‘The shit that happens is not to be understood,’ declares the character Eddie Torres in the first line of Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living. Eddie, played by a beautifully burly Philip Quast, inaugurates the play with this bald statement of life’s incomprehensibility. Some are born rich and safe; others into abuse and strife. Some get to inhabit their bodies easily, and stride through life in the blithe pleasure of good health; others experience infirmity and disability and the cruel prejudice afforded to non-normative bodies. Some experience caring and being cared for as a source of security and love; for others, giving and receiving care invites coercion and distress. And try as we might, the unfairness of these myriad inequities seems to defy comprehension; they elude our meaning-making capacities. This is the ‘shit’ that ‘is not to be understood’. What cannot be understood is the cost of living; the cost of its pain, losses, and intimacies.