Why Your Health Insurance Money is Better Spent on ME!! A personal essay by Tammy Quick, Trust Fund Kid (TFK) – and Pop Star! 

Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

       Why Your Health Insurance Money is Better Spent on ME!! 

   A personal essay by Tammy Quick, Trust Fund Kid (TFK) – and Pop Star!

            Hi, you don’t know me.

            Why would you?  My daddy, and my daddy’s daddy, are CEOs.

            I’m from a long line of very successful businessmen.

            The only reason you know my face is because I’ve achieved pop superstardom.

            I, you must admit, am great!

            But that’s off topic!

            Giggle, pose, selfie!

            Cute hit song, about love!

                                        #

            I, you must admit, am beautiful.

            I am tall, modelesque, thin, and have extremely good teeth.

            You might think my appearance is an act of nature, but I had braces when I was 8, a nose job when I was 9, and I learned how to walk and carry myself in private etiquette classes. 

            Because I, you see, had a dream.

            I wanted to be a famous pop star!

            And so my daddy spent your health care money on…ME!

                                         #

            You might think I’m ignorant at best even writing you about this.

            BUT, you must admit, I’m pretty great.

            You listen to my songs on the radio; your children just love my songs!  This year I’ve leapt to Hollywood prominence because I have “gotten cool.”  Comedy show writers love me.  Actors love me.  My friend, another TFK whose father owns an Internet company and who got famous wearing lampshades on her head (I don’t much go for her tacky style, but she was raised in NYC and she is “new money”) is now my BFF and sanctions me, so you see my face nearly every day!

            I’ve entered pop stardom.

            I’m a fixture of early 21st century culture.

            I am history.

                                         #

            What, you suggest that at one point my songs – I? – will be forgotten?

            How could that be?

            I am everywhere, all at once!

            I am beautiful, talented – I am ME!

            I could never believe that history might find my father’s profession – CEO of Humana – distasteful.  Or that his spending your health care money on me would be more important in the long run than any one of my songs about ex-lovers who scorned me because they found out I was a rich entitled bitch, completely manufactured, and my soul was a cold hard business thing, icy as stone, and slimy, too, as they get when they are out among the rocks at the beach, and it is a warm humid funky day.

            For Daddy, and his Daddy, are Capitalists. 

            True American heroes. 

            They learned and promote that true American heroes make as much money as they possibly can…and then hoard it in children and grandchildren’s trust funds.

                                        #            

            You don’t know my background, you see.

            You only see me, my face, everywhere!

            And you have for years!

            It started when I was just 15!

            But I’d been made long before.

            Ok, I heard.  You’re busy.  You work.  Per household, you’ve got one, two, three, four jobs to afford children.

            If you’re overeducated, you don’t even have children and you might pay no attention to me!

            But I was fated for greatness.

            I was a natural.

            Daddy knew it, and he invested your money in me. 

            See as a CEO, Daddy makes on average 273 times more than any of his employees.

            Humana pays him $14.5 million a year.

            That’s $40,000 a day!

            And his daddy was super rich, too!

                                       #

            Oh, you never heard about where I came from before?

            Does it matter? 

            Businessmen like my daddy and his grandfather making millions of your family’s health, giving your money to me?

            Aren’t my songs worth it?

            Isn’t my style worth it?

            My songs are catchy, I’m a good student and a classic role model for your daughters.

            I’m hard working.

            I don’t get loaded.

            I have lots of cats.

            I take pictures of chocolate chip cookie parties with my friends!

            I want you to believe that I am just like you, but in reality, you are nothing like me.

            I am one of the superclass!

            Thanks to my parents, I am a multimillionaire, and I always was!

            I make more money in a day than most of you will ever make in a year!

            Ever!

            By far!

            I claim it’s because I’m talented, and you believe this because you’re busy.

            But it’s really because Humana denied your husband’s claim for that heart scan; your mother lost her sight at 58 from a stroke because she couldn’t afford the doctor; your children have bad teeth.

            Because all that money should have gone to them, to pay their claims, but instead it went to ME!

                                          #

            Now, if a few of you deny the greatness of the very institution from which I came – health insurance – I am here to set you straight.

            The American US capitalist health care system is the best in the world!
            So what if we’re the only industrialized country on Earth that does not guarantee health care as a right for all?  So what if the US spends twice as much per capita on health care than any other country?  So what if my daddy made $14.5 million last year, and his pharmaceutical friends even more, while 40.7 million American citizens remain uninsured?  

            You have my sweet cute catchy love songs!!

            You have…ME!

                                          #

            Fine, I’ll admit a bit of a truth.

            I’m not exactly a force of nature, though I claim to be.

            I’m not exactly a fluke, though that’s how my PR agents spin me.

            I was created by daddy’s money!

            Sure, I have natural talent.

            But if you weren’t giving me your premiums in droves, I wouldn’t exist!

            A bit of family history:           

            Because Daddy was a health insurance CEO, and my mother worked in finance – they explained to me at a very young age that the goals of their businesses are pretty much the same: post quarterly gains to stockbrokers, blah blah blah.  One denys claims to do so, the other trades, it’s the same thing – they fell in love!

            (Incidentally as a songwriter it’s also my job to post gains, that’s why I’m a soulless, carbon-copy shiller for corporate dollars!  Consult my face on products everywhere!)

            Anyway, Daddy’s forefathers were finance magnets, and taught him the same thing.  All must bow to the interest of profit.  If you are a rich American, you’re entitled to it.  Hard work equals having money.  If not for your obsession with profits, other businesses would grind to a halt, that sort of thing.

            So I told Daddy I wanted to be a pop singer – a country one! – and bada bing, bada bang! our whole family moved to Nashville when I was 14!

            Well that’s not exactly how it happened.  But pretty close!

            Before Nashville, I had a regular childhood.  We lived on 11 acres and had horses and Shetland ponies.

            (Didn’t you?)

            My first hobby was English horse riding.

            (Wasn’t yours?)

            The summers I spent at my parents’ vacation home on the east coast, swimming, frolicking, and taking in the sunsets of the ocean.           

            (Didn’t you?)

            This is where my earliest memories were formed, and where I dreamed of pop stardom, watching the Atlantic crash on our private beach wearing what you would consider LL Bean.

            (You can relate, I’m sure?)

                                        #

            Next, I heard Dolly Parton sing and bada bing! I knew I wanted to be a famous country pop star!

            Daddy traveled a lot for work, and my family had homes in a few cities, so the move to Nashville wasn’t that much of a stretch for us. 

            Also, I nagged the fuck out of him for months!  My blonde hair and pout were irresistible!

            (Like say, if you didn’t succeed in music, it’s probably because you didn’t nag your super wealthy father until he moved the whole family and household to Nashville!)

            As I was saying, that’s when everything changed.  All resources – that’s not true, we had vast resources; just a small modicum, a pattering, really, of resources – were siphoned off for my budding career.

            I met with vocal coaches, songwriters, I sang at craft fairs and garden clubs!

            I was so precocious my mother and I took tapes to Nashville when I was 11!

            And finally, after years of crying, and saying, “But I want it, Daddy!” my daddy finally gave in and bought me a New York City manager when I was 14.

            I mean, I had learned three chords on the guitar by then and wrote poetry!

            I had earned it!

            I was ready to become a star!

                                       #

 

            Right off the bat, my manager got me a modeling gig with J. Crew and also included one of my songs in a Cover Girl compilation CD. 

            This is how low I stooped in the beginning!  A compilation CD!  But I was only 14, and here I was working with major multi-national companies!

                                        #

            After I secured my first major record contract in 8th grade, my daddy’s health insurance company transferred him to the Nashville office and we moved into a huge mansion on a lake!

            It reminded me of the idyllic way I spent my childhood summers.

            Good vibes, good energy!

                                          #

            The rest is history.  I started to work with professional Music Row songwriters who taught me everything they knew.  A great “internship,” if you will (that’s what people in your caste call it?), at the tender age of 14!

            It only required a NYC manager on retainer and Daddy moving the whole family to a new state!

            Beans, for my people.

            My daddy even bought me a personal songwriting tutor to "hedge his bet" as he put it!  Major Nashville songwriter Diane Tulip met with me two hours a week on Wednesdays to tighten up my skills and get my confidence up.

            (Didn’t yours?!)

                                            #

            When I was 15, I changed labels and screwed over my first manager – “just business,” Daddy said, and he should know, he was siphoning off people’s health care money to go to our family fortune – at which point I started wearing sexy clothes and bada bing! 

            In no time, I was famous!

                                            #

            So you see I am self-made, I worked hard, and I sacrificed so much to get where I am.

            Just kidding!

            But I am a real 21st century American success story!

            I’m helping to define the TFKs who buy their way into your TV, your culture, your children, and your arts.

            I am – ME! – the new McDonald’s!

                                              #

            I mean, doesn’t everyone do major jeans and cellphone campaigns to launch their debut album?

            Doesn’t everyone sponsor national football teams?

            Doesn’t everyone’s songs appear in video games?

            Isn’t your face all over Sears?  Dr. Pepper?  Home Depot?  Nike?

            Doesn’t everyone earn $18 million on their second album?

            And over $50 million a year every year after that!?

            Of course it's simply because I'm "talented," it has nothing to do with endorsements and Daddy’s business acumen!

                                              #

            My only wonder is: how you have not all turned on me yet for being a rich bratty precocious entitled bitch like Marie Antoinette!

            Sigh, maybe one day.

                                              #

            As of now, eat my cake, bitches!

            Selfie, Twitter witticism, new celebrity friend. 

           

            xoxo,

            Tammy Quick, TFK & Beloved Pop Star 

  © Rebecca F. 2017