It was around 1994, when I was in my mid-twenties, that I officially became a target demographic. It’s a rite of passage as potent as scrotal tattooing or a kiss from a camp counselor, that day when you realize that the Madison Avenue boys find you and your developing credit bulge very attractive. Suddenly, there’s a lot of unwanted attention from corporate brands on the make, eager to impress you with their new cars, their luxury cruise packages, their protein-enriched conditioners. They assure you they’re not like the ones who came before. This ain’t yer daddy’s Weetabix.
And so it was that I spied a TV commercial that day, interrupting a dramatic plot twist on Party of Five, addressing what was considered to be my then-current market segment. In this ad, a twenty-something couple sat on a Danish modern sofa, framed by a sunburst clock and atom-age lampshades, both of them sporting their grandparents’ eyewear and vintage clothing. He, a wiry, white nerdboy, wore a bowling shirt and Chuck Taylors, she, a Bettie-banged grunge gal, an oversized flannel shirt and Doc Martens. So far they had my number, with a two-or-three-percent margin of error. Then the Gen X Poindexter looked up from his Crash Test Dummies liner notes and said to the camera:
“We were having a lot of trouble trying to decide who should manage our stock portfolio.”
For a brief moment, this stunned me. A quick flash of panic. “Wait. I’ve got mid-century furnishings and vintage eyeglasses and a flannelled spouse,” I thought. “Am I supposed to have a stock portfolio?!”
I didn’t even know what that was, and truth be told, I still don’t. Stock portfolios, and those who manage them, are things I only know about through rumor and hearsay. Those advertising vampires in 1994 may have known about my preferred sneaker brand, but they’d mistakenly pegged me as one of the up and coming, creative-class tech bros, on my way to Silicon Valley to merge billion-dollar startups, instead of the penniless art-school wastrel that I was and am. The guys selling Surge (“the fully loaded citrus soda with carbos”) understood me a lot better (aside from their misguided assumptions about my interest in Lenny Kravatz).
Those market researchers trying to push stock investment to the granny-glasses set may have missed an important facet of our generation. Those 90’s youngsters, scouring the thrift stores for Eames chairs and Mrs. Miller LPs, may have been searching for a lost national identity among those post-war artifacts, but they were also looking for cheap, retro activewear because they didn’t have any fucking money. And what little cash they could scrape together was going toward vintage Walter Keane* wall hangings and not, despite the corporate fear mongering, stock portfolios.
And I was no different. In my twenties, I had no concept of finance beyond the forty-five dollars I may or may not have had in my checking account. I developed no large-scale fiduciary schemes for myself because I could never imagine having more than five hundred bucks at one time. My dreams of financial independence usually revolved around the reckless purchase of collectible lunch boxes. The idea of spending more than a hundred dollars on anything – say, on a sofa or new mattress - was too vague an abstraction for my undercooked mind, much less the unfathomable figures in the tens of thousands that seemed to be moving through other people’s bank accounts. I never spent money, but not because I was I was stingy or tight. The word for it is poor.
I didn’t grow up poor, but I was raised by people who grew up poor. As in no-electricity/dumping-in-outhouses/might-have-to-cook-squirrels poor. For our mallrat generation, this was possibly more frustrating than genuine impoverishment, because you knew your parents could be purchasing flashy video game consoles and name-brand parachute pants, but, thanks to their dirt-eating upbringing, they ain’t gonna. My parents taught me the value of a dollar by never spending one. The message was always clear: The moolah is not forthcoming. So you can just shut up about the goddamned Micronauts.
My mother encouraged robust scavenging. Discount stores, yard sales, roadside refuse. She imparted the valuable lesson of keeping close ties to one’s community, because those idiots are throwing away perfectly good mini-blinds. And even if they hadn’t planned to throw their belongings away, they might just give you the stuff so you’ll stop dropping hints about it. A bargain is a bargain, but according to my mother, a half-broken crock-pot secured through sheer pestering was the greatest treasure of all. In my last home, I repaired and re-repaired my washing machine consistently for fifteen years, refusing to replace it. Not because that Speed Queen was beloved – it was clearly unreliable - but because I had rescued it from the garbage. And a victory like that you keep in the trophy case forever.
All my electronics came from pawn shops, my auto parts from the salvage yard, my fashions from Goodwill. My closets and drawers were filled with extra soy sauce packets, A/V cables, Wendy’s straws, half-dead batteries, leftover paint, filched rubber bands, and an endless supply of mismatched screws and washers. The angriest I have ever been at my wife was when I discovered that she had thrown away my collection – years in the making – of perfectly good twist ties. Why not just put the dog to sleep when I’m not looking?
Now that I’m committing these tendencies to writing, the condition seems more dire than I thought. This isn’t really about thrift on this level, but some combination of laziness and a weird, innate fear of purchasing something, at full retail price, that no one else has previously owned. Being the original buyer is somehow too much responsibility, a financial investment with too much risk. That, and I suffer a deep neurosis that something worthwhile might be thrown away before I get a shot at it.** Assuming this is a disease common to Generation X, why, I ask you, would the banking industry of 1994 conclude that twenty-five-year-old, beer-drunk, Converse-clad, graphic-noveling dependents like me, spending our last ten bucks on Land of the Lost View-Master reels, had stock investments that needed managing? Or that we watched Party of Five?
I, for one, have remained a problematic target for their market strategies. I’ve never managed to level up in my material desires - a decadent splurge for me is still ordering Dominos. Better they focus on my monied contemporaries, who always pay retail, buy exactly what the wedding planner recommends, replace their McMansions biannually, and have no interest black velvet paintings. These are the reliable spendthrifts, eager to discuss finance, who proudly confess that they dropped eighteen grand on Ralph Lauren toilet seats. They know the price of everything and the value of not keeping quiet about it. “That’s our three-thousand-dollar coffee maker, and here's the fifty-eight-hundred-dollar oven mitts.” I’m always at a loss as to how one is supposed to respond. Congratulations?
Where I come from, bragging rights aren’t for those who spend freely but for those who got it for nothing. The Wall Street grifters, whether dressed in bowling shirts or Armani, trading their ephemeral stocks, juggling unthinkable sums to appease the Dow Jones from the comfort of their private jets and city-sized yachts – they will never know the life-affirming pleasure of finding an original Anchor-Hocking Fire King measuring cup for fifty cents at the Salvation Army.
A score like that you celebrate by chugging a Surge.
-A.H.
* Yes, I’m aware that the “Walter Keane” brand of artwork was actually painted by his wife, Margaret, so kindly keep that admonition in your pants.
** I have no problem with overindulging in food I bought myself, but a free buffet triggers in me a kill-or-be-killed jungle instinct to stuff my maw with complimentary cupcakes before those other bastards can get near them.
(And let’s not forget Ashley’s website, jam-packed with portraits and other drawings, his highly-affordable prints and books currently available, his eagerness for your portrait commission, and his contact email, thrdgll@gmail.com, where he longs to hear from you.)
Unlike we hungry poor boys, such wastrels will never know the thrill of the hunt, of hacking through the wild bush aka "Veteran's Thrift" armed with nothing save two crumpled dollar bills in the back pocket of his generic brand blue jeans and a bone tipped spear. The pounding of the heart and the quickening of the breath when at last one parts the bushes to find an okay copy of the "Banned -at-Sears" Blind faith album for 75 cents. The warrior holds his prize aloft. His victory is empire.....