Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re in the house of the owner of Arizona’s first Rolls Royce dealer, and after his 89-year-old wife has adequately prepared a bolognese, he wants help getting into his email, as Anthony skipped lunch.

My life is a fucking dichotomy at this point. I have rejected capitalism and am planning a commune, yet I have a soft spot for a multimillionaire who provided a chilled white from the Valais.

Oh, he’s also the honorary Swiss consul. Just another day at the office.

Returning to Arizona has always felt weird because I know why and how I was raised, but it simply isn’t me. Elsbeth asked some question about the artistic director of the Phoenix Boys Choir when I was the soprano soloist, and I ask if she knows Herbie is now running it. Max jumps in and asks what happened to the Austrian, and I’m like “Georg Stangelberger? He was a disaster for the choir.”

Because, you see, I am actually that guy.

I am back in Texas tonight, having negotiated Phoenix roads without actually thinking. I don’t drive in Austin on autopilot, but drop me in fucking Scottsdale and I can debate fine policy points while also knowing I need to be one lane to the left in 1,000 feet.

I don’t like that Paradise Valley is where I simply need no directions. It’s a terribly uppity place now, but it wasn’t when I was growing up.

A.J.'s was not A.J.'s in the '80s. It was A.J. Bayless, and simply a small grocery store, not the absurd monstrosity of expensive food it currently is.

But, you see, that’s where I grew up. It’s just home. It looks really high-end, but the Bentleys are in the garage.

When Elsbeth asked to see where we’d deposited Pop, we had to go up the road a bit to get her a decent view. Via the garage, where of course there’s a Volvo as the daily driver and two Bentleys and a Jag.

Because that’s who I was. And I fall back into it easily. But it’s not at all who I am now.

  • t3rmit3 ( t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) English
    1·
    5 days ago

    I had a somewhat strange upbringing, because my divorced parents ended up at very different ends of the economic spectrum, with me living with my mother on the poor end, but then visiting my dad for holidays in whatever European country he was living in at the time, and then turning around and going right back to the banned-from-all-the-fast-food-restaurants-for-bouncing-checks life at home.

    My partner only really sees or hears about the glamorous side (and I certainly don’t deny that I’ve been very privileged), but I think the stints living out of our car, or dinner being a heinz tomato soup can heated on a hot plate with kraft singles melted in, for n days in a row (back when that only ran you 35 cents a day), gave me an appreciation for the absolute bullshit crapshoot and stacked-deck poker that is economic success in the US.

    And it’s funny because my partner often comments on how the food I’ll eat if left to my own devices is “absolute crap” (bologna on white bread with mustard is a perfectly good sandwich!), when I can afford to eat much better and we regularly do, but for me there’s no stigma to eating like that, it’s just food.