My Last Hundred Bucks, Possibly Ever, at Least for Some Time

by Brendan O’Connor

Where’d your last hundo go, Brendo?

$2: Large coffee at Ninth Street Coffee in Alphabet City for $1.50, plus $.50 tip because I come here all the time and sit for hours and want them to like me.

$.99: Four weeks digital New York Times subscription, because I am a JOURNALIST and this is a thing I need? Yes. It is. It’s going to jump up to $3.75/week after a month ($15 a month). A necessary expense.

$2: Large coffee at Ninth Street Coffee in Alphabet City. (See above.)

$14.73: Two avocados, Newman’s Own salsa, chips, a lime, and a white onion to make guacamole to go with dinner. Oh, and two lemons. My friend works at a fish market and brought over flounder that he got for half-price. It was delicious.

$41.06: Cheerios; peanut butter; frozen fruit; spinach; yogurt; orange juice; milk. Groceries! Mostly ingredients for smoothies.

$19.09: California burger and fries from Bareburger. I have this problem where I don’t realize that it is time to start thinking about making dinner until it is too late and I’m already deliriously hungry so I just order something via Seamless. Meal planning is hard!

$22.76: My aunt is pregnant so I went to McNally Jackson to buy the yet-to-be-born baby Emma a book. I settled on a picture-book version of Moby Dick. It’s pretty great. It’s got pictures of stuffed whales and men and opposite them words like “whale” and “man” and “angry” and “harpoon.” It is maybe a little bit scary? But the world’s a scary place, baby Emma. Anyway, I was at the cash register waiting to pay and Paul Auster’s Red Notebook caught my eye and I impulse-bought it, even though I have more than enough books already that I haven’t read but it was just too pretty and it’s really hard to walk into a bookstore and not walk out with something for yourself.

Total: $102.63

Brendan O’Connor lives in New York. He recently got fired.

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