Invoice No. 921
Item: Being hushed by a fellow library patron while Steve continues to blather on, ad nauseam.
Total: $123.22
Invoice No. 43
Item: Listening to Richard explain the plot of “Infinite Jest” to me even though I loaned him the book in the first place.
Total: $54.21
Invoice No. 44
Item: Hosting a listening party to prove to older high-school boys that not all metal albums are in Drop D tuning.
Total: $44.33, plus the cost of pizza and Mad Dog 20/20s
Invoice No. 27
Item: Smiling when instructed—e.g., by a construction worker on my way to work, a police officer in the park, my mother every time she’s ever taken my photo, etc.
Total: $25.43, recurring
Invoice No. 411
Item: Explaining my disability—e.g., when grovelling for health-insurance reimbursements, to human resources every single calendar year, to strangers for a seat on the subway, etc.
Total: $457.36, recurring (initially $125.50, rate raised based on frequency of occurrences)
Invoice No. 22
Item: Being told that there were no female Beat writers and that Kerouac’s “The Subterraneans”—“Oh, wait, I mean ‘The Dharma Bums’; actually, ‘Desolation Angels’ ”—is the real Beat magnum opus.
Total: $76.54 ($2 discount for each new title mentioned, as a bonus for at least showing range in your limited taste)
Invoice No. 107
Item: Demonstrating to a boyfriend how to do laundry—e.g., detailing why detergent is necessary, the significance of dryer sheets, etc.
Total: $23.34 (filed twice for two different boyfriends—both overdue)
Invoice No. 112
Item: Proving that Queen is a metal band to various metalheads.
Total: $192.34, recurring
Invoice No. 673
Item: Receiving nudes and the person is still wearing socks.
Total: $125.12
Invoice No. 88
Item: Teaching a male friend that women do not pee out of their vaginas.
Total: $46.44
Invoice No. 3
Item: Sitting patiently and totally sober while my drunk father breaks down the chronological order of “Pulp Fiction.” The key is to focus on the clothing, he tells me, fourteen times.
Total: $32.98 x 14, overdue
Invoice No. 14
Item: Answering to the nickname my brother gave me as a preteen, “Ugly Little Girl.”
Total: $5.62, recurring
Invoice No. 252
Item: Defining the prefix “proto-” to idiots on the Internet in order to explain that proto-metal is early-stage metal and that contemporary standards don’t revoke the genre designation from bands like Gun, Uriah Heep, and Deep Purple—bands that helped establish metal’s foundation, Jon.
Total: $1,089.73, recurring, because this is the hill I will gladly die on
Invoice No. 253
Item: If you think that Van Halen qualifies as a metal band but Queen doesn’t, then you’re a fool incapable of analyzing the formal elements of a work of art and instead clearly rely on the arbitrary opinion of some other guy who just happened to write a bullshit opinion piece for Guitar Player in the early nineties.
Total: $1,512.23, recurring, because I am exhausted
Invoice No. (n+1)
Item: Biting tongue.
Total: $83.48, recurring (subject to adjustment, based on inflation)
