So maybe Jonathan is wrong. I’m not boring. I am inconvenient, a costly inconvenience. “My rules” require that if they want to spend time with me doing anything fun, my friends have to buy me. Debbie and I compromise on a coffee, for which I “let” her pay.
Later, on the phone, I recount the exchange to Prudence, who is also a friend of Debbie’s. She offers another theory: “When someone isn’t shopping, it’s as if a vacuum forms,” she says. “You feel you have to rush in and fill it.”
By not buying, Paul and I have mobilized a small army of surrogate consumers.
JUNE 7
We run out of Q-tips. I try to wash my ears with a washcloth but can’t reach the sweet spot. Is impeccable ear hygiene a necessity?
JUNE 10
Paul receives an e-mail from a friend inviting him to join her “gifting circle”:
There are 3 gifting opportunities or stages in the You’ve Got Friends Circle process—Prosperity, Generosity and Abundance.
There are 15 individuals in each Circle. There is 1 BLESSED—2 JOYS—4 HOPES and 8 FRIENDSHIPS. The Friendships are the new members coming into our Circle who gift the person in the Blessed position.
Paul is troubled. “These ‘gifting circles’ are pyramid schemes,” he tells me, and explains the marketing and investment con games that promise financial rewards to participants who bring in more recruits (say, each friend brings in six friends). The hitch is, they never inform new members that the odds of recovering their “investments” diminish radically with each concentric circle, since the circle must be complete before they get their money, and each circle grows geometrically larger.
He sends his friend the URL of a Web site that explains the ways people are burned by this specious form of generosity, which cloaks itself in the language of friendship, freedom, wisdom, women’s empowerment, and the ever popular “new paradigm.” The Web site also reports on the fraud and tax evasion cases being brought against the enterprises by states’ attorneys general and the IRS. He feels bad, raining on her hopes, but also is praying she won’t be too blessed out to pay attention.
We’re leaving for Montana in two weeks. The origami corpses are still taking up most of the kitchen table. We are still agonizing over Sarah’s gift. It’s a welcome agony, to be sure, the privilege of generosity being ours for once. But we’re getting down to the wire.
As I put two bowls of soup on the table, Paul strides into the kitchen, excited. “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you give Sarah something you own that you love?”
“That’s it!” I shout. A gift is a gift by virtue of being given, says the poet and anthropologist Lewis Hyde in his imaginative and generous book entitled, like Mauss’s,The Gift. Hyde’s thesis is not a tautology; rather, it describes what you might call the social physics of giving. The gift, he says, must perish for the giver so that it can it be reborn for the recipient. “A market exchange has an equilibrium or stasis: you pay to balance the scale.” I approach the Green Bun Lady. I want a bun, she wants a dollar; we don’t want a relationship. I give her the dollar, she gives me the bun. End of story. “But when you give a gift there is momentum, and the weight shifts from body to body.”
“Perfect!” I say again. I mentally review my possessions. From body to body: jewelry. I open my Mexican wooden jewelry box (Recuerdo—“I remember”—is inlaid on the top, above a picture of a pony) and pull out a silver and turquoise Navaho necklace that my mother bought just after the war. Its design is an unusual cross between folk art and Art Deco, between antique and modern. In my twenties, I noticed Mom never wore the necklace, and asked for it. She gave it to me. Now I rarely wear it. It is tarnished, its clasp broken. It needs a new life.
I call my mother to ask if it’s okay to give the necklace to Sarah. She doesn’t quite remember it (so much for “lovingly handed down for generations”). Still, the piece is meaningful to me: it feels like an heirloom. Plus, the blue will bring out the color of Sarah’s eyes.
In the next days I stitch a pouch out of a remnant of satin brocade and Paul carefully glues opalescent wrapping paper over a small cardboard box that has seen better days. He irons a sheet of wrinkled tissue paper to put inside, as well as a thick piece of gros-grain ribbon for the outside. I make a card. A friend of his fixes the catch and polishes the silver. We wrap the necklace in the paper and load it into the pouch, which we lay in the box. It looks like a small coffin.
JUNE 24
I have paid off my credit card—$7,956.21! I will announce my achievement tonight at Voluntary Simplicity, Paul’s and my last meeting before decamping for Vermont. I have to say, I’m proud of myself.
Since the group last gathered, some things have changed, some remain the same. Elisa has a new job in a college library. Lionel’s wife has lost her job. One household in fresh crisis; unemployment trends flat. In spite of his wife’s plight, Lionel is still lobbying for the big refrigerator. I write in my notebook,Can this marriage be saved?
We’re not supposed to get to Spirituality until the last meeting, but the theme finds its way constantly into our conversations. For lack of better analysis (or evidence), the group (minus me) has faith that things work out—jobs will be found, budgets will balance, Dana’s clutter will go in its own time. Lionel, who says he has been conversing frequently with God, declares that “the universe is bountiful.”
Unable to keep my mouth shut, I say, “I don’t know if the universe is bountiful or not. But the U.S. government and the multinational corporation sure ain’t.”
This throws us into a series of doctrinal disputes. Is or is not the universe bountiful? Will the meek inherit the earth (they haven’t yet, I mutter). Irwin, always eager to assume blame, hedges our bets by quoting his mother: “God helps those who help themselves.”
Another debate: is there anything fundamentally wrong with being rich? Voluntary Simplicity is ambivalent on the matter. The movement may reject the obsessive accumulation of wealth, but it has nothing against the accumulation of wealth (remember Beryl’s “wise investments”?). The debate advances: might a camel, under certain circumstances, be capable of passing through the eye of a needle?
JUNE 25
Paul and I take public transportation to the airport. A nervous traveler, I am biting my nails as the bus pushes its way like a balloon catheter through the clogged arteries of Queens, stopping every block to disgorge a fatty clot of schoolchildren. I’m carrying a sack of cold remedies, a product category of which I am a devoted consumer. Before getting on the plane, I take two ginger root capsules, a natural preventive for airsickness. I also appear to have the flu. My head is exploding and I feel nauseated before even stepping onto the aircraft.
Paul has made our supper: mozzarella and homemade pesto with mushroom-onion relish on Italian bread from Caputo’s, a local deli, and an apple for each of us. It’s bound to be better than the airline “food,” if there is any. As soon as we’ve reached cruising altitude the stewardess offers a snack in a box, and, indeed, it is the typical balanced airline meal of one flat slice of orange cheese and one of beige meat on a roll that is somewhere between the two in color. There’s also a bag of multigrain Sun Chips and a brownie. I guess I’m hungrier than I thought, or hungry for anything commercially produced and served, so I gobble down the sandwich, which is about as tasty as the cardboard box. When Paul takes out our lovely supper, I’m too full and sick to eat.
In the Denver airport, I buy a pack of Dentyne Ice gum to quell my nausea. It costs $1.49 and is the first candy I’ve bought in five months. It’s medicine, I tell myself, but now I feel guilty in addition to ill.
On the next leg of the flight, from Denver to Bozeman, we are seated in front of a mother and son who are discussing the sporting life.
First, fishing. “You pay the guide seventy bucks for the Gallatin, but it’s totally worth it. He totally knows the river.”
“I think I paid $85.”
“Still totally worth it.”
“Totally.”
“Corky has the Patagonia waders, right?”
“No, I think he bought the Simms.” (These cost $400 a pair.)
“I like the Simms, but the Patagonia fit me better.”
“Simms has a new winter kind that are warm but light.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking of getting some of those. I heard they’re awesome.”
Cycling:
“They have a color in the titanium that I really love.”
“I like the silver, but I hope it’s brushed, not polished.”
“I like the polished.”
“So, are you going for the custom?”
“It’s only about $200 or $300 more, so really, why not?”
“What do they run, all together?”
“A bit under six.” Thousand, that is.
They discuss hiking, climbing, skiing…gear. They speak of almost nothing else during the two-hour trip.
My brother, Jon, who has come to Bozeman with his girlfriend, Beth, picks us up at the airport and drives us to the Days Inn, which is about a hundred yards off the interstate.
The receptionist takes Paul’s credit card and hands him the keycards. She gives us chits for free breakfasts during our stay. “There you go!” she chirps.
Paul looks at the thin envelope and glances around the small lobby. “So are you going to tell us about the amenities?”
The girl, who apparently had not read the hotel’s Web site promising said amenities, remains cheerful. “We don’t have any amenities,” she says.
“Oh,” replies Paul. I look at Jon. We both try not to laugh. Paul and I have decided that the trip is a hiatus in our spending hiatus—after all, we’re staying in a hotel, eating in restaurants. But we haven’t discussed the rules governing any of these transactions. I didn’t rent a car, having counted at least three vehicles in our party of six. But since the project’s principal aim was never frugality, I didn’t seek out the barest-bones motel in town. This fact becomes obvious when I get a glimpse of the place next door. Its name is something like Little Dogie’s Inn, and the rusticated exterior suggests the innkeeper hands you a flea-infested blanket and a tin plate and leaves you to bed down by the glow of the Coke machine.
Still, I’ve acquired the skinflint’s instinct and have unwittingly chosen the second-barest-bones motel in town. “Okay,” says Paul, as if to comfort the girl. “Thank you, then.”
But our insufficiently disguised disappointment has affected her. In the hopefully interrogative tone of America’s young, she offers an amenity: “We have ice?”
JUNE 26
We are to gather at Sarah’s at eleven to go to the campus, and Paul and I have told my brother we will walk the couple of miles there. After a free breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee (which isn’t bad), we take off for a stroll downtown.
It is hard to stroll on a four-lane strip where sidewalks are an afterthought, which makes it hard to stroll in almost any American town west of Philadelphia.Get your own goddamn car: that’s the message. Here in Bozeman, you get the impression that strolling is considered effete, vaguely European—unpatriotic and maybe illegal. Like the pedestrian version of Updike’s Swimmer, we navigate from parking lot to parking lot, dodging pickups and SUVs, hopping curbs onto small rectangles of yellowing grass.
After a semi-harrowing half hour, we make it to the edge of downtown Bozeman. Finally, sidewalks—and around them, a beautifully preserved turn-of-the-century Western town. Bozeman’s main street is wide, flanked by two- and three-story red brick buildings, which are flourished with the fancywork of nineteenth-century bricklayers and an occasional neon cowboy boot, bronco, or lasso. From the main street, leafy side streets stretch toward snowcapped mountains; on these boulevards, gracious wood-frame houses preside over broad lawns and mature gardens.
Unfortunately, the mall-lined strips also stretch toward those mountains, pouring out in every direction like the rivulets of an oil spill. Along them can be found every fast-food joint and big-box store ever conceived, and nothing else. As I said, it’s the typical Western town.
Paul and I pass a Tibetan store in a little gray clapboard house. “Okay if we go in?” I ask.
“Okay with me,” he says, and we remove our shoes on the porch. I browse, breathing the incense. I almost try a pair of cotton pants that look just right, but I refrain. The rugs (on sale today) are thick underfoot; the prayer flags flutter in the half-open windows. It’s a meditative space for purchasing. But I only breathe, I do not buy. A little sorry, I say goodbye to those just-right cotton pants.
A few doors down we reach Sack’s, a thrift shop that Sarah’s mother, Amy, has told us about. She bought the kids clothes here during the years she lived in Bozeman with one or both of them. A sign by the door informs us that profits go to preventing domestic violence and serving its victims. I look hopefully from the sign to Paul, as if to ask permission. For the graduation, I am wearing my green-checked pants, which once looked fashionably odd and fit well and now are baggy at the knees and faded from washing. Maybe I’ll find something to change into. He says nothing. We go in.
As I begin to move methodically through the racks, Paul hangs back, fingering an item of clothing here and there. I duck into the dressing room with a sleeveless shirt. The first thing I notice under the fluorescent lights is that my armpits are saggy. When did that happen? (The good thing about not buying clothes is that you don’t have to engage in the level of microscopic self-inspection the activity promotes.) I feel disgusted with myself. Out on the floor again, I recover: in no time I am clutching an adobe-colored long-sleeved shirt and a pair of baggy red cargo pants. “I’m going to try these on,” I tell Paul, again asking permission, but also defying it.
“Go ahead if you want to,” he says in a neutral tone I interpret as disapproval.
I try on both items. They fit well and look good. I can’t wear them to the graduation, but I know I’ll wear them a lot. “What do you think?” I ask Paul, coming out of the dressing room in my “new” clothes.
“They’re fine,” he says. “Buy them if you want…But, you know”—I brace myself—“the rules haven’t changed. We’re here for Sarah’s graduation. We’re not on vacation from not buying.”
“No,” I say, more emphatically than I mean. “We are. We’re on moratorium.” Paul and I go back and forth about this. “Anyway, I have nothing to wear.”
“That’s just the story you’re telling yourself,” Paul says. “Something else is going on.” This always makes me angry, when he informs me I’m telling myself a story. But we’re both surprised at how upset I have become, and how quickly.
“Don’t tell me something else is going on. What’s going on is going on. I have no clothes. It’s spring. I have nothing to wear.” By now I’m shouting (albeit in whispers). My voice is shaking. He’s right. Something else must be going on.
In fact, I have been looking forward to this weekend as furlough from active duty. And now, having opened myself even gingerly to the small dramas of shopping, the disappointment and triumph, the self-criticism and self-affirmation, I’m like a soldier tasting my first home-cooked meal: I could weep. These feelings may be false consciousness cynically produced by consumer culture. But retail therapy is also therapeutic.
Or maybe I want to break the rules. Shopping is not only socially sanctioned, it is a socially sanctioned “bad” behavior. Ricky catches Lucy with a spree-ful of shopping bags and asks her with a wicked gleam in his eye if she has been bad. The pleasurable tension mounts. She is asking for punishment; he is warming up to give it to her. The scene is almost an S&M assignation. The luxury car ads invite the consumer to wallow in badness. Below the burnished image of a Jaguar XJ8L, a creamy description of its leather seats and teak dashboard climaxes with, “Sin No. 2: GREED. Can you resist?”
The Deadly Sins give the economy life; transgression turns it on. By refraining from shopping I may be transgressing against the consumer economy, but where transgression pays, the
consumer economy is one step ahead of me.
As I continue to shop, Paul repairs to an armchair in the front room, in which the cashier is surrounded by crockery and old appliances. I try on a half-dozen more things, put them back, then march into the room and approach the counter with the adobe shirt and the red pants. The bill comes to just under $9. Proceeds after operating expenses go to a good cause. I’m not consuming new resources. It’s an efficient, rational market exchange and a gift in motion. If I had to lapse, I’ve come to the right place: a truly anticonsumerist consumer opportunity, a place to transgress virtuously.
“I did it,” I announce to Paul, almost proudly. I notice he’s taking notes in his Palm Pilot. “What are you writing about?”
“None of your business.”
I try to read the screen. “You’re writing about our argument.”
“What’s it to you?” He shuts the cover, stands, and hugs me as I am stuffing the recycled red plastic bag into my backpack. I don’t want anyone to see it. But secretly, I can’t wait to put the clothes on.
When we get to Sarah’s, I take her aside and give her the gift. As she lifts it from its little coffin, it’s as if the necklace is resurrected. The silver casts light on Sarah’s face. She smiles, her eyes wide. She reads the card, which tells her it was my mother’s and mine and now hers, and maybe (I’ve written) someday will be her daughter’s. “Oh, Judy, that’s soooo sweet,” she coos. I close the clasp at the back of her neck and she goes into the bathroom to admire herself in the mirror. She comes out beaming, clearly moved. “Now I can have a little of Judy and Grandma with me wherever I go!” Sarah knows how to give back.
JUNE 27
Sunday morning, Paul asks the receptionist at the Days Inn where he can find aNew York Times. The hotel carries only theBillings Gazette, which barely covers Bozeman, much less Basra. “Your best bet would be the Barnes & Noble out at the shopping center on Nineteenth,” she says, indicating a mall about five miles away. Paul tells her he doesn’t have a car. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she replies, as if he’d told her he doesn’t have a mother.
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