The EGP: The Sweet Smell of the Phantom Greenback
Written By Jeff Phillips
July 1st, 2010
The EGP: The Economic Ghost Post is a weekly article examining economic theories through the invention of ghost stories…a wicked blend of essay & fiction – phantoms as the allegorical Vanna White of ‘Econ.’
I sprawl. I sigh. I try to dream. I believe I hear the crinkle of a thick paper beneath my mattress. I get up and look beneath. There is nothing but dust bunnies intertwined with collected cat fur from a season of shedding. Nothing of the like to make this crinkle I hear. As I collapse back down, my head nestles into a flattened pillow. I for some reason begin to think of the smell of a brand new twenty dollar bill.
When the global currency came to be, I attempted to keep one bill of each as a souvenir: a one, a five, a ten, a twenty, a fifty, a hundo, I could not afford any bigger in greenbacks…then a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a fifty cent piece, a Sacagawean dollar. But I had found myself in need of the transferred points to my account, so I had squeezed every conversion point possible and so squandered this little collectable.
I wake up at night often and think I smell the antiquated scent of paper money. The metal of sweaty coins. The world’s new ticking pulse in transaction has no smell. This measure of means exists only as electronic digits that dance away my funds, fluctuating constantly, dipping down as old creditors come out from the past and nip at specks of interest as mandated by corporate legislation which allows them to collect their due.
I pull up my bank statement online, late at night. The glow of the screen shows me that my financial life is draining…I feel as though I am losing at a video game and I must chase down more coins to get an extra life!
I turn off the light and go to the bathroom to take a piss. In the faded street light that seeps through the gap in my blinds, I can swear I see a dollar bill softly sweeping across the floor in the breeze made by the churn of a ceiling fan. I reach down and the breeze takes it further, where it settles, and I can see, yes, this is a fifty dollar bill. Grant is looking at me, and perhaps it is just this lighting, but he seems to be laughing at me…and fluttering further as I reach again. I blink. It is gone.
I take my piss and lie back down. I turn on my side and through the pocket of my pajamas I feel what I believe to be a wad of cash. I reach in and retrieve, yes, a wad of one hundred dollars. They are crinkled, and some held together by way of tape. I giggle, for this is a wild thing that is happening to me, and in a previous phase of my life would have changed my living situation tremendously. I drop the wad of bills upon my bare chest but nothing makes contact, for as it turns out, I am only letting slip from my hands the dry breeze that comes from my bedroom ceiling fan. Nothing is there.
I dream for a bit. I have one of those claustrophobic dreams, where the vision is not quite clear but there is a lot going on and the brain feels like mush from the process of cranial integration. I am entrapped in small room. The walls are covered with pasted one dollar bills. Every time I touch one of them they turn to dust and I cough in the brittle paper that floats up and into my lungs. I finally wake up from coughing…I’ve been doing this in my sleep, heaving, heaving a dry rasp. I get up to see if I have any cough syrup in the kitchen. As I exit my bedroom I am slightly startled as I see a faint green glow quiver from the kitchen table. I hear the slap of coins. My breathing stops for a moment as I round the corner, and there indeed is some activity around the table. Wavering phantoms of similar folks in appearance to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Benjamin Franklin, William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, James Madison, Salmon P. Chase, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea all hover around clutching cards, moving piles of pennies into the center, grunting with the spread of agonized defeat upon their faces. The room is cold. It feels like an icy quarter has been pressed flat against my neck, as though from a thin winter pocket. I shudder and stare at the faces of these ghosts of the American dollar as they turn and stare at me with an assortment of green, grey and black eyes. I cough once again – a harsh rasp, this one – and these figures fizzle like melting pieces from a plastic transparent and arbitrary puzzle.
Jeff’s books are available at WhiskeyPike.com & TurbanTan.com. His shorter works have appeared in Thirteen Pocket’s Seeding Meat series, Bellows, and will appear in an upcoming publication by Trifecta Publishing in NYC.
