A Day in the Life of a Billionaire

WORDS BY Thiamando Pavlidis @thiamand_no

ART BY My Tieu Ly @alruin_de

Billionaires are just idiot man-babies with too many resources. Many of whom are clearly just overcompensating for at least one little… thing. This is the sentiment I have tried to convey in this story, where many of the jokes and anecdotes are actually based on real-life billionaire antics — the gag is, without the context, it’s impossible to tell what’s made up and what’s real. With that in mind, here is what I imagine a day in the life of a billionaire is like.

You wake up and emerge from your race car bed — a literal Lamborghini you paid a professional to convert into a bed — and you remove your monogrammed robe and pick out one of six identical grey Brunello Cucinelli t-shirts from your wardrobe. You put on your gun holster for your day gun. It's a nice, big gun and holding it in your hands offers you an unfamiliar feeling of power.

As you enter the kitchen, you are greeted by your personal chef. It’s Heston Blumenthal. You sit down on your special booster seat for breakfast opposite one of your seven teenage girlfriends. They all understand you like no other. It’s definitely not because you’ve taken advantage of a group of young and vulnerable women who have had less experience with men than women your own age, who would most likely ridicule you for your incapabilities and… uh, nevermind. Heston’s made ortolan bunting for you — he was hesitant because it’s “illegal” and “one of the most controversial dishes in the world”, but you love the crunch! You’re supposed to keep a towel over your face to trap the smells or hide your shame from God or something, but what’s the point? Fry up those tiny, endangered songbirds! After breakfast, you take a stroll through your warehouses. It’s so gracious of you to pluck the poors from the side of the road to work for you, you think to yourself. Sometimes, you even pay them, as a treat. In the main warehouse, they’re building you a long, sleek, thick rocket. It’s really big, huge even. Looking at it offers you an unfamiliar feeling of power. They make bath salts in the other warehouse, but the cops think it’s meth so they keep testing for the wrong things whenever you’re raided. You make eye contact with one of the security guards outside the second warehouse. He has a gun too. Yours is bigger.

Once you finish comparing guns, you head to the basement, where you’re keeping Azealia Banks hostage. One of your girlfriends is an aspiring hyperpop artist and wanted a collaboration. She’s been saying mean things about you in text posts on her Instagram stories all day about this. You’re not really that short, are you? You should’ve taken her phone, but it’s too late now. Maybe you can blackmail her and force her to write an apology letter later. Your girlfriend… which one was it? Anyway, Banks isn’t leaving until that collab is recorded. You finish your delicious dinner of bulls’ testicles in the shape of an orange. You like eating testicles, as the act offers you an unfamiliar sense of power. Heston asks if he’s allowed to go back home to see his family, because he misses them. You tell him no. At night, you get ready for a call with your friend Joe Rogan, who you’ll be remotely recording a podcast with this evening. You like this sentient thumb because you are taller than him. You talk about throwing money into a well with gasoline and a lit match, and then putting money in a blender and eating it between two slices of bread. Also, cryptocurrency. You tell him you’ll bring some of your fresh drugs from your warehouse when you see him next, but currently you’re laying low in a nice villa in Belize to avoid the investigations into tax evasion. You say all of this on mic. After you hang up the call, you get changed back into your pyjamas, hop on your step to hang your grey shirt up and go back to sleep in your Lamborghini. ‡