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

Cotto Cooks

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

When I worked out of the Brooklyn Public Library in Park Slope, I was often beset by the usual characters one would expect lurking idly about during the day, in a space designed for heavy public usage. My friend named "Cotto" was just such a person. He sat next to me huffing and puffing away to attract my notice, shuffling in his seat and looking around, until I finished writing my piece and my headphones came off. Now! He hit me up for my earbuds as soon as I laid them down to the right of me, next to his workstation. Sure...I was a little hesitant about loaning them out, since they're designed to go directly into dirty waxy ear canals but he looked decent enough, so I said "yes".

He thanked me and went back to his work, while I finished my day writing publishing-related emails and copyediting. After we were both done working on the public-access computers (just around the same time, wink wink), we easily struck up and conversation as he handed my little earbuds back to me. He was filling out a test online for a type of hygiene certification that was his boss' direct orders to him because (as he told me), he was a "chef". Aha! I always brighten up around other working artists, since we're rare in the real world. We have a lot in common creatively, and we share the same types of problems out in society. I told him about my website that has "food" built right into its subtitle because I'm on par with a low-level cook, even though I'm not certified to do professional kitchen work, which would be a whole other life trajectory that I do not have time for.

But he certainly did have available time, and from what he told me, it was definitely worth it, at least at first. He was working (at that time) in the kitchen that serviced the VIPs who came to see the Jets play football at the Meadowlands. Whoa! That's a big name to drop 'round the way. Good for him! Finding quality work is the biggest challenge a real working artist has. He said his boss was very strict while running his kitchen ("Top Chefs" usually are, since the competition is fierce and their reputations are always on the line), and he was "riding him" at work about his cleanliness. In order to keep this plush gig, he had to do coursework for a certain type of kitchen certificate, if he wanted to keep his job washing dishes (read more about Cotto's bottoming-out phase here: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/10/dirt-weed.html).

It was a start. I gave him one of my black "Illumination" stickers with my email address written on the back, and told him to keep in touch with me. He was new to the neighborhood, and very excited to show me the place he scored through a bodega contact about ten blocks from my apartment building. After our first meeting for coffee, he told me that his rented room didn't have a kitchen, and he was worried about losing his skill sets as a chef. Could he use my kitchen? Okay, why not? I was in the middle of an eviction case and in serious limbo. Who knows how much longer we'd have access to it? Besides, I hadn't eaten all day and I was feeling lightheaded from hunger. It was worth a shot. He seemed clean and respectable, even buying me a Chai Latte at the local hippie cafe in the 'hood.

We went to a nearby grocery store, and that was when Cotto quickly began losing his bearings. The old Nuyorican neighborhood had slowly changed from gentrification, with the typical influx of rich white out-of-town hipsters and "wanna-be" art fags, which seemed to throw him off, plus the layout of the store had changed with recent renovations. Where to go? Also, he had no shopping list, preferring to dazzle me with his limited memory. I wasn't that worried, because his food was free for me with my kitchen use serving as his fee, so I tagged along as he aisle-surfed. We left, bought some wine, and then he hesitated outside the store again. I forgot something! And that wasn't something a pro would do. Ever. Without a firing. Huh...

He also made a relatively simple Italian-American dish called "Fettuccine Alfredo" that I could have made in my sleep, if I cared enough to do so, which I didn't. Let him try to "dazzle" me with his prowess! I happily played the role of "Sous Chef" to him as a kitchen second (I like being an amateur, at times), thinking he'd enjoy being the lead guy after working at the bottom of a creative hierarchy, like those in the top kitchens of New York. I chopped as he added ingredients to the pots and pans on the stove, but my kitchen quickly threw him as a new environment for him to maneuver around. I turned my back to empty off my cutting board into the garbage for a mere second and when I turned around, Cotto had a bizarre wide-eyed look about him, as we watched one of my tea towels go up in flames.

Oops! He'd used it as a pot-holder in lieu of my actual potholders within easy reach of the stove (it was a small apartment kitchen), which caused him to let the corner of the small flammable towel drop directly into an open flame. Uh, that's more than a ten-point deduction, dude. I calmly put out the fire in the sink within another couple of seconds, and before he knew what to do, I had another tea towel in his hands so he could get back to work. The dish came out lumpy and overly rich, with chunks of congealed cheese clumped together in sodden clumps, which was his ultimate finish for me as part of any ongoing "Demo Team" I might have. No "personal chef" work for you, esse! Besides, after we ate, he noticed me as I laid down on the floor with my feet propped up on my couch, where he took up residence as my house guest while I sat on the floor, and he began to notice my beauty, with first one comment followed fast by another that betrayed his dawning nervousness about me and my excellent home.

After my housing deal went bust and I moved into his "Casa Crack Shack", we had plenty of more time to get acquainted, which we did quickly as I lead our conversations. Turns out, Cotto had to pick a training program as part of his release from prison, so he picked "cooking" at random, though as he told me, he "never really wanted" to be a chef. This, as he played his video games, chain-smoked, and then blew part of his city funding for school on more tacky "hood rat" shit, like shiny new gadgets and other things dumb stoners really like, but that's a story for another day. 

Suffice to say, after generations of a paid education with special ESL classes, free cell phones and public utilities, mass transit, welfare, Section 8 housing, incarceration, rehab, drug and alcohol addiction recovery programs, medication, healthcare, psychotherapy, institutionalization, and crime, we New Yorkers managed to completely piss away millions of dollars on one very sick Puerto Rican guy whose greatest feat of cooking will be passing out underneath a palm tree somewhere near a turista beach cabana back on his warm tropical island home, waking only after one particularly large coconut falls hard on top of his big round head, finally rousing him from his comatose-like slumber brought on by his raging manic obsessive schizoid bipolar identity disorder (because he likes skipping doses to bring out the psychotic in him: much easier to commit crimes that way), preferring instead to "slow-roll homie" his way late in the afternoon to shake down the wealthy Americanos who are already a couple of drinks into their Puerto Rican beach "vacay", paying for his spot beneath the tree by helping the cabana cook crack open a couple of conch shells for the grill, because that's all he can really do. Really. He's that sick.

The real deal: https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Public-Policy/Social-Security-Income-%28SSI%29-and-Social-Security-D

The scam: http://www.disabilitysecrets.com/mental-impairment-claims.html

The New Black

Way before Orange is the New Black, my punk rock cousin Susan had already "been there and done that" while wearing the standard prison-issue jumpsuit. She was a model in the city during the CBGB music scene of the 70s, and DeeDee Ramone's girlfriend. She was beautiful, glamorous, and a drug addict. After her fling with the “sex, drugs, and rock n' roll” lifestyle, she rallied back from the hard bite it took out of her to work as an office girl in the city, while dating the "nice" safe Italian boy from her neighborhood. 

Unfortunately for Susie, the damage was done. No amount of shiny polyester shirts, tight pants, and Travolta-style pompadours could help her stay out of Studio 54, with all that free coke. What could compete with her troubled working class roots, with its' generic Queens row house, and her excruciatingly boring 9-5 job? Not much, and the allure of the forbidden was too much for her to resist. 

When I lived in Brooklyn, she used to call me loaded to chew my ear off, chain-smoking and enjoying the high. I asked her to write down some of her experiences from those days, but like everything else with my family, I'd have to do all the work, and there was no way I could take her on with all of her diseases. But, she told me enough of it for me to recreate a timeline in my head that's reliable.

After her Queens boyfriend broke up with her because she couldn't buckle down into their engagement and a normal, family-based routine, she went back to using hard again. When she was a model, another girl on the circuit taught her how to shoot up without leaving behind any visible track marks, because this was way before Photoshop could airbrush out any sins you may have committed. When I asked her how she did it, she spread her toes apart to show me how she injected heroin in between her big toe and second toe.

And that was the beginning of the end of the road for her. She was caught in a raid on a crack house that had become the center of a huge drug trafficking ring, and like most addicts, she sold to get high. From what I heard back then, it was a typical dirty-bare-mattresses-on-a-floor-with-scary-graffiti-covered-walls kind of joint. Old school New Yorkers will get it. It's the kind of place brokers try to sell as condos in Bushwick nowadays to stupid rich white kids who are priced out of Williamsburg, by selling it as an "up-and-coming" neighborhood, but I always knew better.

From there, she was shipped off to Rikers to do a stretch of hard time. It was unbelievable. Me and my brothers were working "The American Dream" hardcore in the country 'burbs of early 80s Rockland by studying and working part-time jobs. After she was raped in Rikers, they sent her to a prison in Pennsylvania to do the rest of her time. She told me about her affairs with other female inmates, the crescendo of her time rounded out by an affair with a male prison guard.

When she got pregnant by him in the joint, my father flew out there to give her away in a shotgun wedding after her release. I saw the pictures of her with a flower garland askew on her head during the ceremony, bleary-eyed and out of it. And that's how years before you all cashed in on a gang of girls gone mad, my cousin Suzy gave birth to a low-weight baby boy she named after Bob Dylan, her one and only child, not long after her Corrections Officer died of a heart attack.


(From Wikipedia) The writing and structure are both somewhat more sophisticated than the songs on their previous record. Guitarist Johnny Ramone relates: "We recorded them in the order they were written; we wanted to show a slight progression in song structure."^[3] Most of the songs were written in the band member's homes, rather than at a studio; "Suzy Is a Headbanger" was written in drummer Tommy Ramone's loft apartment.^[4]

"I wrote most of the stuff I contributed at my apartment in Forest Hills, before I left and moved back to a place in the city. I had no amp at home, just an electric guitar. I recorded it onto a cassette and played that back at rehearsal. We had better production, we were playing a little faster, and we had a lot of songs accumulated. We were in really good shape for that album."

Satanic Surfer

Years ago, after a financial downturn I didn't control, circumstances forced me to move from place to place, like a woman with hell on her heels. One place was an old, run-down townhouse in Brooklyn, with the usual suspects: an old white lady landlord living in Long Island who just wanted checks in her mailbox, a Puerto Rican super/building manager turned rogue slumlord through the opportunity that indifference brings, a corrupt bodega owner in "da 'hood" who recommended hard cases to the seedy crash pad, and a desperate network of ex-cons, schizos, and other outsiders (like me), who needed a place to stay immediately, because a hotel was out of the question with no money.

And so I nimbly footed my way through the system, meeting up with a troubled but highly intelligent man while working at the public library. He finally found a room to rent in his "dream" neighborhood, which had quickly become the over-priced hellhole I wanted to escape, but options had run out for me. When my library friend offered to let me crash on his floor in an old Army sleeping bag while I greased the palm of "José" (the building manager who was in the palm of the corner bodega owner), for basic cleaning services to the garbage-filled room next door so I could move into it. 

I had to pay the rent for even that floor space dearly by listening to my new friend rant and rave while he badly juggled school, work, and life on his own, which naturally led him to weaning himself off his anti-psychotics during my time at "Casa Crack Shack", but that's a story for another day. My sick friend does it routinely, and no one ever does a thing for him about it; another hard luck case for social services that are so anti-social, I have no idea what petty bureaucrat thought it up, but they should serve time for the offense.

Anyway, he had a substitute for his expensive medication, with all the excuses hard criminals have, who also struggle with mental illness and addiction: dirt weed and lots of alcohol! It was a brilliant plan, because he soon ran out of the sleeping pills he needs for mania, hence the healing nature of pot, which left him with a nagging smoker's cough that did not go away. In between hits off his cheap cigar blunt and hacking coughs, he liked to tell me outlandish stories, because I was already well-known in the city for storytelling, right here on this site.

I'm sure he read it, though true to the lifestyle of the not-so-rich and not-to-be recognized famous, he pretended he hadn't seen my work, choosing to bend my ear with his horrible lies instead. The tales he told were telling about his psychosis, and I didn't have a choice, so in between cleaning a room that had been vandalized for years, after my day job at an indie house as a rock star cover artist, I sat on the floor of his tiny room to let and listened.

Like any kook you meet at a cocktail party or on the Internet, he was obsessed with the usual wacky shit that crazy people get wrong all the time: sex, drugs, rock n' roll, and religion. He mixed them up poorly, fueled by the pressure to perform at NA meetings, finely honed after many therapeutic sessions. He was your average reality t.v. show guest star, having told me that he was a child actor who auditioned on Broadway and had recently tried out for a weight-loss show as a coach, because one of his jobs in Florida was as a "Personal Trainer". He's basically your headcase whose weight fluctuates wildly from extremes, which is the exact profile most producers look for in potentials, but he isn't handsome, so nothing ever came of it.

What he did have were hours and hours of bullshit; some good, some really bad, and occasionally he veered close to art, without ever crossing over into our territory, but he was fascinated with me for my beauty and my genius, which kept me safe, because he was enthralled by me as an audience. He must have read about my boogie-boarding and beach going online, which naturally led him to tell me a crazy story about him violating the "Boarders-only" policy at the Rockaways*. He must have got caught in a riptide and panicked, because he was in way over his head in rough waters, but instead of telling me that, he concocted a bizarre tale about evil surfers who tried in vain to drown him.

Why? I asked mildly, though I am shocked as usual by the utter lack of reason the seriously disordered among us suffer from. Why would Satan give a crap whether some fat Nuyorican drowned or not? Were in you in league or something? "Well, no, Marie," and then he would adopt this pseudo-white guy, actor-y voice, which let me know the real show was about to start. He forcefully told me that "Luciferians" were real, when I countered with the obvious truth that there have never been any documented cases of cult activity, certainly not while surfing poorly in Queens without a board. He pretended that I was a naive white girl, and that I should look it up online soon, on that other Wild West domain of the insane known as "The Internet", like a hypochondriac addicted to WebMD.

After I pelted him lightly with a series of easy questions in rebuttal, tired from a long day of brutally hard work, I let him know the jig was up. I sagged on the mattress I now sat on, because the floor had gotten hard during his long speechifying. So, I looked him right in the eyes, after yet another position change, this time him on the mattress and me on the floor, and he knew it, too. His eyes changed, the wind went out of him, and he told me the truth, finally: he had a psychotic episode while he was swimming, and he thought devil-worshippers sounded a lot more exciting. The only demon in the room with him and me that night were the ones flying around in his brain; a series of random, uncontrolled brain bursts that one very sick man needs medicine and treatment for, not stories and t.v. shows.

Can you guess what he was studying (and I use that term loosely) at Staten Island Community College? Some design thrown in for flash, and a lot of drunken, stoned television and movie-watching, but that's not what he called it. He told me he was a Media Major. 

Hey, have fun at the beach this weekend, America! Watch out for all those sharks that swim in deep waters. You never know where you might find one.


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