I Wanna Be Bad By Alysia Lewis / Willa Ford

Every day that I don’t wake up on a sprawling estate somewhere in Jamaica Hills or Kensington, in my 6-bed, 4-bath Tudor-style home, I think, with all my heart, that my parents should have raised me to be a whole lot worse.

Like, this is America. If there were ever a country where being an absolute, feckless, piece of garbage was an option for a lucrative career, this would be the place! There are so many different ways to prey upon the people that the American healthcare and education system left behind, and here I am, sitting on my hands working a 9-5 because my dear mother and father decided I needed to learn stupid shit like ethics and morals. I’m wasting such a great opportunity! There’s so much I could do.

I’m Black. Not only that, but my hair’s natural. And not only that! It’s short! There is quite literally nothing stopping me from opening some Pan-African-esque holistic cancer treatment center except that icky feeling that I get when I lie too hard. I have 3 or 4 African head wraps somewhere in my dresser, and more often than not, my armpits are unshaved. I could change my name to something unnecessarily African, à lá Rachel Dolezal, and really start raking in that cash money. 

No offense, but thanks to the absolute abuse of said American government, Black people are really easy to scam. All you have to say is something about the White man and pesticides in the food, and something about the cops, and look at that, people will take out payday loans to have a medical consultation with me. Some bitch they found on Instagram. 

A consultation (for a respectable fee of $400) in which I, Dr. [insert very African name here], tell them that Big Pharma is a scam and a racket. Chemo is poison, and radiation was created to...uhh...make the Black community infertile or something. I, however, despite not being anything close to a doctor, could prescribe a custom whole-food diet that would strengthen the immune system against cancer cells and all other ailments for a small, one-time fee of $4,500. (Follow-ups would be $600 for each session, of course)

And while the cancer in their bodies used the energy from the whole food diet to eat them alive, I would take their money and lovingly put a down payment on my stunning forever home. 

What’s great about this grift is that I would only need one success story to legitimize myself. It’s incredibly unlikely, but some people are lucky! Cancer comes, it does nothing, and it just...goes away. Most people aren’t lucky, though, and cancer eats them all the way up. But I would just need the one person, preferably a child, since it’s really good marketing, and I would be rolling in the dough.

Just sweating money. 

I see people on Instagram do it all the time.

Why can’t I ruin people’s lives and become disgustingly rich at the same time, like the founding fathers wanted me to be?

Oh yeah. It would make me feel bad. Boo. Tomato, tomato, tomato.

For the new year, I’d like one good knock to the head to really scramble my shit and make me the horrible and wealthy person I know I have potential to be.