Nouveaux Pauvres

I was seated in front of the mirror getting my regular haircut at the same salon I’ve been frequenting for the last six months when something stirred my emotion. By the time, the stylist was done with my hair, which was, as usual inspired by some Mohawk type of cut the same stylist sold me the idea of, when I first walked in to this salon six months ago, my eyes were beginning to get watery. So I quickly stood up, smiled thankfully, went to the cashier, paid, and left my tip.

I just had the worst fight in a long time, with my significant other over things that was for him seemed petty, but for me was nowhere near the same adjective. And in a long time, I never felt more belittled because of my roots, thanks to him.

With some credit to his opinion, I know I tend to be fastidious at times, maybe even delicate to the point of misconstruction. Just imagine being poor or at least something close to that and being educated with well-to-do classmates. Growing up like that ought to put some pain and knowledge one way or another. Naturally, one ought to have some sort of defense mechanism, which I happen to have harboured in me—then and now that I’m all grown up. But to say pretentious, arrogant, bordering on what he calls eccentric hypocrisy, with false predilection the world over were just downright mean not to mention inaccurate and simply a weak justification to go breaching on someone else’s privacy especially when it is with one’s own lover’s. But just like a badly written movie script, it was easily predictable that he will apologize and make amends, which he did. After a few days of reflecting on my now evolving badly done haircut and the whole ugly fight with my dear significant other, I find myself googling the words: social classes. And in a feat of results after results, I drowned into a research of how social classes came about from the olden times through the renaissance, through the dark ages, and finally, to the fabled French revolution. As it turned out, the cries of the French peasants then—Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!—as it seems, are just no more than a rhetoric version and thus no more different than today’s. So it quickly dawned on me… if there’s anything I abhor more than a bad haircut, it would have to be this vicious status quo upon us, and if I had the sharpest shear, and the genius of a senior creative stylist at the poshest salon in town, there’s nothing I would love to do more in the world, than cut the line that divides (assuming my hyperbolic metaphor makes sense here)!

Then I wondered: In a now modern society where there seems to be, for the most part, equal opportunities, regardless of social status quo, for everyone, and in a country where call center agents can carry last season’s Louis Vuitton, is it right to assume that another revolution is upon us? And if so, whatever happened to the working class?

I was reading my newly found fixation over a cup of another newly found addiction (soy milk!) when I came across an article about how money is spent among the aristocracies of Europe. Boy! In matter of nanoseconds I felt like I was transplanted from Monte Carlo, London, Paris, and all the happy neighbourhoods of the filthy rich and back to my apartment with my soy milk. Then I thought, if ever in this lifetime, in some odd, wicked, playful twist of fate, I happen to wake up someday with a Swiss account on my name, or just found out I’m a lost heir to a taipan, or maybe just won the biggest prize in a national lottery, I’d be sure to rub elbows with all the arteratis, gliterratis, and be the best fashion writer there is. How lame, I thought afterwards, that social class would even have anything to do with writing or for that matter any dream for anyone who’s ever been born hoi polloi.

On that same night, with my significant other, I was watching a British film (Atonement) about love, war, absolution, and social class and how each of them are intertwined on the lives of two lovers with a huge gap in social status. The film in all its grandiose and sartorial storytelling raises some interesting insights about being poor. The leading male character Robbie was the son of a housekeeper to a very affluent upper class family in England. Although it was not shown on the film how, Robbie was sent to Cambridge to finish a degree along with Cecilia, the eldest daughter to the rich family. Robbie then by virtue of a good education, grew up to a handsome and intelligent genteel lad who speaks French and Latin, dresses accordingly, and is able to hold his own in the company of his rich and influential friends.

So it got me thinking again, if wealth inevitably determines one’s social status quo, is there anything far greater than that, that makes it a levelled playing field for the rest of us out there?

The following week, with my significant other, we were hopping from shop to shop, looking for this leather heaven-sent Armani wallet which I’ve fallen love at first sight with when I saw it just after New Year’s. But because by that time, I was nearly broke, and I’m not about to pull a Winona stunt at an Armani outlet, I didn’t get the chance to actually buy it. Turns out someone has also laid eyes on it, and because there’s just no rules of shopoholism that says about visual imprinting (this would make more sense if you’ve read Twilight Saga), the Thing that later saw it, has all the right to snatch it, take it home, and make babies out of it (if he so pleases!)!
Then, out of the blue, my significant other ask me, why I’m so keen to finding it when I could just easily settle for something else which is still available. And half jokingly I said: That wallet and me, is just like us, we’re a match made in heaven. And above all, it’s just darn beautiful…

As soon as the words came out, it hit me, in an imaginable way when Regina George (hello! Mean Girls) got hit by the bus, but mine was more severe and a little less blonde, plus I didn’t get all those flowers. 
People are not defined by who they are or where they come from. They’re defined by what they want and what they aspire for. The fact that most of us wants the same things, and the same jobs, the same stretch of land in an expensively plush neighbourhood, or the same life we happen to read from a magazine (whether you actually have a subscription or you’re merely feasting on back issues doesn’t even matter) means we’re all the same and all equal. So yeah, I’m a poor man, a nouveaux pauvre if you would, who’s got his eyes glued in an Armani. Touche!

25 and thinking

I just had my 25th birthday. There was no celebration, no cake, no fancy dinner. If it hadn't been for my work mates, I wouldn't have bothered remembering it really. I mean, when I was in my teen years, birthdays were really nice, but in your mid twenties, it somehow becomes way too annoying, pretty much like a dentist appointment or botox treatment (probably for older people) or something like that. You just want to get it over with. And when you're done, you have a whole year to count before it comes around again. Although I'm not really counting. I guess, it's a nasty reminder of how my life is slowly unfolding before my eyes. And I don't think I'm really happy about this so called life. Not that I'm sad and alone and pathetic. It's just that every year, I feel like I'm missing out on something. Like my life is dragging, and nothing is really happening. You know? Like there is a life out there for me, which I'm not aware of, or something God has entitled me, but is still yet to happen. I know that's probably weird, and you probably think I'm just insane. But shouldn't there be something more to life than just work, paying the bills, and the rest of the whole nine yards?

Shouldn't there be more to learn in life than the rules of English grammar and more to accomplish than getting an 8-hour corporate day job that pays us twice a month?

With all these confluence of things in my life, I feel like there is a huge void in me, that's empty and waiting to be filled. But with what? I know stuffing it with Armani shirts and Louis Vuitton might somehow appease the shopoholic in me but for how long?

That's just really great, isn't it? I'm 25 and I don't know the answer.