Last week marked two monumental events in an already criz-azzy 2005—the pope died (sad) and spring break arrived (awesome). The pope’s death didn’t really have an earth-shattering effect on a nice little pro-choice, sex columnist Jew like me, which left only one thing on my mind—spring break, a bastion of Catholicism.
I wanted it and I wanted it bad.
Every time I turned on the television, mindlessly flipping channels, there it was, shaking its tail-feather on MTV. I watched the lithe bronzed bodies of Communications majors from Ft. Myers to Fargo play humiliating dating games, joyously rolling around in whipped cream and honey. I watched Fiddy Cent pick a shorty for his candy shop and then slap her ass with glee (well, as much glee as Fiddy is capable of exhibiting). And I was sorta jealous.
I lusted after spring-breakers like Michael Jackson after…well, you know where this joke is going. I woulda drank the Jesus juice—on the rocks, through a funnel, straight up, I don’t care. I woulda drank the Jesus juice if it got me to Spring Break!
Feeling pathetic and useless, I tried to change the channel to something more closely suited to my mood, but to no avail. No matter how I tried, I remain fixated on La La and Jimmy Fallon pontificating about the world’s problems—like the paucity of Margherita mix in the northern states.
But fear not! Us post-college neophytes have the new spring break. We’re blessed with another version of that annual exercise for ringing in the warm weather—taxes, bitches! Welcome. Embrace it. This is your new life.
What is a W2? Oh, that stands for “Way over your head in debt—part 2.” Or a Schedule C? That’s really “Schedule Can’t pay? Kill yourself. No really, do it.”
We’ve been ushered into a new era. Welcome to the bureaucracy of life—ain’t it grand? There’s a lot of paper pushing involved here in the real world, so hold on to your hard hats, we’re in for a bumpy ride. Rent, electricity, health insurance, 401K, social security…Destiny’s Child had it right—bills, bills, bills. If only Beyonce could float fifty bucks my way for those pesky cell phone overages.
Can you hear me now?
“Life,” I told my mother a few days ago, “costs a lot of money.”
She stared back at me blankly and then asked me for the 37 dollars I owe her for the rug she bought for my apartment.
“I thought that was a gift,” I commented, as I wrote her a check. I guess I thought wrong.
As it turns out, even relationships involve paper work. A close friend of mine, who has recently come into a beau with bank, was asked a few weeks ago, whether “if necessary” she would sign a pre-nup. I guess contracts for commitment are commonplace in the real world.
Health insurance. There’s another doozy. Why? Cause I ain’t got none. I live in constant fear of shit hitting the fan. Like if I get hit by a cab just standing on the curb, all I have is a tube of hydrocortisone and an old stolen bottle of Ritalin to soothe my pain. Crush that on your coffee table and snort it.
You see, unlike college where an escape from reality is a way of life, in the real world, there is no escape from reality. It always returns just in time for the first of the month.
So how can we bring it back? Is it possible to recapture the carefree ways of our youth (last year)? Or, like the DMV, are we embroiled in this bureaucratic mess forever?
Sadly, it seems that, barring the few friends I have gallivanting around exotic locales like Thailand and Argentina in a drug haze thicker than the studio executive that gave the movie Debs (“they’re crime fighting hotties with killer bodies”) the go-ahead, the rest of us are stuck with “killer taxes.”
But that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost—the week in and week out routine of work is supplemented by the endless possibility of the glorious weekend. The new spring break happens once a week for two days at a time with New York as our playground. The truth is that young New Yorkers have it made in a city that works hard, taxes hard and plays even harder. Many of my friends have taken weekend debauchery to a new high, and weekdays off of work early even higher (think Naomi Campbell).
So this tax day, remember; April 15th is a Friday. And though short, it’s spring break ’till Sunday. Raise your glass and toast to a refund.