Free Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (C. AD 2009) in a Large City by Choire Sicha

institutions. Always
     paying some was considered the best thing of all.
    In a sense, interest was insurance for the bank. There would always be people who
     would not pay, after all, so the interest earned from others would offset those losses.
    But also there was money to be made there. For instance, some cards had fees just
     for users to be allowed to have them. Some cards started with a very low “interest”
     rate that then jumped dramatically. There were also “late fees,” for any tardiness
     in payment.
    Eventually it became necessary for the government to intervene on behalf of credit
     card users. Just then, laws were enacted that said credit card companies could not,
     for instance, dramatically raise the interest rates on cards without allowing people
     to continue paying off what they owed at the prior rate. The government had to mandate
     that monthly due dates for payments could not fall on a day on which mail was not
     delivered. The government had to declare that cardholders could, when they had multiple
     cards with the same issuer, first pay off the account with the highest interest; previously
     the credit card companies had declared that any payments would be applied to the lowest-interest
     card first.
    Just six companies were responsible for issuing four out of every five credit cards.
     At around this time, all the credit cards in the country had about 950 billion dollars
     in debt piled upon them, spread between about 150 million people. In the year previous,
     all kinds of fees—late fees, over-the-“limit” fees, annual fees—were thought to total
     20 billion dollars.
    AT A BOOK party a week after Edward and John met—that is, a party to celebrate a book—a friend
     of Amy’s came up to John and said, hey, wow, Edward really, really likes you. And
     John was elated.
    Later John would find out that Edward wrote that stupid thing on Twitter about being
     sad only because it was raining outside. Edward had actually never been happier in
     his life.
    IN THE END, the elected members of the City Council, after hearing from the public, were compelled
     to decide whether the Mayor could run for the third time, and the vote went 29 in
     favor to 22 opposed. This was, apparently, legal, even if it seemed like it shouldn’t
     be. “Our City is facing the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression,” the head
     of the City Council said. The Great Depression was the last great contagion, eighty
     years previous. Her implication was that continuity in leadership would help prevent
     things getting worse. She planned on being the mayor herself after the current Mayor’s
     third term.
    Most everyone felt dimly outraged—some more than dimly. In the council chambers, after
     the vote, people were actually screaming from the balconies. But then what? Not enough
     people were so outraged as to go and do—well, what? March on the Mayor’s house? People
     had to go to work, after all. Also there were so many good things on their TVs.
    EDWARD WAS BEING cagey, but finally John convinced Edward to get together for drinks, at the Nowhere
     Bar, a red-tinted basement bar, dark and campy and not far from Edward’s place, or,
     that is to say, Edward and Edward’s boyfriend’s place. It was more than a week but
     less than two weeks after they had met. They were having a lot of fun! John was so
     happy to see him. They sat next to each other in the dark, and the glow of their faces
     was all there was.
    I may be moving back down to the Capital soon, Edward said, to my parents’ house.
     John grabbed his arm. You can’t do that, you can’t leave town, he said. And Edward
     said, you know we can’t do this, right?
    And John said, why not? And Edward said, because I’m fucked up. And I love my boyfriend.
    And yet. Edward was really effusive too. He said that he really liked John. But what
     were they supposed to do, exactly? Edward asked. He said he’d seen a number of friends
     leave their