Twenty-five years ago I lived in San Francisco with my childhood friend, we will call her Jay. We had parted ways in high school due to my father’s relocation for his job and reconnected after I had graduated from college. “Come live with me in the city,” I begged. She did.
Jay was the consummate ugly duckling turned swan. She was always dressed impecilby. Though I was the one with the big corporate job she managed to out spend and out dress me–it was competitive. Even her nightgowns were gorgeous.
Immediately I found our living situation less than bliss. Jay was distanced and not as fun as she had been when we were in junior high. She worked two jobs, administrative assistant by day and record store clerk by night while I found my way as a sales person for Eastman Kodak. We didn’t’ see much of each other. I would occasionally see her in the mornings or in the evenings when she came home from her job at the mall-bags of clothes on her arms. I just couldn’t figure out how she could afford all that stuff while I was stuck in the same preppy skirts I wore post college. About six months into our living situation the phone started to ring at all hours of the day. I worked from home so I was the one taking the calls. The voice on the other end always asked that Jay return the call offering up an 800#. When I passed these messages along to Jay she replied annoyingly, “Those calls are magazines trying to sell me something. Just hang up on them.”
One morning after a run in the park I was making coffee in the kitchen of our flat when I heard our front door open. I walked down the long hallway toward the door to face two very scary looking men asking for my roommate. She was still in bed at the time. I was frightened. It was 7am and I had two very large, and very sketchy looking men in my house—think Mikey Rourke in a mob film. I woke Jay. What ensued was a discussion about the repossession of Jay’s car. She broke down crying and begged that they give her some time to get her act together. They were empathetic in their mobster way and gave her 24 hours. Jay would not speak to me, she simply went to her bedroom and shut her door. The next morning her parents drove up from Orange to San Francisco and moved her out, leaving me with the rent and a giant question…what happened? I never spoke to Jay again. The moral of the story…It’s never just about shopping!
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let this be a lesson unto us. thanks for blogging this, it’s definitely a wake-up call for people like me who are in danger of living beyond their means and one day losing everything. cheers! xx