What the contents of your wallet say about you

Brian, who was looking for paper clips in my desk drawers the other day, informed me that there was a wallet in one of them that still had money in it. How I managed to tuck something like that away and almost permanently forget about it in the span of 8 months is beyond me, but I checked it out and it was legit. My old wallet, with money in it.

I happen to be in the middle of an artistic crisis. It seems that everything I’ve done so far is completely boring and I hate it. It’s making it hard to continue with anything. I actually want to destroy everything I’ve made so far, then kill myself.

But instead of doing that, I’m going to blog about the contents of my old wallet!

1. Cash Money! $28.31, mostly in dollar bills

2. Not one, but three Tasti D-lite punch cards, doubtless from three different Tasti D’s in areas frequently visited (we see here 9th Avenue/44th street and Waverly Place/University Place represented).

3. My health insurance card and the many wonderful things we did together. Those were the days! Acupuncture (which didn’t cure the depression or the ghosts but certainly helped with the constipation), holographic repatterning (which helped with the depression and the ghosts but could not eradicate the fear of the apocalypse), and gynecology (which didn’t help with the apocalypse, but reassured me that it wasn’t happening in my vagina).

4. This. I have no idea what this is, but someone (in Canada) thought that 5 cents was an appropriate amount to print coupons for. And someone else thought that I could use it.

5. Transportation. A New York Metro Card and a D.C. Metro Card. The D.C. card still has $7.65 on it. The New York Metro Card’s worth is undisclosed.

6. Friends’ business cards. I believe Ms. Uresse has changed positions. It’s too bad, because “Button Stylist to the Stars” is a pretty rad job title.

7. My beat-up ticket to “Bodies,” which I visited two years ago at the South Street Seaport in New York. It was the best thing I have ever seen. I saw real fetuses. I saw a thumb with elephantitis. I saw an internal tumor that was growing hair and teeth. And I also know what every single thing inside my body looks like. For days, we would just look at one another and all we could say was “BODIES.”

8. A giveaway card that I had made for an open studio at NYU my senior year. At the time, I was obsessed with the way that mangled umbrellas lined the streets after a storm. It seemed so violent, and for some reason, I loved to picture the moment where each individual umbrella gave out on its owner, and they were forced to join the elements once again.

9. This is one of my favorites; an old one, passed down from wallet to wallet. In middle school and high school, me and my very best friend Elinor used to play this game. Elinor never really liked to write (even though she always managed to crank out a few letters when I went to camp for the summer), so instead of writing notes to one another between classes as most bestest friends do, we used to draw each other pictures. And what were the pictures of? We drew pictures of each other. Sweet, right? Except that we drew pictures of each other dying horribly violent deaths. So I would draw her falling off an absurdly high cliff into the jaws of a hungry alligator. And she would draw me impaled on 4 foot spikes, and so on. I actually think it was pretty advanced humor, considering we were so young.

Here is one such drawing.

The outside:

The way it gets folded up, and because of the reversible nature of the letter H, it almost looks like it might say “HI!” with happy little lines, but no: “DEATH” with some flair. Also, notice the naked woman in the top left corner on the outside page. I have a feeling Elinor didn’t draw that. It’s just not her style.

The inside:

Notice the people laughing at my scared, pathetic, nearly dead ass in the background.

10. Mementos from the road trip. A few days in Vegas that were so crazy, I couldn’t part with our hotel card, and a vintage store in Vancouver that showed a little compassion (in discount form) when all of our clothes were stolen by meth addicts.

11. A reminder of darker times. I ate at this salad place every day when I worked at The Matisse Foundation in midtown. I was miserable. I stood in a line out the door (in the cold) with dozens and dozens of people in suits talking about finance and real estate to get my lunch. I ate alone. Even if I go back there, I won’t let them stamp that remaining happy little lettuce head– it represents my release, right in the nick of time. Or, on second thought, it is a free salad.

12. Art supplies!

13. My student ID, which must have been taken during a bagel eating marathon, or else the lens was distorted. My face is lookin’ round. But I do have a nice tan. I remember I went to take the picture with Cliff, and he had to take it a thousand times because he kept making funny faces and they wouldn’t allow it. He’d make a normal face and then change it to something silly as soon as the flash went off. They tried to be upset with him but the faces were so funny. In the end they compromised: he didn’t do much with his face. He just made his eyes so large and buggy that he looked like zombie.

14. And last, but certainly not least, a monument to the compromising of all of my ideals just to make Zach happy. I love bagels, this is common knowledge. So ever since freshman year of college, Zach has insisted that I one day try bagels and lox. I am a devout vegetarian, 15 years strong. I always declined. At a going away party for yours truly (I was getting ready for an 8 month odyssey, beginning in Spain and ending in Kenya), I got too drunk and yelled, “I’ll do it! I’ll eat lox!” And they held me to it. The next morning, we got bagels from Bob’s (my fav) and lox from the undisputed best lox place in the city, Russ and Daughters on Houston Street. I didn’t buy the lox. I wouldn’t. I ate it and it was a big to-do. (There are several pictures of the first few bites.) It was fucking awesome. Two years later, in honor of my leaving again, to Spartanburg this time, I succumbed to peer pressure and decided to participate in yet another lox extravaganza. It didn’t feel right this time. Once is forgivable, but twice? Why not have a sausage link, or roast a pig on a spit? Why not skin a mink myself and wear it around my neck? But Zach really wanted to do it. This time, because of logistics, I had to pick up the lox. I watched them slice the meat right off the fish. It made me nauseous. I ate the damn bagel, but I didn’t enjoy it and felt ill for two days. Never again.

So that’s it. My wallet. Yippee. Now can someone provide me with a reason to live?