Mary's Story
This is a story about a woman named Mary.
Mary
is twenty seven years old. She grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia – not upper
middle class, but firmly middle class. She could ride her bike at night and not
fear for her safety; or, her parents would let Mary ride her bike at night and
not fear for her safety.
These
parents are an elementary school teacher (mother) and a college professor
(father). Mary’s mother spent the first ten years of Mary’s life raising her
and her younger brother, who is now twenty four, before she went back to work,
first as a teaching assistant, then as a full time third grade teacher. Her
father, who has his PhD, has tenure at a state university.
In
high school, Mary coasted by on her natural intelligence, getting mostly Bs,
with a few As and Cs scattered about (more As than Cs). She lost her virginity
at seventeen, which was late for her group of friends, to a boy at a party.
They were both drunk. Afterwards, they dated for four months, but then broke up
when he started seeing someone else. For six weeks, Mary thought her life was
over, that she would never recover. Now, at twenty seven, she hasn’t thought
about this boy in at least six months.
She
went to a small liberal arts college in central Ohio. It was far away, but in a
town that felt comfortable – white (at least around campus), with lots of
cafes, a local theater, and, on the outskirts, strip malls with all the
familiar chains.
Mary
chose this school because it had a good reputation as being “almost an Ivy” but
was known for its more “liberal” education – meaning that most of its graduates
pursued careers in the humanities, not in finance. She was pushed towards this
school both by her parents, who knew of its prestige and figure it would
validate the myriad sacrifices they had made in raising Mary, and by her
guidance counselor (who had graduated from the school in 1981, with no loans, whereupon
he was immediately hired for the position that he still holds to this day). She
was also pushed towards it by the competitiveness of her school, a mostly white
public school, where the administrators bragged about the high quality schools
their kids went to – not an empty boast, but one that was tied directly to the
school’s quality, as its federal funding was entirely dependent upon the
national test scores, which were also a part of the admissions process at the
college.
During
Mary’s many meetings with her guidance counselor, and during her two official
visits to campus, no one mentioned anything about tuition or loans. And when
Mary was asked, at 18, to sign for both federal and private loans – her parents
made too much money combined to qualify for a full financial aid package, but
had far too little saved up (because Mary’s mother had only been a full time
teacher for the last four years) to pay for tuition – she signed on the dotted
line without a second thought. She had no concept of interest or credit, because
she had not been taught it in her high school’s math classes because the
federal tests didn’t focus on interest or credit. Besides, College meant
Success which meant a Job. This is what everyone – teachers, parents,
administrators – had been telling Mary her entire life.
College
was college. She smoked pot. She drank too much. She may have been assaulted
one very drunken night by a friend, but it also might have just been really
bad, hazy, drunken sex; whatever it had been, she was over it by now.
She
majored in English because she’d always been a good writer; she thought,
encouraged by a kind high school teacher, that maybe she wanted to write
novels. Her advisor at the college ensured her this was a solid, spiritually
fulfilling path to pursue. Encouraged by a boy she was falling in love with,
she declared, officially, her sophomore year.
Her
classes were almost overwhelming in their workloads. She read the modernists,
the romantics, the Victorians, the post-Modernists. She read Marx and Hegel and
“The Protestant Work Ethic.” Classes were extremely competitive; everyone was deeply
concerned about graduate school.
As
such, she was also active in extra-curriculars. She sang in an a capella choir.
She played intramural quidditch, which was a thing. She was also active in the
English department, organizing readings and attending wine and poetry nights.
She
dated the boy who encouraged her to study English through her sophomore and
junior years. She thought, for a time, that they were going to get married,
because so many people said you met your spouse at college and because they
could talk all night and because he was pretty good in bed. But, senior year,
with the Real World looming, she suddenly felt trapped and didn’t want to have
to worry about anyone’s dreams but her own. He, sort of, agreed, so they broke
up, but within a month he was showing up outside her room in the middle of the
night reading her poems he’d written. At first she was sympathetic, but
eventually she threatened to call campus security, and finally broke off all
contact altogether.
After
graduation, Mary suddenly realized she had a shitload of debt. Like, a hundred
thousand dollars worth of debt. And suddenly that debt was going to be accruing
interest. Mary had always imagined that after College came Freedom. Work, yes,
but the freedom to choose meaningful work.
But
those loan payments were coming and she couldn’t defer them until the next
year, when she hoped to go back to school for her masters (she took the year
off because she’d been in school for sixteen years straight and felt she needed
a break; many of her friends jumped right into masters programs and
fellowships).
So
Mary looked for work. And she looked. And she looked. She had a diploma – summa
cum laude! – from an impressive Liberal Arts College! Why couldn’t she get a
job? She applied to be a teacher, like her mother, but she needed a masters for
that – and to do a masters, there would be more loans. She applied to be a staff
writer at a magazine in Philadelphia, but the position had over three hundred applicants,
and the one they ended up choosing had spent two years toiling as an unpaid
intern; they owed him (he was able to toil as an unpaid intern because his
parents were lawyers). She applied for a job selling insurance (needed an MBA).
She got offered a job in collections – this was in October, by which point she
was living in her parents’ basement and had been babysitting to make her loan
payments – and she accepted it in a heartbeat. Except the job was horrid. She
cold called hundreds of people a day – people not unlike herself – who were
defaulting on loans. Most of her payment was based on a commission which was
based on the percentage of clients she got to make payments. She quit after two
weeks.
She
was hired as seasonal help at Target
for the Christmas season. She was competing with twelve other employees – all of
them with college degrees – for, perhaps, two full time positions when the
holidays passed. She felt lucky to get one of those positions, even though the
job paid $8.75 an hour and she had to eat her lunches at the depressing Subway
next to the closed down shoe store.
She’d
mostly stopped writing because, between babysitting and Target (she had to keep
babysitting just to make enough for her loans and her cell phone bill), she
worked sixty hours a week. Plus she had to apply for her masters, so that she
wouldn’t have to spend another year doing this shit. She was too tired to
write. And, in truth, her soul was too crushed.
To
ease this despair, she smoked a lot of pot. And drank quite a bit, too, which
concerned her parents. She fucked random people sometimes, too, but not
usually. Working at Target was not the best place to meet men. She also ate a
lot of junk food, because it eased her depression. All this consumption further
cut into Mary’s funds, and ensured that she had to keep working both jobs. She
worked six days a week. Fridays and Saturdays, she worked twelve hours a day;
Tuesdays, she worked sixteen. Her entire extended family was worried about her,
but they were also disappointed. They lamented how much she had underachieved,
and how she wasn’t working hard enough. When would Mary get a Real Job?
Incredibly,
jubilantly, in April, she was admitted to a State University, where she would be
getting her masters in English Literature with a focus on the Modernists. But,
because she’d been living at home, once again she’d have to take out loans to
cover it. Not as much as undergrad, but it would still be another fifty grand. Besides,
she’d been hoping to get into one of the Ivies. But everyone was going back to
school; the competition was just too stiff. She had to take what she could get.
She’d
also considered an MFA, but when she didn’t get into Iowa, she said fuck it,
because even Mary wasn’t naïve enough to believe that an MFA from anyplace that
wasn’t Iowa would lead to anything other than the indentured servitude of
adjunct professorships.
Mary
moved to the State University’s town, which was a quaint red brick town where
rents had gone up exorbitantly in the last decade. As part of the program, Mary
would be teaching two classes a semester, along with three classes, in which
she would have to read a book a week for each. To make ends meet – meaning rent,
cell phone bill, health insurance, car insurance, car payments (a car was a
necessity in State University town, which was in a southern state whose
Republican governor had vetoed a public transit plan), food, and an increasing
amount of red wine (which Mary needed to calm her nerves) and coffee (which
Mary needed to wake up) – Mary had to take a job at the local Target, working
twenty-five hours a week. Her local manager had been nice enough to get her
transferred.
The
two years of the Masters were the hardest she’d ever worked, which was saying a
lot, because she’d worked really hard the year before the Masters. She realized
that to make ends meet, she actually had to work at least thirty hours a week
at Target. Most nights, she was getting four, at most five, hours of sleep;
many nights she got less.
Also,
one of her professors pressured her into a vaguely sexual relationship that
one night actually became sexual. But he’s a super respected guy in his field,
with a lot of influence, so she would be insanely foolish to turn him down or get
on bad terms with him. Doing so would likely get her ostracized from the whole
department, to the point that she might even have to leave. And afterwards, she couldn’t tell
anyone about it, because this professor is incredibly well respected within the
community. So she had to deal with seeing him strutting around campus almost
every day, Very Important and Respected, while she felt vaguely nauseous.
Maybe it was her disgust or maybe it was just the lack of sleep.
But
she was getting a Valuable Education in a Meaningful Field that she was Deeply
Passionate About! Surely, once she cleared this last hurdle, the world would
open up. She’d be free to work a well paying job that would allow her a measure
of financial comfort and enough space that she could finally start writing
fiction again. Right?
Well,
maybe that comes with the PhD. Right? Surely, after one of these hurdles there
is the financial security and the social gratification that Mary has been
promised would be hers since high school – fuck, since middle school even!
Surely, after one of these hurdles there is the space to enjoy life, to savor
friendships, to have a healthy relationship, to take the trip through South
America she’s always wanted to take.
But
fuck. How can she take a road trip through South America with $150,000 in loans
hanging over her head? And how can she justify another $100,000 to get the PhD?
She
can’t. So she moves back to the Philadelphia suburbs and gets a job at a coffee
shop and another job as a gardener while she applies to every Real Job she can
find: finance, education, journalism. She does not give a fuck what field it is
in. Once again, she is working sixty hours a week. Once again, her extended
family and friends are very disappointed and worried at how much she’s
underachieving and wish she would just work harder.
And
yet, in a strange way, she’s grateful. She meets a cook at the coffee shop from
El Salvador who walked across the border and saved money for three years so he
could bring his wife and kids over. He works six days a week without complaint.
Why does he do it? So his kids will have the opportunity … to go to a good
liberal arts college.
And
at the gardening job, she meets an amazing man who was once a heroin addict. He’s
clean now, though he’s clinging to sobriety, and it’s really hard because he
doesn’t have health insurance – god knows the gardening job won’t pay for it –
so he can’t get the medicine or the treatment he needs. He’s also working two
jobs, and commuting an hour and a half between them.
“Some
days, you have no idea how badly I want a drink.”
He
gets fired after he shows up two minutes late – work starts at 5:30 am – for the
third time.
In
October – October is apparently her lucky month – she gets a job doing web
writing. It’s a Real Job! It’s even a writing job! It’s at an office in
suburban New Jersey, so the commute won’t be easy – at least forty-five minutes
on good days, and God knows the traffic on the Schuylkill is rarely good. But
it’s a Real Job, goddamnit, in a cubicle in an office and all!
Mary’s
friends and family rejoice. She’s finally joined the Real World. Soon, she’ll
probably start thinking about marriage and kids because now she’s twenty-six
and because she’s a woman she must be getting worried about her aging ovaries.
If she doesn’t get a good man soon, she might wake up forty alone! Which is
infinitely worse, Mary’s grandfather tells her, than waking up forty in a bad
marriage, two kids, and a soul crushing job. Anything is better than being single,
without kids, and a job you don’t hate.
So
Mary starts her real job. She’s excited! She wears pants suits to work. Her
boss is a man. Most of her co-workers are men. In fact, Mary feels a bit inadequate
beside these men. Not because she doubts her intelligence, but because she’s
never done this kind of work before. Maybe she’s not going to be good at it?
None of the men seem to be worried about this. In fact, they all act like they
were goddamned entitled to this job.
She
works long hours at first, in the hopes of dispelling this feeling of
inadequacy. She gets in in the morning at 9:00 a.m.. Most days, she leaves
after six. She’s rarely home before seven. When she gets home, she’s so tired
that all she wants to do is eat fast food and veg out to the Tube. Except she
has a shitty old TV. With the money she has now – not much, but more than
before – she can get a better Tube. So she does. Everyone is very impressed by
her new television and they tell her how bad ass it is that she works a Real
Job where she can buy a Bad Ass Tube.
But, they wonder, when
is she finally going to become an Adult and settle down. The clock is ticking,
right? Tick, tock. Tick, tock. All the good men are marrying off!
After the new job sheen
wears off, Mary finds that the job is almost as soul crushing at Target. She
writes and edits for websites. Her company is kind of an intermediary. In
truth, most days, Mary works no more than four hours a day – that’s on a busy
day. And yet, she has to be in the office by 9 am every day, even on the days
when she knows there won’t be work until at least noon. In fact, much of Mary’s
time is devoted to making it look like she’s doing work when she actually isn’t.
This is a source of great pride in the men at her office – that they make it
look like they’re working when they’re actually on Facebook or Buzzfeed. They
brag about how good they are at this.
Increasingly, Mary
finds herself wishing away entire hours of her life. Hours she will never again
recover; wishes that are bearing her irrevocably closer to death. And she just
wants these hours to vanish so that she just doesn’t have to pretend she’s
working when she could be in bed catching up on much needed sleep or when she
could be actually writing fiction.
Actually, Mary’s
wondering why she needs to be in the office at all. With technology these days,
can’t she do all of this from home? Then, she could work on her schedule. She’d
work when she felt like it, and not work when she felt like – as long as she got
the work done on time, what’s the difference?
She approaches her boss
about this. She frames it as a desire to work on fiction.
It’s imperative, she’s
told, that she remain a Part of the Team. And that she Be Available For
Observation. Also, if she really truly loves fiction so much, she can find time
for it, can’t she? If she has all these wasted hours in the office, why doesn’t
she use them to write fiction? Because exhausted hours in a cubicle in a place
that you are slowly growing to loathe are the perfect recipe for great fiction,
right? Maybe Mary should just work harder for her art.
Instead, dispirited,
Mary drinks more. And eats more fast food. And watches more television. And
drinks more coffee – but because she’s so tired, it’s much easier to just buy
the fucking stuff than to make it her own. And it’s much cheaper and more
convenient to buy it from Starbucks than from the Mom and Pop Place that is
five minutes out of her way and a dollar more expensive.
Mary’s weekends fly by.
Is it just her, or is time speeding up? Maybe she’s gotten so conditioned to
wishing vast swaths of time away at work that, when time arrives that she
actually wants to savor and hold onto, she doesn’t know how anymore.
Maybe, but Mary,
really, you’re twenty-seven dear. We’re so proud of you for your Real Job, but
we’re really worried about when you’re going to finally settle down and become
an Adult. Plus, that $150,000 in loans (actually, now it’s only $137,000!) isn’t
enough; you need kids to tack onto that burden.
One day, Mary passes
out. She wakes up in a pool of her own piss. She’s been having chest pains
recently. She goes to the doctor and finds out her blood pressure is high. She
needs to exercise more. But it’s dark when she gets home from work and her
neighborhood isn’t that safe to begin with … So she joins a gym by the office,
for only a thousand dollars a year! And she feels so good working out that she
usually rewards herself with a take-out dinner on the way home; after all that
working out and all those hours wished away in the office, she’s way too tired
to cook.
One day, Mary breaks
into sobs. She hasn’t written a word of fiction in two years. She hates her
job. She’s saddled with debt. She calls her best friend to vent.
You need a boyfriend.
It’s not healthy to be alone. A good boyfriend will fix everything. It’s what
you’re missing.
She calls her mother
instead.
We’re so proud of you.
Dad brags about you at the gym every day. Everyone is very impressed by how
hard you work at your Real Job in your Real Office. You have a Bad Ass TV that
you paid for yourself and you went to a Super Impressive College (Dad still has
the bumper sticker on his car!). Maybe you just need a vacation. Take a cruise
or an all-expenses paid week in Cancun. But Mary, I think I know what the real
problem is. You aren’t getting any younger. Maybe it’s time to find a man and
become an Adult. Happiness is waiting for you. You just have to get out there
and grab it.
Kept me reading and wondering where it was going to end; this is a slice of America, and your generation, worth recording, yes...
Hey Dad,
Thanks for reading and glad it kept your attention. It's one of the more bitter, caustic things I've written, but it felt necessary. I've got plenty more "upbeat" stuff out there, thankfully :)