i start thinking i can sell solar panels for 22,551.00 a month, and i get ideas like this all the time. like maybe i am a secretly successful person trapped in an average encasing: a golden kosher hot dog. my skin house has good bones but the upstairs tenant is an idiot. but so if it wasn’t solar panels it would be selling x for y at cost z and “a 43% profit margin! NOT BAD” and i would say things like this over appetizers at happy hour, a wet mozzarella stick in my craw, my acrylic fingernails now little harbingers of disease, delivering germs to my mouth that won’t shut up, that eats processed cheese, that is going to die a stupid broke loser who gets ideas.

i dance between these two versions of myself, believing i should be popping your finest whatever with japanese business men, actually in japan and on a rooftop. the next day, sinking into gorgeous and cold hotel sheets that hug my aching hungover molecules and diamond sweat, because i am rich and it doesn’t matter if i order room service or do anything that day. people like me for breathing, and i finally can. i have figured out how to have the american dream and eat caviar without gagging. it is unpleasant to say, but I fantasize about money and what it would do to me. for better or for worse.

worse: i’m one of THOSE PEOPLE that win the lottery and lose it all in months because they’re handing it out like it’s monopoly money. i do not maximize profit, i do not invest, i squander my generational wealth and become, once again, a person who seizes in line at the check out because i’ve got $6 cash, .60 on card, $22 from doordash, and my mom gave me $30 and i have to turn it into like bananas and chicken and cottage cheese, etc.

better: mama, i’m a rich man. holy shit, i did it. i sold solar panels and their back up batteries and the first thing i do is i give everyone i love money, but i’m not bad about it. there is humility in my giving but not self-sabotage. i get into crypto or daytrading and i ride that bitch all the way to the top, i buy a tesla, it just sits there and i say shit like “i have a tesla, it just sits there” and people go wowwwwww you don’t even drive it, like, NO, i’m too rich to drive my own car, i’m post-driving, i just close my eyes and i’m there. bing.

worse: i cannot sell solar panels and i go to jail for trying to sell solar panels and i ruin my credit score, and my life, and i have bad skin and when i get out of jail, if i ever do, i spend the rest of my life creating a sculpture of my ass with my ass into couches and eating wildly, showcasing various renditions of $7 moo moos, developing swollen ankles that evolve into cankles like diabetic pokemon, i do not have sex or kiss, no one will even brush past me, i only tv/eat, do fat and die, and the worst part is i’m getting ideas the entire time, and they’re kinda good?

better: i am not delusional, i am having these ideas for a reason, i am truly great. what did ye say? ronald mcdonald, harry potter, walt disney? ok, and then there’s me. but what would it do to the writing. must i suffer to salvage a slice of my imagination and debatable talent. do i have to be poor and hate myself to be good or can i buy this mini kelly or what like am i allowed to be happy or is that against the rules

what’s so good about suffering anyway? and what’s so good about being a good writer? admittedly, everything. i would rather have people tell me i’m even a little bit good than sell solar panels, but can i have both. i want to complain about things into the nothing corners of the internet but in a double-breasted vicuña peacoat thinking things like where is that goddamn waiter, i asked for sparkling with lime twenty minutes ago ugggghhhhhhhh. and i swear to god if he brings me a wedge and not a wheel, i will throw a chair into the bellagio fountains. again

i want hair extensions and a lash lift. i want big yellow checks that look suspicious to cash with russianly manicured fingernails right before the bank closes. i want the option to get gummy bear CC’s incase i have a midlife crisis. i want to kiss executives and leave all my money to an obscure charity that resents me but needs me, just as i have felt so many times when i was poor, and i need to stop thinking about money. it hurts.

if it’s not solar panels, it will be something else. i get ideas.