We ran this almost a year ago, but we're reposting it because this shit is getting depressing. We need some kind of silver lining.
Do recession woes have you down? Are you worried about losing your
job and/or your yipster lifestyle? As terrifying as doing your own
laundry and switching from Americanos to drip coffee may seem, the
recession could do wonders for your love life. And as we learn from
Caitlin MacRae, economist, sexologist and Nerve intern, life as a
normal person affected by the recession is a lot like life as a blogger.
10. Fine wine will once again be for stuffy rich people.
These
days, everyone’s expected to be able to select the correct boujolais
from a leather-bound list of hundreds, adding anxiety to an otherwise
pleasant date. When the economy tanks and you’re forced to go back to
meeting up at the kinds of bars you don’t find in Zagats, the two of
you can relax and do shots of Jim Beam while wistfully reminiscing
about your vintage merlots – and your vintage careers.
9. Lack of disposable income will force you and your date to engage in exhilarating illegal activities.
Before
you had a job, before you were old enough to get into bars, you lived a
romantic existence free of any sense of social propriety or personal
accountability. Instead of planning extravagant outings, you figured
out how to skulk around verboten locales, pool-hopping late into the
night and making out in the backseats of unlocked cars. Just because
you’re all grown up doesn’t mean you can’t still indulge in such
shenanigans, and shimmying up to top of that water tower together is
free, unless you need to post bail.
8. Bars are filled with the unemployed by three p.m., drunken hookups will be in progress by five.
When
everyone works till seven, happy hour doesn’t really get going until
eight, which doesn’t leave much time to get tanked and slur pickup
lines at strangers before a responsible working-person’s bedtime. With
more free time, you can look forward to those midday drink specials and
the afternoon bouts of poor judgment they produce.
7. You’ll find out if those coffee shops really are hotbeds of early-afternoon sexual tension.
Your
freelancer friends have long regaled you with stories of giddy midday
coffee-shop flirtations, making their wayward life sound like Prince’s
Black Album incarnate. You’ll soon find out if this secret holy land of
semi-employed sexual tension actually exists, since you’ll be parked in
this alleged paradise of furtive glances all day while Craigslisting
for gigs.
6. Breakfast will replace brunch.
Somewhere
between the lemon-pepper-vodka Bloody Marys and the sea-salt-and-pesto
poached eggs, we lost sight of the real magic of weekend mornings:
sloth-like apartment lingering. Instead of showering, throwing on a
jaunty scarf and skipping down to the chirpy, overpriced brunch nook,
you and your significant other – or last night’s trick -- can shuffle
around in ancient pajama pants, fry up half a pound of bacon, and have
morning sex without waiting for an overworked server to bring you the
check.
5. Museum dates will be unaffordable.
Like
an Alzheimer’s patient, we return to the $20-per-ticket Museum of
Modern Art again and again for an ill-conceived date with someone we
don’t know very well and already feel awkward around. The museum date
is a clumsy murder-suicide: the two of you shuffle from sculpture to
painting while acting like pretentious eggheads as you try to discuss
art that you don’t understand. Catch a discount matinee instead, and
grope in the dark.
4. Library-sex will make a comeback.
Combine
America’s declining interest in knowledge, free admission, and sultry,
stuffy sex-maniac librarians, and suddenly you have an accessible,
sparsely populated impromptu orgy club. The public library, with its
many dim corners and unlocked “reading rooms,” is a recession-era
Plato’s Retreat. Take it from a former librarian: the microfiche room
is far from obsolete when reappropriated in the right fashion.
3. That romantic getaway to a Costa Rican eco-lodge will become a sordid roadtrip to a dingy Niagara Falls motel.
Never
underestimate the beautiful sleaziness of vacationing on the cheap.
After spending several hours in traffic, then bundling up in twelve
layers to go stare at a plummeting body of water, you’ll be eager to
trundle back to the seedy Fairway Motor Inn for an evening of basic
cable, vending-machine dinner and the sickest, hottest sex you’ve had
since your first three months of dating. Splurge for the room with the
mirror on the ceiling – we can’t even begin to explain how worth the
money this is.
2. Tinier apartments lead to accidental sex.
Since
rents never seem to drop with the rest of the market, you’ll need to
downgrade from that sturdy loft to a tiny railroad apartment whose
walls seem to actually amplify your neighbors’ late-night viewing
choices. Might as well seize the opportunity to accidentally on purpose
touch one of your five roommates’ breasts while reaching around her to
grab your coffee mug in the morning. With everyone unemployed and
starved for a little human contact – and the unpaid electric bill
shrouding you in darkness -- you can get away with more than usual.
1. More dates take place in the cheapest available venue: the bedroom.
Pirated
movies on your laptop, cheap take-out and some PBR serve the exact same
function as the overpriced museum, the brunch spot, and the wine bar -
and none of those places have the advantage of being right where you
want to be in the first place. Happy poverty!
—Caitlin MacRae
Originally Posted March 8, 2008
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