I’m Special (10 page)

THERE ARE A LOT
of amazing things about writing for television. There's the beauty of collaboration and being able to bounce ideas off some of the most insanely talented and funny people in the world. There's the excitement of watching the words you wrote be brought to life on set by gifted actors. There's the endless supply of snacks, which if you aren't careful, will cause you to gain fifteen pounds in four months. And then there's the money. The money is really good.

Shortly after receiving my first paycheck from working on
Awkward
, I found myself blacked out at a Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. I told myself I would only go in to look for a Tom Ford cologne I'd been eyeing (Tuscan Leather, $210), but somewhere along the way, I'd managed to lose my damn mind. After dousing myself in Tuscan Leather, I decided that I wanted—no,
needed
—to add Tom Ford's Tobacco Vanille cologne to my shopping list.

“Hi, hi, hi!” I said manically to the man behind the perfume counter. “Can you come over here for a second?”

“Yes, sir; can I help you?”

“Um, yes,” I stuttered. “Do you think it's possible to mix Tobacco Vanille with Tuscan Leather?”

His eyes lit up. “Yes! In fact, those are my two favorite colognes to mix. This is the Tom Ford Private Blend collection, which means that they're actually meant to be combined with other scents.”

“Wow!” I swooned, wiping some sweat away from my forehead. “I could tell that Tuscan Leather wasn't necessarily a stand-alone scent. What other colognes do people mix it with?”

“Sandalwood is very popular.” The man sprayed some Sandalwood on my wrist, and my whole body convulsed in ecstasy. Suddenly I was convinced that I was only three $210 bottles of cologne away from being the person I was meant to be.

“That smells amazing! I've been on the hunt for a scent that feels the most like me, but to be honest, I don't think I found it until today.”

“I understand completely. People spend years searching for something that best fits their personality. It's not easy.” The perfume guy eyed me slowly. “I can tell by your personality that Sandalwood, Tuscan Leather, and Tobacco Vanille are three scents that accurately represent you. They're sexy and mysterious.”

“You really think so? Thanks so much.” I smiled coyly. Even though I knew this guy had no interest in seeing me naked, I appreciated him going the extra mile for his commission.

“So, what are we thinking? Do you want to get them?”

My body was buzzing. My armpits were dripping sweat. I felt high out of my mind and so alive.

“Let's do it.”

He swiped my credit card, and I felt a surge of pleasure go through my entire body. I took my three tiny bags and ran toward the exit, thinking to myself, “Ryan, you need to get out of here. Things are about to get dangerous!” Then I saw a beautiful display of candles out of the corner of my eye and knew that I was dead. Candles are my favorite things in the world. Sometimes I have fantasies of loading them up in a baby stroller like they're my children and taking them on a scenic walk. When I'm around them, I'm powerless.

Two hours later, I emerged from Saks Fifth Avenue with three colognes, six Diptyque candles, and a tiny jar of La Mer eye wrinkle cream ($285). Now that the spending spree was over, the adrenaline had faded and I was left feeling utterly depleted. It cruelly dawned on me that I had spent almost my entire paycheck in an afternoon.

When I want to spend money, nothing can stop me. It's the same feeling you get when you're horny. The craving comes over you and dominates your brain until you find a way to quench it. You immediately enter a fugue state where beautiful objects replace logic. At a certain point, your standards will lower and it won't even matter what you get. You just need to experience some instant gratification as quickly as possible. Swiping your credit card and leaving a store with a bunch of shopping bags is not dissimilar to coming all over someone's chest. Both are a release. But once the euphoria fades, you come to your senses and assess the damage. In the case of getting laid, it might be realizing that the stranger you picked up at a bar looked a whole lot cuter to you an orgasm ago. With spending money, it's processing the fact that you spent almost $300 in twenty minutes and now have an $80 candle that doesn't even smell that great.

I don't go shopping very often, but when I do, events like the Saks Fifth Avenue Massacre happen. None of the things I buy make sense to me at first (lemonade mix from a high-end furniture store and $30 hand soap?), but then I realize they're all things I think the better version of me should have. I buy stuff so people can see it and think, “Wow, who is that guy with an extensive candle collection and fresh-cut flowers on the dining table? He's so together!” Whether you have money or not, the point of being a consumer in your twenties seems to be less about making yourself happy in the moment and more about taking the necessary steps toward becoming the person you want to be.

People don't like to talk about these kinds of things. If you ever want to clear a room, just bring up the subject of money. Walk up to someone and ask, “How can you afford to live?” Chances are the person will scream bloody murder, tear out clumps of their hair, and run out of the emergency exit before they answer that question. Money is not something we're supposed to discuss. Or if we do talk about it, it should always be in the context of us not having any. When someone tells you that they like your top and it happens to be inexpensive, you say, “Twenty dollars at H&M. Can you believe it?” But if someone compliments you on something you bought at Marc Jacobs for $200, you're embarrassed and say “Thanks” instead.

I get why people are uncomfortable talking about their finances. Money is tricky—especially in your twenties—because it so clearly separates the people who were born with it from those who've yet to make it on their own. In one group, you have the privileged few who are either supported completely by their parents or at least get a little bit of help each month. For some, this affluence can be a major source of shame because rich kids don't like being different. They want to “rough it” along with their peers and be able to say, “OMG, I'm broke too!” Sometimes they'll go so far as to pretend they're struggling anyway, which is so insulting. Once a very rich friend of mine was complaining about how she couldn't afford groceries. The next day she showed up to lunch with a new Miu Miu bag. In college, I knew a rich kid who lived in a doorman building and moonlighted as a dishwasher because he said it felt like honest work. What is with rich people's FOMO about being broke? It's not fun!

Then you have those who are working toward some semblance of financial security. They look at apartments, they look at lattes, they look at cashmere sweaters, and all they see is a price tag, something that could catapult their entire existence into debt and misery. Money is the enemy. When they look around, all they see is people who have it better than they do, people with tans from their exotic vacations wearing expensive makeup and jewelry they bought with their “fuck you” money. In a city like New York, where I spent most of my twenties, the concept of wealth is completely distorted. You could come from the richest family in Kentucky, but when you move to the city, you feel destitute. True poverty exists here, just like it does everywhere else in the world, but the people who often identify as being poor in the city are usually, in fact, not poor at all. They're just living in New York.

I've always been obsessed with rich people who have a tenuous grasp on reality. Luckily for me, delusional trustafarians seem to be everywhere these days. They're at your dry cleaner getting their designer dresses tailored or standing in the corner of a grungy house party plotting to steal your boyfriend. The rich often live among us in disguise so as not to give their class away, but don't be fooled by their ratty flannels and scuffed boots. That outfit costs $3,000. The stains on their faded jeans? Those were imported from France, you plebeian.

Here's how you can tell if someone is rich. Number one: they live in Manhattan, Paris, San Francisco, or any other swinging metropolitan city. I know
rich
is a relative term, but if you can afford to pay sky-high rents, you're already richer than most third world countries. Secondly, you have to understand that the rich have their own language, especially when speaking to each other. They say strange things like, “My parents bought me this apartment as an investment . . .” which, okay, yes—I get it. Real estate is certainly a wise investment, but you do realize that makes you a twentysomething homeowner, right? You know what's considered a good investment at the age of twenty-four? Condoms. A nice pair of winter boots. Not lucrative property.

Rich people also like to say things like, “I left that at my summer house,” “My horse is acting out!” and “Dubai is actually kind of cool, you guys . . .” Someone who is well traveled is usually wealthy. Name a country in front of them and they'll be like, “OMG, I love [insert weird place here]. If you go, you have to visit this
amazing
restaurant on the river that serves the best chimichangas. Ask for Mambo! He's an old family friend!” The old family friend is another important signifier of class. Rich families like to travel in packs so that wherever they go they have a filial connection, a place to crash, and a job waiting for them. They look out for their own. Meanwhile, the only place I have connections is Costco, where my dad is considered to be a very important customer.

Other ways to tell if someone is rich: they have nice shampoo, conditioner, and face cream. Rich people don't like to be too grandiose anymore, so most of their money goes into the small details. Visit a rich person's bathroom and all their secrets will be revealed to you. Their couch may say recession, but their medicine cabinet is still living high on the hog. Lastly, someone is rich if they have a name like Scoop, Muffy, Mitsy, or Scooter. The more made-up a name is, the richer they are. Nothing says “I DON'T GIVE A FUCK BECAUSE I'M RICH, BITCH!” like naming your daughter Acorn.

Even though I technically grew up middle class, I've been around rich people since I attended St. Paul's on financial aid. While all the other mothers dropped their kids off at school wearing their tennis outfits and stopped in the parking lot afterward to leisurely chat and gossip, mine was always like, “Get the fuck out of the car, sweetie. If I'm late to work, I get fired and we lose everything!”

My family did have occasional glimmers of wealth. For a few years, we lived in a nice house in the hills, and at one point my father even owned a BMW (which he later couldn't afford, so he traded it in for a piece-of-shit Buick that eventually broke down in a Taco Bell drive-thru). But as soon as we'd start to feel cozy, as soon as things would get comfortable, we'd lose it all. When my parents divorced and filed for bankruptcy, my mother had to buy a much smaller house in a less desirable part of town. My father moved into a two-bedroom apartment where I took up residence in the walk-in closet. (To this day, my father doesn't think it was weird for his son to live in a closet and insists it was the size of a small bedroom. It wasn't. It was the size of a closet.) My father was offensively cheap. Whenever we would grab burgers at a fast-food restaurant for dinner, he would refuse to do something as simple as pay the extra sixty cents for cheese, insisting that he could melt cheese in a pan himself when we got home. We could also never order anything other than water when we were at a restaurant. Suggesting that you'd like to have a Sprite was basically like demanding that he send you to Sarah Lawrence for college. Whenever I asked him why he wouldn't buy me a soda, he would say, “BECAUSE IT OFFENDS ME THAT THEY'RE EVEN CHARGING FOR SOFT DRINKS. IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER, RYAN!”

As I got older, my father remained cheap as ever, but somehow he, my brother, and I all managed to move up in class. When I was fourteen, my father remarried a sitcom writer and moved into her beach house in Malibu. When I was eighteen, I got access to my settlement money, and my parents were basically like “K, bye—no more money for you.” (One of the first things I did with my money was take my dad out to dinner and order a million Sprites just to spite him. It was a bittersweet moment because no purchase has ever felt as gratifying since.) After I received my lump sum of cash, my brother started his very successful porn website and bought a million-dollar house in the Hollywood Hills. Soon, the three of us were eating out at steakhouses and experiencing a lifestyle that was wildly different from the one we grew up with. We had reached financial stability thanks to second marriages, porn, and cerebral palsy.

I'll never forget the day I got my settlement money. On my eighteenth birthday, I went into a Washington Mutual (RIP) and took out $300, which was the most amount of money I'd ever seen in my life. Holding those crisp $20 bills in my hand felt like being in possession of crack cocaine. I just wanted to use it until there was nothing left. So that's what I did. I had Baby's First Spending Blackout in the mall. I bought a few CDs at Sam Goody, an ice blended mocha at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a new wallet at the skater shop, and some T-shirts at Miller's Outpost. I bought lemonades for all my friends at Hot Dog on a Stick and took a cab downtown to go to the movies. I was an instant nouveau riche teen nightmare. Growing up in a household that was dominated by financial stress, I'd never thought of money as a happy thing. It was the source of depression, anxiety, and fear—not a cause for celebration.

It felt strange gaining access to a world that was never meant for me. The switch reminded me of my car accident, when I had gone from being Ryan, the dude with cerebral palsy, to Ryan, the poor guy who got hit by a car. I was again wearing the personality clothes that didn't quite fit. People assumed I came from a wealthy family and had a trust fund when it couldn't have been further from the truth. Cerebral palsy, the source of all my major issues and internal strife, was the reason why I was able to order an $18 salad at [insert hot restaurant here].