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Cheapness Breaks Up Couples

Tom Ball

    It was a World of cheap people. Sex workers could not survive.
    Everyone was in the service industry but were paid the minimum and no one tipped them. People always went Dutch if they even agreed to “waste” money on a restaurant.
    Many people were billionaires, but no one was generous.
    The vast majority were dirt poor. There had been an economic depression for more than a century.
    There were no leaders here. Gold was their leader. Gold was always right. And that meant what the rich said goes.
    I dated a girl who was rich from her family business and she made us go Dutch in everything we did. She said, “It was fair.” But I couldn’t afford to date her. She said, “The strong survive, and the poor perish.” I said, “She wasn’t kind.” She said, “It was tough love and I would have to get some cash together, then she would love me.”
    I said, “You are just a spoiled rich girl who doesn’t understand what it is like to be poor.” She responded, “Her family members were all adept at making money and couldn’t understand why a clever man like me was not rich.” I said, “I am a typical starving artist, a writer of good books who is misunderstood by his contemporaries. But posterity would remember me as one of the great ones. However, I need a patron to keep writing.” She said, “I do like your work, now that you mention it. And OK, I will be your patron. But you have got to write about me prominently in all your stories.” I said, “Fine.” And I wrote about her in various scenarios, she was haughty and proud and clever and unpredictable in my stories in which she was the hero. I had to dance through hoops to win her approval and she insisted I modify my scripts to suit her. She was an egotist.
    She wanted me to portray her as a great philanthropist. A patron of the Arts who struggled with the other leaders to make a lasting impression on history.
    And so I did and exaggerated her philanthropic deeds and made her out to be a Superwoman who cared deeply about the common human.

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