Cake Eater

A few weekends ago I went to my nephew’s wedding in Ohio. It was not so easy to get there. My flight to Dayton was cancelled, and in rebooking the flight, the closest airport I could fly into was DCA. My wife picked me up in Washington, DC and we headed west on a 9-hour drive.

The idea was that we could grab a hotel room about an hour outside of the city in Maryland. We tried four different hotels, and there was not a single room available. We checked the booking sites—nothing. Finally, we rolled past a Super 8 in Frederick, and decided to give it one last try.

As it turned out, they had a room. I was a bit apprehensive. The place looked a bit sketchy—there were a couple of guys without shirts chilling out on the balcony at 2:30 in the morning, and some people sitting in cars in the parking lot. But we were exhausted and just looking to catch some Z’s for a few hours. So me with my Hublot and my wife with her Patek, we went up to the room, opened the door, and wham, it hit us in the face—the strong smell of urine.

We walked inside. There was a huge puddle of piss on the floor. In fact, we were standing in it. Not sure who did it—maybe the housekeeper? The pee had been sitting there cooking in a hot room all day, and whoever did it probably was subsisting on a diet of Monster energy drinks and Copenhagen. It smelled terrible. We stood there and stared at each other for a minute, trying to figure out what to do. Flop out and inhale the pee while we slept, or just do the midnight run all the way to Ohio.

We chose the latter. I told the woman at the front desk that we had a change of heart, and she refunded our money. $99.89 for the pee room. I passed. We drove the rest of the way on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the middle of the night, keeping each other awake talking about life and politics and our cats.

Having said all that, there was a time in my life when I would have stayed in the pee room. When you’re 22 and broke, you will pretty much put up with anything. When you’re 48 and rich, not so much. Though I have always prided myself on being pretty unfancy. Even at this age, I will go camping. And I’m not talking about glamping. I will pitch a tent and sleep on the ground. But it occurred to me that it had been years since I had stayed in a hotel for less than $300/night, unless you count The Pod in New York City. Was I getting soft?

The answer is decidedly yes. I have turned into what I once despised—a cake eater. “Cake eater” is a term we used on Wall Street for a rich fuck—one who eats cake. I worked with a lot of cake eaters on Wall Street. Cake eaters would not be caught dead in a Super 8, a Red Roof, or even a Hampton Inn. Five stars all the way. Recently, I put out a poll on Twitter asking people what was the least and most expensive hotel they had ever stayed in. For me, the cheapest was a $15 room in Rawlins, Wyoming in 1996. The most expensive was when I stayed in Santorini, Greece last summer for $1400 a night. $1400 a night? I told you I was a cake eater. It was a pretty amazing room, though. I said to myself at the time that we don’t take many vacations, so we might as well do it right.

But that happens to be my attitude on everything. If I am going to get a hotel room, it has to be the best hotel room. If I am going to buy a shirt, it has to be the best shirt. I don’t shop for clothes at Target, let’s put it that way. I have made a pretty good living of talking up my blue-collar sensibilities, but I’ve turned into somewhat of a snob. It’s been about 10 years since I’ve set foot in an Applebee’s. And not because the food is bad, because it’s really not—it’s just ahoy polloi.

So if you do this—if you go from being a man of the people to a cake eater, you risk becoming out of touch—insensitive to the perspectives of people of lesser means. And there really is nothing worse thing than being rich and out of touch. You live in a bubble—you have a house in a nice neighborhood, your kids go to the best private schools, you shop at the high-end mall, you take vacations in the Maldives, and you really don’t have a clue as to how most people live. Social scientist Charles Murray talks about this a lot, and he used to have this quiz that you could take online to see if you are a rich, out-of-touch cake eater. One of the questions was whether you have ever been to a NASCAR race. I have been to six, so there is that.

And one of the things that happens when you are a cake eater is that you have a luxury car, luxury clothes, and luxury beliefs to go along with it. You become an elite. I hate that word, elite, because it is so politically charged, and I started seeing it a lot in 2012 when all the conservatarians began to develop these conspiracy theories about Bilderberg and the World Economic Forum. The rich, elite liberals trying to run the world and make us eat bugs. All conspiracy theories have a kernel of truth, and when you’re a cake eater, you tend to feel pretty smug about being successful and think you know what’s best for everyone else. These people don’t know what’s good for them. It’s probably perplexing to someone who is an elite why a person would ever choose to smoke tobacco. Occam’s Razor: it’s not irrational behavior. Smoking enhances their lives and the tradeoff in terms of reduced lifespan is worth it.

A few years ago, my wife and I were vacationing in Riviera Maya. It was a high-end place, but not a super high-end place. All-inclusive for about $900 a night—actually a pretty good deal. My wife was doing one of the scuba excursions and ran into a young couple from Simpsonville, South Carolina. They were complete hayseeds, and my wife was pretty shocked that they had found their way to this luxury resort. But this was a couple of months after a $1 billion Powerball ticket was sold in Simpsonville. It was too much of a coincidence—it had to be them. There is nothing in Simpsonville but a Shoney’s and a Circle K. They were taking baby steps toward becoming cake eaters—enjoying luxury for the first time in their lives. And they were loving it. I remember my first cake eater experience, staying at the Gansevoort in Turks and Caicos in 2012 for $600 a night. It was the most expensive place I had ever stayed in by a factor of three. The deep house thumping softly on the pool speakers was a nice touch. From that moment on, I knew I was going to be a cake eater. Once you get a taste of luxury, you can’t let go.

But here we are, heading into what is certainly going to be a recession. I’ll be cutting back. I just spent two weeks in New York City, staying in a $175/night hotel room. I haven’t bought any clothes in months. I will be making do with less. For economic reasons, but also for anthropological reasons. I can’t stand the fact that I’ve become a cake eater. I think it is about time that I experienced some discomfort—which means lowering my standard of living a bit. It will be good for me. But I draw the line at pee.

Go fuck yourself,

Jared

Music Recommendation: Eli Nissan – Snow Tiger. Off his new full-length album. Kickass organic track.

P.S. We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards will always be free. Please forward to whoever you like.