On liquidity and attention
a case study in sharpie capitalism
He was furious as he scribbled across the volleyball.
We were having one of our weekly Company meetings.
I was aboard the hippie theatre boat.
The founder, director, you know, the boss man.
He built the boat on donations.
People like to get behind tall ship building, so he got himself a tall ship built.
He was educated by Jesuits and was pretty wily.
He could guilt and double-talk a room so hard that if he borrowed a dollar, with interest you’d somehow owe him two-fifty.
This man was a masterful fundraiser.
Building that boat was an incredible accomplishment.
He was really good at fundraising.
As a director?
He was a hack propagandist.
Both on the stage and with his theatre company.
He called it a company, but, because we lived with each other and were all being paid an equal share of the cash we took in, we’d have these weekly meetings where we’d discuss how to run the company.
They were fucking awful.
Typically something would go wrong then Vinnie, the stooge who built the ship, would try to find a way to guilt us into giving our money back to the company for the collective good.
For the collective good?
Fuck that. We were in New York City.
I had subways to catch, plays to watch.
Motherfucker wanted to take my money for the collective good?
When he hired me, he had no idea what he was getting into.
But then again, neither did I.
While in Toronto, they told me this:
We’ll fly you down. Everyone will get health insurance, no problem.
Once there?
The health insurance became “Insurance companies are evil. Let’s just put what we’d pay in premiums in a collective account. We can use that should we need it. We never need it for everybody at once.”
Please, dear reader, imagine for a moment how long the collective health fund lasted for a hippie crew of twenty Canucks living collectively in a thousand stinky square feet of living space?
That is correct.
Not long at all.
Within a month it had gone.
I reminded Vinnie at each and every weekly meeting.
But in NYC, where they didn’t have money to pay us, and we were promised $200 USD per week and they wanted us to pay them our pay back for the collective good?
I spoke up.
I’m sure you will manage it just as well as the health insurance fund.
He looked like a kid who dropped his ice cream in dog shit then had it pissed on by a racehorse.
There’s a reason they call you Jimmy Dart-mouth, he retorted.
Not one to let a soft and easy one straight over the plate hang in the air too long, I was quick with my reply.
Yeah, because I pop the bubbles of manipulation.
He looked hurt.
You don’t have to be so mean.
It was an act. A manipulation.
He was a showman. A PT Barnum with an ark filled with dirty young hippie theatre sailors, all paired up two by two.
And he was used to getting his own way.
I wasn’t letting him.
This is a job for me. I was told I would be paid weekly. I was told there would be health insurance. None of this was true. So I’ll stop being mean when you stop being a manipulative fucking liar who takes advantage of people by guilting them out of their money.
That dear reader was when he started scrawling on the volleyball.
Once finished, he capped the Sharpie, and threw the ball to me.
Only one word was there. It read: ATTENTION!
There, he said, now have all of it. Are you happy now?
Great question, eh? I took a beat.
I remember looking around the room and seeing people staring at me, slack jawed, some puzzled, others appalled.
But I was on a roll and gathering no moss.
Am I happy now? Yes and no. Happy to have ALL OF THE ATTENTION. Hell yeah. As it should be. But I’d be a lot happier with health insurance.
He shook his head. There’s a reason they call you Jimmy Dart-mouth.
It’s true.
I come from a place where we can smell bullshit through a snowbank.
And I didn’t sail all the way to New York City to be paid in sporting goods.
Stay vinaigrette, you fools!