The day they buy a boat.
The day they sell themselves on the idea that they somehow deserve to own a boat—that their wealth isn’t the product of luck or circumstance but, rather, is a proportional reflection of their value to society.
The day they buy nine more boats, making their personal collection technically a fleet.
The day they sell themselves on the notion that anyone who doesn’t own ten boats simply hasn’t worked hard enough to earn them.
The day they buy a captain’s hat and plate that shit in gold.
The day they sell their gold captain’s hat to make room for the South-Sea-pearl-studded admiral’s hat that they commissioned from Van Cleef & Arpels.
The day they buy a car—a car so nice that its doors open in a novel and exciting way (like, they pop out and slide into a hidden cavity in the roof).
The day they sell their very nice car because they’ve begun to commute exclusively by helicopter.
The day they buy an orca.
The day they sell seventy-three miles of beachfront property on the island of Majorca.
The day they buy butt implants.
The day they sell their entire wardrobe at a charity auction because none of their old clothes fit their magnificent new butt.
The day they buy stem cells, just in case.
The day they sell their majority shares in a biotech company just hours before the stock price bottoms out.
The day they buy into the validity of the moniker “job creator.”
The day they sell the voters in their state the line that they’re qualified to be an elected official because they are a “job creator.”
The day they buy a series of data-driven, microtargeted campaign ads that depress the vote in select districts and swing others just enough to clinch a statewide victory.
The day they sell an economic-prosperity message to the citizenry in a televised acceptance speech while standing next to their orca tank.
The day they buy a Newton’s cradle made from black-rhino horn to put on their office desk in the governor’s mansion.
The day they sell their tax bill to the public, exclaiming, “Prosperity follows the law of gravity—it trickles down!” before firing fake dollar bills with their portrait printed on them from a confetti cannon.
The day they buy a full-length mirror, strip naked to behold their sagging, bloated form—a body not immune to the passage of time, actively decaying—and chant, “If I were not a god, I would not be treated as a god. If I were not worthy of worship, I would not be worshipped. If I were not a god, I would not be treated as a god. If I were not worthy of worship, I would not be worshipped.”
The day they sell their boat.
