Class.

or, existential wealth vs. actual wealth.

There is this kid my kid knows. His name is Name Redacted. Unusual name, I know. My kid’s name is Levi.

Name Redacted is very, very rich— well, his parents are, at least. I know this because Name Redacted’s house is one of the grandest, most majestic homes I have ever seen in my entire life.

His house gives Museum of Modern Art.

His house gives live-in staff.

His house gives bespoke. (Which is a word I didn’t know the definition of until Name Redacted’s nanny used the word to explain the wallpaper.)

My kid and Name Redacted are casual acquaintances— not friends really, but they have hung out infrequently over the years.

One time, a few years ago, I went to Name Redacted’s house— let’s call it Manderley— to pick up my kid, who was on a play date with Name Redacted.

The nanny at Manderley let me in, told me to wait in the cathedral-like foyer, and went to fetch my kid from whatever wing of Manderley he and Name Redacted were hanging out in.

While I waited, alone, I casually poked around.

I slid into the living room (or parlor room? Conservatory? Study with the lead pipe?)

Above a cavernous stone fireplace in this room was a massive work of modern art.

It looked like a Chagall-Kandinsky hybrid, but bigger—- maybe 7 feet long and 6 feet tall. Elegantly framed, of course. If it was under glass, it was that invisible museum glass used to protect, say, Guernica from being shot at.

All of a sudden, Name Redacted’s mom appeared. I mean, I assumed it was her. Having only ever interacted with the nanny, I’d never actually met her.

She gave Lilith Sternin-Crane from Cheers.

“Good afternoon.” Lilith said, deadpan.

“Oh! Hi!” I said, suddenly hyper-aware that my shorts were once jeans that I turned into cut-offs with kitchen scissors.

“That painting is incredible.” I said. “Who’s the artist?”

Lilith looked up at it. On a bored exhale she said, “I don’t know. I got it at auction.”

This encounter happened several summers ago, but I have carried the memory deep in my soul.

Could a person be so rich that they buy a painting “at auction” totally unaware of who painted it? Could a person be so rich they then feel no shame in revealing this to a stranger in cut-offs?

Also, what is “at auction?”

I mean, I know what an auction is, but I always assumed you have to really, really want something to bid on it in an auction, which implies knowing what it is. Like that Seinfeld where Elaine is trying to outbid Sue Ellen Mishke for the John F. Kennedy golf clubs for Mr. Peterman. Or like those weirdos who lined up outside a South Carolina storage facility to place bids on family-murderer Alex Murdaugh’s fine china, lamps and vacuum cleaner. Those people really want that specific vacuum. And isn’t the whole point of an auction that laser focus?

And where do you find out about auctions anyway? Are they listed somewhere? Could someone be rich enough to casually wander into an auction off the street on a whim, not planning on bidding but then spotting this gargantuan painting on the block by who-the-fuck-cares, and on a lark, outbidding everyone, winning and saying: “Bubble wrap it for me, would you dahling?”

Also “at auction?”

Shouldn’t it be “at an auction?” Can a person be rich enough that going to an auction is so common for them, so pedestrian, that the indefinite article “an” is disposed of?

Or is there only ever one auction?

Is not saying “an” a status thing? Are there other things rich people don’t use indefinite articles for? If I start saying, “I bought this Top Ramen at store” or “I’m due for a cleaning at dentist” will people be impressed?

Why am I talking about all this on a theater-based Substack? I promise there’s a reason, bear with.

Just last week, my kid ran into Name Redacted on the street randomly. A playdate was arranged at Manderley for that very day.

Later that afternoon, my kid returned home from Manderley (the nanny dropped him off).

He walked into our living room. I was still working, sitting on the couch before my usual 2 laptops always on the coffee table: one is for my money job, the other is for my non-money playwriting job. I alternate between these two glowing eyes for about 60 hours a week. It’s not noble like being a nurse or a first responder or an elementary school teacher and it’s certainly not life or death like an air traffic controller or a journalist in a war zone. But it’s how I eat and how my kids can do summer camp and how I can afford to get a pap smear at gynecologist.

“Hey honey!” I said, without looking up. “How was your playdate?”

My kid was silent.

I sensed trouble and looked up at him.

He had that thousand-yard stare, like DeNiro in The Deer Hunter.

“Levi? Are you ok?” I asked.

He burst into tears. He hugged me fiercely.

As I hugged him back, my revenge narrative began. The adult responsible for whoever made my youngest child cry like this will get a strongly worded text message followed by the coldest of shoulders at school pick up and drop off for years until one of us can’t take it anymore and moves away. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.

“Honey! What happened?”

And this is what my 9-year-old said, verbatim—- I swear, I haven’t altered a word:

“It’s not fair that you have to work a lot of jobs and we have no money and a small house and Name Redacted’s mom doesn’t do anything and they live in a mansion!”

Triggered and proud, but also spiteful and enraged, I unleashed an anti-capitalist democratic-socialist manifesto upon my son that rattled the window panes.

I shouted a bastardized Marx and Engels–

“Levi! Capitalism leads to the oppression of the masses!”

and

“The emancipation of the working class must come from the working class itself!”

and

“The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains!”

and my coup de grâce:

“If this country invested in its people, Name Redacted’s mom’s auction money would be rightfully redistributed to the poor!”

Strangely, none of this radicalized my 9-year-old, as I hoped it would. So I pulled out the big guns.

“Levi: I will always be richer than Name Redacted’s mom because I have existential wealth.

I know, Levi, I know. It’s idealistic, impractical, impossible, unsurvivable, like what Matthew McConaughey would shout to the heavens after shitting his brains out on ayahuasca. Existential wealth, brah!

Or as my father, your grandfather, Fred, would have said “Existential wealth? Pfft. That and a dime’ll get ya a cuppa coffee.”

That may be true, Levi, but I still believe in existential wealth. It is my life’s work and daily philosophy and why I sit here with not 1 laptop but 2. And I will cling to my existential wealth like the greediest, douche-iest billionaire. And when I die, I will bequeath my existential wealth unto you, so that when you die, or when the planet becomes uninhabitable, you can bequeath it to your kids on Mars.

Here’s the truth, Levi— if America valued existential wealth, America wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of an AR-15 right now. Trump wouldn’t be a thing. How could he be in a world that values existential wealth? He’s an existential pauper! If we valued existential wealth in America, everyone, even the white working-class Trump tricked into loving him, would’ve laughed that assclown off the stage decades ago. We’d be the democratic socialists we were always meant to be! We certainly wouldn’t have heard of any of Trump’s SS Men. JD Vance is an existential beggar and so would never have risen to the heights of Vice President. Sure, he wrote one shitty novel once, but where’s its shitty follow up? You can’t live off one existential paycheck for life! You gotta work for it, JD! Kristi Noem is an existential train hobo and would never ever have become Secretary of Homeland Security in a world that values existential wealth. She’d just be a person who shot her dog in the face. And if Kristi Noem could move her face, I’m sure you’d see existential poverty written all over it.

Anyway, you get it, honey, right?

I chose theater because it brought me existential wealth. Instantly. Theater is an existential ATM machine. Sure, there are $4 existential transaction fees, but the existential cash output far outweighs it. And I’ve been doing theater for so long that my existential stock portfolio is surging, brah. I’m absolutely existentially printing.

And yes honey, obviously, I’m telling you this from a place of relative privilege. We are not currently starving or suffering or oppressed, like so many millions around the world right this second. My tune would change if we were, toot sweet. But my argument, which I know is right, is that starvation and suffering and oppression wouldn’t be Homo sapien’s default setting if we valued existential wealth. The imagination, the mind, the arts would. Everything else would follow. Kindness. Compassion. Investment. Progress. Utopia.

Now Name Redacted’s mom— let’s call her Lilith Sternin-Crane— may be very rich and seemingly do very little for it and with it but, judging by the evidence presented, she is existentially poor.

Now I believe a person could be existentially rich and actually rich. This can come from doing good with your actual wealth. There are people to whom money doesn’t instantly corrupt. Usually, they’re women who, historically, are less corruptible. MacKenzie Scott is a good example. If Lilith decided one day that a substantial percentage of her actual wealth would go to the arts or children’s cancer research or Sandy Hook Promise or even struggling war-torn nations, well! Lilith Sternin-Crane would rise to the ranks of both kinds of wealth.

But I suspect that Lilith doesn’t do this and won’t.

I suspect that Lilith has reached a nadir of ennui very few of us mortals will ever know. It’s a dark room of the soul and upon each wall of this room are paintings that match the sofa.

My only consolation honey, is that hopefully whoever painted that colossal artwork above the fireplace at Manderley received at least enough to pay rent before Sotheby’s took the rest.”

Upon concluding my manifesto, Levi was already playing Roblox.

Theater is hard.