What Do CHEAP People Bring To A Barbecue?

I hang out at X on a regular fuck ass basis because I'm cool like that I'm Chupacabra Disco like that I'm clueless like that I'm claustrophobic like that I'm chocolate chip cookie dough like that I'm CHEAP like that. I sold my car in 2020 and said I would never drive in San Antonio again. I still dream of someday buying a brand-new beige Dodge RAM pick-up truck with cash but only when I own my dream house and a few acres of land and I need to drive into the city once a month for supplies (toilet paper, lemons, sourdough bread, cherries, bananas, Chef Boyardee pizza, alkaline water, batteries, eTceTeRa).

So I go to X as I am wont to do and some random person or bot posts the leading question. What Do CHEAP People Bring To A Barbecue? I do not engage. I take it as a writing prompt. Here we are. As long as we think like this we are doomed. Are you cheap (SOLO cups, condiments from Wendy's/Panda Express/Burger King) or are you CLASSY (alkaline water from Costco, Grey Poupon, glasses from Dollar Tree). This kind of thinking divides us as a nation. "Oh, I would never in a million years fuck with that Faded Glory mommy jeans Equate body wash bitch with her Fantastic Sam's hair and press-on xmas tree fingernails." I walked into Old Navy the other day then walked out because I couldn't find any black shirts. "Okay, Johnny Cash," my husband said. My latest thing is collecting black shirts. I have several black shirts and sweaters from the website that owns the fucking planet. I want more. I want a closet bulging with black shirts and sweaters. This seems important. I also walked into the big girl store. Torrid. I thought maybe I'd find a black shirt on clearance. Yes, I found a cool-ish black shirt on clearance but it was size 5X and it was on sale for $71. Um. No ma'am.

I confess. I was starstruck when I entered the world of the upper class at the age of ten when my mom married my stepdad, an Aggie. The first time I ate dinner at his parents' house in Abilene, Texas I felt like I had died and gone to some kind of white person heaven. We sat at this long table. There were breakable plates and glasses and there was some kind of order to the gleaming silver knives, forks and spoons. The baked chicken with white rice might as well have been caviar. I had only ever eaten chicken with my hands. Fried chicken from Popeye's, mostly. And what was UP with these articulate, witty adults drinking cocktails with dinner? Que??? Ice clinking in the glass. Amber liquid. Scotch, maybe. The patriarch, my stepdad's father, was a cocktail swigging cigar chomping son of a gun who owned some kind of automobile dealership. After dinner he played the player piano and we all stood around singing such songs as "The Aggie War Hymn" 
and "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor." 

There was European art on the walls with those little lamps shining over them to really illuminate the swirls of paint and there were bookshelves filled with honest to fucking god hardcover books, not the true crime and Western pulp paperbacks that I'd found in my maternal grandparents' house. You're familiar with Hummel figurines? Yeah. Lots of those little fuckers. I was dazzled.

I come from working class small town Texans. I was the first person to attend college in my family. My sister was the first person to graduate from college. To my parents' credit, one of my fondest memories is of them giving me a box filled with Little Golden Books. I always had books, even when I couldn't read. They would take me to the Ben Franklin store (the five and dime) and I would make a beeline for the books even when I was a toddler. Is it my Virgo ascendant? In Vedic astrology I have a Leo ascendant. No comprende. It took me years to grasp Western astrology (tropical) and now I'm learning that Vedic (sidereal) is more accurate. Last night I dreamed of a Sagittarius guy I had a crush on years ago. He was teaching me about taxes. I wish I'd written down what he said.

So. Cheap versus classy. A cheap person brings their sweaty funky body to the barbecue and says, "Deal with it. Where's the potato salad? Where's the beer?" A classy person brings the unsweet tea and ecologically superior paper towels and their immaculate presence. You'll feel your vibration rising just by seeing them from two feet away. O holy one. Can I wipe the sweat from your forehead? Paper or plastic? Buddha or Jesus? Radiohead or Coldplay? 

I am not worthy.