For My Rich Neighbors

by David Lawrence

I live near rich people on Madison Avenue.  I used to be rich.  I am no longer. What I like about living near rich people is that they generally don’t mug you. And their help picks up the feces behind their dogs.

 

I think of the Occupy Wall Street Crowd and how they are jealous of the rich.  But I’ve lost more than they’ll ever earn.  Jealousy is feminine.  It is vaginal.  It wants to scoop up other people’s lives and issue them forth as their own children.

 

I went to jail for two years in 93.  I didn’t complain.  I loved having time to work out and write.  It was for tax evasion.  I still paid millions in taxes.  The OCW crowd pays nothing.  They’re complainers.   Like Thoreau who spent one day in prison for tax evasion. Big deal.  Or Al Sharpton who gets overnight sentences for trying to overvalue his own people.  Big Al.  A coward. He keeps making a big deal over the fact that he is black.  He forgets that his real problem is that he is ugly and inarticulate. I mean most people feel that it’s prejudiced to dislike ugliness.  If that’s so, why is beauty so valued and why are Victoria Secrets models so well-paid?

 

I am downstairs talking to a couple of my doormen.  A young woman walks in whom I don’t know.  I ask the doorman, Jack, “Who’s that?”

 

“That’s Mrs. X’s maid,” Jack says.* Jack is Sicilian.  You know the type.

 

Reggie works the front door and the elevator with Jack.  He says, “Mrs. X complained to the Board so that her maid could come through the front door.” Reggie’s from India.  He comes from the Brahman class.

 

I hate the liberals in our building.  Mrs. X once threw a party for Obama for his first election.  Her husband was alive then.  I don’t remember if Obama attended. If not, his important flunkies were there.

 

I get angry.  “Screw X.  She’s a phony.  She wants to pat herself on the back for getting her maid in the front door.  Like that’s any skin off her eighty year old bones.  It requires nothing of her.  It makes her feel big. It might make it harder for her to fit into heaven.”

 

“She only thinks of herself and her crew,” Jacks says.

 

“Does she ever consider how it makes the other maids feel who can’t come in the front? Maybe she should come in the back herself to show her solidarity with workers whom she doesn’t understand,” I say.

 

“X pretends her maid is her secretary to get her in the front door,” Reggie says.

 

“How charitable,” I say.  “The secretary doesn’t have to go through the back door.  And X feels like a queen for this.  She becomes a defender of the people.  She doesn’t have to feel guilty about her millions.”

 

“She’s a phony *itch,” Jack says.

 

“I don’t even know her but I hate her,” I say. “I hated her dead husband too,” I say.

 

“He was much nicer than her,” Jack says.

 

“The men are always nicer,” Reggie says.

 

“That’s because the men have to work for everything and the women just sit there and spend it, brag about it and prance like show dogs,” I say. “Just because women announce that they are better than men doesn’t mean that they are.”

 

“I guess these people are the reason you go to Gleason’s to box,” John says.

 

“I’m really a Hindu like my friend Reggie here,” I say.  “I’m a pacifist with a punch. I’m a Brahman.  I’m upper class like you, Reggie.”

 

“You can get pretty violent,” Jack says.

 

“When I get most violent I get knocked out,” I say, joking about my boxing skills.

 

“So tell us what you really think about Mrs. X?”  Reggie asks.

 

“I think she coddles the disadvantages of the poor to inflate herself.  She’s like Obama spreading around confetti to his cherished middle class but giving them no nourishment while he spends millions a day living in the White House.  They are both narcissists. They love themselves but act like they sincerely care about others who mean nothing to them.”

 

“You’d like to hit her, wouldn’t you,” Jack asks.

 

“Yes.  But I wouldn’t.  I don’t hit women or old people. No matter how destructive or stupid they are.  Liberals get so  indignant and ideological that they strike out at stupid demonstrations” I say. “I’m not the French rabble cutting off Marie Antoinette’s head. You see, I don’t do things I am tempted to do when they are wrong.  Obama does things he shouldn’t do if he can lie about them and make them look good.”

 

“David for president,” Reggie says.  John applauds.

 

“I’m not a good enough liar,” I say. “I’m an egomaniac but not in Obama’s league.”

 

“He’s a dictator who likes to pretend he’s the good guy, the saint,” John says. “He not only wants to live the high life but he wants to get credit for facilitating the poor.”

 

“Tell Mrs. X I don’t wish her well. That’s not nice.  I’m not nice.  It’s hypocritical.  I can’t believe I was once a liberal.  Now they’re making me into a bad person,” I say.  “See you guys later.  I’m off to Gleason’s Gym.”

 

“Break a leg,” Reggie says.

 

“Brahmin, that’s for actors.  In my case, I want to break a nose,” I say and give him a five knuckle hand shake.

 

------------

*I use the pseudonym Mrs. X because she is the widow of the owner of a famous liberal company.  And like limousine liberals, if she hears me badmouthing me, she can surely afford to sue me. Also I don’t want to get the doormen in trouble.  They’re my best friends in the building. We gossip constantly.