I should not have picked up, but I didn’t want to be bothered throughout the day with her calling me again. So we talked. Well, I purposely dominated the conversation in an effort to say my piece and hoped she’d land on the position that now wasn’t the time to keep badgering me.
Yes, this is Michael.
Yes, I understand why you are calling, but as I explained to one of your colleagues a few days ago, I don’t know when I will be able to make another payment.
However, I did make sure to make a payment last week to avoid charge off.
She granted me mercy by informing me that she would make sure the calls would cease for a few days. They were back on December 26. I should have known better—I was told during last week’s call, too, that I would get a reprieve. Here we were, all the same.
I guess thirty-six hours of space is better than none.
The first time I got one of these calls, I was mortified. Me? Behind on a payment? No, no, no. I was not going to be one of those. That is not a diss to people who fall behind on payments—millions upon millions of people living in America (and counting). Life happens; that I get. But I didn’t want it to become a regular thing for me. It would mean that I was losing my fight to stay afloat of this debt. That would then mean that it was having an impact on my credit. And if it was having an impact on my credit, it would hurt me if I wanted to get a car, a house, one of those credit cards that can lead to racking up points so that I could take a damn vacation somewhere nice without having to come out of pocket as much. Beyond all of this, not being hounded by creditors was just its own peace of mind. I was determined not to lose mine.
Whatever needed to be done, whatever needed to be sacrificed, to make sure those payments were made on time was done. I operated this strictly for a significantly long time. As I said, I was determined.
Then things became harder than they needed to be. One company owed me so much money during the summer of 2014—well over $5,000—and that spilled into the fall. Whatever else I brought in had to go to necessities. I was living check to check and constantly trying to collect as many of them as possible. And when your financial state is stuck in quicksand, it’s easy to slip and bust your ass on the ground. So here I was.
It got a little better, but it was so easy to fall back behind. The system was designed this way. I hated to feel like a statistic, some sob story. But life became more about mere survival than appeasing the people making my life a never-ending financial nightmare. Or, when I miraculously had the chance, helping other people through their own financial distress. My loans may have been devastating to me, but I had grown up seeing far worse devastation. So I helped when I could. It has become easier to ignore my student loan oppressors over time because there are only so few people I ever actually speak to on the phone. That, and the robocalls are endless; I let the ignore and silent options on my iPhone serve their purpose. I assume no one means to call me unless the conversation has been previously scheduled or a blood relative over the age of forty needs to voice their distress. But eventually—unfortunately—I do have to make contact. So when I am good and ready, as my pops would say, albeit in a more financially solvent context, I dial that number. By good and ready, I mean when I am either prepared to make good on how much I owe in back payments, or if too many media entities owe me paychecks at once, I want to find out the bare minimum I need to pay to avoid defaulting on any of my loans. It’s not that big of a choice for me in the end: Settle up or snuggle up with your nightmare scenario.
They call my mother, too. She did cosign these loans—against her better judgment. In fact, they call her as much they call me. She’s become immune to this; she’s learned to ignore them. I hate that I have put her in the position to be harassed in that way. Every so often she will send me a text saying she picked up the phone and gave them some amount of money. She says not to worry about it. I tell her thank you, but that I wish she hadn’t given them anything. After all, she brought me up in Catholicism, so she should know that I can’t shake off guilt easily.
Yes, we could change our numbers, but that really doesn’t solve the underlying problem, now does it, beloveds? The debt is still the debt. Besides, to completely ignore a major financial institution to which you owe a large debt would be inciting the wrath of a major financial institution. I’d rather not.
Once I engage any of these people on the other end of the line, I get right to it. I give them my name and my Social Security number. They ask me to wait a moment for their computers to update. Then they ask would I like to pay the total outstanding balance?
I try not to laugh. Do you think I called to give you that much? If I did, I would have paid online, fool. No, this call is to perform damage control with what I have to offer. But cute of you to be that optimistic given your line of work.
I give just enough to avoid default. Just enough means, at minimum, $800 or so. But there are the times when the loan companies hear me say the word “no,” and their voices shift to a disappointed tone. If they are genuinely nice people or new to their jobs, they will ask if I would like to explore the options available to me during times of financial hardship. I assume when my name appears on their computer screen, there is some indication that no such options exist. Something along the lines of “this bitch is hopeless, but he better pay us.” But apparently not, because I have to inform them that no such options exist. Sometimes, they’ll offer to check just in case. They then return and confirm what I already knew to be true.
Then I get asked why I have fallen behind on payments. The question enrages me every single time, but I have to maintain my composure. On second thought, no, I often do not, but I try not to be rude to people who haven’t been rude to me. It’s not because I fear they will hear the Lawry’s seasoning in my voice and fall into stereotypes about Black people. I couldn’t give any less of a fuck about that. If they want to believe the worst, white people will think whatever they want about Black people no matter the setting, income, credit score, or debt ratio. So it’s not that at all. I just try not to be rude. It’s the southerner in me. My problems are not the fault of any of them—something I tend to say when trying to answer their frustrating line of questioning in an effort to get to the point and go on about my day.
Freelance writing and my various other hustles, which all fall under the scope of contract work, don’t make my life easier, but at the same time, I’ve come to realize that even if I was a W-2 bitch (a term of endearment, I assure you, W-2 bitches) earning an obscene amount of money, life wouldn’t necessarily be any better for me. It is a pain to be paid late and to have to essentially threaten to run up (legally or physically), but with experience, you learn to better bob and weave with those companies that take longer than they should. The underlying issue is that I am required to pay an enormous sum of money per month by most American workers’ standards—all while simultaneously trying to eat regularly and not be homeless.
So, that’s why I’m late, motherfuckers, and while I understand that none of the people who answer the phone are in control of their employers’ policies, they should all acknowledge that by not offering to negotiate repayment terms under any circumstances, the whole system makes the situation all the more difficult. For them and for me.
I did try to refinance once. Very early on, actually. What ended this was noticing that, at the time, most of those companies offering refinancing were trying to fuck me over even worse. One company in particular made an offer to somehow expand my debt from a twelve-year repayment structure to a thirty-year one without decreasing the monthly payments by any significant figure. I stuck with the devil I had come to know.
What kills me about each and every one of the customer service reps from Citibank Student Loans and eventually Discover Student Loans (the former sold my debt to the latter) is that they are keenly aware of how screwed I am in the situation. You want me to pay $800 a month on a twelve-year plan with only two deferments? This sum on top of other bills—including some other stu
dent loans that covered expenses these other loans did not? In the United States of America? And not as a millionaire?
That’s what makes their repeated inquiries so frustrating.
But their questions end up asked and answered.
Once I wrap my remarks, the people on the phone proceed to stop pretending they can be helpful and accept my payment. They know that there is no additional deferment available unless there is a natural disaster that significantly affects where you live. Likewise, they are fully aware that their employer, my lender and oppressor, will not lower my payments in favor of an extended repayment period.
I hate cyclical conversations generally, but I loathe none more than these.
Annoying as they are, I can at least deal with the well-meaning folks. A few of them even reference their own student loan woes. And again, they didn’t do this to me. Their employer did—and only has the ability to do so because I gave them consent once I took their money. My not totally understanding what I was getting myself into is now not a productive thing to fixate on. You can’t go back. As much as I strive not to care about what others think of me, the less-than-nice bill collectors do get to me.
All that said, even if I understand people have a job to do, and even if I have no intention of being rude to people over my struggles with my student loan debt, that doesn’t mean I want to talk to any of these people. Who cares if they’re cordial in conversation when they’re still calling me early in the morning and late into the night? Or when I’m heading to a funeral or when I’m in the middle of tears about a loved one suddenly passing? Or when I’m at the movies? Or at a restaurant? Or when it interrupts my Friday night and I have to excuse myself to go into a room and give up literally the last of what I have in order to avoid defaulting? These callers may not be fully aware of what a Draconian process this all is and how they play a role in it, but does that make it any less of a nightmare for me? No, so all the more reason to especially hate the callers who go out of their way to be disrespectful.
It has been my experience that no matter who they are with regards to their gender or race and ethnicity, if they are the type of person who thinks they are above someone struggling to make their payments, they will make that evident to you.
Many of them seem to derive joy from kicking another person when they’re down. What a peculiar kind of twitch. I assume that it makes them feel better about their own shortcomings. Or they’re just assholes that arguably should have been swallowed. I can’t call it, I just catch it the second I get a whiff of it. It’s not like they make it hard to. They want me to know they think less of me.
Sometimes I give it back to them. To make clear that my struggles with this one facet of my life do not mean I am whatever caricature of a broke person they have conjured in their minds (as they sit in a cubicle, more than likely making a lot less than I do). In a few instances, my words to them involve lots and lots of profanity. It doesn’t make me feel any better, and I’m sure it doesn’t help their day. Oh, well. They should learn to live by the proverb Don’t start no shit, won’t be no shit—and making people suffer through student loan repayment is the most flagrant example of starting shit.
They remind me of the most terrible sect of TSA employees. The ones who take even the slightest bit of newfound power and start behaving like mini-tyrants since it’s as close proximity to that level of control as they’ll ever get. The power trippers who smugly speak down to people going through security, the ones that you want to chop in the throat but cannot, because the last thing you want is to get tackled at the security checkpoint and taken into federal custody. Or any club bouncer. Why do so many of them act like assholes? It’s not our fault they didn’t make the cut for the NFL, the WWE, or UFC. Anyone who exists within this subgenre of humanity ranks high among the most contemptible. The bill collectors for the student loan oppressor are the Kevin and Joe to their Nick.
Whenever I get caught up on my payments, I feel such a great sense of relief, though it lasts for only a short while. It doesn’t take long for me to worry all over again. About what happens if I fall behind once more. When I get the sneaking suspicion that I might, my anxiety levels start to rise. The breaths become louder and sharper as my mind wrongly convinces itself that the air will soon escape me altogether.
Part of that is knowing that no matter how long I go with consistent payments—ranging from a few months to several months to well over a year—the calls will sound the same no matter what.
It is technically better to speak to a sympathetic ear than an unsympathetic one, but I wish I didn’t have to talk to these people at all. These calls have taken a mental toll on me over time. I am uneasy with that admission—yes, it’s pride—but it is one reached for reasons that feel reasonable.
For more than a decade now, whenever I have fallen behind on student loan payments that rival mortgage payments across various parts of the South and Midwest, I know that I will be inundated with calls hour after hour every single day of the week (yes, sometimes on Sunday morning, too) badgering me about the impossible situation I have to live with. Yeah, some of them will behave decently; offer condolences for my situation and wish me luck. And yeah, some of them will put me down; go out of their way to make me feel worse than I already do. They’re all villains to me, no matter their tone.
They’re all reminding me of my failures and my hardships and how both are rooted in a mistake I made in 2002 when I sought the assistance of a bank to fund my college tuition. I did not know I basically was sacrificing myself to a poorly regulated system designed to help major corporations fuck suckers over. It’s a mistake I can’t take back.
The feeling won’t go away until they go away. They will not go away until I pay them off. I used to say that on the day I make my last payment to my student loan oppressors, I would hand deliver the check and proceed to piss on the grass outside of the building if not the building itself. I wanted to hold a press conference, too. I imagine this would have ended up in my being asked to leave private property by a member of law enforcement who may or may not have shot me in the face for no other reason than it being a Black one, but the goal was to troll them as hard as they have trolled me if only for mere moments. I have hated these people for so long. For very good reason.
Now that I’m getting older, I’m not angling to tempt fate in that way. I won’t show up at the corporate headquarters, knucking and bucking and ready to fight. I won’t channel my inner Al Sharpton and pop my collar at the podium in the pursuit of some justice. All I want is peace. I cannot wait to take comfort in knowing that those people can never call me again. That I won’t have to deal with any of those nosy people thinking they are Suze Orman or some shit. Or the people who act like they are some oligarch calling me from their lofty apartment in a Trump Tower they may or may not be using to launder money, allegedly.
I cannot wait to have the peace that comes from knowing they can never call me again. I am almost there. I won’t think I’m better than anyone for it, either. I only hope they never have to experience that burden, and if they do, that they are freed from it, too. But if they call you at the crack of dawn on Christmas Eve or on the weekend, I’ll always defend your right to cuss them smooth out.
K STREET THOT (AND OTHER CAREERS CONSIDERED)
I always forget LinkedIn exists until someone I met once seven years ago sends me a request to “connect.” For what purpose? I heard from straight people that the business-casual hussies (this is a gender-neutral term round this way) use LinkedIn not to network but to hook up. Hard pass (double meaning intended). I prefer for any consensual sexual trysts that begin in a DM to be initiated on a platform that is not permanently set to business casual. And I write for a living. If you need to connect with me for work, scour my Twitter timeline mid-rant and send an email asking if I want to write eight hundred words for middling-to-good money (depending on the outlet), like any other editor in this climate.
But then I have to remember that there are much bet
ter adults than I am out in the world who use LinkedIn to network and/or nut. And they want their connection. Like, they really, really want that connection. So whenever I decide to finally respond to the seventy-second email reminding me that a person from wherever I met them wants to connect and then never speak to me again, I am on the site, and soon thereafter, reminded of what could have been.
Instead of listing “writer,” which continues to be not a real job to sizable portions of the population for reasons both valid and totes unfair, my job title should perhaps be “senior medical analyst.” Or “pharmacist.” Or “investment banker.” Or whatever screams responsible, stable adult with ample amounts of disposable income that no private student loan could conquer.
Believe me, I am fully aware of the fun fact that choosing a career in media was not the wisest option for someone interested in not feeling swallowed whole by their sizable debt. I did not go in with blinders. I understood that I would be required to perform a lot of indentured servitude guised as an internship before even being considered to get hired for my first low-paying entry level position. I also knew that it would take time to overcome the seemingly endless sacrifices made in order to eventually get over that hump. These positions are primed for people with means. People who can actually afford the sacrifice. It’s cute when folks who are of means like to go on and on about how hard they work, but while no one can take away whatever strong work ethic they claim to have, they still have a leg up.
My mom’s nursing career saw her begin as an LVN rather than the higher-earning RN she wanted to be before entering nursing school. Determined, well over a decade later, she made the choice to go back to school while raising kids to get her RN and make more for her family. In both of my parents, I saw people with multiple hustles doing whatever was required to get by and work for a better way for their children. I had reason to think I could do the same for my own dream.
I Don't Want to Die Poor Page 4