32 Flavors

As you know from recent headlines (and some not-so-recent), public spaces have become rife "hotspots" for all sorts of crimes, like mass murder, which is also not new to human society. I've always known that people were unsafe. Just ask my family. A more vicious set of scavenging predators you're less likely to meet. We have/had: convicted murderers doing hard time, prostitutes, drug dealers, prostituting drug dealers also doing hard time, mobsters, gangsters, punks, etc. You name it, we've had it, and those were/are just the more openly active criminals from my father's side. The lazy people from my maternal line are much savvier at hiding their crimes, because "guineas" are like that. You know, mafiasos. Not my grandparents, but probably yours, paisans.

It's made my aggressive good health (not that that wasn't attacked constantly and/or mocked, like any other illnesses I might have/had, too, because it was) stand out in sharp relief to any family functions I attend(ed), or if I just wanted to use the upstairs bathroom where it was warmer before getting ready for school as a kid, with my two brothers pushing me around. It didn't matter what I said, did, wore, performed, or, apparently, wrote to millions of reading people. No change. That's sort of an anti-good health policy, isn't it? It certainly is! 

In retaliation to my relative patience and composure, I was attacked for being "boring", or, in the words of one criminal dyke at work in a dull office that could be anywhere, "vanilla", because after the best-looking fighter at our dojo turned her down hard, she pretended he was "too young" for her anyway (like I had already told her) and, besides, he was ugly from "cauliflower ears" (which all fighters have), so if he did prefer me to her (and they all do), it was because we were just a couple of bland nobodies next to her, as one out of http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/commuters-nearly-double-manhattans-daytime-population-census-says/ admins working in the city. 

The strangest part behind the rather unsavory and highly ineffective tactics of using one's mental illnesses and psychiatric disorders to decorate oneself with, like, say, a pretentiously-colored beret to cover up your ineffectiveness as a real working artist by pretending to look like one instead, is that the severely mentally ill and psychotic actually become rote and predictable, the way a "goth kid" telegraphs his belonging to a group of millions by wearing the exact same outfit as a million other goth kids. You know? Black eyeliner, all black clothes, black hair dye, chain wallets from the mall store catering to sulky teens living in the 'burbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Topic): their seemingly "alternative" cultural stance became as standard as their rather boring juvenile behavior.

In the strangest twist of all, in response to the poor secretary who went around a bland midtown office for weeks bragging about liking "hard sex"—because her infamous "Unibomber rape" in Central Park made her feel shame about her body's natural responses to sex, even when it's "unwanted", and that usually slays them in group—we just started making fun of her for pretending that her mental illness was kinky. Yeah, bitch...we know. You like choking people and being choked. In time, I learned about more fucking weirdos at dojos, like the porn fetish that caters to sick fucks who like punching women in the stomach. 

You know, typical weirdo shit on the Internet that you can find in a 5-second search, just like I did, and you know what? Still wasn't weirder than me typing it in during the brave new days of online engagements, because I already done wrote the book about it, bitch. See it right here, haters: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/01/hes-very-loving-cat.html. Midget porn: you have to be weirder than that. Because I got 99 problems, but a stupid weird bitch like you ain't one of them. Feel me? Not in the real way, but mentally, like. Yeah, you do. You fucking get it. I can tell. Totally.


"99 Problems"

If you're having girl problems I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one
[Verse One]
I got the rap patrol on the gat patrol
Foes that wanna make sure my casket's closed
Rap critics that say he's "Money Cash Hoes"
I'm from the hood stupid what type of facts are those
If you grew up with holes in your zapatos
You'd celebrate the minute you was having dough
I'm like fuck critics you can kiss my whole asshole
If you don't like my lyrics you can press fast forward
Got beef with radio if I don't play they show
They don't play my hits well I don't give a shit SO
Rap mags try and use my black ass
So advertisers can give em more cash for ads...fuckers
I don't know what you take me as
or understand the intelligence that Jay-Z has
I'm from rags to riches nigga I ain't dumb
I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one
Hit me
[Chorus]
99 Problems but a bitch ain't one
If you having girl problems I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one
Hit me
[Verse Two]
The year is '94 and in my trunk is raw
In my rear view mirror is the mother fucking law
I got two choices yall pull over the car or
bounce on the double put the pedal to the floor
Now I ain't trying to see no highway chase with jake
Plus I got a few dollars I can fight the case
So I...pull over to the side of the road
And I heard "Son do you know why I'm stopping you for?"
Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low
Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don't know
Am I under arrest or should I guess some mo?
"Well you was doing fifty five in a fifty four"
"License and registration and step out of the car"
"Are you carrying a weapon on you I know a lot of you are"
I ain't stepping out of shit all my papers legit
"Do you mind if I look round the car a little bit?"
Well my glove compartment is locked so is the trunk and the back
And I know my rights so you gon' need a warrant for that
"Aren't you sharp as a tack are some type of lawyer or something?"
"Or somebody important or something?"
Nah I ain't passed the bar but I know a little bit
Enough that you won't illegally search my shit
"Well see how smart you are when the K-9's come"
I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one
Hit me
[Chorus X2]
[Verse Three]
Now once upon a time not too long ago
A nigga like myself had to strong arm a hoe
This is not a hoe in the sense of having a pussy
But a pussy having no God Damn sense, try and push me
I tried to ignore him and talk to the Lord
Pray for him, cause some fools just love to perform
You know the type loud as a motor bike
But wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight
The only thing that's gonna happen is i'mma get to clapping
He and his boys gon' be yapping to the captain
And there I go trapped in the kit kat again
Back through the system with the riff raff again
Fiends on the floor scratching again
Paparazzi's with they cameras snapping them
D.A. tried to give the nigga the shaft again
Half-a-mil for bail cause I'm African
All because this fool was harrassin' them
Trying to play the boy like hes saccarin
But ain't nothing sweet 'bout how I hold my gun
I got 99 problems but being a bitch ain't one
Hit me
[Chorus X3]
You're crazy for this one Rick
It's your boy

Bordello

Back in the day, me and my large British/Scottish boyfriend lived in a quaint "mixed-use"* residential neighborhood in Denver that had a supposedly thriving bordello operating out of the old house next to our small apartment building, pictured here: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7423312,-104.9634647,3a,75y,273.09h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srZ3cLJcEAi2acpMNLcmhpQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656. Our apartment is the one now decorated with Tibetan prayers flags on the balcony, a true hippie symbol for the mountain adventures of the rich and white "out west" that cleverly masks their true intents of pot smoking and low-level employment behind a handy pseudo-spiritual symbol borrowed from another culture, "slacker"** staples both. 

Of course, the house faced the other side of the building from our apartment, the side with the rowdy gay boys who kept to a more nighttime schedule than ours, but suffice to say, a genuine "shock factor" was in effect. It was then (and now) a beautiful old house better suited to the upscale remodeling of a rich gay architect and his journalist partner, which I'm happy to see has now happened. Denver has always had stunning old houses and plenty of parks, but just like New York City, that doesn't mean crime isn't happening practically beneath your feet. Kent and I were the more "regular" duo of the square Mod-style building we lived in. "There are three 'gay boys' living there, and they're all named 'Rick'! Even the two boyfriends! Ha!"

It was funny, but true. We were the only straight couple in a building full of gay men, but because of our different lifestyles, we barely saw one another, and there was no common laundry room to meet in. "Downstairs Rick" was a nice, quiet, blond man, devoted to his mother (I know), and his cute little lapdog that was very well-groomed (I KNOW!). He was home all day on disability benefits and his father's inheritance, and the upstairs couple was way rowdier than us. Kent could hear them arguing late at night and knocking stuff around, but not me. I'd been diagnosed with deafness by then, which made for easy nighttime sleeping, though not for my hearing partner.

He had the early morning run to do with our Mal, Ted, which meant that he was up by 5 a.m. every weekday morning, with me waking up at 7:00-7:30 a.m. for my downtown newspaper job that I either walked to, or, if it was a nice day, rode our purple motor scooter to, so I could walk TeddyBear for lunch. But, that was our particular schedule. Just like the projects down the block with the liquor store right across the street, stuff changed when we weren't around or awake to see it, which meant that the gay boys living on the other side of the building and the man home all day knew way more "dirt" about nefarious goings in the neighborhood than we did. We were either: 1) asleep 2) walking Teddy or 3) away. And that was it.

After a few late night scuffles that had Kent concerned, he asked the guys upstairs about all the banging and knocking he heard going on late at night, and he was the kind of dude who got answers. "What're you doing up there at night anyway? Making furniture?!" It was an old joke that he turned into his version of what he called "a polite chat", which meant that he got what he was looking for in a conversation as a strong man, or he'd pick you up and throw you across the room. It wasn't subtle, but as a master electrician, it was sometimes necessary with the under-educated people he worked with. As it turns out, "the boys upstairs" were the perfect working-class gay cliche, because that's exactly what he said he was doing: finishing up some chairs he made for a gallery show downtown. Well, that's certainly "arty" enough for this area!

I'd met Kent at a recording studio, as the art director who helped his band make a CD, and we'd become friends through my ex, who frequented a punk rock bar in town called "The Lair" (https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x876c7eca9ed79609:0xb8f14596ec324d8b!2m5!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i100!3m1!7e115!4shttps://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname%3D105306774870304916929%26id%3D6295751615571815730%26target%3DPHOTO!5sThe+Lion%27s+Lair+2925+E+Colfax+Ave,+Denver,+CO+80206+-+Google+Search&imagekey=!1e3!2s-bzMva3lPO5o/V18AvPA_7TI/AAAAAAAAL80/pMIezmcZDXwhtQmZU4j_08JFtL8kNim7wCLIB&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf_5nm4tzNAhWDXD4KHRbaAJIQoioIbzAK), that played his kind of music. We lived a creative life without any of the pretentious bullshit, which is exactly the kind of scene our art, design, and music defined for us, as a generation, and it was always working class in tone, which means that poseurs stay far away from us, because art isn't fun if you don't really know how to do it. And we did.

Suffice to say, with our attentions pulled away, it was a bit of a shock to Kent when he came home from work around 3 p.m. to find a full-on cop car scene right next to our building. What the...? The two gay guys from upstairs were already on sight to gossip about it, and Kent caught them at the right time, but not before he made an entrance to our apartment worthy of the full-on rock star role he played between full-time gigs. "Marie! Marie!" At that point, I was working at home during the day, after the two newspapers in Denver bankrupted each other through a poorly-planned competition that was bailed out by the feds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_Preservation_Act_of_1970), and I was illustrating in our bedroom (on my old studio desk) a children's book I'd written as a child that my mother sent to me. "What?" Me and Ted were alarmed. We had a slow life.

And then he just said it. "Hooker stuff is happening!!" What? Like, I couldn't even understand the words at first, because Denver was such a mild place to live for me. Nothing actually happened there, and whenever I walked around, it seemed like it was a dead place empty of people and life, because I didn't actually see people walking around like you normally would in a small-sized city, even at the park during the daytime. It was such an odd feeling, like downtown Providence was completely desolate at night, in contrast to the working days of the week. This felt like that, too. "What?" 

"Yeah, yeah! The cops busted some 'crack ho's' living next door!" Huh? I just didn't get it. Where? In that nice old house? We never saw actual people walking around this block, let alone next door. Heck, son. Let's go take a look! He filled me in on some of the details he'd already gleaned from the gay guys, but it was jarring to see it in broad daylight. We stood on the sidewalk, watching the scene. A cop car was pulled up on the lawn to the front door, which meant it was a surprise bust. Kent went over to an officer, and quickly came back across the lawn to talk to me, because I had a very concerned look on my face. 

People may talk about New York in an openly disparaging way, but I'd never seen or heard of such a thing happening in or near the excellent spots I picked, when I did real estate as part of a couple. This building was Kent's bachelor pad originally. Still, we never had any idea that such a thing was happening. Not one clue. "They're almost done. They're leaving soon." And that was it. We went upstairs for Kent to tell me the rest of the story, as told to him by the gay couple. "They told me they'd been hearing stuff 'pop off' over there for weeks now." Oh, I see. "Yeah. Like, really loud parties, with some girl fighting some guy on the front law." Ah! That must've been the pimp and his hooker, hence the call to the cops.

And that's exactly what is was. The guys had had enough disturbances from the house next door that finally led them to call the "po po", which is antithetical in "hipster", but they finally did it. "They couldn't sleep at night anymore, and you know how much those guys drink!" Yeah, I did. They were sullen and dark-faced to me, the few times I met them in the hallway, never really speaking to me, but for a dull nodding that was directed more to Kent and his general direction, like whipped puppies avoiding their master. What with the union rip-off job at the newspaper, 9/11, and now hookers, it was time for me to go home. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones. I'd had enough.

 https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=ssl&ei=Bt57V_eeGMar-wWPmYgw#q=prostitution+busts+in+denver

*   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-use_development
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker
 

Thug Life 4E

Trifling 'hood rats ain't nuthin' new to me. Like I've explained to y'all  before, the first real criminals I met who tried to scam me were my very own family."Home" and "house" and "safe" were never really words that signified good places for me to live in, as my sickest family members told me every time they thought I "stepped out" of line of their controlling manipulations. Continually consistent and strongly applied coercion is the very first sign to working class kids that our parents or older siblings are gearing up for their next big push at us, in a series of highly coordinated acts that spoke of their persistent ability to attack me behind my back as a child, which solidified my "head of household" status to me over and over again, at a very young age, when I was just some po' girl chile with no one to help me out, and nowhere to go.

Except that I did. I always had my excellently faithful grandparents to back me up with their good health and superior strength, as a direct contradiction to the fearful paranoia that so deeply marks the sickest people around us. They illegally violated our privacy and sense of security every time they were caught abusing us, and that could happen at any time, with their violently frenzied periods of deep paranoia that define the day-to-day reality that is mental illness and psychoses. It became so bad, me and my brothers began threatening exposure to our school teachers and social services, with the achievement of a new family policy clearly stipulating that there would be no hits to the head, so as to prevent telling marks from clearly showing where anyone of authority could see them, not that we thought foster care was any better than what we had. We knew.

It didn't stop my mom from beating up my oldest brother into a broken arm that he covered up for her expertly at Nyack Hospital's ER back in the day, with the conveniently well-practiced excuse of "falling down the stairs" at the ready by both parties that they carefully rehearsed during the car ride over. It was easy for him to do, too, because my brother had prior sports injuries that my mom could frame into a clear sense of his proven carelessness as a wild boy child. 

Our "savage" genetics were also an easy target for her to blame us for any of her abuse that she aimed at us. We were raked over the coals by the mad people around us, to the point of our collective perfection in comparison to their obviously bad behavior, which was then thrown into our faces, too. "What are you, like, 'perfect' or something?" We learned to avoid crazy people the way a cat burglar breaks into a city apartment during the summertime, through an open window by a conveniently placed fire escape.

My self-defense makes attempts at scamming me into this absurdly surreal game of "cat-and-mouse" that I can best with both hands, arms, and legs bound tightly, with a blindfold on. And it continued throughout my life at every public venue I ever "dared" to appear at, including the very public abuse that I suffer(ed) at this public library, because it doesn't matter where I go or what I do, who I am with, and what I look like. It doesn't actually have anything to do with me at all, because I don't do anything wrong, which is a huge problem for a violently acting-out criminal sitting next to me at a public computer, or on the bus to the city, or on the subway, or at work in some office.

It became a pattern that, no matter how cleverly and craftily done, I managed to fight back against —on little food, sleep, money, clothing, medicine, support, and/or shelter—sussed out in record time, to the horrified amazement of yet another delusional individual who felt protected enough to attack me in full clear view of several authority figures in charge who had every opportunity to clear up the situation with one word in my favor. But, that's part of the job, right?

Over time, I even developed a handy "cheat sheet" formula for businesses and other public venues that preferred to witness ongoing abuse that goes unchecked without protecting me, because, you know, I'm obviously society's number one scumbag. One: hire a bitchy thick blond to "man" your reception area with an even bigger desk to match her overblown ego. Two: allow her to gossip loudly and spread rumors within clear earshot of large groups of people who will then feign a planned indifference that you will pretend to control with Three: a series of intentionally inept "scolds" done purely for publicity's sake, before telling your mistress(es) behind closed doors to keep on doing exactly what she's been doing, because, again, I'm the beautiful, high-performing single woman on an extremely tight budget that you like to squeeze as part of some con game.

She, in turn, will blow on her troll dolls in an unchecked madness that you will laugh about in an obviously evil way, because you like seeing your lead bitch with fangs rave at a woman out of your league. So, on this very special Friday, let's go over your "Special Needs" list of rules that even a kindergartner understands, just in case you plead ignorance or impairment. Ready? Okay, here we go!

Children Ten Commandments

1. Have no other gods.
2. Have no idols.
3. Honor God's name.
4. Honor the Sabbath day.
5. Honor your parents.
6. Do not murder.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not perjure yourself.
10. Do not covet.

Got it? Good! Now, let's go over every flaw you have, in clear language that even you can understand, with your list of serious impairment(s):

Vice		Virtues
Lust	Luxuria	Chastity	Castitas
Gluttony	Gula	Temperance	Temperantia
Greed	Avaritia	Charity (or, sometimes, Generosity)†	Caritas (Liberalitas)
Sloth	Tristitia/Acedia	Diligence	Industria
Wrath	Ira	Patience	Patientia
Envy	Invidia	Kindness	Humanitas
Pride	Superbia	Humility	Humilitas

^†This virtue is generally considered to be the greatest and the most important of all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins

Don't play this here New York mama for a "sucka", kids. That is all. See you next week. Be ready. It's "go" time!

Credit

In addition to his lack of driving skills, Cotto has no idea what money stands for (hint: it's for goods and services).To him, every day is either the best day ever (like a whacked-out teenager at Disneyland), or his imminent death—like a kid eaten by a gator at Disneyland (http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/15/us/alligator-attacks-child-disney-florida/). And that's exactly what his serious mental disorders are about: really really REALLY!!! great things that make you stay up for days and days and you just don't understand and why aren't you more excited, Marie? Sleep?! Food?! WHY???!!! GET PUMPED UP!!! Yeah, kid. Call me when the show is over, or starts, whichever happens last. I'm going to sleep, and I'm eating breakfast. Bitch.

The same is true about his understanding of family. His dad was his drinking buddy/sexual escapades partner (aye yi yi), and his mom's new "old man" looks at him kinda funny, too. He's been staying up late to watch t.v. recently, so he could screw the people living around him from using "his" pull-out sofa as a bed, and when you question that, he blames you for his escalating drunken abuse. It's a landscape without any safe places, which makes jail seem much better in comparison, because at least you get decent food and a bed to sleep in, you know? And maybe skip the nighttime rape scene, for once.

I felt bad for him because he had it that hard coming up in "da game" of life, but he's such a selfish fucking dick, you can't help but wish for him to be as far away from you as possible. Just because someone's really sick doesn't mean they can't also be a completely selfish asshole. I'm sure the staff at his residency center wants him dead or gone on his worst days, particularly the days when he deliberately craps his bed so the big buff orderly in the tight white scrubs can change his diapers for him while he sexually harasses him with molester-type comments. You know? A punch in the face is sometimes much quicker and easier than strapping him down to the bed and cleaning out his mess. Poor fucker. I've been there with head-cases before. Many, many, many times over.

So, when I asked him about his "credit card debt" that he intentionally mischaracterized as a fun "Sex and the City" shopping spree, it was just as depressing as I thought. "Well, Marie...", he began. Oh, OK. I'm the dumb fuck sleeping on your floor in your Army/Navy sleeping bag that you can talk down to. I forgot where I was for a minute! Actually, I didn't. Yeah, Cotto. What happened? I wanted him to just take his sleeping meds and go the fuck to sleep, but he was going off of his prescriptions one-by-one, because he couldn't handle the stress of homelessness, welfare, and his broke-ass two-year school on Staten Island for people without their G.E.D.'s coping with several mental disorders, and I was supposed to pretend that wasn't true with him, so he could psychotically pretend that I was his trapped quarry, when in truth, I could crack open his shin bones to the marrow whenever I wanted. 

Not that I wanted that. He was a dumb bloated mess of a human being, and I questioned that status on most days, too. But, let's hear it. It'll come out anyway, and it's not like I have anything better to do on a Tuesday night, besides getting a good night's sleep on this here dirty tenement floor so I can out-design the crazy "creative director" at work tomorrow, who would short-change me out of a health plan and rip-off all of my cover designs out of professional envy and hateful sabotage. So, yeah. Go ahead. Well, my grandmother died, and she asked me to "look after" her mail while she was in the hospital, so I did. Uh huh. I question every part of that sentence, but yeah. And?

"I took her Sears credit card." For how much, Cotto? And he waffled on that, too. Sigh...every step of the way, eh asshole? "About 3 or 4 grand." It was probably much higher than that, between the $5-$7000 range, because he then told me his "lawyer" advised him to pay it back quickly. Riggght...while you blow off your dish-washing job (not good enough), buy dirt weed instead of meds, and jam in a stressful college-like experience at the same time, so you can justify your subsequent freak-out and imprisonment? I think I know this tune! "It came addressed to her in the mail and I was staying there." So? So what? "I needed money." He clammed up like a hardened convict who's just "lawyered up" because he already knows the drill.

But, like, why? I mean you have two fucking cell phones, an expensive video game console that's also your hard drive, an iPad, a laptop, and ghetto headphones. The whole nine, kid. What the fuck did you spend it on? I never got a real answer that made any sense to me. What the fuck did he buy with it? For those of you reading me outside of the U.S., "Sears, Roebuck and Company" is a really old catalog business that began when the west was still a bison-filled frontier for European sharecroppers in covered wagons hoping to escape/frame "Indians" for all of their horrible massacres, in a lustful quest for blood and oil money that has come to be known as "The Wild West." You've seen the movies, right? Like that. Or, more specifically, like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears.

I mean, he wasn't exactly home-owner material as a self-entitled welfare queen. People like me work hard. Not him! He's "special". Well, Cotto, sigh...don't make me phrase it like I'm taking away your lollipop, you fucking prick. I'm tired. What did you buy with it? I waited...and then waited some more. And some more. This, from an arrogant dick who liked to pretend he was exceedingly verbal and highly loquacious with his carefully chosen bon mots. Give it up! He looked down, and thought about it, but finally, he was too embarrassed to tell me. I'm sure it wasn't for garden hoes, or trimming shears for his fucking front lawn with carefully groomed hedges. And to this day, I still don't know what he bought with a housewares store credit card used by Americans for generations as their rural general store.

I know what we did. My mom asked me to circle clothes out of a huge Christmas catalog every year for toys and clothes, and if they didn't fit or we didn't like it, we went back to the store in Nanuet (still there) to return it. That's what country folk did back then, while your dad browsed the barbecue grills and dreamed of a motorized lawn mower with a comfy riding seat, like the big Italian douchebag next door to us had, riding around smiling on his ghetto "pizza money" from his 'hood storefront in the Bronx that would become a model for the summertime NYC movie classic "Do the Right Thing" that explored ethnic and racial tensions between the Italian-American immigrants who earned their plush living off the backs of impoverished, trapped African-Americans living in a hot city without air conditioning, just like we did.

We had heavy, awkward window units that sat tipsily in the small window sills of our split-level home, and if we wanted even that cool comfort in our rooms, we had to pull down a ladder in the ceiling to go into the attic, carefully stepping between the beams so we wouldn't fall through the floor, and then pushing the heavy units down the stairs at a steep angle to whoever was at the bottom. We had air conditioning in our small bedrooms only; not in the kitchen, or the living room, or the converted basement downstairs. If it was too hot to stay in our rooms for too long, we went outside, or we walked a mile and a half to the public pool up-and-down the impressive hills of this area, or we ran through a sprinkler on the lawn, spraying each other with a green garden hose. I know that he didn't do any of that, because he said would die in his early 50s, just like his father and his father's father. 

It was sad, but it was real. As he told me his life of woe, I knew his life was designed for him to fail. And so, I listened to his halting confessions that he had to work up the nerve to tell me over shared dirt weed blunts and cheap beer, because it probably included evil staples of the projects like child rape, child abandonment, and/or child endangerment. How did I know? He told me his dad was his first "party" partner. You fill in the blanks. And that's what I did. I "read" him expertly, better than anyone else did, and that's why I got out of the ghetto alive, just like my hardcore New York City family. That, and I kicked out an old abandoned bookcase piece-by-piece after work one night, so I could leave the floor of his dirty room for the room next door with a chain through the opening where the doorknob used to be, in front of him and our neighbor "Rex", his "hood rat" partner-in-crime for those days, even though it was mostly particleboard. Almost.

My mutha's naybahood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Avenue
My fahthizz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford%E2%80%93Stuyvesant,_Brooklyn
And mine, bitch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodside,_Queens

Drive

In addition to cooking poorly, thinking poorly, acting badly, and behaving terribly, Cotto was a horrible traveler and automobile driver, which was no surprise to anyone but him, and that was a total lie on his part. His dumb ass gets caught all the time, like the time he overdosed on cocaine and "working out" in Florida as a mechanism for coping with his manic bipolar identity/personality disorder with active schizo-affective features. It was based on his flawed perception that life was totally different in another state, which is only partly true, Yeah, sure, dude: the scenery, climate, culture, foods, and people could be different or dissimilar to you, but you're still on Planet Earth, motherfucker. You're still a fucking human being, you dumb dick.

And that was the other excruciating thing you have to do with severe mental patients who avoid long-term healthcare so they can use it as an abusive weapon against their fellow human beings: he made you repeat shit all the time just to "fuck with" you, except he just came off as a stupid dumb-fuck, which isn't exactly criminal genius, is it? Of course, I know mental patents with Ph.D's who can hardly figure out how to get dressed in the morning without taking lots and lots of drugs, so we went over (again) my part of the lesson plan that includes mental illness and I.Q., and how they are not always related, except when you forget to take your anti-psychotics, dick. Off his meds, he has the fucking mentality of a retarded ten year-old sans Ritalin.

So, when he told me that he pounded lines in Florida and "worked as a personal trainer", the cocaine part of his sentence made sense to me right away, with perhaps some manic-compulsive dieting and exercise thrown into the mix, because addicts with serious mental disorders totally do that. He was a part of "Narcotics Anonymous" (that's N.A. for you "squares" like me), weirdo street-front Evangelical churches catering to madness for the zealot-minded who seek immediate relief with loud shouting and lots of absurd arm-waving, and crazy life goals that include personality changes with any switch in one's geographic locale. Uh, homeboy...how exactly does that work?

Oh, it didn't, he assured me. Thanks, Cotto. I think I figured it out. He always tried to impress me with his intelligence, but coupled with delusional paranoia and his criminal record, I wasn't buying it. When he told me he was arrested down south for driving under the influence, that I immediately believed. Of course, his story came readily-equipped with a "white power" angle concocted in his over-heated tropical Nuyorican brain about "racial profiling" and "The Man", even though he was drunk and high and swerving all over the road when he was arrested. Without a license. I know! Not exactly "12 Years A Slave" material, you know?

But, that's the thing with chronically sick fuck-ups: he actually likes being sick better than he likes healing, so he creates a ton of lies to cover over his inability to adapt to human society, because he can be an evil fuck, and he likes that. After our acquaintance continued in his prison-like quarters of our temporary Park Slope tenement housing, he also let it drop that he stole his dead grandmother's "Sears" credit card from her mail (for what, we can only fucking imagine), and that "his lawyer" advised him to pay the $3000 he put down on the card back.

His theft shocked me less than the fact that he had a lawyer to advise him on complex legal matters, like his subsequent incarceration and rehabilitation program in Florida (that included job training, psychiatric treatment, and free anti-psychotic drugs), that was a mandatory part of his release as a drunk, high, thieving, mental patient on welfare. You get representation for free, too?! I was stunned that he got expert legal advice as a convict. Ain't we supposed to be "gaming" him for the facts, yo? How did it get to be the other way around? The criminal gets legal counsel, but the sweet old "mam" I met on the "Legal Aid" line in Brooklyn has to do chemotherapy for her cancer along with solving her wrongful eviction case. How the fuck did we get here?

At the end of our quick friendship that was always destined to be short-lived—just like his too fast life—I thought he was one of the sickest, most vulnerable people I'd ever met, who been further brutalized by his codependent, drug- and alcohol-addicted Nuyorican parents (and grandparents), and every so-called social system we'd devised for practically untreatable people like him, because we'd rather sell people on this fantasy that with enough money and condescending "programs", he'll be just fine. He just needs to work in the back of dirty kitchen washing dishes, you know? He's just "underprivilieged" as a European-American into several consecutive generations.

It was some of the worst healing and care-taking I'd ever heard of (or seen) first-hand in my life, wasteful and ignorant in the extreme. Most of the welfare workers I met were just as sick and poor as Cotto, with a lot less intelligence than him. He wants to be lazy and unproductive because, and here's the kicker "America", he's really fucking sick. Do you know what he needs? He needs a fucking institutional facility of supported apartments with full-time healthcare workers to take care of him during the rough spots in his life, not your fucking sadistic bullshit about "job training" that you can use, to pose with some retard in a fucking photo for your next political campaign fundraiser. Cut the fucking bullshit with me and Your Holy Father. It's time. Really.

Your homework, plebes:  
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/11/welfare_spendin.html

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/01/24/1489091/americans-just-cant-afford-mental-health-treatment/ 

Jailbreak

 

After I went bust during the last big economic recession, I was forced to undergo severe deprivation, like Americans do in times of war. I didn't have any luxuries to begin with, which meant that I almost immediately lost a lot of weight, and fast, too. I spent a few weeks light-headed and slightly dizzy, especially when my family chose to reenact their rather ritualized behavior called "kicking people who are down" by pretending that my living expenses were the result of laziness (ha!), ineptitude (how?), incompetence (oh, no) or an inability to work, which is, unfortunately for them, not backed up anywhere by any type of actual legal documentation, like, say, my complete work history through Social Security and the IRS. Hard to beat, but true.

As I freefalled expertly into poverty like I always do (because I've compensated for familial inadequacies all of my life), I met the typical lifelong poor who live in the 'hood, and who've never accurately reflected me or my reality. "Everybody's 'crazy' in the hood!", my friend Cotto explained to me, as my so-called expert on ghetto fabulosity, not expecting a "white" girl (uh, oh) like me to come from the projects in Queens (also documented), or having parents from Bed-Stuy and the Bronx. Real but true, as our native stories from around the way. He got angry and aggressive at my "street creds" (like I planned it), tensely inquiring about street names and directions to my parent's so-called neighborhoods that were immediately under suspicion, because he lies almost every time he opens his mouth.

And that's true about critically impoverished project people who are on their 7th or 8th generation of the American Experience; they don't actually solve problems. Other people do that for them! Cotto had an arrogant sense of entitlement about his welfare the same way a wealthy white man expects "his" table to always be ready for him at his favorite restaurant, as part of his price for eating at the establishment. "It's not a law, but that's the way it works in the world, Marie", typically accompanied by a pitying gesture like the sideways head tilt and a condescending tone. Right...I'm the poor muthafucka who doesn't know what time it is. I keep forgetting that!

In truth, after my family forced me into "Public Assistance" by turning their backs on me (I got some MetroCards for hours and hours of waiting and form-filling), I needed a sit-down with Cotto so I could take notes on his lifestyle. It was fascinating. There were unwritten rules about everything that you'd never find in print, which would legitimize an already-shady situation. He had to tell me what time to get there so the lines wouldn't be painful to wait on, and after I did that successfully, he told me I forgot to go to this particular window on this floor to ask for MetroCards because "they're supposed to do that for you!" Huh. Uh, homeboy, nobody told me that. It was so fucking crazy and half-ass that I immediately knew it was designed for him and his mentality.

Nothing made sense about their process. Not one single fucking thing, and I can write books on any subject matter there is. There were secret rules about special windows, lines, locations....it went on and on and on. After his bad Alfredo dinner, I finally told him the truth. "it sounds like this is a full-time job!" He agreed. "Yep. Being on welfare is like having a full-time job, because to get benefits, that's how much time you need. You have to think of it as your job." What the...? A job? But, like, I've been working since I was a minor. Where do healthy brilliant female publishers go? Of course, the answer for me was as simple as the local library (duh), but for unskilled generational poverty on a continual course, I was stumped. I still have no idea how anyone could live within a system as fucked up as that and survive, but as I found out through Cotto, it's made to foil criminals, not law-abiding citizens rocked by changes in the economy as old as the hills, like highly-skilled managers dumped for their pricey salaries.

As I fought the final battles with my disordered family on an empty stomach, I found a temporary cover design gig, then more "Unemployment Benefits" that I paid for in full (like all of my single-girl health plans), then another design gig that was deliberately cut-off to intentionally suck cover designs out of me for catalog season before my six-month kicked in that would give me full health benefits, as they cheated me out of them for the first few months that I worked longer and harder than around me, and then a final round of Unemployment Benefits that I lived off of for months, at my mom's place. Being healthy didn't pay off for me, yet again. But, how to fake being sick? If I had to bend myself into that contorted a shape, I might as well go into the movies and acting! Who can do that? It hurt me to even try to be in a sick world for too long, like one big held-breath underwater.

Into this scary mix of crazy systemic incompetence came the necessary delve into tenement housing and shady subletting situations, like the weird OCD guy with a rental listing service who made me stand behind painted lines and follow his posted instructions written out in his tensely scrawled handwriting from behind a long counter, because he'd been beaten up too many times for taking poor people's money and then giving them bad information. Huh...so, not like my Park Slope real estate agent taking pictures of available brownstones for me to peruse while I corresponded via email in Denver? Uh, no. Not at all like that, or like me. The place on 9th Street that Cotto rocked like it was his personal prison cell gave me the creeps, but I survived. The guy who sometimes lived next to us on the top floor had invented a pseudonym named "Rex", which his friend told him to do if he dared to rent a shady sublet, as another critical piece of "hood rat" info that I didn't know. Ah.

Advice like that also originated from the same bodega that had attracted a drunk and high Cotto like a magnet, where he bought his "loosies" (didn't know that, either), and received such sage wisdom as "Don't let me hear that you actually paid Jose for that place!", which is so illegal, I can't even touch it from this angle. Do your thang, hood rat. What could I say? He wouldn't have listened to me anyway. Our neighbor Rex was deeply saddened and shocked by my "phoneless" state, which he telegraphed to me as this, "Oh, you should let me 'jack' your phone! I worked for a Verizon store." Uh, excuse me? "Yeah! You 'jailbreak' your phone from your carrier so you can get another plan!" Okay...I actually tried looking it up on the Park Slope library's public access computer, but it was so fucking convoluted and fraught with technical difficulties that once again I thought to myself, well, shit; if he can do that, why is he here in a tenement with us, you know?

I'd adjusted to having no phone the good old fashioned way: I used payphones on the corner, and the library's WiFi to access the Internet through my old iPhone. Still do. In time, I bought a cheap drugstore cell-phone, and my mom's broke-ass cousin had to tell us how to do that, too. I simply didn't know you could buy a phone for, like, $10 and then load it with phone minutes. I always paid for all of my expenses. Sure enough, the next time I walked down Fifth Avenue towards the Hispanic neighborhood of Sunset Park, there it was, advertised on a placard in Cotto's special bodega: WE JAILBREAK iPHONES HERE. Great. Yet another piece of criminal knowledge that I didn't want or need. I just wanted to live life for another day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking

Without Prejudice

Much like a confused America wrongly divided itself into two incorrectly opposed factions of "black" and "white", the saying that mental illness (like cancer) doesn't discriminate is dubious and suspect in the extreme. When I heard the verdict for the O.J. Simpson trial live on t.v along with millions of other people, I knew that the corruption of our court system now extended to wealthy African-Americans, too, and if you think that's "equality" in the eyes of the law, then you need to go back to school immediately. In fact, that's what I said for many years after the court case, whenever I was asked about my impression of it: "Well, African-Americans are now just as corrupt as 'rich white men', because they can buy their way to an innocent verdict like they do."

It's like pretending that you are less complicit in a crime because you just stood there while someone else hacked to death a woman in her kitchen for being brave enough to divorce her abuser/attacker. I mean, it's not like you swung the ax yourself, right? Right?! Wrong! And that's exactly where many murder cases wind up while under examination in a courtroom setting; the bystanders who did not stop the crime, or report it, or try to deter it in any way are in some cases just as culpable as the actual murderer for participation in a crime, especially if the attacker is seriously mentally ill. If you knew better and you did nothing about it (hence the cover-up and subsequent silence, post-crime), then you are charged with criminal acts along with the actual murderer. Get it?

This heady climate of celebrity culture has become just another stage for performing, for the criminally insane acting out who use their crimes to gain access to the public's attention. You are O.J. Simpson, regardless of melanin*. Look, I like black-and-white cookies from the deli just as much as any other hardcore New Yorker, but what happens when you can't break it clean in half anymore, because most Americans today are "colored" and mixed ethnically, too? There is no privilege of bias based on "racism" (and there is just one modern human race living today, as far as I know), or skin tone. 

If you are severely mentally ill with violently psychotic tendencies that have been easily observed and often remarked upon in public spaces (like, say, offices and large football fields), then there really isn't anywhere to hide anymore, nor should you continue to do so. Your healthcare claims will be denied, like a car insurer denies coverage to a serial negligent driver, as with a D.U.I. No compliance with our laws = no insurance coverage. Now, if you want to pretend that you need dental coverage but not medical treatment for your personality disorder, then fine. You can pay for it out-of-pocket the next time you wind up in an E.R. for an accident caused by your mental illness. Welcome to "The New America". It's way better than the last version.


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin

Shock to the System

Lately I've been seeing a building rhetoric grow in popular media outlets that suggest electroshock therapy as a cruel and inhumane practice, even though it isn't designed to be so. If you ever met a violently-shaking schizophrenic or a severely distressed bipolar individual who's completely disassociated from reality (and has been so for days, manically cycling through a series of brain traumas that cannot correct themselves on their own), it's easy to point fingers around the medical community that treats the sickest kinds of people living among us.

It's illogical to assume that currents targeted to specific areas of the brain (that are already shutting down) would be overly harmful, since a severely dysfunctional brain is significantly handicapped to begin with. We run on electricity! All lifeforms on earth are held sway under the same natural principles of Applied physics, and our bodies (with brains) are no different. Would you ask a heart patient to remove his or her life-saving pacemaker just to suit your irrational fears about electrical currents and the mechanical devices made to heal them?

It seems cruel when I phrase it that way, right? And it is. We should be open to any healing practice that has years of solid science backing it. I know mental illness is scary. We've all been victimized by chronic abuse, most often at the hands of the seriously disordered, and isn't that reason enough to keep these kinds of helpful methods around? Any empirical scientist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence) would read the same data that I did, to come back to the same place. If it works, it works. Who are we to question someone else's healing? Let. It. Be.

Forget what you've seen in those old movies (based on better books) about cuckoo birds, insane nurses, and wrongfully-imprisoned Indians who seem harmless until they're violently tripped off. When was the last time you stepped over a homeless individual on the streets, yo? Like, yesterday, New Yorker?! We're confronted with illness every day. It ain't just hype when you confront damage like that, is it? It's real. People need understanding; not fear and ignorance. You need to heal. It's time.

Know the facts, first: 
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy
- http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/electroconvulsive-therapy/basics/definition/prc-20014161
- http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/electroconvulsive-therapy
- http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/ect
- https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Treatment/ECT,-TMS-and-Other-Brain-Stimulation-Therapies

A West Side Story

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Elevated_Highway

My family left the city in the late 70s because it fell apart, as captured through many fictionalized movies like "The Warriors" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warriors_%28film%29), "Fort Apache, The Bronx" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Apache,_The_Bronx), and "Escape from New York" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_New_York). While they may seem like gross exaggerations to you, for the millions of displaced New Yorkers forced to leave old established neighborhoods that'd been in the family for several generations, it's hard to describe that feeling of watching your home burn to the ground. It was utterly heartbreaking in its devastation.

I met up with a few other Irish-American "white-flighters" (white people were widely criticized for fleeing bombed-out buildings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight) from the old neighborhoods at the local lavandería here in this Nua Brigadoon we've made our own 'hood, after another tragic ousting in yet another town we helped to build, patrol, and heal. Their impressions were exactly the same as mine and my family. One guy had a brother who was an engineer at Co-Op City, as part of our last stand towards crime and crack in those rapidly de-zoned blocks that created instant ghettos almost overnight, in some of the most corruptly bad urban planning we'd ever seen in a city famous for its intellectual capital. What the fuck happened?

And so we talked about committee meetings held in basements that fought obviously poor building codes with my "new" old friend from around the way, who had to type up a report as former FDNY about an escaped gorilla from the zoo that was killed and burnt to death in a city street, while an entire neighborhood slammed their windows and doors shut in response to such a weird tragedy. We were losing badly, block by city block. It was hard for us to pull up stakes in such a high stakes place that we actually helped to construct, but there were no other choices available for families living paycheck-to-paycheck. It was like nothing we'd ever seen before, a horror we could sense coming with such a power, that it actually left a bad taste in your mouth.

As me, my bud "Brennan", and Paul talked it over, the short Mestizos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo) clustered in small groups around us kept a comfortable distance with wide eyes that silently folded laundry, as we talked about roving packs of wild dogs that haunted certain city streets, burning garbage cans roaring out of control on almost every corner, and entire cars lit on fire that stayed that way until they burned out all the way, that we saw with our own wide eyes through the muddy, streaked windows of cars that didn't seem to go fast enough after the light finally turned green. "What, did they change the time on all the lights so we could be 'sitting ducks' here?!", we'd say to each other in fear of the regular carjackings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carjacking) that happened all the time, in yet another part of a rigged game leading to our once-beautiful city's downfall, and no one seemed to give a fuck about it but us.

Certainly not the zoned-out crack zombies, part of the huge packs of drug-addicted hookers who walked up-and-down the West Side Highway every night of the week. We watched our infamous meat-packing district become a den of such evil, that the local S&M club seemed like a funny joke compared to the strange group sex that happened in oddly-named Greek club, yet another stab directly at the heart of the ancient Mediterraneans who had crossed many seas to make a happy life here. It was cruel, a hard slap in the face that we will never forget.

We moved up here in packs of our own, as average but well-educated working class families of every kind that inhabited Gotham back in the day: African-Americans working union jobs they got after their mass migration from the newly desegregated South, Puerto Ricans escaping a poverty so extreme that it sometimes still hurts to look at old pictures of their former tropical beach paradise (like the Haitian boat people and Cubanos who would float to Florida on the backs of flimsy, quickly-built rafts to run from oppression and mass murder like we had), and the Irish who met with famine greatly assisted by many a wealthy Brit with no interest in helping them out at all, in order to preserve the bottom rung of the European ladder just for them. Ditto with my poor Greco-Roman farm folk, without mentioning the mixed horrors neatly hidden behind the distinctive looks of an "Original" Acadian Métis. Who.....? How do you spell....? Huh? What?!

You know, those wily muthafuckas who bought this here island called "Manhattan" ([PDF]The Origin and Meaning of the Name “Manhattan”) from a bunch of Indians for some wampum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampum), so that we could all cash out on those rapidly-boating Brits and Dutch looking to farm near a convenient seaport town near you....but, no! Wait!! What does that word you just said mean? Which one?! And, how to catch you up on all of our history with your kind of brain, dude? You just don't fucking get it, feel me, turista? That's what it feels like: a stranger in our own strange land to you, and you definitely do not belong here.

So, when my friend Donnel's second-cousin from Harlem, Lawrence, told me his own particular horror story about the west side gone way wrong during the last century, I could totally relate to it. We'd all been through a version of it as immigrants or indigenous people, or both, as the case may be. He told his story to me one night after a few drinks and a couple of tokes, in this native tale of woe. He'd been walking down West Street looking in the cheap juke joints (he's a musician), feeling broke and alone, pushed out of another family home gone "KABOOM!" as tightly-packed tenement apartments with four generations of kids tend to do, when you cram in enough teenage mothers and their illegitimate children living on the minimum wage of one powerful grandmother working as a nursing assistant at the local, run-down, welfare hospital because if she falls down hard, the whole family goes down with her.

Yeah, man. I get it. But, he was also working through a lot of shit that comes with being an angry young black man in the city, and as much as he didn't know about me and my history, I felt that static, too, but I also knew it was his road to walk down and not mine. I wanted him to know that I wouldn't take anything more away from him, as a New York kid who was getting just about everything ripped away from him at the same time. He saw "black and white" in everyone and everything, because that's the steady ghetto diet he was being fed at the time. I got it. Well....what happened, man?

Lawrence was used to presenting a tall strong front on the streets, and this was something he had to work up to. Take it slow, kid. He was nervous. Deep breath....okay. Pass me that joint. Inhale....now, go. He was walking down the street when a friend passed by in a car (a car! WOW! Rare treat for "hood rats" to have moving vehicles that worked right in their possession), and he hopped in. They cruised down West Street with the windows open on a hot summer night, looking to catch a breeze, score some weed, or make some kind of deal....something. You know that feeling on certain warm nights when you're young, right? That was it...waiting, and also moving along with it, which they did.

Suddenly, he saw a young woman walking by struttin' her stuff like working girls do. She was obviously a hooker, but there was something else about her, he craned his neck to look....yo! Turn around, bro! He got out of the car and walked down the block, turning the corner she just passed by. He followed her for a minute or two before she turned around to meet her attacker/pursuer or potential "John", with an expectant look that quickly changed to astonishment. "Larry....! Is that you?!" Unfortunately for him and her both, she was right. He was her former classmate from high school, and they both knew it in that one instantly-recognizing moment. That hooker you passed by in Times Square (now dressed-up in a furry cartoon costume handing out stripper bar fliers on the sly), yeah, that one, man.

She went to school with one of us, yo. Hope you score cheap tickets from the midtown kiosk for the musical, though. And don't answer knocks on your pricey hotel door in the middle of the night, either, bro. Because that hooker there? Yeah, she's a "lady of the night", too. She's also someone's daughter, former classmate, sister, or cousin from the 'hood. I know you only give a fuck about your stupid fucking tourist trip, though, so enjoy the show. I hope it was worth the trip, while you pretend to see and understand nothing about our pain. Asshole. One more time! <jazz hands> Entertaining, isn't it?

Walk On The Wild Side

Lou Reed

Holly came from Miami F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side,
Said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side.

Candy came from out on the island,
In the backroom she was everybody's darling,
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She sayes, hey baby, take a walk on the wild side
Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
And the colored girls go,

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo

Little Joe… Full lyrics on Google Play