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For working class people like myself, our productivity serves as the vocation that directs and guides our lives, because labor is the greatest conduit to self-determination that we have. It was a really hard concept to describe to the average Americans I met earlier in life, like the feeling behind mia famiglia*, a shared closeness that bonds New Yorkers on a deeper level than your average cul-de-sac couple, because if you don't figure out how to live on top of one another in a small tenement flat with a shared bathroom on every other floor, you're fucked for life. You might just kill someone on the next "bad" day!
Much like our advanced solutions for recycling and re-purposing, our island nation began with limited space that demanded excellent and immediate solutions. While other Americans buried their toxic trash in empty fields that they hoped would just disappear like so much dust under a carpet, we were forced to live with our garbage strewn everywhere, as the price we paid for our failure to adapt. There was simply nowhere else to go. Our limited shared spaces created some funny dynamics, like the floating garbage barge denied docking pretty much everywhere (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobro_4000), and the infamous prison barge for our society's over-spill of convicts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_C._Bain_Correctional_Center).
When you can't take the train without a deep feeling of paranoia because the homeless drug addicts outnumber the people of the everyday working world, you've got a big problem, and when you can't walk down the street without the rank smell of a two-week pileup of garbage during the hottest season of the year (ah, August in the city...), you kinda want to solve those problems as quickly as possible. And so, we did. In the process, we became the world leader for innovation, adaptation, flexibility, and real change, because we had to. It's hard, and it's entirely human. But, on any given day, you'd find just as many working class people like me encountering the same situations with solutions already in hand (and cheaper than yours to implement, Baby Boomer) right now.
So, we waited. And waited. And then, we waited some more, for you to catch up to a reality that you check(ed) out of regularly with t.v., booze, pills, shopping, junk food, and whatever else the "idiot box" sells you, because you can't cope with the world you made—and then destroyed. Thanks for that, by the way. I heard one of the designers from the home-based reality show "Queer Eye for the Straight Eye" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Eye) joke that he'd simply become the maid service for a bunch of dysfunctional shut-ins, and it was easy to see why. "You know your apartment needs cleaning when you have air fresheners plugged into every outlet", was the most direct way one of the designers could explain the concept of "clean" to a drooling chronic case of angst.
For me and my hard-working friends, the class system was completely different than the false realities sold to us in college and on the job through popular t.v. shows and movies. There were no more "blue collar" or "white collar" designations anymore. We were left with those who can, and those who can't, with a million problems needing solutions, and all of them were yours, not ours. In order to live, we had to solve your alcoholism and indifference for you, by managing it better than you did, with your greater share of power and money. In short, we became the ruling class from every great time in history, like the samurai warrior class of Japan, or the enslaved architectural scribes of Ancient Egypt. Because we had to. We had to work our way out of it. We simply had to. We have to work. There is no other choice.
Work for me has always held the power of self-determination, as the ability to rise above the shitty overblown titles of the inept office worker, or the ineptitude behind the egotistical fast-food restaurant manager, doomed for a life of gruelingly repetitive banality. Anything but this. That's how we felt about it. Anything must be better than this. And we were right. It was. Our lives were/are so much better than the people in our families that we grew up with back then. I always describe my group ethos as thus, for our motivation: I don't want to die. That was/is our motto. SO inspiring, right! Yeah, sure. It's a great bestseller, if you package it for demented retards. We rose above the labels and strata of the American Dream, because the fantasy was never real for us. We became the work, and in the process, we began to rule the world. Through popular vote, of course. What else is there?
Me and my friends instantly hated "Baywatch" the very first time we saw it, even though David Hasselhoff was the "King of Cheese" back in the day for this crazy show about his talking police car (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Rider_(1982_TV_series), and his status as a "rock star" in Germany (http://chicagolampoon.blogspot.com/2011/10/germanys-perplexing-love-affair-with.html), but it gained cult status in our 80s-era dorm rooms filled with horny teenagers who played drinking games every time there was a run on the beach filmed in slow motion with a girl in a tight red bathing suit. It sucked, but so did most of pop culture. Who fucking cares?
We humped a grind over every summer like any other east coast kid trying to make a buck for school and living expenses, and to get out of our mother's collective hairs. The kids from Long Island did clam-digging over the summers for work, plus surfing, boarding, and skate-boarding that became rollerblading with the next "fitness" craze. My family had long aborted our annual trips to LBI as too expensive, though occasionally a relative might rent a house, but with our clash in cultures, it wasn't worth going to yet another house full of crazy people.
My Brooklyn friends did what any other kid from the 'hood does: they took the train out to the beach. After I graduated, started my career, and transitioned to my own work full-time, I found myself in a similar situation: broke, alone, and wanting to hit the beach. I lived in the fourth floor of a 120 year-old walk-up in the Slope, and after I ordered a boogie-board for cheap online, I hooked up with some of my training partners in BJJ at the Far Rockaways boarder's beach, no swimmers allowed. It was a good fit for us, because we could use our mandatory rash guard shirts that we used for no-gi classes to surf with (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submission_wrestling), which gave us more exercise that was different from our main sport. Well, not mine.
They were blown away by some "white" middle-aged female rolling with the boys as a part of my MMA training, then hitting the beach like a native, and it was easy to see why. The beaches of Brooklyn and Queens had been home to hardcore ghettos for a hundred years, despite the kitschy faded glory of Coney Island that attracted dykes, misfits, and trendy hipsters looking for retro "art fag" design spaces on the cheap, but they learned. White kids from out-of-town always do. After dark, our beaches became some of the worst neighborhoods in all of the five boroughs, definitely not some fake SoCal paradise from t.v., not that I believed any of the hype I saw on t.v. anymore.
You see, in response to a "tidy whitey" Manhattan that catered to rich foreign diplomats and the local ethnic population serving them, we were supposed to retain a foothold in our culture on our teacher/social worker/publishing salaries that mandated we live as far away from our now over-priced native homes as possible. Makes sense, no? No, it didn't. But, rich white men hate looking at "depressing" project people who are passed out on a subway grating. It's, also, like, really hard on your shoes, too! So, the "powers that be" ruined our fair city in a few short years through some of the worst, most corrupt urban-planning to ever happen on planet earth, changing the landscape of our city from a great trading center with gorgeous waterways to a depressing hellhole that you couldn't walk through without an escort.
Coney became infamous for murders under the boardwalk and floating bodies washed up on the beach, as Jersey spiraled down into dysfunction with an annual epidemic of dirty hypodermic needles dumped carelessly into our waters, some of them infected with HIV and AIDS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringe_Tide), through the evil immorality of "healthcare" businesses looking to make a quick buck off the backs of a downtrodden and exhausted sick people. It was doubly worse for an elderly population that still remembered with great fondness Steeplechase rides at the beach during sunset, cotton candy with their loved ones, and the novelty of an electric Ferris Wheel that lit up at night to illuminate the sand with its many colors, as fireworks exploded in the background of another day in a public urban paradise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steeplechase_Park).
Sure, it was hard working the daily grind in a city of strangers, but so what? We had everything we needed in a quick bus ride or train stop away, but then it changed drastically. A disenfranchised people who never had any real comfort with swimming in our rougher waters were pushed out to the beaches, as a cruel reminder of a place they knew they didn't belong. My Filipino training partner was horrified by the early murkiness of our summer Atlantic Ocean, because he grew up in the tropics. Uh, this ain't that, homeboy. Ditto for my sparring partner from Korea. Are there animals under the surface? Uh, yeah, girlfriend. She preferred to stay on the beach while I body-surfed the waves like an otter fishing in its home waters, because I am.
Slowly, we came back after many years away, and so did our town. We brought to it all of our experienced know-how about social justice and real public change, just like we said we would to each other all those years ago, as we sat in spare, dirty, broken-down rooms; drunk, high, scared, and often alone. Never again. That's what we thought then, and that's what happened, as I fought my own battles in middle-age through the corrupt court systems of the city and country.
I see you, muthafuckas. I take pictures, and I document, document, document. You can, too, because it works. That's how we bring back the world, people: one beach at a time, block-by-block—or lot-by-lot, like my good folks of the "Stop Anellotech" movement in Rockland County fighting Big Pharma and Big Corporate Petrochemical—because this city and this land is ours by our collective birth rights, and not yours, so give it back. Now is the time.
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
By now you should know that compulsively hoarding "cat ladies" and most "volunteer" pet rescue kooks are totally fucking nuts, because they use animals for their own selfish healthcare needs instead of going to see a doctor regularly, and these bitches can definitely afford to see a rich white psychiatrist any day of the week. Ya read me? My own particular obstacle course of "fucked-up white person" dysfunction came in the form of an unstable Jewish/WASP from Connecticut who had insane parents with money to spoil her rotten, just so they could avoid icky things like "parenting" on the daily, which is a big "no-no" in demented, wealthy, corrupt, country circles that worship money and extreme dieting as a panacea to manic-depression and suburban alcoholism, best done indoors and away from legitimate authority figures who don't have help on the payroll as the ticket price to their admission to a better life for their families.
Lisa was a typical selfish bitch working unnecessarily in publishing, is what I'm sayin' to you. Much like our Napoleonic publisher's bitch of a wife, she told me early on that she didn't need to work for money, she just didn't like being bored. Right....same! We had nothing in common and she knew it, so, just to fuck with me as a better-looking genius, she pretended she didn't know I was working in the same room as her, choosing to signify her utter distaste for the genuine working class ethnics of native New York like me by shutting the office lights to the studio room while I still sat in it, because she was threatened by my superior work ethic, too, in addition to my good looks. You know: a total fucking bitch among many.
She was also one of the worst book designers I'd ever met, though as an average white Baby Boomer, that wasn't especially exceptional to me, either. I knew a lot of dumb rich fucks from publishing. When I finally told her that I noticed she was shutting the lights on purpose, she giggled and blushed like a crazy toddler caught stealing cookies from the cupboard before dinnertime, and then she quickly walked away embarrassed, down the short hallway and out the door without saying a word to anyone. Like any other asshole in business, she pretended she couldn't "hear" me, even though she had the money to buy two hearing aids for herself and I didn't, which didn't give her quite the edge she hoped for, because she's also stupid and slow.
In addition to nursing her long list of deliberately untreated disorders and serious health conditions as leverage and the occasional workplace weapon (where it's completely inappropriate to do so because, like, we work with books as objects), she had absolutely no conversation skills whatsoever. So, within record time, I pushed through my obligatory "too low" job title that was used as a justification to underpay me my true worth (as yet another sign of disdain telegraphed to me that was glaringly obvious), to take command of an imprint without a real leader that became a big money-maker for the largest book retailer in the country, because Lisa was too incompetent to lead effectively. Within my first week on the job, every freelance designer, on-the-job contractor, pre-press artist, printer, typesetter, service provider, ex-employee, as well as all of their current employees, told me the exact same thing.
Oh....great. Plus, Marie, she hid her deafness from us on purpose! That was my first "work lunch" with the young Millennials working there. Their treat. Gee, kids, thanks for cluing me in! They wanted to tell me that they didn't know about it, because they didn't hire her. The publisher did! Okey dokey! Yeah, I got that. Thanks. Every dick move you could think of, they threw at me, which I expertly dodged just as quickly. Lisa continued to avoid me passively-aggressively through a thick haze of Valium and anti-depressants, only moving about the office in a creaky, stiff, robotic way when she needed more coffee from the office kitchen. She ignored everybody like it was part of her job. That was their big "Art Director" on-site, when I got there: a bitch too crazy to speak normally in "human". Some communication expert.
It wasn't exactly a "hostile" takeover on my part, in the wake of her almost complete mental and physical absence within the company, but crazy bitches do what they do anyway, regardless of my active participation or bodily presence. That didn't stop her from trying to hang her hat on my hook as part of her poor work survival skills, and she told me that every few weeks, too. "You know, I'm trying to get you fired", she'd say to me with a half-lidded death-stare frozen onto her angry face. Yeah, bitch? How? You fucking suck. The only time she spoke to me was to try and give me orders, but like I mentioned, I'd already locked myself down tight with the other imprint in the house that she demeaned as, yep, too "lowbrow" for her to work on as a bargain book line. 'Kay, bitch.
The only time she brightened up at work was after I pinned a large colorful photo of my dog Teddy smiling up at me while walking in Prospect Park, with his cutely-colored collar of rainbow smiley faces prominently displayed. Oh! Now, I was a human fit for her to talk to! You have a dog! Uh, yeah. She could care less about me and my dog, but it unfortunately opened up the door to the only subject she actually cared about, her stupid fucking terrier, Winston. He was as average as she was, but it helped me get actual work-related information out of her if I just unlocked her artificially-sealed mouth with some loose doggie talk. What a fucking weirdo! Within weeks, everyone in the office visibly groaned whenever Lisa lisped at me in her overly-loud deaf accent, because it was like a sitcom beer-drinking game: how many times will this daft bitch repeat the same story over and over again?
Oh, good. Winston, again, She was the dullest person I'd ever met, and her interior book layouts were as boring as she was, which is why we gave her old classics to re-design for the umpteenth time. Hard to screw that up, but she would, periodically, which caused Manufacturing to go ballistic and then ask me to prove her liability. Uh, what the fuck do yo do for me, exactly, besides ride my coat tails for a living? Fuck off! Pin her in a meeting on your own without my ammo, because you humps sure as shit don't give me anything to work with. You want a turn-coat, make your own, and don't you know, readers, without me they couldn't? It was so sad and pathetic, because she cost them so much fucking money with her errors, but the crazy old man still wouldn't fire her. He liked talking to an "older" woman! It was that fucked up, but who cared?
I was face-out on the shelves of every single B&N store in the world and online. I just didn't fucking need them. So, whenever we had to interact about work, I brought up her dip-shit dog, which got her talking to me, and then I waited for her to obsessively repeat the exact same story back to me. When there was an opening conversationally, I took it, as the leading creative adult working in the company. But not before she first told me the exact depths to her depravity, as a way to be colorful with her rather generic roots. First, her parents met in an insane asylum (OOO!) when her dad worked as the orderly helping her resident mom with the bigger mental patients needing subduing. Uh huh...that sounds like a good story...and then it would end.
Ditto with her "dog rescue" work. She knew I got badly hurt in a walking accident with my giant Mal. Did the bitch care? Nope! She reiterated to me that she once again wanted me fired. Anyway, she doesn't work with those kinds of animals. Ew! She was offended by the very suggestion, as well as the poor, ailing, elderly people who tried to give her other types of similar terriers to place in better homes. She didn't give a fuck. Not her job! Anyway, they had legal issues with "pet adoptions". But, that didn't stop her from giving a face-eating dog to a healthy young couple with small children! Did she tell them? "Oh, I don't have to do that. It wasn't his fault he was hungry!" You fucking cunt. Okay, so tell me about your dog. Was he a rescue dog? Oh, yes, and from a nice, rich, white gay couple of affluent men living in a beautiful downtown loft, too, which means he was treated really well.
Yay! That's some sort of pride in something, I guess. But, did I know that she only did it because she lacked affection as a child? Excuse me? What the fuck did you just say to me? I'd do that to her when I wanted her to speak even louder, so the whole office could hear, thus sharing complicity with her obvious dysfunctions. Yell it, Lisa! And then she would. Out loud, in front of anyone. "My parents didn't touch me as child!" OH! What else? "I use dogs for affection because I lacked intimacy as a child! My parents are cold and emotionally distant."
And there it was, my fellow excellent humans of Earth: an actual bitch-sized snare that caught me one very large, dumb, clueless kook in the wild office spaces of New York City. That's how you fight back without tricky employment lawsuits and illegal firings, with clearly documented cases of workplace harassment attached for good measure. Rainbow-colored and neatly packaged, too.
Dear crazy "cat ladies" and fellow "dog-whisperers" of the world, please take note: you will be phased out by real warriors in the near future, but we do accept cash, checks, and money orders. Just not you. Your homework for today is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_law_enforcement
Back in the day, me and my friends all had several part-time jobs after school, and we had them before the legal employment age requiring parental consent on your employment application, which is a classic upbringing for working class New Yorkers. I had a work permit from my elementary school principal (I know it's against the law now...sigh), so I could earn a few bucks with my older brothers working paper routes. Once I hit 15, me and my two friends worked at the McDonald's in Nanuet (it's still there, too), with my mom's signature alongside mine on the job application. I simply didn't (and still don't) know how to live without working really hard for a buck. It's part of my DNA.
It was a daily part of my low-class, ethnic friend's lives, too. We all humped it with a few jobs living with our dysfunctional families, just to have food and new clothes, and to escape our insane asylum homes. I met my first French Canadian boyfriend (Hi, Joe!) at the Nyack McDonald's my friend Donnel worked at. Yeah, it was like that. Her dad had died unexpectedly and suddenly under mysterious circumstances overseas, which sent her entire family into a tailspin. Her "best friend" Laila had already been to rehab and sent back to her grandparents in Norway to "dry out" for awhile, which meant she managed the convenient store in West Nyack as a high school teenager.
That's just how it was for us. And it didn't end with high school. Me and my best friend fit right in with our new college friends, almost all of them "ethnics" from the city, with the occasional banged-up Italian chick from Syracuse with the drunk, abusive Indian boyfriend from "the res" thrown into the mix for local color. Oh, yeah? We have those downstate, too. Know what I mean? We fit each other real well. My college boyfriend worked at the school cafeteria, worked the door as a bouncer at the hip music bar downtown that his brother played at with his "art fag" girlfriend, and then he spent excruciatingly slow summers helping old rich Jewish ladies with their shopping bags get out of cabs on the Upper West Side, which financed our first European trip abroad that we got on discount because his older brother worked bags and the ticket counter for Aer Lingus.
It was everywhere we went, with everyone around us repeating the same insane chorus: if you want to eat, get a job. If you want clothes, get a job. Not health insurance or medicine(s), or a savings account, or a "golden parachute" if the job suddenly ended for reasons that typically had nothing to do with me and my hard-working friends, even if excuses were used, and by the end of high school we'd heard them all. Just survival. It was all about surviving for another day. Just one more day. We were hungry for life because we were really good at it.
And so, it wasn't a big deal to me that my Dominican friend Ariel from Brooklyn had been hustling various jobs since childhood, too. His mother Miriam was a loud, screeching hairdresser who worked intermittently for shops, and when those went bust because she got angry and threw a tantrum at the boss, she cut hair at home. We met in Oneonta because he liked my look as he passed me by on a campus staircase—we both sported Eisenhower jackets*, though he claimed his was real and I knew mine was a "faux" one that I bought for cheap down at the Jersey Shore on LBI over the summer—which gave him extra "cool points" in his desperately trendy "art fag" clique.
He lived in the dorm beneath us on the hill, right next to ours, so it wasn't long before his group and mine began mixing it up at parties. I introduced him to his first serious girlfriend—my friend "Dev", who pursued my friendship aggressively after Photography class, because I got great "crits" and she knew I knew a lot of "hot" guys—because he wasn't my physical type, and I already had a boyfriend who lived directly beneath me in my dorm. We had a lot of other differences, too, as our friendship unfolded, but suffice to say, he was very happy with his "consolation prize". They immediately hit it off as "city kids" who both wore hipster black almost exclusively, right down to their underwear, which Ariel promptly showed her to prove his "Goth" cred.
He had "Bauhaus" posters in his room, his busted-ass bikes that he fixed sometimes, and lots of dope, though he just as hungry and thirsty as us. We'd rip off smokes from each others packs during parties, and weed and beer was our collective currency that could get you instant access anywhere. Dev had already had a live-in boyfriend and a retail job in Manhattan, because her parents kicked her out of their Roosevelt Island place after she refused to go to a good college, and after they paid for Bronx Art and Science, a really prestigious city high school. Instead, they got a typical "Art Fag" with a lot of gauzy black clothes that needed steam cleaning, and a pretentious closed-jaw accent for their troubles, but she fit in with my bro from Brooklyn, and I liked that. I wanted us to keep hanging out, you know?
Ariel was busted like we were, and every summer we tried to think of ways to avoid going home for the horribly long summers that included mandatory hard labor at jobs we fucking despised...except Ariel. He was actually a street kid and not just some "wanna-be", because in addition to the usual skate-punk skills with a board, his dumb ass was crazy enough to work one of the most dangerous jobs in all of Manhattan—a bike messenger. It was like being a cabbie in the 'hood. You could get killed just for making some change. He told us harrowing stories about car doors that suddenly opened, side-swiping him off his bike that was then too broke too ride. No bike = no money.
In addition to tense stand-offs with cab drivers and truckers, he had to stay alive and stay on his bike to earn money. I can't really explain to you how insane a proposition it is, until you visit Midtown Manhattan during a commuter rush-hour, with the added bonus of a million dumb European tourists wandering around the streets during summertime. It was a stress test devised by some mythic "Men in Black": if you arrive safely, you survive. The worst accident he ever had was when he was ripped off his bike by a speeding cab, dragged with his bike underneath it, to come out the front end and grab onto the back of a huge truck's bumper that was right before him and the cab. Yeah. I know.
It was always a rough ride, but he loved adrenaline rushes and getting high, so the job took, give or take a summer session upstate. It was his way to earn, and we very much wanted to get back to our college campus in the mountains of upstate New York. It was our paradise away from home, and we got educated, too. We all had T.A.P. from the state** and single mothers (or close enough to it, with their notoriously bad marriages) who needed cash to maintain their lifestyles, not ours. I also took out a personal loan that I got for my mom so she could meet some expenses, and our tuition back then was...ahem...$750.00 a semester. Yeah, you read that right.
Everything else we had to pay for, including food, clothing, shelter, books, art supplies, medicine, and laundry. We were the most independent kids I'd ever met, and to match our advanced know-how, we'd developed maturely good tastes, like travel and fresh gear. Ariel had the added burden of being an arty hipster, which meant his hair and clothes had to be "on point" to give him status in his clique, a group of cool surfer/skater kids from Long Island, who were all more-or-less the same height, which made Ariel the tallest and skinniest at 6'1. That's a lot of hair dye and black clothes. He also needed the goods to maintain a connection with his bitch of a girlfriend who played hard to please like an angry, spoiled, rude brat. A lot, bro.
So, he did what a lot of messengers who were "hep cats" did on the side: he smoked and sold a lot of weed. I didn't really make the connect until a venture into the city for a meet-up between semesters, when his beeper would go off constantly. That's how they did back then, with special codes for "weed", or, if you were an upscale club-goer at night, coke. Ariel dabbled in a lot darker shit than me and my main crew, who were destined for scholarly lives, but Ariels' main goal was to work in a recording studio with "The Ramones", which he did, because he took us to the joint to scope it out. He still works with audio, too (sans the college bitch I introduced him to), doin' high-end installations for rich white people in the city (and occasionally their ski chalet or Woodstock country cabin in upstate New York), who want one remote control for their stereo system, alarms, and car park. Shit like that. He also married the daughter of the owner for extra security.
But, I can't deny that his bravado and skill at circumnavigating those crazy-ass Manhattan streets blew me away back then. That n*gga knows how to fuckin' ride in all that shit without dying, and that's impressive, yo. Props to you, pops! You were one of the coolest kids on the block back then, and you knew how to telegraph it, too. Good on you, bro! You were always one of my favorite Oneontans from the 'hood, guy! Have a great summer. Watch out for the sharks! With or without the "speed weed", ya hump. Ha! And, Dave, fuck you still. Ass hat. Keep yo' Niagara ass close to the Hudson River with yo' job, and off my shit this summa! I got shit goin' on and I don't need you sniffin' around being pokey, looking for an "in" with me like you do, Indian boy. Stay off my jock!
For the "Dog Pound"
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_jacket
** https://www.hesc.ny.gov/pay-for-college/apply-for-financial-aid/nys-tap.html
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/
During the heyday of social media, I grudgingly opened a series of accounts online to reserve spots with my name on them, for sometime in the future when I had more time to devote to it, at the urging of a young acquisitions editor at the small Jewish publishing firm I worked for back then. Why not? It was summer hours, and I was already exploring commenting on websites and posting photography through this site you are now reading. I didn't know what to do with "social" media, but like any other social endeavor, most of it involves family grudges, drunk bitches posting crazy shit online with their ounce of "Dutch courage", some cyber-stalking, and good old-fashioned dating.
Like I've written before, it's a lot like "life" itself, because I've often said that social engagements online are like those first few introductions you make at a cocktail party: you want to be polite, make socially acceptable small talk, and avoid taboo topics like sex, religion, and politics. Of course, after several drinks in, the gloves come off conversationally-speaking (whether in person or online), as those partners somewhat engaged with you on social media conveniently forget that media is my world, and every time you hit the "post" button or "publish" tab, you are in my world, and this is where I rule.
But, that doesn't stop people from trying to pretend that they are on the cusp of a brave new world with no rules, like our initial explorations with the Internet as highly savvy media designers working in the famous Flatiron building of Manhattan on a DOS screen. Wow...sexy. Before more intuitive interfaces were built for the layperson, we used technology like that as a lark to our main business of making books, the benefits of which you reap today by reading my content for free.
Back then, we were just tossing digital bottles into a large, dark, empty ocean that was devoid of the normal human warmth you might find meeting people in the flesh, like whether that dick hanging around the studio with his designer girlfriend really did meet some "hot chick" online, or it was just some balding older dude fucking with him, because it looked like this:
As I explored my online options with this new world of "online media" that now included nice things that are easy to understand, like pictures and photos with captions, I found the usual human suspects, including: that guy from high school who always wanted to date you but was too scared to ask you out, and his friend-of-a-friend who wants to meet you because you look "hot" in your profile pic, and your drunk redneck bitch of a cousin who not-so-secretly hates you for being prettier and more talented than her and her arty husband (whatever that means). Shit like that. Really common, easy stuff. And it did work. I briefly dated a guy I knew since junior high school days, a guy who knew an old co-worker of mine from my first job at SMP, and a former boss of mine from Denver, now back east again and dating as a rather new divorcee. Same type of stuff.
On the more professionally-geared social site, I met up with a few alumni looking to network and expand their projects through a less dating-themed kind of way that was too casual for their business worlds, which is also an obvious part of my life, too. And so, after a few casual emails traded on this corporate social site, I met up with an older alum who had his own small architecture firm on Long Island. We met at a casual burger-and-beer joint downtown when he told me upfront that he was married. Ah...good! He was balding and pleasant, but definitely not the type of guy I date. No pressure, then. We can just hang out and talk.
We got along well, as two RISD alumni working in the city as professionals, and he assured me that his wife would have no problem with our new acquaintance, because he often mentored younger alumni and attended alumni-based functions in the city socially on his own. Wonderful! I love clarity like that in conversations, especially with our very small pool of incredibly gifted working artists. Save us a lot of time to have that kind of speed, intellectually-speaking. Easy to understand, and easy to follow. Let's drink! You know? You don't want weird shit hanging over your head when you just want to relax and enjoy after-work drinks with a colleague.
After that first meeting, he invited me to an art book signing in "The Village" at an arty retail bookstore that catered to more rarefied artist books and large coffee-table editions with expensive photographic reproductions. In short, I knew I was walking into "Art Fag Central" upfront, but to what exact extent, I did not know, and that was part of the fun for my new alumni friend. He laughingly told me as we walked over there that we were going to meet a couple of mental patients he knew, through a young woman he met at another type of signing that was geared towards sexual content and explicit nudity. Okay...this, on the walk over there.
Oh, and also, you should know, that at this book-signing will be the "artist" herself, promoting her new book of stupid photos about her dumb adventures as an S&M-themed cougar with severe emotional problems. Ah...so, fucking with me on a RISD-sized scale. Kudos! It wasn't exactly a heart-pounding request to build a DaVinci flying machine during studio class with only paper clips and rubber bands and a 1/2 hour time limit, but it was solid enough as an outing with rather extreme social tensions built directly into it. At first we did normal things, like tour the two-level store looking at weirdo books made about weirdo things, with overly-wrought covers that had weirdo thingamabobs stuck onto them, like a bad crafts project that retails for $400. So, basically, crazy rich white man shit. Got it.
We went back upstairs for the obligatory white wine and cheese course of the evening, served by suitably arty-looking waiters and waitresses, with the requisite "hipster" retail sales staff on-hand, in case you suddenly got the urge to buy an ugly book about an ugly woman who wants to have sex practically in your face for money. Like, a hooker. You know, just your average Wednesday night after-work kind of thing. And to make it even more awkward, she stood in front of the long table set up with a display of her horrible book dressed in a hooker outfit, with a really bad feather boa around her shoulders. Her hungry eyes that searched the room desperately for a social connection freaked me right the fuck out, but after a few drinks, "Fee" finally worked up the nerve to buy her book, ask her to sign it, and then engage her in conversation dressed like your grandmother in a Halloween outfit for a crazy "Times Square" hooker from the 70s that I could barely look at. Ugh...
So, I actually turned back to the two outpatients my friend had introduced me to when they first arrived at the book-signing, and that's social life in the city on any given night, folks: the "artist" at the opening was wayyy weirder than the two mental patients on curfew I was talking to. You see, dear readers, in addition to their mandatory check-in at their housing facility for the insane, they also had (of course) a keen, shiny-eyed interest in weirdo sex that more often included beatings over any actual human contact. The small Asian girl thought she could talk me into it, and at the point, I was like, what the fuck? I'm already here. Sure, weirdo! I gave her my cellphone number so she could send me outrageous text messages that I could show people, because at that point, I was already close to changing numbers from the harassing texts that every ex-boyfriend or male mate I'd ever been with had already sent me.
And that's it. That's our grand future that involves you, your mental disorder, and society. We will provide you with supported housing that has mandatory check-in times with the on-site staff that includes social workers and professional healthcare aides, medical charts with your medication times (because you totally forget that, girl), and key-card access while you recover and rehabilitate from your serious illness(es). With or without the feather boa(s). That's optional, folks. And what a beautiful world it will be. Healthcare and healing, guided by the same two people you love you the best: me, and Your Loving Holy Father. Amen to you, on this perfect late Spring day, New Yorkers. We've earned it. Really.
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.
