{"id":2980,"date":"2019-12-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/?p=2980"},"modified":"2023-06-28T17:57:28","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T00:57:28","slug":"out-of-pocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2019\/out-of-pocket\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of Pocket"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Out of Pocket<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span>Kat Houk<\/strong>\n \n December 1, 2019<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\u201cToday\u2019s a good money day,\u201d my mother would say to our small bodies at a checkout counter. Or, \u201cIn a couple weeks we can buy that, okay?\u201d tucking away a magazine cut-out.<\/p>\n

Mama and Papa\u2019s backs hurt. They are fading, with grace, like retired monarchs. Stage lights haven\u2019t illumined their faces in years. Their reverence from the ballet world is lost in translation. There are no 401K plans, no formulaic influx to college funds. The studio inhales and exhales cash like a lung on its side, so Mama keeps firing the teachers, stretching paper thin to take on all of the teaching. Papa growing introverted in his exhaustion. They keep training their students, hour after hour, until their aching feet go home at 9 PM and they laugh it all off over dinner and a game of \u201cName that Composer.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remember standing on the beach cliff where we would camp for a few nights when we needed to rent our house for funds. \u201cWhy can\u2019t we just go home? I want to have a sleepover with Ellie,\u201d I said, my chin tucked into the collar of my fleece jacket.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook down there,\u201d my dad pointed to the ten-story wooden stair-case that crawled down the cliffside. The two bottom stories were concealed by churning water. \u201cThere\u2019s a King Tide this time of year,\u201d my dad explained, \u201cit\u2019s a special time in the year when the earth, moon, and sun are aligned. The water comes flooding in from the ocean.\u201d Two tourists are spazzing out halfway down the staircase, realizing the beach is three feet under. \u201cSome families have a King Tide of money all the time. But we have the dry parts too.\u201d He pulled his colored beanie over his ears, nodding slightly as he watched the sea.<\/p>\n

But we weren\u2019t just riding the waves. We were drowning, and then surfacing, and then swimming, sometimes floating\u2014limbs suspended, spines buoyant, seven sets of sun-cracked lips and crevice eyes bumping gaily into one another, before the sea needed to cough and the salt drained out and the King Tide subsided, sucked into its volcanic crevice far off the wheezing coastline. So we\u2019d clamber up the cliffs, crabs who knew the way, making camp from a lookout to wait it out, hoping the sea would vomit again and send us spinning in all of our salty glory.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

My parents were the top ballet dancers of their day, but didn\u2019t reap the rewards of their success past the age of 35. From there it was a scrappy, self-made, and constantly undulating financial situation. I have passed my entire life as an economically sound person by attending a\u00a0 string of elitist schools. The dead horse that\u2019s been beaten with my reflections on how experiences with poverty \u201cshaped me as a person\u201d has helped me ride into these schools on a saddle made of scholarship money. A saddle of papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 dollar bills from people who felt bad for me, or believed in me, or both.<\/p>\n

I never pretended to be rich, but I kept quiet. No one likes a complainer\u2014or an outfit repeater. My sisters and I bartered with one another, trading wardrobes like passionate merchants. The extreme wealth around me was more dizzying than dazzling. Deep down I was soothed that I didn\u2019t scale marble stairs to my bedroom to plan my creepy 18th birthday party on\u00a0 a yacht.\u00a0But a vibrant green envy did snake around my ribs when my best friend\u2019s mom picked us up from school, glowing from her post-work yoga class in her Nissan Leaf. I sat in the back seat, staring, as she lifted her matcha latte to her lips that was not too hot, not too cold, but just right, <\/em>the skin on her face pulled tight by her Lululemon headband.<\/p>\n

What would it be like? To see my mother or father adorned with the little tokens and treats of a comfortable life. I couldn\u2019t really picture it; it was too alien. For them, nothing came close to the highs of a substantial art based income. The months when we thrived off of my parents\u2019 earnings from their sheer talent to train impeccable dancers felt infectious.\u00a0To cash in on their passions was iconoclastic. We didn\u2019t have to be like everyone else to be okay. Home was: music first, build the raft second, and then dance on it third and hope it won\u2019t break\u2014which it often did.<\/p>\n

One day, my siblings and I will ordain my mother and father with the respite that they deserve. It will have wicker rattan furniture, a pottery wheel for my dad, a stereo for my mom, a built-in rack with labelled spices, a stove with four burners, a freezer that never breaks and melts my dad\u2019s pistachio gelato, a small closet of soft clothes, a laundry room with organic detergent, a little brown dog with pet insurance, and a yard with an herb garden. I\u2019ll take them to a dentist and pay out of pocket. They\u2019ll walk from the office, hand in hand, and flash their glowing teeth, blending in, alas, on the streets clogged with sharks, and behind their little door, creatures of their own breed, they will pity those who aimlessly hunt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Kat Houk<\/strong> is a former ballerina and aspiring writer who is currently earning her Master’s in Literary Editing & Publishing at USC. As an undergraduate, she studied Narrative Studies and Environmental Studies, and co-founded the USC Literary Society in 2018! She is currently co-writing and editing a manuscript with screenwriter Jan Oxenberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-2980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2019","tag-prose"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOut of Pocket<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2019\/out-of-pocket\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Out of Pocket - Palaver Arts Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2019\/out-of-pocket\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Palaver Arts Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/palaver.arts.magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-12-01T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-06-29T00:57:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/175\/2023\/06\/palaver-logo.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"710\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"198\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akcannon\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2019\/out-of-pocket\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2019\/out-of-pocket\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"akcannon\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/palaver\/#\/schema\/person\/8ac801b3c8176b6860207b43ecbe9e78\"},\"headline\":\"Out of Pocket\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-12-01T08:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-06-29T00:57:28+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2019\/out-of-pocket\/\"},\"wordCount\":3,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/palaver\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Prose\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Issue 06: Fall 2019\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2019\/out-of-pocket\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2019\/out-of-pocket\/\",\"name\":\"Out of Pocket - 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