The Life of the Mind

The other day I had an unfortunate experience. I was getting ready to go out for the night, and I put on my nice pair of jeans (a.k.a. the only pair I own that doesn't have a huge tear at one of the knees). But they didn’t fit. Or rather, they fit, but were uncomfortably tight. I bought these jeans for a stand-up show back in February and they fit great then. What could possibly have happened in the last few months? Did they undergo some sort of shrinking process?

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. The truth was right there in the mirror, starring back at me, a sickening grin on its face: I’ve gained some weight. Not much, mind you, but definitely a few pounds. This came as a terrible shock to me. Because these last few months I have been living the life of an unemployed, twenty-two year old male, a lifestyle I always figured would be akin to having the Flu: it’s not very pleasant, but at least you’ll lose some weight. Seriously, aren’t poor people supposed to be skinny? Isn’t that just one of the things that goes with being poor?

This kind of thinking, I have realized, is deeply flawed. My traditional ideas about the poor (scrawny, long-haired men with newspapers for pants and a wild glint in their eyes) is based on outdated, romanticized notions, and really has no place in today’s world. And after much deliberation, I have realized that my weight gain has not occurred in spite of my unemployment, but rather as a result of. Allow me to explain:

THE LIFESTYLE CHOICES AND LONG TERM GOALS OF THE UNEMPLOYED (NOT INCLUDING GETTING A JOB)

The primary goal of the Unemployed Male (the UM, if you will) is to not spend any money. This is tantamount. Obviously there are the other, more ambitious goals (ex: getting a job*), but when you've sent out your hundredth email in a week without a single response, or maybe when you've been informed by the sour manager of a candy store in Times Square that you aren't qualified to sell chocolates, you reach a breaking point. These other goals seem a bit too lofty, and we must settle for something less.

This new goal, in turn, makes one's day-to-day priorities very different. For instance, there was once a time when spending an entire weekday playing Nintendo 64 would be deemed uneventful. But, for our intrepid UM, this is an exceedingly fruitful use of time. Because there is one defining principle that can still guide you through these hard times, one truth that remains absolute: when you sit in your apartment all day, you will not spend any money. On the other hand, when you are out there in New York City, no matter how frugal you plan on being, you are probably going to spend something. Doesn't matter what you're doing, doesn't matter if you're just going for a crisp stroll. You will spend money. At a certain point you’ll walk past so many pizza shops and cafes and guys selling books on the sidewalk that you just can't help but succumb. It is the curse of this city.

Now I'm not saying that spending entire days sitting around your apartment, your unwashed skin wrapped up in an unwashed robe, is an especially romantic way to live. Nor is it especially healthy. But when you go to bed at the end of the day having not spent a single cent, having managed to keep your rapidly diminishing bank account in a precious moment of stasis, then I’ll be damned if you don’t go sleep with a smile on your face.

THE ARGUMENT FOR BREAD AND CHEESE

New York City is not a difficult place in which to find something to eat. You could be anywhere in the city, and there's a very good chance that you can find food within a block. The problem is, almost anything that’s cheap enough for the UM to eat is also, inevitably, very bad for you. For example, right across the street from my apartment there is a Burger King. It is there every day when I wake up, taunting me, laughing at me, every bit my old nemesis. I frequently complained about Burger King being the only fast food restaurant back in Evanston, but let me say, I gave in and had some the other day (an angry chicken tendercrisp, thank you very much) and, well... it tasted like home. A disgusting, gloppy, fattening home, but home nonetheless. Seriously, though. I bash BK sometimes, but they actually have some extraordinary deals there. For under six dollars you can get a full meal that not only fills you up, but, at least briefly, makes you feel like you never want to eat again. What a bargain!

But see, those brief forays into hard fast food are not a normal occurence. They are regretful benders, most likely fueled by marijuana smoke and sado-masochism. They are not my day-to-day. For the day-to-day, there is something else: pizza. The single most omnipresent food in NYC and, in a cruel twist of fate, also the most consistently satisfying. No matter where you are, there will be a pizza place down the street that provides you with a meal that’s several dollars cheaper and several degrees more delicious than any of the alternatives. There are exceptions to this rule, obviously, but for the young diner with both a light wallet and a discerning palette, New York pizza is really where it’s at.

Now, from the very start, that’s a large amount of bread and cheese in your diet (note: I will be referring to “bread and cheese” collectively as if it was it's own autonomous food group which, given the state of things these days, it pretty much is). But that isn’t even the half of it. Sure, pizza is a cheap thing to eat out, but by far the cheapest way to eat is cooking at home. Assuming that you’re buying your groceries from that super-cheap Supermercado down the street (smiling at the pounds of chicken thighs for a buck fifty, grimacing at the plastic-wrapped chicken feet mere inches away from them), it’s possible to eat at home for something like fifty cents a meal. And while yes, sometimes you do enjoy experimenting in the kitchen, sometimes cooking can be therapeutic and rejuvenating and a perfect stress-killer. But cooking takes time and effort, and those are both precious commodities indeed.

So even for those (like me) who like to cook, there are plenty of nights when the prospect of slaving over a hot stove, of chopping and peeling and smashing and smelling, of eating your entire meal with the dire knowledge that there’s a huge mess in the kitchen waiting to be cleaned as soon as you're done... there are times when that whole shabang just doesn't seem all that appealing. So all the dishes that require actual cooking, all the salads and soups and risottos and roast meats and grilled fish and puttenesca/arrabiatta/chimichurri sauces and pastas that you were thinking about making, all of those go out the window. But we’ve already covered how financially gainful it is to cook something at home, so even though you don't want to be makin’ anything too fancy, you can still make something, can’t you? You can still whip up something that's satisfying and filling and won't mess up the whole kitchen or give you a migraine, right? Are you that inept?

Well, let’s see. You’ve got all that super cheap chicken, which you probably cooked all at once right after you bought it. And you have tortillas, or if you don’t have tortillas then you probably have some bread, and if you don’t have either of those then I’m sure one of your roommates has some, and will they really notice if a couple fucking slices of bread are missing, really? I mean, I’m not saying that you should go all communist in your kitchen, but a little sharing never hurt anyone.

Okay. Some type of sandwich. But do you have lettuce? Tomatoes? Onions? Anything like that? No, you don’t (see: The Argument Against Vegetables). And you don’t just want a piece of cold chicken in between bread, do you? You may be experiencing some financial difficulties these days, but you don’t have to live like a fucking animal. But wait, wait… you have cheese! You always have cheese, that’s one of the essentials. So why don’t you just lay some chicken and cheese on top of your tortilla/bread, pop it in the microwave, and presto! Not only is that easy, and cheap, but your mouth even begins to salivate at the prospect (because no matter what they might say about cheese and bread based concotions, they are undoubtedly delicious). And not only is this delicious, but it takes less than a minute to prepare, and your prep work ranges from incredibly minimal to (if your cheese is pre-shredded) absolutely nothing.

And there you have it. More bread and cheese. And so gradually, without you even noticing, bread and cheese takes over your life. It becomes your primary source of nutrition. Your body becomes accustomed to it, and so does your mind; you begin to inadvertently order quesidillas and tuna melts at restaurants, choosing to indulge in cheese and bread even when you have a wealth of other possibilities, finding a hateful comfort in that soft, gooey taste that fills your mouth and expands your waist. The constipation comes later.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST VEGETABLES

There are many arguments that can be made against vegetables. A lot of people just plain don’t like the taste of them, so their argument is easy. But lets say you are one of the proud few who do enjoy the taste of vegetables, who find them peppery and savory and exciting and fresh, a spa treatment for the inside of your mouth. However, there is a harsh truth that you can’t escape: vegetables need to be cleaned. Whether you are buying them at a boutqiue grocery, an outdoor farmer’s market, or a gas station, the vegetables need to be cleaned. And this cleaning process is, more often than not, a categorical “pain-in-the-ass.” And it doesn’t matter how you’re planning on preparing them. If you’re eating the vegetables raw, adorned with nothing more than table salt and the sweat of your palm, they certainly need to be washed. And if you’re cooking them, it's also a real good idea. You can delude yourself into thinking that by putting broccoli florets over heat all their dirt andgrime will evaporate into thin air, but the reality is it will just become darker and grittier, a more concentrated, pungent form of its' already disgusting self. Still hungry?

Now, here's another misconception about the life of the UM: it may seem like you have a lot of spare time these days, like you have literally nothing but spare time. In fact, your time right now is more precious and regimented than ever before. For instance, any amount of time that you might spend washing vegetables could just as easily be spent applying for jobs, which is the single most important thing that you can be doing and which should take up a sizeable portion of your day, every day (if for no other reason than to the assuage the throbbing guilt that eats away at you any time you think about that incredibly expensive education that you spent the last four years of your life accruing, and that nowadays is getting about as much use as that Bowflex in your parent's closet).

This is not to say, obviously, that your entire day should be spent applying to jobs. No sir. No man can live like that. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re bent over a shining computer screen in your underwear or peddling your resume door-to-door, spending too much time only applying for jobs will begin to eat away at the very fabric of your soul. You’ll know when you’ve reached your breaking point for the day, because the same job-hunting that was working to feed your guilt (and, thus, marginally improve your rapidly diminishing psychological health) has now begun to demoralize and depress you. All of the sudden, you’re five times worse than when you started: you’re crouched in the corner of your room, shivering in a blanket, wishing that you lived three hundred years ago and had been forced to learn a proper skill or trade at a young age. Wishing that you now had the facilities to perform an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, and would never have to think about cover letters or resumes or informational meetings or cold calling or interviews ever, ever again.

Those are the bad days. They are inevitable. But as the barren winter approaches, how can we try and guarantee ourselves just a few more good days? The answer is simple: the times that are not spent applying for jobs should be spent, in effect, recooperating yourself. This recooperation can take the form of activities that are entirely mindless (playing videogames, watching the Glenn Beck Show) or therapeutic and rejuvenating (reading, writing, watching Barton Fink on Instant Netflix). Peeling and cleaning vegetables, unfortunately, does not fall into either of these categories. To do it properly you need a big sink (bigger than we have), and lots of clean dishrags (psshaw) or paper towels (the environment!). And, when it comes down to it, you’re just washing and scrubbing crusted old dirt off of ragged shit that comes from the ground. It isn’t a fun thing to do, and the inclusion of this kind of non-fun / non-productive activity into your schedule could really wreak havoc on your extremely frail psyche. And maybe it won’t really make that much of a difference, but honestly. Things haven't been going so well. You’re in a tender place right now. Why risk it?

THE EXERCISE ENIGMA

Of course, some people would say that it doesn’t really matter what you eat, especially for a strapping young man such as yourself. These people will say that you can eat pretty much anything you want, provided that you exercise. And there have been times in the past where you exercised on a semi-regular basis, and despite the mundane pain of the whole thing, you found that every time you left the gym you felt refreshed and powerful and just goddamn good about yourself. And now, with no job, no hope, no future, that kind of refreshed/renewed feeling could do a whole lot of good for you. But it isn’t that simple, is it?

Gyms cost money. Lots of money. Even the one that’s a few blocks away, one room, no showers, no locker rooms, a hole in the wall with treadmills, even that one costs lots of money to join. Perhaps it all seems like lots of money because you are more financially aware right now than you have ever been before, because you understand the value of the dollar in a visceral way that no amount of civic class theorizing or folksy talks with your father would ever approximate. But still, whatever the case, it’s a lot of money, and this is a time where money just can’t be spent on nonessentials (and as a member of the male sex who does not flex in front of the mirror every night and feel comfortable slapping strange girls in the ass when they pass you at the club, a gym membership does not quite register as “essential’).

But that’s fine, isn’t it? Who says you need a fancy-schmancy gym membership to get in shape? You can just go running outside, do push-ups in your room, create the perfect sculpted physique and do it by utilizing your own muscles and the sweet power of gravity. Problem is, you live in Harlem, and since you already feel a bit self-conscious just walking around outside, you can only imagine how miserable you’ll feel dressed in your gay little running outfit, running these hilly streets as you sweat and pant like a bitch (which is precisely what you’ll be doing the first time you run after four months of perpetual sitting-on-your-ass). You could still do push ups in your room, sure, but as the lack of running packs on the pounds, push ups will become more and more difficult, and the lack of forward momentum in your exercise regime (a perfect parallel to the lack of forward momentum in every other part of your godforsaken life) will be very, very frusterating.

Perhaps it’s better to just accept your physical decline and know that in order to be fit, you might just have to wait til you’re rich. And maybe that will also coincide with becoming well-adjusted and popular and joyful and you’ll start to dress better too. It’s an all or nothing world, friend. Grit your teeth and accept it.

______

So there you have it. Circumstantial evidence that my weight gain is an (almost) inevitable result of my current unemployment, just a part of the natural order of the universe. Granted, there are ways to work around these issues; for instance, the gym membership quagmire can be temporarily solved by making use of all the free trial memberships that are offered at just about every health club in the city. This works great, so long as you don’t mind lying to the face of friendly people. But those strategies are for another day. For now, I have some sitting around to do.

*Note: For those of you who are curious, I am actually hot on the trail right now for a really, really, stupidly great job, but I don’t want to jinx anything by talking about it. All I can say is it would be a real trip if I got it, after spending several months unsuccessfully applying for the type of jobs that I was trying to get in fucking High School. Either sweet irony, or positive proof that success in this life is based entirely on blatant, vacillating chance. I'll take either.