There are many kinds of vicious cycles. Mine, it would turn out, was paying for drinks to use a bathroom (often with no toilet paper) only to need to buy more drinks so I could stay longer to, what else, use the bathroom again. And on and on and on, ad infinitum. I keep going back to the same bathroom to repeat this process. Even though I know that it never has toilet paper. It doesn’t seem to matter what time of day, or year. It’s as though the employees simply never see fit to change it at all. Like some sort of social experiment that only serves to prove that humans are both desperate and disgusting enough to do whatever it takes. You know, when it comes to survival. And pissing is definitely a key part of surviving, toilet paper or not. But then, so is shitting. Especially shitting, actually. “God” knows that holding that back can prove to be even more disastrous for one’s insides than holding your piss (the effects of which Rue in Euphoria oh so perfectly illustrates).

I guess what I’m getting at is that despite knowing full well the financial detriments of ever leaving my house, I still did so on a daily basis. Fully aware that it would always require me to dig deep into my pockets to secure bathroom access. Again, usually at the same place with no toilet paper. Sometimes, when I bordered on spending nearly thirty dollars in one day, I truly had to question the “value” of the outside world. The so-called benefit of “getting out of the house.” Whoever came up with that bullshit advice must not have been able to fathom life in a late capitalist society, where it pretty much costs extra money to breathe in any space that isn’t inside your own home. Which you’re already paying a premium for, no matter how unimpressive it might be. 

Of course, there was a time when I never left the house. Even before the pandemic hit. I found it too easy to loll about and “do nothing” (as they call not making money) all day. But that quickly became its own vicious cycle for me. I’m not talking anything as severe as the nameless narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but fairly close. Except, unlike that nameless narrator, I didn’t have the unlimited means to support a shut-in habit. I suppose that’s the greatest irony about all this: you need money to stay in as much as you need it to go out. Though, obviously, homebodies and Earth signs alike will tell you that the price of staying in is far less astronomical in every way (i.e., physically, emotionally, financially). They’re not wrong. Not totally, anyway. Because I know that, just as it is with most everything else, the staying in versus going out conundrum was a matter of choosing a lesser evil. This didn’t necessarily put my mind at ease…considering the two-party system in the United States also boiled down, to voters, to choosing between a lesser of two evils. And look how that’s been working out. Though I’d rather look at that than look at how choosing “leave the house” as the lesser of the two evils had been working out for me. 

In the beginning, I thought maybe I was doing myself a favor. Following the aforementioned adage that “getting out of the house” (or “changing air,” if you prefer) really was good for the soul/spirit. Or, more to the point, it was good for my soul/spirit. Once I noticed the full extent of how it was affecting my bank account, I realized the soul/spirit (no matter whose it was) couldn’t possibly feel something akin to “good.” Unfortunately, I had already trapped myself in this new vicious cycle by the time I put two and two together (literally) about it. Fully comprehended the financial damage being done. All for the stupid sake of buying into the societally-imposed belief that staying inside for the day is wrong. But it seemed to work just fine for the royalty and other assorted nobles of the past. That’s the only thing they did: stayed inside (with the occasional constitutional on “the grounds” here and there).

Granted, they had to get much too dressed up for such a non-event; and yes, their boredom caused them to create a lot of unnecessary drama and still spend too much money on at-home gambling and waging petty wars. Yet I stand by what I say. If staying inside was good enough for royalty, it ought to be good enough for a plebe like me. Enough with this drink-buying/bathroom-going catch-22. An unending cycle that dipped as superfluously into funds as the U.S. government into social security. 

The day I saw that my savings account was hovering just above one hundred dollars, I knew, without a doubt, that I needed to find a way to stop. Just fucking stop. The same way I had with staying in. Which I would now have to revert back to. What else was there? It’s not as if there existed any such thing as a happy medium between going out and staying in—especially when one lived as remotely from the city as I did. My geographical distance from anything like what Morrissey would call “people” and “life” (as in, “I want to see people and I want to see life”) made it so that once you were out, you had no choice but to surrender to being out for the entire day, and probably well into the evening. No more. Those days had to expire now. And I would be left with no choice but to get a job (yet again) at the grocery store in town. They were always desperate enough to hire (and rehire). After all, it wasn’t easy to come by people willing to interface with the belligerent public for so little compensation in return. 

Thus, despite my less than “stellar” attitude, they could hardly say no to employing me, let alone try to fire me for my “sullen behavior.” That was the sole perk of such thankless menial jobs: you could ultimately act however you wanted—that is to say, not act at all. And wasn’t that what most “high-paying” jobs paid high amounts for anyway?: “dancing with a smile.” As for more literal dancing for money, of course I had thought about it before. But, in the end, I decided I was too shy for such public displays of begging for money with even less dignity than a homeless person. Even though there’s no such thing as “dignity” in a society that runs on capitalism as the lone method by which to secure a livelihood. So I worked. 

Three months turned into six, and six into a year. And before I knew it, two years had passed. All spent scrimping and saving. Squirreling away every last dime until I felt it was “enough.” I guess what I forgot to mention—my “ace in the hole,” as it were—is that I lived in an apartment that required me to pay no rent (thus, my willingness to live in what could be characterized as “the middle of nowhere”). I suppose, in this sense, maybe I was more like the nameless narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation than I let on. Except I didn’t inherit property from my parents. It was actually from a kooky great-aunt who had taken a shine to me. Aunt Sabrina, she was called. I credit her with teaching me the wondrous ways of shut-innery. 

While my two older siblings, Nick and Alice, were horrified by the sight of Aunt Sabrina in her natural environment, I was glamored by it. Such freedom, such unabashedness about not bothering with cleaning or personal maintenance. For me, it was something to aspire to—not dread the way my brother and sister did. In fact, there came a point, when they reached their teens, that they refused to go visit her anymore. Leaving only me to do so. Worked out in my favor, clearly. ‘Cause all I have to do is fritter away two years working at the grocery store and I’m set for, like, a minute.

Hence, I retreated back into my lair. For some much needed recovery time—and liberal pissing without fear of needing to buy a drink in order to establish myself as a paying customer “worthy” of the bathroom and/or being docked on my minutes at the grocery store for taking too many bathroom breaks. At last, I could be me again. My total, uncensored, frequently-pissing self. The way Aunt Sabrina used to be (I can’t attest to how often she pissed though). No wonder she wanted me to have this place. It was as though she could sense I would be carrying on the tradition of how she used to live. Or what some would call “not live.” Fuck them. To me, Aunt Sabrina was #goals, and I had been a fool to try living any other way for even a few weeks.

But I see now that foolish behavior is what happens when one listens to societal rhetoric as an internal voice. Thankfully, like the piss I now let loose freely without worrying about needing to spend money on another drink that only keeps the piss flowing, I am flushing that voice down the toilet and only listening to my own. And it’s screaming: shut-in for life! Or until the monetary reserves run low again…