Tess Durberville has been in some sort of state of bum her whole life. You could say it's in her blood. Born to two public employees-- one a WWII refugee who grew up into a musician from the midwest and the other a Brooklyn ghetto, stoner guy-bastard son of a Finnish washer woman.
Tess inherited from her mother her fear of the apocalypse, the apocalypse in New York City, her doubt in her own right to exhist, her outsider and her artistic sense. She inherited from her bio-father her compulsion to obsessively scheme and strategize. And from her dad she inherited her outlaw/ rock n' roll renegade, pot-head, money schemer, underachiever cheater.
With this soddy foundation which predicates any form of bumhood, Tess set out in life to earn what is perhaps the longest list of genuine (as in not blatantly fabricated, such as her work resume) credentials that she has in anything.
This list includes such items as:
1985-2003 Underachiever:
Tess was always able to learn anything she'd whim and talented enough to create some exceptional stuff yet she was too lazy to ever put in the work, so all her teachers loved and admired her, yet she was formally a C student, so she'd always end up with a grade of B. She used to be proud of this, thinking it proved a gifted intelligence, but she now realizes that all this proved was that she was destined to waste her gifts and fail to make any meaningful contribution to humanity before her brief moment in time is passed.
1985-pres. Outsider, Wacko:
Tess has been preparing for the apocalypse her whole life. As a child in NYC in the 80's she'd study street bum shelter techniques and in her mind do garbage planning with what she saw on the sidewalks. As soon as she was older, in art school, she deliberately took manual skill classes in order to be able to build and fix things when she needs to survive in the apocalyptic ecosystem. She just spent the last two and a half years in the country upstate for a large part in order to learn how to live off the land like a pioneer or savage.
1991-1995 Dirty:
Tess' life was transformed by the blowing up of the Grunge movement in 1991.
1995-pres. Bottom Feeder:
1995-pres. Bottom Feeder:
Tess started her employment as a babysitter when a teenager then became a cafe cashier, she got a Bachelors degree and has been a cashier almost this whole time. Still is.
2003 to pres. Gimp:
Tess always has some sort of problem going on with her joints. Both her wrists are bad, she has two bad knees and a bad back. At age 29, she's a wreck. She can barely do anything like a normal person does, though she is discreet and conceals this, and she's rather pathetically weak. This strongly limits her usefulness to society.
2001-2003 Homeless:
When in college, in order to spare her mom the expense of helping her with school and in order to achieve independence, Tess gave up housing and squatted for two school years. First she spent a few months digging a hole in the woods in the hopes of making a secret, sub-terranean hovel she can live in. Then abandoning that, she ended up spending the first year sleeping in the woods, in ventilation platforms in school buildings, labs and her friends floors. Second year squatting at her boyfriends dormroom.
2003 to pres. Broke:
For the majority of the last six years of her post-college adult life her annual income has been around $6,000 per year.When in college, in order to spare her mom the expense of helping her with school and in order to achieve independence, Tess gave up housing and squatted for two school years. First she spent a few months digging a hole in the woods in the hopes of making a secret, sub-terranean hovel she can live in. Then abandoning that, she ended up spending the first year sleeping in the woods, in ventilation platforms in school buildings, labs and her friends floors. Second year squatting at her boyfriends dormroom.
2003 to pres. Broke:
2003 to pres. Gimp:
Tess always has some sort of problem going on with her joints. Both her wrists are bad, she has two bad knees and a bad back. At age 29, she's a wreck. She can barely do anything like a normal person does, though she is discreet and conceals this, and she's rather pathetically weak. This strongly limits her usefulness to society.
2006-2007 Cheater:
Her biggest effort to escape her destitution since getting a degree was starting her own contracting business with her bf at the time. They did this by funding the whole thing on all the consumer credit cards she could get. Then her bf bottomed out and Tess took the bullet and filed Chapter 7.
2003-pres. Lazy:
Half of the reason why Tess' income is so low is because she can't stand the shit jobs she gets and always quits after just a couple of months, so she's only employed half the year. The other half she systematically milks what she can from the welfare system. Tess has been using food stamps on and off since she first graduated from college.
2003-pres. Lazy:
Half of the reason why Tess' income is so low is because she can't stand the shit jobs she gets and always quits after just a couple of months, so she's only employed half the year. The other half she systematically milks what she can from the welfare system. Tess has been using food stamps on and off since she first graduated from college.
2008 Domestically Unstable/Borderline Transient:
Tess moved ten times within the same area in 2008.
March 2009- pres. Homeless, Transient:
March 2009- pres. Homeless, Transient:
She has been homefree since March. During this time she spent a month camping in the woods on the road alone, as well as six weeks on her moms' couch.
August 2009- pres. Migrant Worker with No Home/Hoboe:
Tess now drives a truck with her work partner, Rosasharn, all around the country as a travelling salesman. She figures the pay's bad and the work's hard but at least she doesn't have to worry about where she'll lay her head at night or what she'll eat-- company pays for all of that. She's planning her next gig as a volunteer in exchange for free room and board in a second-world country.
Tess now drives a truck with her work partner, Rosasharn, all around the country as a travelling salesman. She figures the pay's bad and the work's hard but at least she doesn't have to worry about where she'll lay her head at night or what she'll eat-- company pays for all of that. She's planning her next gig as a volunteer in exchange for free room and board in a second-world country.
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