Bootstraps
Yash Seyedbagheri
The first time I hear the word “bootstraps,” I’m visiting my friend, Cockroach, at his bar. It’s a hazy August night, full of sweat, heat, and laughter that reminds me of geese and hyenas. The funniest thing is who uses the word. It’s not some geriatric with a hard-on for Eisenhower and Perry Como. It’s a flame-haired guy with owlish eyes, a hawkish nose, and round glasses. He’s probably not much older than me. Probably thirty. He sits to my right at the long oak-paneled bar, with taps of 90 Shilling, Fat Tire, and Voodoo Ranger whooshing with liquid seduction.
“I’m telling you,” he says to his female companion. “It’s all about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. But people love taking. That’s why they can’t get ahead. You just have to work your ass off. You’re up against bigger businesses, but isn’t it worth having an adversary to battle?”
“But what about circumstances,” she says. She wears cat-eye glasses. Just like my sister, Nan. “What if you lost a toe? What if you got ill?”
“Well, if you pull yourself up, you can adjust. Embrace the difficulty. Don’t ask for help. Besides, dear Rosie, a toe is an inconvenience, but profit is forever.”
“Aren’t there enough assholes already?” I quip. “I think I’d prefer to keep my toe.”
The guy just shakes his head like I’m a freak. Like I don’t understand the reality of the world. He has a sense of control, but I feel no passion, no understanding. He reminds me of Dad. Like Dad, I could see him proclaiming artistic pursuits, “senseless dreams,” and calling teachers like my sister “brainwashing schoolmarms.”
But the man opens his mouth, then shuts it. I’m not worth it.
I absorb the young men in backwards baseball caps and baggy pants, young and middle-aged blondes in yoga pants, the clink of glasses, the musky scent of weed and onions. The clatter of balls at the pool table, and someone yelling at Trump on the old Sony TV. The pulsating jukebox with its pink and purple beat conjures a constant reverie. I hope to God I will never have to hear a version of this bootstraps speech. Of course, this is during the good times. It seems impossible.
My credit card is paid off. $3,000 in available credit. Plus $2,800 saved from a litany of editing jobs, some work I’ve done for my father (I’d prefer other work, but I’m pragmatic), and being a judge for the Midnight Marauders Fiction Contest. I live in an apartment with egg-yolk walls. I imagine a long litany of editing jobs. I imagine saving each penny, until my money balloons. I’m twenty-six.
~ ~ ~
The first crack comes when the rent goes up from $800 to $1,000 a month. I try not to use that credit card, that piece of lavender plastic. But if I don’t, I have to eat into the $800 I have left out of the $2,800 (I’ve paid two months’ rent in advance, to have a safeguard). And there’s still groceries, cell phone bills, and other utilities (about 500 in all). The math is tight, no matter how many nights I weigh plus and minus signs and numbers that blur.
The reason for the rent increase? Dynamism of the market and the vagaries of life. At least that’s what the statement from Harmonious Happiness Court office claims. They promise an upgraded Harmonious Happiness experience. This reeks of artifice, chiseled word for word, but I want to believe. Even if I’m a happy-go-lucky blockhead, as Nan often jokes. Even though a part of me knows that buzzwords like “dynamism” and “vagaries” are translation for, “the free market is the supreme leader. Pay fealty to its mood changes, or land on the streets.” I will not end up on the street. I will not ask my parents for shelter, or my sister for that matter.
I allocate $500 to spend on my credit card. But I’ll stop there. I’ll pay it back. I’m not a thief, although I have access to so much, including my father’s own accounts. The situation is sustainable, though. I don’t steal from credit card companies— or my father. Even though I could. But I’d pay it back.
~ ~ ~
The second crack comes when my father says I need to work full time for him, and I refuse. He reduces my pay to $1,000 a month. This is two weeks after the rent increase, and autumn’s chill begins to fill our town, an insistent, pushing chill. Leaves dance and descend and lie in the coldness of streets. But this is a chill I can withstand.
“Nicholas, I’m doing this because I love you,” he says. We’re at Ramon’s Mexican Kingdom, a cornucopia of pastel and pink colors, clattering dishes, and unabashed Spanish swear words. “Development’s grounded in reality, not fairy-tale shit. You can write and research like no one’s business. And you’re a Rembrandt when it comes to digging into impact studies, so why not parlay that?”
“I’m good at editing,” I say. “I’m not trying to quit on you. But this is who I am.”
“I’ll raise your pay to $3,000.” He strokes his goatee. “You should be grateful. With this job, you wouldn’t be dealing with pissy little authors who get drunk and blow out their brains over one missing comma.”
“One client said I have such an attunement to the most inconsequential detail.” I look around the restaurant. We’re in a booth on the left side of the main entrance and underneath one of the several large windows that look out onto the parking lot with faded lines, ghosts of cigarettes past, and even a Trojan wrapper. To the right of the main entrance is this raven-haired harpist, plus the cash register.
“So what do you say about the $3,000?”
It’s tempting. And impact studies are interesting. I like to think about how planned communities rise up with vanilla walls and little identical garages, all along a neat plane. It’s also interesting how communities fall apart, too, because of some lack of foresight with sewage or infrastructure. As Dad always says, “Where’s the poop, son? That’s the key to good development.”
But I can’t fix impact studies the way I can with writing. Writing and editing make me feel in ways mechanics can’t. Plus I’m not well-versed in anything mechanical. I tried to fix Nan’s bike when I was twelve, and she called me, “Henry Ford in reverse, who turns things to shit in Technicolor. But I love you.”
I’ll get more editing gigs. I’ll make up for the space that Dad’s cuts have left, those spaces, those comforts.
“No thanks,” I say now. “I’ll just keep on with the present arrangement. Part time for your work.”
“But editing?” Dad says. “Again, I love you, Nicholas. But you’re going to make what, 20 or 30 an hour from some ungrateful reprobate? What’s the endgame? What do you want to achieve?”
“Dad, I know what I want.”
“Do you really?”
The harpist begins to play Debussy’s Reverie. I love the way her fingers glide over those beautiful strings, the way she creates haunting notes. I think of the life she might want for herself. Has this obsession with individualism has brought her here? Did she want to play in some orchestra? Did she lose her family, her home? Did she have to bury dreams and go for the easiest route? The route that paid phone bills, electricity, bought her sodium-saturated TV dinners? I try to imagine how she still exudes grace through loss. How each note is an attempt to pull herself up. Strike a C or a G, and she lands another dollar toward keeping her apartment for a month. Strike a flat or a sharp, and it all comes to a discordant halt.
I want clients with money. Maybe make it to some big city publishing house through the natural whirl of time. I want to move beyond shibboleths of apartments and into mango-colored suburban homes. Get married to someone who can quote Coen Brothers movies and get excited talking about the Russian Revolution. Someone who can use the words “callipygian” and “motherfucker” in the same sentence with ease.
I don’t want to think that something might disrupt my good fortune.
“Then let’s see how you do on less,” Dad says now. “Maybe this will be a good experience. You’ll see how people fuck over whomever they need.”
“Thanks for that wonderful philosophy.”
“Again, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love you. You know I had to work at the cheese factory in college? You know how hard I fought to build up my empire?”
“Thanks for the tip, Logan Roy.”
Of course, Dad hasn’t seen Succession, so that insult slides past him. As to the cheese factory, Dad worked there a single semester after he got caught cheating on a Spanish test. It was a PR move Grandpa arranged. A chance, as Dad said, to “show the world that the Botkins also had to pull themselves up and atone for their errors, no matter their wealth.”
“Oh, Nicholas,” he says, jarring me from my reverie. “Don’t forget to check my bank accounts. We can’t let things dip, even a little.”
“You got it.”
Sometimes, I think I’d just drain his fucking account. Watch every cent get sucked into the sweet hereafter of payback. Watch him pull himself up. Or I should say, rebuild his life. I’d love to watch myself hold power, like some precious, fragile little thing. But I don’t want to be a mini-Dad who thrives on edicts and stealing and stripping rival developers naked. Besides, Nan says I’m “sweet” and “too good for Dad.” Cockroach calls me “a creative, loveable motherfucker,” even if I do need to chill out a little more. If they have confidence in me, surely, I can be better. After all, I’ve prided myself on neatness, drawing up schedules, setting alerts, learning to adhere to them.
But I’ve just lost $200 of my income.
On top of that, the bootstraps will never leave. I hear it from TVs in my complex, in the barbershop tuned to Fox News, where fake smiles and fake facts reign. Bootstraps try to snag me from newspapers, replete with stories about self-made entrepreneurs, people who froze and slept in toilets.
I want to scream. Talk about good, hardworking people, people like Cockroach who could never get a loan to expand the bar, to let his love, his baby grow beyond one small little room. I want to tell them of the Cockroaches who fill out the paperwork, don’t fudge their histories, confess their credit issues, and get fucked without reward. Or the Nans who teach, and get called Communists, socialists, people undeserving of raises, and somehow comport themselves with morose grace.
And as much as I hate the powers that be, a part of me envies their ability to forget these pasts, or to at least assess them from the safe distances of champagne, caviar, and crackling hearths.
~ ~ ~
One night, I’m in my turd-walled apartment drinking far too much Merlot I bought at CheapGoods. Lately, I’ve been drinking, plus binge-eating everything I can, the good things. Pita bread, guacamole, hummus, even a couple of discounted steaks from CheapGoods. Maybe I need to savor these moments of luxury before it all goes under.
Armed with episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and a perch on my booger-colored sofa, I feel this urge to look up that execrable word. Bootstraps. I know it’s the booze, and I’m descending into the sorrowful part of the experience. Nan reminds me of that when she calls, just as I’m about to look the word up.
“Honey,” she says, her voice full of that quiet disappointment. “You’re drunk. What’s the matter, Nicky? Tell me. You can tell me.”
But I can’t. I can’t tell her how I need to live, to stress eat the hell out of the world before it all comes down, and I’m searching for crumbs in the Mama Lily’s parking lot. Before I’m one of those failures with a full-length beard, who thought the world was fundamentally decent, at least in some respects.
“I’m all right,” I say.
“Are you?”
“I swear, Nan.”
She pauses, then she says, “Take care of yourself. Or I’m gonna rush over there and cry over you for an hour. That’s an edict.”
I laugh, a laugh that reminds me even more of drunkenness.
But the feeling won’t go away, even after Nan gets off the phone. That word taunts and sneers—bootstraps.
There’s some force pulling at me, something that wants to just know how this word came to be. Why it seems ever present. I can pinpoint the rise and fall of bootstraps in America (thanks Gilded Age and Saint Reagan), but it’s getting to the core that counts.
One of the earliest uses of that word was in 1834, when this unfortunately named man, Nimrod Murphee claimed to have discovered perpetual motion. A newspaper picked up his claim and offered their own little retort: “Probably Mr. Murphree has succeeded in handing himself over the Cumberland river, or over a barn yard fence, by the straps of his boots.” I think of the weight of the term’s original absurdity. The impossibility.
You can pull on bootstraps, but they’ll never pull you over anything. First of all, gravity makes it impossible. Gravity always wins (plus you might end up with a myriad of injuries in the process).
On top of that, they won’t pull you over a world of rent increases, fathers trying to teach lessons, gas bills, cell phone bills. I try to tell myself I’m just worked up, just a little drunk. I even try to understand why the practitioners of this word adhere to it. I think of Dad. His grandparents came over from St. Petersburg at the turn of the century. Dad and Aunt Betty had the good life, though, thanks to his grandfather’s speculations, his ability to lie and preempt competition. They had grand mansions, chandeliers and champagne, a coterie of butlers and nannies and boarding schools with Gothic arches and the stride of confidence ahead. And they had PR to clean up shit, be it Dad’s Spanish test or Aunt Betty driving a 1913 Rolls Royce into a lake, inebriated, and almost killing a friend in the process. Yet, they are disciples of the bootstraps god.
Why can’t people get off the bootstrap train? Why can’t they understand that you’re never completely on your own? Why can’t they see the shades of gray above?
I really could steal. But if I did, and I’m not going to, I’d pay it back.
~ ~ ~
The third crack in my life is when the editing jobs begin to dry up. It seems to happen at one time. Clients apologize. Karla Pritchard finds an AI editor, Rex, who can do the job in half the time. Rebecca Schwarzkopf claims to have a new editor who only charges $15 an hour. Samantha Hinzpeter says she’s chosen “a different route.” But she at least chooses to meet with me in person over coffee at Mama Lily’s, to have a “real” conversation.
“You’re a good editor,” she says. “Believe me. You have an eye for detail. Especially with Oxford commas. But I need more speed.”
“I can speed up.”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it, then? I’ve tried to work according to your specifications. Every single one.”
“I know. It really isn’t you.”
“So what is it?”
People laugh and chatter at the series of small oak tables and the long one that flanks the middle of the main room. Someone jokes that the checkstands at CheapGoods look like cough syrup or puke. Another girl quips about having too much time on her hands. A part of me almost wishes Samantha had rejected me via email like the others. There’s a certain nakedness to being here, a certain shame. After all those sentences I stripped and pared, metaphors I helped her develop, and emotional dynamics I helped hone, she’s leaving me. Maybe she is an ungrateful reprobate.
But I have to be better than this. Once upon a time, I didn’t think I’d get a single gig. Then I got one on LinkedIn, then another through that client’s friend’s friend.
“I want to get this on Amazon fast,” Samantha says. “I have connections, and if I get this up in the next two weeks, they think they can promote the shit out of me.”
Just for the record, her “masterpiece” is about what else? Bootstraps. It’s the tale of two immigrants, one of whom practically starves his way through turn-of-the-century New York and magically becomes a robber baron by grit and hustle. The other relies on the kindness of strangers and by some convoluted logic becomes ashamed, flabby, and drunk. If I had more options, I’d have rejected this when Samantha came to me.
But of course, the $30 an hour Samantha offered was good.
That was then.
The point now is that there’s more lost income. She also only pays me $15 for the first fifteen hours of this project.
“You’ll land on your feet,” she says. “You’ll pull yourself up easily.”
“Pull myself up how?” I snap. I hate losing my temper. I really like to think that people have reasons for their actions. But these excuses all seem so flimsy, so crude.
I’ve almost spent the $500 I allocated on the credit card, and might have to give myself permission to spend another $500. But how am I going to make the monthly payments? The minimum payment is already $50, and likely to go up. I only have $300 of my own stash (from the $2,800) left.
I think of Dad’s account, glimmering with dollars. I have the keys to the kingdom. I could just go in, make a transfer, and say I clicked on the wrong button. Of course, I’d have to pay it back. It’s the right thing, even if it means taking on additional editing work, maybe even an outside job or two at Burger Empire or some gas station.
But no.
I must ask for help. It’s a word I dread, but I think of the bootstraps man back at the bar. I think of the fact he thinks help is something unneeded, an anomaly, some inconvenience to crush. I need help, and this is the right thing to do. I hope my family will step up. I hope for much, but expect little.
~ ~ ~
Some famous bootstrappers: Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Jacob Riis, Theodore Roosevelt (in the sense of building up his body), Henry Ford, Friedrich Trump, the guy they made the Pursuit of Happyness about, Ben Carson. Even AOC, one of my all-time heroes, and Bernie Sanders. But Bernie and AOC know if you don’t get helped, you’re up debt and shit creek.
~ ~ ~
I ask Nan for a loan. Just a few hundred. I really don’t want to, but it’s easier to start with her, then move toward the inevitable. Dad. She’s an adjunct at Fort Edgar State University. She doesn’t even have her own parking place, and has to fight fellow adjuncts for spaces near the dumpsters behind the Student Union.
I really hate to ask.
But I’ve spent nearly $1,000 on the credit card, and with my dwindling cash, I can’t let my life go downhill. I can’t let these marks mar me. Delinquent. Slacker.
“Oh, Nicky,” she says. “I wish I could. You know I believe in helping, unlike certain magnates. But they raised my rent too. $1,200 a month.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry my sister—who drove me to school, taught me the power of grammar and writing, and comforted me after nightmares— is in this predicament. I wish I had more so that I could offer it to her, beat this bootstrap monster.
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “I’ll just have to scrimp. I really wish I could help, honey.”
“I’m sorry I asked. I was an asshole.”
“You’re my sweet little asshole.”
I laugh.
I’m ashamed to say I kind of resent, no, hate her. But there’s an edge of sorrow in her voice, something that wants to crack. I can’t hate Nan, a history teacher who talks of trends and the rise and flow of things, but can’t break away from them herself.
“I wish I could help us all,” I say.
~ ~ ~
My computer breaks. It’s been a month and a half since the first crack. I have no other choice, but to spend the rest of that credit card. The last $1,000. I could get a flimsier computer, but I’ve got to think about the long game. Dad got that right. I need something that will sustain hours of editing, that will let me get my name out in the electronic sphere. But right now, I have to ask for money.
~ ~ ~
I ask Mother over a Zoom call. She’s a realtor and a powerhouse in her own right, and as usual, she’s travelling. She’s in some hotel with mauve walls and earth toned blankets. She wants to help, but she agrees with my father.
“He’s not Logan Roy or Donald Trump,” she says (Mother and I both adore Succession). “He loves you, Nick. You and Nan both. He does this for your good.”
“Mother, I’ve worked my ass off. I’ve tried to budget every which way. I’ve tried to avoid using the credit card. I swear. I’ve added and subtracted figures until I have budgets coming out of my asshole.”
“Maybe try it again? I know it’s not easy, sweetheart. You know that when your father and I were starting out, your grandpa gave us a little money.”
“What?” This knowledge rushes to me like a hundred-ton freight train. Sure I know about Grandpa bailing Dad out with PR and all that, but this is a whole different ball game.
“How much?”
There’s a long pause, and I feel dread rushing to me.
“$450,000. But it was just a loan, mind you.”
“That’s almost half a fucking million dollars,” I say. “So Grandpa gave Dad a loan, and that’s all right. But I have to pull myself up?”
“It was different then,” she starts to say.
“How the fuck is it different?” I can’t figure it out. Dad already came from wealth, and hardly worked in college, save for the cheese factory. On top of that, he cheated on that test. I’ve done everything right, and I’m not getting a brass farthing.
She stares at me and sighs. It’s like she wants to kill and comfort me, but doesn’t know what to do.
“It was just one time. You don’t know how embarrassing it was for us. For your father to ask.”
“And I’m just asking once too.”
She sighs, and shifts. Her face is flushed and she has the biggest Amaretto Sour in front of her.
“I know you work hard, darling. But just try a little harder.”
“I’ve tried. Damn it, I’ve tried.”
I realize that there’s a crack in my own voice. Happy me is breaking, and God only knows what the new version will look like.
“What if I lost a toe?” I say. “Would he want me to resolve the situation by myself?”
She pauses again.
“Look,” she says. “I’ll make a deal. If you can get your father to agree, I’ll throw in a little too. I know you work hard, Nick—Nicky.”
“Thanks, Mother.”
This is even more frustrating, because the door is partway cracked. Why can’t she just step through it? There are times when he’s affirmed Dad’s survival of the fittest creed that she’s taken on this faraway look. A look that says she wished she’d ended up in some different life. Or maybe she wants to remind him that she came from a working-class background. That there’s a side not completely lost to cold numbers and escrow. She worked in a diner in college, where she served up hamburgers and received abuse for $3 an hour, even as she studied sociology.
But Dad almost certainly won’t give in. Even though he got a teensy little loan of almost half a million bucks to “start out.” Even though he proclaims the gospel of bootstraps and the toughness of the world. What if he hadn’t gotten that loan? Where would he be?
Right now, stealing is starting to feel good. They call it stealing, but to hell with that. When you’re in the lowest place, you do whatever the hell you must. As much as I understand, I still can’t go through it. But I do think about how I’d do it. And how fast I’d repay him, if at all.
~ ~ ~
I finally ask Dad. Of course, I have to get drunk first, even though I now have about $150 in personal funds. So while I swig a White Russian at Cockroach’s bar, I call him.
“Nicholas, this is a surprise,” he says. “You usually don’t call unless I push.”
“I know. I’m just busy.”
The jukebox blasts the Eagles, peaceful, easy feelings, wanting to sleep with lovers in the desert. A few couples move around the pool table, shaking their booties. A young flaxen-haired woman with huge aviator shades dances about, raising two Fat Tires with ease. She has what she needs. I feel it in her moves, in the smiles she offers across the expanse of bar.
“What’s up?”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“You need something, don’t you?”
I can hear the judgment. The judgment that waits to pounce upon me, two White Russians to the wind. I want to say, please help me. I hate to be in this situation. I’ll pay you back. But the words stick in my throat, like pieces of something I’ve chewed too fast.
“Well?”
“Dad, I need, I need…”
“Don’t stutter. It’s not good form for a Botkin.”
“I need money, Dad. I’ll pay you back. I’ve worked hard.”
“Have you?”
Cockroach yells at a drunk to get off the counter. I admire the way this drunk weaves himself across these vast spaces, at this lowest point. I can’t even talk to my father.
“I’d like to think so.”
The jukebox kicks in, and even before he responds, as Simon and Garfunkel rise, I know I am a rock. I am an island in a sea of bootstrappers. And rocks sink.
~ ~ ~
The next night, I stare at the computer screen. Dad’s account is pulled in front of me. $500,000. I could take it all. But that would be a rookie move, and I don’t want to do this. But the credit card’s bloated, I now owe a $200 minimum, and I have about $100 to my name, after the White Russians.
I just needed that comfort. That cocktail of illusion, until I could figure something out.
No, I’ll take $1,000. I can explain that. Until I can repay Dad, even though a part of me doesn’t want to. If he asks off the bat, I can say that it was an auto-pay for one of his myriad of cards. Or I can pin it on some other scammer. He won’t think twice, especially since he’s so busy with these developments, and he has a new one, Midnight Heights, due to open up in December.
Maybe I should go for a smaller amount. $800? Maybe $600?
I close my eyes. Outside the apartment, trucks sputter, horns blast. A train wails, almost as if it knows what I’m about to do. I can hear its wheels from this far away, a clickety-clack across my consciousness. He’ll kill you, he’ll kill you, they whisper. And he very well might. Not with bullets, but with slander, a weapon he employs with cold aplomb. He’ll play sympathetic father and say I have problems, permanently marking me for good. Or God forbid, he might actually call the police. He’s always said, “nothing like a visit from the police to mark you useless in the world. You fuck with my world, my things, you pay the price.”
Maybe I should bear the misery. Cut down on what I eat. Force myself to consume Vienna sausages and find friends to crash with. At least, there’s a chance to recover from all that.
But I hover over the cursor. It’s just one quick click. One quick click.
But it’s Nan I really fear. I think of her quiet sorrow, like the time I drew Hitler mustaches on the Mother’s Day mannequins when Mom was off to yet another realtors’ conference. “So disappointed,” was all she said, when I wished she’d called me a motherfucker or anything at all. Dad’s always dissected me, seen every little flaw, real or perceived. That won’t change.
An alert screams from my computer. A reminder of a $50 increase in utilities. We regret having to make this move, but this will make for a more dynamic, livable environment. Be sure to budget accordingly.
I think of that man in the bar, of his ease. I think of Dad’s developments as they rise, of the ease with which he takes from me. The ease of teaching lessons. The ease with which the world takes.
I change the amount to $1,200. I can take as well. It gives me no pleasure. Just a sense of dread, a very deep sorrow. For all the talk of not paying him back, I know I inevitably will. But that doesn’t make me feel better.
But what else can I do?
I click on the cursor and wish for something. I wish I could pull myself up. But I can barely stay straight. As the computer screen screams SUCCESS, I really need a drink.
Yash Seyedbagheri
The first time I hear the word “bootstraps,” I’m visiting my friend, Cockroach, at his bar. It’s a hazy August night, full of sweat, heat, and laughter that reminds me of geese and hyenas. The funniest thing is who uses the word. It’s not some geriatric with a hard-on for Eisenhower and Perry Como. It’s a flame-haired guy with owlish eyes, a hawkish nose, and round glasses. He’s probably not much older than me. Probably thirty. He sits to my right at the long oak-paneled bar, with taps of 90 Shilling, Fat Tire, and Voodoo Ranger whooshing with liquid seduction.
“I’m telling you,” he says to his female companion. “It’s all about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. But people love taking. That’s why they can’t get ahead. You just have to work your ass off. You’re up against bigger businesses, but isn’t it worth having an adversary to battle?”
“But what about circumstances,” she says. She wears cat-eye glasses. Just like my sister, Nan. “What if you lost a toe? What if you got ill?”
“Well, if you pull yourself up, you can adjust. Embrace the difficulty. Don’t ask for help. Besides, dear Rosie, a toe is an inconvenience, but profit is forever.”
“Aren’t there enough assholes already?” I quip. “I think I’d prefer to keep my toe.”
The guy just shakes his head like I’m a freak. Like I don’t understand the reality of the world. He has a sense of control, but I feel no passion, no understanding. He reminds me of Dad. Like Dad, I could see him proclaiming artistic pursuits, “senseless dreams,” and calling teachers like my sister “brainwashing schoolmarms.”
But the man opens his mouth, then shuts it. I’m not worth it.
I absorb the young men in backwards baseball caps and baggy pants, young and middle-aged blondes in yoga pants, the clink of glasses, the musky scent of weed and onions. The clatter of balls at the pool table, and someone yelling at Trump on the old Sony TV. The pulsating jukebox with its pink and purple beat conjures a constant reverie. I hope to God I will never have to hear a version of this bootstraps speech. Of course, this is during the good times. It seems impossible.
My credit card is paid off. $3,000 in available credit. Plus $2,800 saved from a litany of editing jobs, some work I’ve done for my father (I’d prefer other work, but I’m pragmatic), and being a judge for the Midnight Marauders Fiction Contest. I live in an apartment with egg-yolk walls. I imagine a long litany of editing jobs. I imagine saving each penny, until my money balloons. I’m twenty-six.
~ ~ ~
The first crack comes when the rent goes up from $800 to $1,000 a month. I try not to use that credit card, that piece of lavender plastic. But if I don’t, I have to eat into the $800 I have left out of the $2,800 (I’ve paid two months’ rent in advance, to have a safeguard). And there’s still groceries, cell phone bills, and other utilities (about 500 in all). The math is tight, no matter how many nights I weigh plus and minus signs and numbers that blur.
The reason for the rent increase? Dynamism of the market and the vagaries of life. At least that’s what the statement from Harmonious Happiness Court office claims. They promise an upgraded Harmonious Happiness experience. This reeks of artifice, chiseled word for word, but I want to believe. Even if I’m a happy-go-lucky blockhead, as Nan often jokes. Even though a part of me knows that buzzwords like “dynamism” and “vagaries” are translation for, “the free market is the supreme leader. Pay fealty to its mood changes, or land on the streets.” I will not end up on the street. I will not ask my parents for shelter, or my sister for that matter.
I allocate $500 to spend on my credit card. But I’ll stop there. I’ll pay it back. I’m not a thief, although I have access to so much, including my father’s own accounts. The situation is sustainable, though. I don’t steal from credit card companies— or my father. Even though I could. But I’d pay it back.
~ ~ ~
The second crack comes when my father says I need to work full time for him, and I refuse. He reduces my pay to $1,000 a month. This is two weeks after the rent increase, and autumn’s chill begins to fill our town, an insistent, pushing chill. Leaves dance and descend and lie in the coldness of streets. But this is a chill I can withstand.
“Nicholas, I’m doing this because I love you,” he says. We’re at Ramon’s Mexican Kingdom, a cornucopia of pastel and pink colors, clattering dishes, and unabashed Spanish swear words. “Development’s grounded in reality, not fairy-tale shit. You can write and research like no one’s business. And you’re a Rembrandt when it comes to digging into impact studies, so why not parlay that?”
“I’m good at editing,” I say. “I’m not trying to quit on you. But this is who I am.”
“I’ll raise your pay to $3,000.” He strokes his goatee. “You should be grateful. With this job, you wouldn’t be dealing with pissy little authors who get drunk and blow out their brains over one missing comma.”
“One client said I have such an attunement to the most inconsequential detail.” I look around the restaurant. We’re in a booth on the left side of the main entrance and underneath one of the several large windows that look out onto the parking lot with faded lines, ghosts of cigarettes past, and even a Trojan wrapper. To the right of the main entrance is this raven-haired harpist, plus the cash register.
“So what do you say about the $3,000?”
It’s tempting. And impact studies are interesting. I like to think about how planned communities rise up with vanilla walls and little identical garages, all along a neat plane. It’s also interesting how communities fall apart, too, because of some lack of foresight with sewage or infrastructure. As Dad always says, “Where’s the poop, son? That’s the key to good development.”
But I can’t fix impact studies the way I can with writing. Writing and editing make me feel in ways mechanics can’t. Plus I’m not well-versed in anything mechanical. I tried to fix Nan’s bike when I was twelve, and she called me, “Henry Ford in reverse, who turns things to shit in Technicolor. But I love you.”
I’ll get more editing gigs. I’ll make up for the space that Dad’s cuts have left, those spaces, those comforts.
“No thanks,” I say now. “I’ll just keep on with the present arrangement. Part time for your work.”
“But editing?” Dad says. “Again, I love you, Nicholas. But you’re going to make what, 20 or 30 an hour from some ungrateful reprobate? What’s the endgame? What do you want to achieve?”
“Dad, I know what I want.”
“Do you really?”
The harpist begins to play Debussy’s Reverie. I love the way her fingers glide over those beautiful strings, the way she creates haunting notes. I think of the life she might want for herself. Has this obsession with individualism has brought her here? Did she want to play in some orchestra? Did she lose her family, her home? Did she have to bury dreams and go for the easiest route? The route that paid phone bills, electricity, bought her sodium-saturated TV dinners? I try to imagine how she still exudes grace through loss. How each note is an attempt to pull herself up. Strike a C or a G, and she lands another dollar toward keeping her apartment for a month. Strike a flat or a sharp, and it all comes to a discordant halt.
I want clients with money. Maybe make it to some big city publishing house through the natural whirl of time. I want to move beyond shibboleths of apartments and into mango-colored suburban homes. Get married to someone who can quote Coen Brothers movies and get excited talking about the Russian Revolution. Someone who can use the words “callipygian” and “motherfucker” in the same sentence with ease.
I don’t want to think that something might disrupt my good fortune.
“Then let’s see how you do on less,” Dad says now. “Maybe this will be a good experience. You’ll see how people fuck over whomever they need.”
“Thanks for that wonderful philosophy.”
“Again, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love you. You know I had to work at the cheese factory in college? You know how hard I fought to build up my empire?”
“Thanks for the tip, Logan Roy.”
Of course, Dad hasn’t seen Succession, so that insult slides past him. As to the cheese factory, Dad worked there a single semester after he got caught cheating on a Spanish test. It was a PR move Grandpa arranged. A chance, as Dad said, to “show the world that the Botkins also had to pull themselves up and atone for their errors, no matter their wealth.”
“Oh, Nicholas,” he says, jarring me from my reverie. “Don’t forget to check my bank accounts. We can’t let things dip, even a little.”
“You got it.”
Sometimes, I think I’d just drain his fucking account. Watch every cent get sucked into the sweet hereafter of payback. Watch him pull himself up. Or I should say, rebuild his life. I’d love to watch myself hold power, like some precious, fragile little thing. But I don’t want to be a mini-Dad who thrives on edicts and stealing and stripping rival developers naked. Besides, Nan says I’m “sweet” and “too good for Dad.” Cockroach calls me “a creative, loveable motherfucker,” even if I do need to chill out a little more. If they have confidence in me, surely, I can be better. After all, I’ve prided myself on neatness, drawing up schedules, setting alerts, learning to adhere to them.
But I’ve just lost $200 of my income.
On top of that, the bootstraps will never leave. I hear it from TVs in my complex, in the barbershop tuned to Fox News, where fake smiles and fake facts reign. Bootstraps try to snag me from newspapers, replete with stories about self-made entrepreneurs, people who froze and slept in toilets.
I want to scream. Talk about good, hardworking people, people like Cockroach who could never get a loan to expand the bar, to let his love, his baby grow beyond one small little room. I want to tell them of the Cockroaches who fill out the paperwork, don’t fudge their histories, confess their credit issues, and get fucked without reward. Or the Nans who teach, and get called Communists, socialists, people undeserving of raises, and somehow comport themselves with morose grace.
And as much as I hate the powers that be, a part of me envies their ability to forget these pasts, or to at least assess them from the safe distances of champagne, caviar, and crackling hearths.
~ ~ ~
One night, I’m in my turd-walled apartment drinking far too much Merlot I bought at CheapGoods. Lately, I’ve been drinking, plus binge-eating everything I can, the good things. Pita bread, guacamole, hummus, even a couple of discounted steaks from CheapGoods. Maybe I need to savor these moments of luxury before it all goes under.
Armed with episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and a perch on my booger-colored sofa, I feel this urge to look up that execrable word. Bootstraps. I know it’s the booze, and I’m descending into the sorrowful part of the experience. Nan reminds me of that when she calls, just as I’m about to look the word up.
“Honey,” she says, her voice full of that quiet disappointment. “You’re drunk. What’s the matter, Nicky? Tell me. You can tell me.”
But I can’t. I can’t tell her how I need to live, to stress eat the hell out of the world before it all comes down, and I’m searching for crumbs in the Mama Lily’s parking lot. Before I’m one of those failures with a full-length beard, who thought the world was fundamentally decent, at least in some respects.
“I’m all right,” I say.
“Are you?”
“I swear, Nan.”
She pauses, then she says, “Take care of yourself. Or I’m gonna rush over there and cry over you for an hour. That’s an edict.”
I laugh, a laugh that reminds me even more of drunkenness.
But the feeling won’t go away, even after Nan gets off the phone. That word taunts and sneers—bootstraps.
There’s some force pulling at me, something that wants to just know how this word came to be. Why it seems ever present. I can pinpoint the rise and fall of bootstraps in America (thanks Gilded Age and Saint Reagan), but it’s getting to the core that counts.
One of the earliest uses of that word was in 1834, when this unfortunately named man, Nimrod Murphee claimed to have discovered perpetual motion. A newspaper picked up his claim and offered their own little retort: “Probably Mr. Murphree has succeeded in handing himself over the Cumberland river, or over a barn yard fence, by the straps of his boots.” I think of the weight of the term’s original absurdity. The impossibility.
You can pull on bootstraps, but they’ll never pull you over anything. First of all, gravity makes it impossible. Gravity always wins (plus you might end up with a myriad of injuries in the process).
On top of that, they won’t pull you over a world of rent increases, fathers trying to teach lessons, gas bills, cell phone bills. I try to tell myself I’m just worked up, just a little drunk. I even try to understand why the practitioners of this word adhere to it. I think of Dad. His grandparents came over from St. Petersburg at the turn of the century. Dad and Aunt Betty had the good life, though, thanks to his grandfather’s speculations, his ability to lie and preempt competition. They had grand mansions, chandeliers and champagne, a coterie of butlers and nannies and boarding schools with Gothic arches and the stride of confidence ahead. And they had PR to clean up shit, be it Dad’s Spanish test or Aunt Betty driving a 1913 Rolls Royce into a lake, inebriated, and almost killing a friend in the process. Yet, they are disciples of the bootstraps god.
Why can’t people get off the bootstrap train? Why can’t they understand that you’re never completely on your own? Why can’t they see the shades of gray above?
I really could steal. But if I did, and I’m not going to, I’d pay it back.
~ ~ ~
The third crack in my life is when the editing jobs begin to dry up. It seems to happen at one time. Clients apologize. Karla Pritchard finds an AI editor, Rex, who can do the job in half the time. Rebecca Schwarzkopf claims to have a new editor who only charges $15 an hour. Samantha Hinzpeter says she’s chosen “a different route.” But she at least chooses to meet with me in person over coffee at Mama Lily’s, to have a “real” conversation.
“You’re a good editor,” she says. “Believe me. You have an eye for detail. Especially with Oxford commas. But I need more speed.”
“I can speed up.”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it, then? I’ve tried to work according to your specifications. Every single one.”
“I know. It really isn’t you.”
“So what is it?”
People laugh and chatter at the series of small oak tables and the long one that flanks the middle of the main room. Someone jokes that the checkstands at CheapGoods look like cough syrup or puke. Another girl quips about having too much time on her hands. A part of me almost wishes Samantha had rejected me via email like the others. There’s a certain nakedness to being here, a certain shame. After all those sentences I stripped and pared, metaphors I helped her develop, and emotional dynamics I helped hone, she’s leaving me. Maybe she is an ungrateful reprobate.
But I have to be better than this. Once upon a time, I didn’t think I’d get a single gig. Then I got one on LinkedIn, then another through that client’s friend’s friend.
“I want to get this on Amazon fast,” Samantha says. “I have connections, and if I get this up in the next two weeks, they think they can promote the shit out of me.”
Just for the record, her “masterpiece” is about what else? Bootstraps. It’s the tale of two immigrants, one of whom practically starves his way through turn-of-the-century New York and magically becomes a robber baron by grit and hustle. The other relies on the kindness of strangers and by some convoluted logic becomes ashamed, flabby, and drunk. If I had more options, I’d have rejected this when Samantha came to me.
But of course, the $30 an hour Samantha offered was good.
That was then.
The point now is that there’s more lost income. She also only pays me $15 for the first fifteen hours of this project.
“You’ll land on your feet,” she says. “You’ll pull yourself up easily.”
“Pull myself up how?” I snap. I hate losing my temper. I really like to think that people have reasons for their actions. But these excuses all seem so flimsy, so crude.
I’ve almost spent the $500 I allocated on the credit card, and might have to give myself permission to spend another $500. But how am I going to make the monthly payments? The minimum payment is already $50, and likely to go up. I only have $300 of my own stash (from the $2,800) left.
I think of Dad’s account, glimmering with dollars. I have the keys to the kingdom. I could just go in, make a transfer, and say I clicked on the wrong button. Of course, I’d have to pay it back. It’s the right thing, even if it means taking on additional editing work, maybe even an outside job or two at Burger Empire or some gas station.
But no.
I must ask for help. It’s a word I dread, but I think of the bootstraps man back at the bar. I think of the fact he thinks help is something unneeded, an anomaly, some inconvenience to crush. I need help, and this is the right thing to do. I hope my family will step up. I hope for much, but expect little.
~ ~ ~
Some famous bootstrappers: Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Jacob Riis, Theodore Roosevelt (in the sense of building up his body), Henry Ford, Friedrich Trump, the guy they made the Pursuit of Happyness about, Ben Carson. Even AOC, one of my all-time heroes, and Bernie Sanders. But Bernie and AOC know if you don’t get helped, you’re up debt and shit creek.
~ ~ ~
I ask Nan for a loan. Just a few hundred. I really don’t want to, but it’s easier to start with her, then move toward the inevitable. Dad. She’s an adjunct at Fort Edgar State University. She doesn’t even have her own parking place, and has to fight fellow adjuncts for spaces near the dumpsters behind the Student Union.
I really hate to ask.
But I’ve spent nearly $1,000 on the credit card, and with my dwindling cash, I can’t let my life go downhill. I can’t let these marks mar me. Delinquent. Slacker.
“Oh, Nicky,” she says. “I wish I could. You know I believe in helping, unlike certain magnates. But they raised my rent too. $1,200 a month.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry my sister—who drove me to school, taught me the power of grammar and writing, and comforted me after nightmares— is in this predicament. I wish I had more so that I could offer it to her, beat this bootstrap monster.
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “I’ll just have to scrimp. I really wish I could help, honey.”
“I’m sorry I asked. I was an asshole.”
“You’re my sweet little asshole.”
I laugh.
I’m ashamed to say I kind of resent, no, hate her. But there’s an edge of sorrow in her voice, something that wants to crack. I can’t hate Nan, a history teacher who talks of trends and the rise and flow of things, but can’t break away from them herself.
“I wish I could help us all,” I say.
~ ~ ~
My computer breaks. It’s been a month and a half since the first crack. I have no other choice, but to spend the rest of that credit card. The last $1,000. I could get a flimsier computer, but I’ve got to think about the long game. Dad got that right. I need something that will sustain hours of editing, that will let me get my name out in the electronic sphere. But right now, I have to ask for money.
~ ~ ~
I ask Mother over a Zoom call. She’s a realtor and a powerhouse in her own right, and as usual, she’s travelling. She’s in some hotel with mauve walls and earth toned blankets. She wants to help, but she agrees with my father.
“He’s not Logan Roy or Donald Trump,” she says (Mother and I both adore Succession). “He loves you, Nick. You and Nan both. He does this for your good.”
“Mother, I’ve worked my ass off. I’ve tried to budget every which way. I’ve tried to avoid using the credit card. I swear. I’ve added and subtracted figures until I have budgets coming out of my asshole.”
“Maybe try it again? I know it’s not easy, sweetheart. You know that when your father and I were starting out, your grandpa gave us a little money.”
“What?” This knowledge rushes to me like a hundred-ton freight train. Sure I know about Grandpa bailing Dad out with PR and all that, but this is a whole different ball game.
“How much?”
There’s a long pause, and I feel dread rushing to me.
“$450,000. But it was just a loan, mind you.”
“That’s almost half a fucking million dollars,” I say. “So Grandpa gave Dad a loan, and that’s all right. But I have to pull myself up?”
“It was different then,” she starts to say.
“How the fuck is it different?” I can’t figure it out. Dad already came from wealth, and hardly worked in college, save for the cheese factory. On top of that, he cheated on that test. I’ve done everything right, and I’m not getting a brass farthing.
She stares at me and sighs. It’s like she wants to kill and comfort me, but doesn’t know what to do.
“It was just one time. You don’t know how embarrassing it was for us. For your father to ask.”
“And I’m just asking once too.”
She sighs, and shifts. Her face is flushed and she has the biggest Amaretto Sour in front of her.
“I know you work hard, darling. But just try a little harder.”
“I’ve tried. Damn it, I’ve tried.”
I realize that there’s a crack in my own voice. Happy me is breaking, and God only knows what the new version will look like.
“What if I lost a toe?” I say. “Would he want me to resolve the situation by myself?”
She pauses again.
“Look,” she says. “I’ll make a deal. If you can get your father to agree, I’ll throw in a little too. I know you work hard, Nick—Nicky.”
“Thanks, Mother.”
This is even more frustrating, because the door is partway cracked. Why can’t she just step through it? There are times when he’s affirmed Dad’s survival of the fittest creed that she’s taken on this faraway look. A look that says she wished she’d ended up in some different life. Or maybe she wants to remind him that she came from a working-class background. That there’s a side not completely lost to cold numbers and escrow. She worked in a diner in college, where she served up hamburgers and received abuse for $3 an hour, even as she studied sociology.
But Dad almost certainly won’t give in. Even though he got a teensy little loan of almost half a million bucks to “start out.” Even though he proclaims the gospel of bootstraps and the toughness of the world. What if he hadn’t gotten that loan? Where would he be?
Right now, stealing is starting to feel good. They call it stealing, but to hell with that. When you’re in the lowest place, you do whatever the hell you must. As much as I understand, I still can’t go through it. But I do think about how I’d do it. And how fast I’d repay him, if at all.
~ ~ ~
I finally ask Dad. Of course, I have to get drunk first, even though I now have about $150 in personal funds. So while I swig a White Russian at Cockroach’s bar, I call him.
“Nicholas, this is a surprise,” he says. “You usually don’t call unless I push.”
“I know. I’m just busy.”
The jukebox blasts the Eagles, peaceful, easy feelings, wanting to sleep with lovers in the desert. A few couples move around the pool table, shaking their booties. A young flaxen-haired woman with huge aviator shades dances about, raising two Fat Tires with ease. She has what she needs. I feel it in her moves, in the smiles she offers across the expanse of bar.
“What’s up?”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“You need something, don’t you?”
I can hear the judgment. The judgment that waits to pounce upon me, two White Russians to the wind. I want to say, please help me. I hate to be in this situation. I’ll pay you back. But the words stick in my throat, like pieces of something I’ve chewed too fast.
“Well?”
“Dad, I need, I need…”
“Don’t stutter. It’s not good form for a Botkin.”
“I need money, Dad. I’ll pay you back. I’ve worked hard.”
“Have you?”
Cockroach yells at a drunk to get off the counter. I admire the way this drunk weaves himself across these vast spaces, at this lowest point. I can’t even talk to my father.
“I’d like to think so.”
The jukebox kicks in, and even before he responds, as Simon and Garfunkel rise, I know I am a rock. I am an island in a sea of bootstrappers. And rocks sink.
~ ~ ~
The next night, I stare at the computer screen. Dad’s account is pulled in front of me. $500,000. I could take it all. But that would be a rookie move, and I don’t want to do this. But the credit card’s bloated, I now owe a $200 minimum, and I have about $100 to my name, after the White Russians.
I just needed that comfort. That cocktail of illusion, until I could figure something out.
No, I’ll take $1,000. I can explain that. Until I can repay Dad, even though a part of me doesn’t want to. If he asks off the bat, I can say that it was an auto-pay for one of his myriad of cards. Or I can pin it on some other scammer. He won’t think twice, especially since he’s so busy with these developments, and he has a new one, Midnight Heights, due to open up in December.
Maybe I should go for a smaller amount. $800? Maybe $600?
I close my eyes. Outside the apartment, trucks sputter, horns blast. A train wails, almost as if it knows what I’m about to do. I can hear its wheels from this far away, a clickety-clack across my consciousness. He’ll kill you, he’ll kill you, they whisper. And he very well might. Not with bullets, but with slander, a weapon he employs with cold aplomb. He’ll play sympathetic father and say I have problems, permanently marking me for good. Or God forbid, he might actually call the police. He’s always said, “nothing like a visit from the police to mark you useless in the world. You fuck with my world, my things, you pay the price.”
Maybe I should bear the misery. Cut down on what I eat. Force myself to consume Vienna sausages and find friends to crash with. At least, there’s a chance to recover from all that.
But I hover over the cursor. It’s just one quick click. One quick click.
But it’s Nan I really fear. I think of her quiet sorrow, like the time I drew Hitler mustaches on the Mother’s Day mannequins when Mom was off to yet another realtors’ conference. “So disappointed,” was all she said, when I wished she’d called me a motherfucker or anything at all. Dad’s always dissected me, seen every little flaw, real or perceived. That won’t change.
An alert screams from my computer. A reminder of a $50 increase in utilities. We regret having to make this move, but this will make for a more dynamic, livable environment. Be sure to budget accordingly.
I think of that man in the bar, of his ease. I think of Dad’s developments as they rise, of the ease with which he takes from me. The ease of teaching lessons. The ease with which the world takes.
I change the amount to $1,200. I can take as well. It gives me no pleasure. Just a sense of dread, a very deep sorrow. For all the talk of not paying him back, I know I inevitably will. But that doesn’t make me feel better.
But what else can I do?
I click on the cursor and wish for something. I wish I could pull myself up. But I can barely stay straight. As the computer screen screams SUCCESS, I really need a drink.
