole Foods to pick up dinner fixings. My mother tried to help with the shopping, but not only were much of the offerings foreign to her (Gluten-free pasta? Kimchi? Coconut kefir?); the prices struck a deep and confounding terror in her heart. Her eyes grew wide as she took in the costs at the meat counter. âIf I lived here Iâd starve to death!â she gasped, upset. I watched as the world tightened around my mother, grew smaller. An entire region was now out of her reach. She would remain trapped inFlorida, with other poor New Englanders whoâd gambled on a better life and found the same poverty in a warmer climate, with worse labor laws.
âMa, you would not starve. There are other places to shop. This is an expensive place.â
What I wanted to say was,
There are poor people in Los Angeles, too
, but I was afraid to refer to my mother as
poor
; it might make her feel ashamed. Plus, maybe she didnât feel poor. Was poor a mutable identity, like gender or sexual identity, or
It had been a dream, a sort of joke dream, to go to Paris Fashion Week, and inexplicably, it had happened. Once I knew I wasgoing, I jokingly told my friends, âI want to see Kanye West and score a purse,â never really thinking that I would find myself in multiple closed spaces with Kanye and Pink, and Kate Moss, and the Kills, and Paul McCartney, and those wicked Geldof girlsâand find myself cuddling a batshit crazy Fendi purse that I was sure went for no less than five thousand dollars on the open market. Surely it was part sleep deprivation and part protein deficiency, but after I returned from Fendi I wept, there at the desk in my room at the beautiful Westin. I felt like I needed to reach out to someone, so I e-mailed the person who knows me best: my little sister.
I shoved as much of my otherworldly week into my e-mail as I could, and ended on the quasi breakdown I was having with my Fendi purse.
I must be crazy
, I typed.
But itâs all making me emotional. I guess Iâm overwhelmed.
My sisterâs reply was swift.
Sometimes
, she wrote,
I sit back in the house that I live in in Santa Monica, where I can see the ocean, where I live with my incredible husband and our beautiful baby daughter, where Iâm not struggling, where I get to be a stay-at-home mom like I dreamed, and I go back in time and I say to the thirteen-year-old me who felt so out of place and trapped and hopeless, Donât you worry. Youâre going to grow up and get out of here and have the life that you want.
Michelle,
she continued,
you used to get
beat up
for the way you looked. You and Ma fought every day for four years about how you dressed. You need to go back to teenage you and tell her, Donât worry. Youâre going to grow up and get out of here and have the life you want. Youâre going to get to go to Paris and go to the shows and youâre goingto get an incredible $5,000 purse for free because that is just what is going to happen to you. Youâre not going crazy. Itâs a big deal.
Gazing out my window at the Tuileries, the grounds littered with Fashion Week tents, I took her advice and spaced out and talked to thirteen-year-old me. I told her all about Paris and Annie and Jo and the purse in my hands, and I cried even more. Then, I snuck outside my door, grabbed the end of a strangerâs baguette from a room service tray left out for pickup, ate it, and passed out.
Thatâs what Iâm going to talk about on my deathbed.
3.
My $1,100 Birthday
Apartment
T here are many head-fucks a person who grows up broke will contend with for most of her life, and one of them is not really understanding what things cost, or what things are worth. My understanding has always been skewed, and Iâve seen this confusionâoften accompanied by fear and a bit of defensivenessâin other broke folks, including my mom.
Once, on a visit with my sister in Santa Monica, we stopped at a Whole Foods to pick up dinner fixings. My mother tried to help with the shopping, but not only were much of the offerings foreign to her (Gluten-free pasta? Kimchi? Coconut kefir?); the prices struck a deep and confounding terror in her heart. Her eyes grew wide as she took in the costs at the meat counter. âIf I lived here Iâd starve to death!â she gasped, upset. I watched as the world tightened around my mother, grew smaller. An entire region was now out of her reach. She would remain trapped inFlorida, with other poor New Englanders whoâd gambled on a better life and found the same poverty in a warmer climate, with worse labor laws.
âMa, you would not starve. There are other places to shop. This is an expensive place.â
What I wanted to say was,
There are poor people in Los Angeles, too
, but I was afraid to refer to my mother as
poor
; it might make her feel ashamed. Plus, maybe she didnât feel poor. Was poor a mutable identity, like gender or sexual identity, or
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