I lived in Seattle, Washington, during 2004. I and my partner started that year with $1500 to our name (thanks to a "friend" who stole over a thousand dollars from us and spent it all on herself). We stayed with friends of friends for the first few days, who then kicked us out and into a hotel room. They were obviously very well-off and did not seem to understand that the $1500 we had was all the money we had in the world, and that we could not afford to spend it on a hotel room forever.

We had to negotiate with an apartment complex heavily before they'd let us rent with them. They wanted $1200 up-front--first and last month's rent, plus a deposit--on a studio apartment that simply wasn't worth the price they asked. But, being poor, we didn't have much choice. They also wanted a co-signer on the lease, so we had to wait even longer for approval. While we were waiting, we were buying food from Pike's Place (more on that in a second) and basically living for days at a time off a single piece of cheese, a small jar of jelly, and a loaf of bread.

Those days in that hotel room were spent preparing to spend a few nights on the street. We couldn't afford to keep paying for a $60/night room when we also had a $1200 bill coming up. We counted ourselves lucky that the landlady decided to let us sign a lease. When we moved in, we had a pile of towels and sweaters to sleep on, some clothes and a couple of books. Nothing else.

The first couple of months we lived there, we kept asking people to point us to a "grocery store". No one seemed to know what that was. We later found that in the North, "grocery store" is not in the lexicon; all such stores are called "supermarkets". Instead of getting directed to places where food is sold, we had to resort to local convenience stores. We bought cookware and a sleeping bag from a camping store because we couldn't find anyplace locally that sold these items for cheap.

When we became aware of local supermarkets, we found, to our delight, that they were an impossible trek away. We couldn't afford a car in Seattle, not on our pathetic budget. Often, especially in the early months, we couldn't afford bus fare, and the buses never ran the correct routes anyhow. To get groceries, we had to walk, a walk that was about 45 minutes to an hour one-way. We could only buy what we could carry home.

Later, when we had a roommate who actually paid her bills, we counted ourselves lucky that we could afford $30 for a taxi.

Now, the cost of being poor did not end with the problems of buying food. My partner had to walk to and from her school (a two-hour round trip). She also walked to and from her jobs, which added another 45 minutes of exhaustion. For most of my jobs, I also walked--most averaged an hour- to an hour-and-a-half round trip. One of my jobs required that I take a bus. This bus's schedule was just enough out-of-synch with my usual shift that I'd end up arriving at work early and sitting around late at night, waiting for my ride home.

After a miserable shift serving rich people food and cleaning up rich people's messes, nothing makes your day better than knowing you have to walk another hour in the dead of night, gritting your teeth to keep from panic-breathing, your hand always on the pocket-siren your father sent you for safety, flinching at every shadow and panicking at the sight of another person, your back seizing up from all the overloaded trays of filthy dishes you had to sling, your nose full of the unique scent of swill that always follows you after a shift... and, knowing that after you get home, you have to walk to the grocery store, bring home what you can carry, and try to cook/eat it without just falling the fuck asleep into the saucepan.

But, you know, we had a television*, so we must not have been poor at all. And we were just stupid and making bad, lazy choices when we spent our money on processed food from a convenience store less than a ten-minute walk from our apartment, cigarettes, and beer. Right?

_{*A television with a ten-inch screen that was gifted to us by a maintenance worker at our building. But it was a TV, so clearly, we were not and never have been poor.}