HUMANOID WISHES FOR A NEARBY FUTURE, 8:

Like every christmas is basically a rerun of emotions, rituals, consumerism and urban tales, I join the corps of howling wolfs with a 2004 tale of poverty, which I intend to do every chritsmas for as long as I blog: Through repetition to create a plausible cultural narrative.

In the first days of december I was poor, and that in it self is a very good reason not to be head over heels in love with Big Business. I was poor and poverty is embarrassing and paralyzing. I was poor and I was out of cigarettes. Two things that is not a sociological surprise in The States; being poor and a passionate smoker, but nonetheless: I needed my smokes, and I’ll be damned not to get them.
I had about 3 dollar and 75 cents in coins, that’s about 140 coins because I was down to counting one-cent and five-cent pieces, and 2 dollar 16 cent, sitting on my debit-card. I took the car down to the local Seven Eleven Foodstore(!), on the mercy of big business reluctant to shop there, but that was as far as the car would take me, running really low on fuel. When you are poor, it’s hard to uphold your principles.
Once in the shop not wanting to disclose my poverty to the afro-American woman at the register, I asked for a pack of American Spirit Lights, and ran my card through the slit.And no surprise to me: the display says: “Declined”.“Let me just try again” I told her, and I did, and it did. The card was declined again.
“I don’t understand. I’m awaiting a transfer from Europe, and it should have gone through…like…days ago” I lie in total self-denial.
I’m ordering the transfer tomorrow, and only threw in the Europe fact to deroute the focus of my situation.
“You know what, let me just run to the ATM-machine on the other side of the street to see if it looks different.”
I actually did it, and I almost believed that it would look different, but I knew very well that it wouldn`t, I was in other word HOPING that it did, knowing that it WOULDN`T and it didn’t. The three dollars and seventy-five cents I meticulously had counted before leaving and left in the car in a plastic bag, were just waiting to picked up and spend. And so it goes: I picked up the coins in the car, which I wouldn’t even call money, and went back into the shop.“Well, the money hadn’t come, but if you would be very patient with me, I’ve got my parkometer coins here, and I think if I count them, it’ll pay a pack of smokes..”
“No problem” said the clerk, and I emptied the bag on the counter, just as about a group of people entered the shop, and lined up behind me. I had counted as long as 2 dollar 80 cents, and piled the coins up, when the sweat started to drip. I looked at the price tags under different pack of smokes and saw the cheapest, a pack of Gold Coast: 2,79.
“Allright, give me a pack of those” I said and pointed to the Gold Coasts.
“Which?” says the clerk, and brings out a pack of Chesterfield, 3,89 dollars, from the rack next to the Gold Coasts.
“No, no, the ones left…”
“Oh, the cheep ones…-of course…sorry” she says.
“No problem” I reply, as I get the pack and scrape the rest of the coins into the bag. I leave the shop stumbling, pushes the door instead of pulling, though it says PULL on a big sticker. Once outside I rip the pack open, not having smoked for hours. The smoke is good, but loose, and disappears in 6 drags. A one-minute fag to ease the long pain of being poor.

A week later when the money had finally come through I went back to the same shop to buy more smokes and in that sense expecting to prove my credibility to the same clerk: I`m not poor. It was a freak situation. But she wasn`t working.Instead it was this incredibly fat, toothless woman, who almost took my craving for a glassy donut and a cup of coffee away. On the counter lay a laminated pricelist stating the many prices of different donuts, which I by accident push of the counter with my coffeecup.

The woman then picks it up places it on the counter again and with a smile saying.“Oh you guys! All you wanna do is to see me bend over….”
I havn`t shopped there since.

I wish that poverty was less visuable.