credit rating
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
Three more letters arrive in the mail today. A couple of them are Christmas cards, and then there are the bills. I don’t pay the bills. The companies think I do. I pay the electrical and phone bills by check, and I use my credit card to pay off the bank when it’s time to account for the checks. Sometimes I pay off the credit card companies with other credit cards, and sometimes I pay them with a check. At any rate, I don’t really have any money, but they don’t know that. Someday the checks will bounce and the credit card companies will send strong-arm thugs to my door, and the whole operation will collapse. But until then, I live in relative comfort.
I’m surplised they know I’m still alive, my fiiends who send Clhristmas cards.
Maybe I’m just a name on their lists—entered forever into a database, and they hastily scrawl my name and address onto an envelope, write a generic note inside the card, and leave it to the US Postal Service’s mercy. Sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m still alive, so I usually check for a pulse. Once I didn’t find it, but the mortician told me I wasn’t dead. If you were dead,” he said, “you probably couldn’t have driven down here to tell me.”
One of my friends had his social security cancelled because the government informed him that he had passed away. The mortician didn’t think he was dead either, but if the govemment says so, Ihen it must be true. He was later cremated.
My room is littered with beercans. I don’t even drink. Someday I’ll collect them and bring them in for the refunds. The money will further confuse the bank. They don’t know about me there. I’m just another name on their databases. They even sent me a Christmas card.
Once I entered the bank because they have free coffee. I took the decaf, because I knew that catfeine’s unhealthy. It was too strong, however, and instead of actual cream they had non-dairy creamer, so it was also too hot. I blew on it and blew on it, but I suppose I blew a bit too hard because it spilled out of the cup. Coffee stained my nice white t-shirt, and it burned me. The burns weren’t too serious, fortunately, but Ihey wouldn’t accept my American Express at the laundromat. I could see some Visa guy turning my day into a fucking commercial, but I hoped not. Maybe if I was in a commercial they’d give me some money and I could pay off the creditors.
My lriend Adam has good credit. He’ll always tell me the secrets of having a decent credit rating, in that he always has his credit card payments in on time, and he never borrows more than he can pay back. I always have my credit card payments in on time, but I don’t have a particularly sparkling credit rating.
Later, they even ask me to be in a commercial. I’m a writer, you see. Thomas Pynchon was so reclusive that when they did his GAP ad, it only showed the khakis. I don’ t even wear khakis, but I went to the GAP once. I had to leave because I was dressed too poorly; it intimidated the other customers. Kind of a vicious cycle; I went to the GAP so I could be dressed nicely, but had to leave because I wasn’t dressed well enough. Perhaps there’s an interim store where I could shop before working my way up to the GAP.
It’s probably all the better that they wouldn’t let me shop there. I wouldn’t have been able to pay for it in the first place.
