Sittin’ In Luxury’s Lap

Luxury is a relative concept and any particular person’s idea of it is directly associated with his or her personal circumstances, regardless of the common images we may share when hearing the word of limos and helicopters and Cristal and supermodels and everything all gold and white. Giant beds, Italian supercars, sprawling estates, ornate fountainry, servants, and closets the size of double-wides all scream luxury, but the truth is that any step up from where we are feels luxurious until we get used to it, at which point another increase is necessary to not feel squalid and dingy.

For instance: For many years I slept on a narrow slab of steel with only the remotest idea of a “mattress” for comfort, something you might feel guilty about making your dog sleep on, with perhaps 12 square feet of personal space in a room with 87 other people, noisy, ill-bred, mean people, so when I left there and went to the URC and got something approximating a real bed and a cubicle with only two other occupants, I naturally felt myself to be in the very lap of luxury. That lasted about a week as the memory of prison faded, and when I moved to the SLE into an actual room with only one other occupant, a room in an apartment with furniture and a bathroom shared by only 6 people, I again reckoned myself fortunate to live so high. 

Now, after 4 months, it’s all I can do to not recoil in disgust whenever I walk in or open my eyes in the morning. Part of that is the fact that I live with untamed savages whose idea of cleanliness begins and ends with not actually defecating on the floor, but the truth is that I live in a dump where all my futile attempts to beautify and clean are foiled by people bereft of any sense of taste or consideration of hygienic principle. All it would take right now to return me to a condition of luxury is a room of my own, a floor of something other than unfinished cement, and a few tasteful appointments to brighten and cheer the place. In time I shall have that, but until then I’ll have to rely on the occasional ride in a new car or a brief respite in a comfortable recliner to reinvigorate my sense of luxury.

The rich, it has been noted, are different from you and me. They have more money, for one thing. A lot more. So much more that relatively speaking, my paycheck is to them what the loose change from tips I accumulate is to me, if that. Some of them probably wouldn’t bend over to pick up my earnings if they dropped it on the street.

They differ in other, more fundamental and meaningful ways, though. They don’t seem to scratch themselves, for instance. I don’t know if this is because they hire personal scratchers to do it for them at a designated time in a special scratching room or if they employ expensive emollients extracted from the sebaceous glands of exotic endangered fauna, but they appear to be itch-free.

They are also unable to enjoy the simple pleasures of bubble wrap, popping it, that is. For one, they rarely stoop to actually handling packages in their raw form, and if they do they carefully and frugally fold the wrap and put the empty box in the box room. We don’t do that because we don’t have box rooms and saving empty boxes is an inefficient use of space. We pop the wrap, first individually with our thumbs, feeling something akin to tiny orgasms as they satisfyingly burst, then wring it to hear and feel the final fusillade. We let the cat play in the empty box for awhile and then toss the whole mess in the garbage. This is but one of the simple joys of a simple life that cannot compete with, say, eating urchin roe off the body of a nude supermodel on the deck of a megayacht in a picturesque Adriatic harbor. 

If I said to someone doing that very thing though the only scenario I can envision for me being on the deck of that craft is as ballast or galley slave, maybe apprentice Somali pirate— “Say there, Carter, care to join me in some bubble busting?”, he would have me heaved over the side before I could initiate pop one, because having henchmen close by to obey whatever violent whims you may care to entertain is another of the rich’s many luxurious benefits.

It wouldn’t do for me to pity the rich, but I do feel some concern for their having plateaued their pleasure centers with all the plush toweling and pet ocelots. If everything is within your reach and nothing left to desire or strive for, how do you feel any joy of life? There’s an old saying that goes, “For every beautiful woman you see, there’s a guy who’s tired of having sex with her,” and while that may be rooted in sour grapes on the part of we poor average schmoes who can only look longingly upon the rarefied visages of the ultra-beautiful, it says a lot about the fact that whatever it is you desire, achieve, and take pleasure in will ultimately lose its luster and require something newer, shinier and better to stimulate and satisfy you.

For instance, I have a new phone that represents the apex of current cellular technology, and I love that device beyond all reason. When I’m not on it I’m thinking about it, and owning it has given me an added layer of pride and confidence that no amount of positive thinking or self-help training could hope to match. I went into hock for the next two-and-a-half years to get it, and if they’d asked for a kidney in the bargain I’d have happily surrendered it. I do know, though, that sometime in the not-too-distant future, after the new models come out, I will look upon this phone as a piece of dried-up dog crap and be ashamed to pull it out in public. Back to the phone store I will go, pledging yet more of the hard-earned to revivify that buzz. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson about Buddhism here, but I’m not about to go down that rocky road.

Conceptually I think it’s pretty cool but definitely not suited to my temperament or inclinations.

The luxurious trappings of the rich only appear luxurious to us who don’t have them; to the ones flying private and having their faces rejiggered to suit their mood, they are the status quo and they would have to spend a night or two on a Motel 6 twin to appreciate their half-acre mattresses stuffed with raw cashmere and covered with comforters made from phoenix feathers. What’s more, they know they don’t actually need ermine cellphone covers and gold TV remotes, but the real pleasure they get from owning these things resides in the fact that we, the 99%, don’t. They know that a Camry will get you around just as well as a Testarossa, but knowing that we hate and envy them as they drive by is what primes their boners. They are also aware that this is inherently unfair and despite their constant insistence that they have a perfect right to amass more money than anyone might ever need and that they acquired it through hard work and perseverance (a damnable lie; 99% of the time; they inherit or steal it), they know it’s wrong. That’s why they wall themselves off in impenetrable compounds guarded by rabble-eating dogs. I wouldn’t want to advocate theft but you can understand why some folks might want to engage in a little do-it-yourself wealth redistribution.

I genuinely feel that, peace-of-mind-wise, I am in a better position than the superrich. Not only do I not have to constantly worry that hoi polloi will wise up and rise up and take away my ill-gotten gains or that economic fluctuations will force me to trade in my Gulfstream for a Cessna, but there is so much out there that is attainable and available that will activate my luxury sensors and pleasure centers I can go my whole life achieving small, incremental luxuries and enjoying them far more than someone who needs to inject himself with tiger semen just to feel a little joy of life when the pleasures of his expensive furnishings wear thin.

I’m considering the purchase of a gel-filled bicycle seat cover. I’m a skinny guy and not significantly ass-endowed, so on rides of more than a mile or so I feel some discomfort. Getting one would increase my comfort and ease my riding, but after that, what? Fur covering? A sissy bar to lean back on? Where does it end? I think arriving at my destination and feeling the relief of getting off may be all the luxury I need.