Contact High

Sometimes being legitimate in business puts you in strangely illicit situations, even as you uphold the law. Such has been the case with me over the years, across several states and countries, through jobs at other people's companies. Mastery means that I make it look good and easy, though in truth, my composure is based on many years of hard work, most of which I will never really be compensated for, but that's my vocation; not yours. It's kind of funny at times, because the rigorous discipline I bring to any workflow is out of necessity from the sheer volume of it (and also as an underpaid, high-performing woman), after which I am just as often unceremoniously dropped when I'm seen as "done" in Corporate LaLaLand, which is as bizarre as it is untrue. Illuminators never really die; we just go out of print.

One of my East Coast bros from New Jersey (hey, Eddie) called it running "The Gauntlet" from my time with him at a post-production recording studio with a DVD replication division I ran for the team, because it's true. I "run a tight ship" because I have to, to keep employees paid and the income flowing through the business for all of our benefit while I'm working for a company, and that includes "dependents" in Taxology (also known as "children") who rely on their parents to provide for them. It's part of the deal as a parent, and it's not their fault when employed parents can't function well. My biggest problem as the "goose" laying all those beautifully-designed golden eggs (most of the time) is to skillfully have the client with no skills removed from the process, because my schedule is the protection we have in a business against people who can't work without sabotaging their own product. I protect people from their ignorance, ego, vanity, pride, and spite.

That doesn't mean we didn't work with genuine talent at our studio. One of our better clients was Alex, who ran his own indie label of hip-hop and rap for the "Four Corner" African-American audience out west by selling CD's out the back of his car. His fanbase was small, tightknit, and loyal. His "Mid-Coast Mafia" label showcased local talent, in a situation me and my team knew really well. You see, the two studios (production and post-) were owned by the wealthy son of an Italian-American man from Philly, flush with his dads' cash from the family crane-operating business back east, which meant (for him and his family) that it didn't matter if the studio ventures turned a profit, but not so for the rest of us. 

Eddie (our de rigeur pushy, aggressive Jewish sales guy from New Jersey: c'mon, you gotta have at least one of them) had real cred in the music industry as a classically-trained jazz drummer who studied at Rutgers, with actual time be-boppin' and spinnin' on the mats of early break-dancing crews in the 'hood, after leaving a bad home and taking to the streets early in his game. He'd spent time as a homeless teen living on the streets, like a lot of us from around the way do when we're forced (as minors) between a rock and a hard place. Then there was me, ethnic as fuck and much fresher "off the boat" from the city than my two friends runnin' our small crew. We had "chops" in creative businesses and that was about it, unless we brought it in-house for everyone to take a cut from.

With Alex, we knew the deal from the beginning. He sold his CDs anywhere he could draw a crowd: at local flea markets, shows, or making a deal on the corner. It was as "indie" as you could get and their sound was raw, which is exactly what real aficionados look for; that legit story told in sound before "The Majors" (big record companies) signed them to a deal, then blow the sound by over-producing tracks in the studio that the talent can't produce live on the road, which makes them look weak as fuck onstage. We had a lot of talent that stayed defiantly unsigned to maintain creative control, and as real artists working together, we all understood that point of view. So much mainstream music sucks big time.

Besides, as long as all of us sold product (and we sold it pretty much consistently), we could stay afloat for a little while longer, because the west is a lot cheaper to do business in than the Northeast, and we knew it. We ran our business causally at times, like a frat house party sponsored by the pros from Julliard looking for that next big thing coming down the pike, with me as the designated House Mom, because that's exactly what it felt like. We were cool, glamorous, sexy (at times), and real, which every musician from an area flush with poseurs and wanna-be's really liked and respected. How could they not?! We gave them our expert time and attention, at Denver prices they could actually afford.

But, Alex was different. We did a lot of projects for him and after I left the studio (it went bust like the corrupt newspaper I worked for; shocker, that), I did freelance design for him out of my apartment. He hit on me once which was charming, since he did it via email and not in person because of the large, occasionally angry Scotsman and Giant Mal I lived with, but I really liked his heart. He gave young "Up-and-Comers" a shot regardless of their race, sex, gender, or socio-economic status, and as outsiders, we could relate. Despite his gang-bangin' lifestyle with several "baby mamas", the best packaging I did for him was a CD/poster/postcard/DVD project that was a collage of him and his crew in front of a chruch, titled "Family Values"; a direct pun over the voraciously right-wing wackos living in Colorado Springs.

I eventually lost contact with Alex after moving back East (he still liked to hit on me via email and text, even with his labels and seven kids, with the same quirky charm: "I will always love you Marie but I understand"), but the last project I did for him at the studio was so good that "Family Values" got New York City media attention when they saw it in my book. We "hit it" with that one, and we all knew it, because the buzz it created made the big-time stand up and take notice of a bunch of "nobodies" from the 'hood, even though it was at least partially sponsored by dope deals done on the side. 

How did we know? Because, mes amis, when Alex made a cash drop-off as his down payment for the project, Eddie came running down the hallway after he left to let us all know that his money just gave him a "contact high" from the weed he sold to finance his ventures. That's how we knew. That, and his red-eyed mellow in the studio. His pile of cash reeked of pot smoke we could all smell, because homeboy had just lit up and toked in the parking lot before coming downstairs to the studio to do business with us, and ain't that the way we do it in the 'hood, rats? Ain't that the way?

http://www.discogs.com/BHP-Records-Affiliates-Mid-Coast-Mafia/release/1450113

(design by a young, hungry Marie "MadDog Burke" Doucette)

Huggy Bear!

Yo honky, this here is Huggy Bear. You know, from "Starsky and Hutch"?

Me and my bros hero-worshipped few people growing up, because real-life heroes are hard to find (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2011/12/ackerman-update.html). Our short list back then (and now) was: Mel Blanc, Forrest J Ackerman, and Lou Ferrigno....in no particular order....or is there? We loved the adults who made stuff just for kids, because that's a form of love every child innately understands, like the punchline to a great cartoon voiced well and excellently drawn. How could we resist? We didn't!

We loved monster movies and the heroes who fought back against the bad guys for all of humanity, as well as any kind of action feature that had the good guys winning, kind of like how we do it now;) To us, they represented the best of what we wanted to be when we grew up: actual human beings that our kids (and their kids, and so on...) could look up to and feel proud of. It wasn't always easy for us to see the kinds of people we knew and loved reflected back at us in mainstream media, marginalized as we are as minorities fighting back against oppression (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/06/curly-girl.html), but like any other "good guy" out there, we persevered, living to fight another day.

The supposedly background character "Huggy Bear" from the 1970s t.v. show "Starsky and Hutch" (like the family from "The Jeffersons" and The Walkers from "Good Times") felt a lot like the people and neighborhoods we came from, trying to make their way against insurmountable odds in a cruel world, just like Fat Albert and his ragtag crew of kids from the block resembled the mixed bag of kids from around the way, in a combination of our 'hoods from the city and the country. Huggy Bear seemed to always be there went it all went down, not as the well-paid white actors in the lead, but still essential to the plot somehow by circumstances beyond his control.

But, that's how it went down in the day. Our guys weren't always played by the white actor in the lead, nor were they the sheriff in the big white hat playing up to the movie's full-face, up-close screen time; they were just there, hovering in the background, waiting to step in just when we needed it. In the meantime, we did what every single one of us in my crew did naturally, because we talked about it at length growing up: we worked hard (harder than most), went to school, entered the workforce, and kept our heads barely above water, at times subsumed by the forces of the tides as they turned, to dominate each and every corner of human life, because that's exactly what G-d promises us. Not easy or cushy, not money or houses or cars, nor anything shiny that can be bought and put up for sale, but who we are brought back to ourselves as the reality of who we really are hits us, and how strong we've become through our jointly-applied labors.

For all the underpaid, unsung glories of the world out there (and you know who you are), this one's for you today. Keep on rockin' and doin' your thing, knowing that the right person is watching you, even when it seems like we're not, because we are. We're right there with it.

(For Mo)

Club Dread

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

When I was ejected out of my newly gentrified Park Slope apartment building for not breaking a city lease illegally (and for losing the income from my job), I had to stay with a gentleman friend I met at the local library. It wasn't that I thought my new friend was of sound of body and mind, it was simply that I had no other options available to me, except those fevered delusions that my family routinely plays out amongst one another while I (as the head of my family) struggle with typical life situations, but that's certainly nothing new for me.

Since I've been parenting most of my life, I trust myself to handle as best as possible the worst conditions life can throw at you, because I've never had it any differently in my life (also not of my choosing). What child asks to be born into a very dysfunctional situation rife with mental illnesses, domestic violence, rampantly unchecked psychoses, aberrant obsessive compulsive behavior, and untreated addictions, treated like huge "secrets" that almost every human family has? No one, that' s who. And so, I was under no pretenses when my friend walked me to my church for a casual meeting with some members of the volunteer charity St. Vincent de Paul, which I'm sure he heard of, struggle as he does with manic bipolar depression and paranoid schizophrenia, because they give away free food there.

Under my watch, the volunteers working actually dropped their bullshit act of pawning off old cans from the backs of their closets with food no sane healthy person would ever eat, replacing those dusty cans with vouchers for fresh food from the local grocery store instead (heavy on the organic produce), and for that I am glad. Social "do-gooders" often tends towards the obviously condescending, tentative as they often feel their grip on reality is, reassured only by kicking on the already downtrodden among us, but not so with me. I needed impromptu legal advice for my court cases through the housing court system of Brooklyn, one of the most lopsidedly corrupt institutions I've ever run into, but also not without genuine people looking to help those in need, most often impoverished black single mothers.

It's not fair, and I didn't like one minute of my introductory course with the twin worlds of our legal systems and Public Assistance, but as my friend from Brownsville told me, "You have to treat 'Welfare' like it's your job", knowing the system as he does, because he's a fourth generation recipient of tax money, but that's typical for the criminally insane. There's no way I could sit in an overheated room full of the mentally unfit popping off during their long wait for social justice because there's no real appointment system for services, like a regular government office would have or, say, like any private office I've ever worked at. It's just not in me to do something so insanely wasteful as that when I can be working, like now.

But he worked it like he was born to it, which he was. You see, you have to be taught by someone "in the know" about what time you need to get there so as to not blow your whole day, where to stand and what line to go on (and if you don't do it "right", the personnel there adopts this shocked peevish look by your newness and questions, because they see the same types of families for generations), what kinds of forms you need, what window does what kind of social service, what to say and how to say it, and so on. It was nuts. No healthy person I know thinks, speaks, or acts like anyone I encountered through my enforced labors through the worlds of the addicted and afflicted.

What I did learn after my brief tenure with the lowest of the low is that they need healthcare and supervised monitoring through supported housing for the seriously sick over any kind of fake program that pretends a violent schizophrenic with obvious tremors just needs "a hand up" with an hour of resume writing workshops and vocational training, because being able to rip off the system puts you up there intellectually with a sophisticated cat burglar rather than some pretend office bureaucrat. That's the actual mindset reflected: we're all insane here, except for you because that was the attitude I got from customers and workers alike in the public systems of New York. You, Miss, definitely don't belong here, given with a strangely quizzical look of puzzlement about why a gorgeous, educated, healthy woman like me was even doing there, because that's exactly what it felt like.

Why am I here? My friend Cotto had no such allusions. He knew he fit the system. He likes smoking pot and sitting around bullshitting with nut cases for hours, like the town drunk who takes up "his" barstool every day at noon; because that's the only kind of regular schedule a mentally infirm individual can adhere to, besides the numbing, hand-wrung, midnight laundry hidden behind closed doors that typifies suburban anxieties. They're just more well hidden than those out in public that marks city life. While I fretted every single minute I spent in a system not designed for me, wondering why free Internet wasn't available for people supposedly looking for jobs like I was, Cotto took up residence like the fat king he likes to daydream he is.

One of his favorite fever fantasies he recalled to me one evening at "Casa Crazy", in the part of the 'hood that slips quickly from Park Slope's elite privilege to hardcore Hispanic poverty and crime, involved his ideas about what a dream vacation would be like. Since he knew I was well-traveled, he must have told himself that his lies were entertaining fodder for me while I slept on the floor of his overheated rented room, and they kinda were, if you could ignore his creeping mania returning as his medications waned. On such a cold winters evening did he tell me the tale of his overblown addictions combined with overheard exploits at Mexican resorts, like I would ever believe that he went to one, seeing as he was on our payroll for, well, just about everything, vacation hotspots not included.

But, that's what he wanted me to think: he and his crazy fat ugly girlfriend went to a Club Med type of resort for sunbathing in the nude, partner-swapping in the common area hot tub (also done in the nude, naturally), followed by hours of hazy pot-smoking under the sun with his paramour, while they non-judgmentally explored the finer points of a S&M lifestyle habitue, like a sophisticate on a winery tours pontificating pretentiously about every grape varietal in the glass, which it most certainly was not. His room was dirty, smoky, smelly, scary, and not at all like my life, the real life that he wanted (at least for a little while) to pretend that he had, sick as he was when I knew him.

When I quickly got another gig (while working at the public library and using their Internet service, just like I am today) he freaked out, though I had no idea why. I took a lower level job than my experience with a no-name indie publisher just to get a paycheck so I could pay back rent on a contract designed to bankrupt me while it terrorized me, which it did. It was only later on, after I left his squalid tenement life for other not-so-fair spots on the globe, that I realized what he was actually trying to tell me: I was his dream made real. He gushed when I got home from work exhausted, using the nighttime hours to clear trash out from the wrecked room I paid fair market value for, unfit for living as it was, but those were the times as they existed.

He gurgled with excitement from another easy day I paid for, as I whitewashed the walls with thinned cans of paint I could barely afford in a baggy shirt bought at the dollar store up the block, nailing down loose floorboards while rinsing them repeatedly with white vinegar that repelled city bugs like cockroaches, because I had to. He'd created some ideal celebrity out of a tired book publishing professional who'd apprenticed into the industry way back in 1993, working my way steadily up the creaky ladder I stood on while he watched me work, squinting at me through the smoke. "Oh, snap!", he bubbled excitedly to me, in front of the super's first floor apartment that was strikingly cleaner than the upstairs rooms he rented above him, "This is awesome, man! We're going to need an 'enoturage', yo!".

I realized long after I left for more troubled pastures with greener fields, that's exactly how he saw me: as the girl that every man dreams of, doing feats of brilliance and physical endurance that a chronically sick man like him will never ever be able to do. I was his real-life action hero, right there in front of him, instead of the fictional caped crusader from the video games he used to check out of reality with, on those nights when he was too wound up to sleep and out of sleeping medication. I was his holiday vacation from his own life, brief as that was, because like every seriously mentally ill person I've ever met, he will never have the loving romance of my life over the weirdly leveraged head games that the sick use in lieu of an actual adult sex life.

There were no power struggles between he and I, no strange mind games to manipulate, no weird sexual tensions to exploit, no leveraged money to control me with, no extended overwrought, passive-aggressive coercions...no, there was nothing like that. I was just another overworked New York mama takin' care of her own, you know what I'm sayin'? That's all it was for me: just another day at the office, taking care of the sick people of this world (with no vacation days or vacation pay included), and ain't that the truth for you, too, girlfriends? You know it is. Now, hand me that silly-looking piña colada mixed drink with the tiny umbrella under this here sunlamp. At least we can pretend to take a break, even if it's for a little while, right? No vacations for us, are there? There's never enough time or money for that, when you're a real mother like me. Nope, there definitely isn't.

https://www.svdpusa.org/ 

Y

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

Lately I've been seeing stories about the "homeless problem in New York City" which (once again) suggests we are immoral, unfeeling, uncaring moneygrubbers with no thoughts or empathy for the chronically ill of our society. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unlike the "lily-white" self-entitlement of sequestered elite populations around the globe that are part of any sharply divided society, we live a rather open communal life that is jarringly American in its familiarity and democracy. 

Whereas well-monied royalty overseas can traverse their entire lives without ever touching any really gritty urban pavement, softly moving from their cushy chauffeured-driven limos to their thickly carpeted pied-à-terre, New Yorkers have no real understanding about this type of divide that separates people, because each and every native New Yorker (no matter how rich or how poor) uses mass transit almost every single day of some kind, so much so, that its heavy usage is problematic for many daily commuters. It's that well-integrated and designed for our type of mobile lifestyles. In fact, I can't imagine never having the kind of upclose-and-personal experience that typifies that rather humorous mash-ups that define the New York City commute. 

It's both funny and painful at the same time. Ever had a newly-arrived Eastern European emigre with brightly dyed white/yellow hair, thick dark black brows and unshaven armpits put it right there in your dainty face unwashed in the middle of the hottest summer ever, as she reaches up for an arm-grab to the bar above the seats that steadies us during our bucking ride home? No?! Oh, I have. Ever seen a 6'3 drag queen in full-length evening dress covered in bright green spangles and sporting a large red wig with 6" inch red pumps transfer drunkenly between subway stops after midnight? No? I have! Hands up if you've ever had that kind of thing happen to you at least once, New Yorkers...wait for it...there it is: every single hand shot up. 

We don't have these artificial divides that block normal day-to-day interactions between societal strata like other countries do, not that I really wanted to see some esse take a leak into a garbage pail at 8:00 a.m. as I humped it to the Brooklyn courthouse a couple of years back. I think he was wearing an MTA safety vest, too, hence the sense of entitlement about taking a piss in one of his co-workers cans to clean that morning. Fuck. That's rough to see. It's the same thing with our chronic homeless, people. We know they're mentally ill and addicted, yo. That's why they get kicked out of places. Come on, you honestly think we don't know? What kind of dude doesn't wash for weeks on end, preferring to wear a plastic bag as underpants over his winter wear while sleeping outside on a warm subway grate? Do you have any idea what kind of stench that is when he manages to shake it off and walk it downstairs onto a train? 

You know what I mean, New Yorkers. Yeah, baby: it's a trick subway car that seems magically empty during the height of rush hour, because we've all done it. You step onto the car and then it hits you: the lovely smell of throw-up, piss, shit, puke and rotten b.o. that's been heated up in the car and simmered to a nauseous, vomit-inducing perfection. I don't ever want you to think that we don't know about our homegrown problems here, because here's the thing, peeps: any one of those "bums" you see on our streets could be that crazy drunk uncle from your family, or that drug-addicted prostitute of a niece who seems to disappear every few years for another few years, and that's how you know she's back to using, because she's "mysteriously" absent from jolly family gatherings around the holiday Christmas tree. 

You feel me? Of course we know! The Mayor of New York himself has a daughter who suffers from a chronic mental illness and an openly justice-minded wife (http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/24/politics/de-blasio-daughter-depression/). Who better than they to advocate on their own behalf?! These are our families. Why the fuck do you think that each and every single member who joins their local branch of the YMCA pays part of their dues towards housing for the sick and homeless? Because we know, a'ight? We fucking know. Now, pony up for the common cash-kitty. We need lock-downs and mandatory check-ins supervised by the expert people we pay to monitor our sick populace and their coming-and-goings with an access key-card because winter is out there, and we know it. That's why. So fuck you! Whachoo think? We don't take care of our own? Nuh uh, brother. Not on my watch. Now, get to steppin'. I have real work to do.

http://www.newarkymca.org/main/supportive-housing/

https://thrivenyc.cityofnewyork.us/do-you-need-help/ 

Camouflage

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

We've all seen the reports about "Problem America" and our supposedly rabid bloodlust for gun violence, but that only tells part of the story. For every raging "gun nut" with a pseudo-militaristic bent who's overdosed on too many boyhood war flicks, there exists an actual veteran with a licensed weapon who belongs to a legitimate gun club, carrying an updated permit tied to a rigid background check with a psych screening (perhaps a blood test with a urine sample or two thrown in, for good measure) that's current. Why would owning and driving a car require more testing than carrying a deadly weapon? It shouldn't be like that, and that's not our intention here*.

As a nation of expats, exiles, and immigrants from war-torn countries around the world that have in power a wealthy ruling elite funded by corruption, Americans tend to be a little sensitive about oil barons in fancy trucks who have all the guns, and we don't. Our Constitution actually preserves our rights as citizens to form an opposing militia, in the event that it all goes wrong somehow with our government sometime in the future, like, maybe during a zombie apocalypse coupled with the latest impending nuclear attack. It's extreme, really. Or perhaps, like my gentlemen friend from the post office who sported flannel along with his ole fishing hat with NRA and scouting badges: you grew up in rural upstate New York where the wild things live, because hunting and fishing is a big part of your life.

I'm not talking about those faux hicks who sell it in modern "cuntree" songs about some pretend lifestyle that preserves inbred rednecks getting drunk and shooting off guns in the middle of woods, because we certainly have those type of kooks 'round the way, too. My former handyman from the 'hood is just such a type of Nuyorcian. One afternoon while he and his skeleton crew worked (including a one-eyed Mexicano who didn't have his own paintbrush, even though they were there to paint my apartment, and he's probably an illegal alien, too), my friend came up to me while I was writing a novelization of yet another office situation gone mad in the city, he though it was more than acceptable to interrupt my work at the keyboard so as to settle some crazy-ass nonsense he and his brother had about Bruce Lee. 

You read that right, amigos. My handyman though it was totally fine to ask me in the middle of my work day to "squash a beef" for him about Bruce Lee, by asking me to look up a YouTube video for him, so as to ascertain whether or not the video was real or faked, like, some far out Sasquatch or Loch Ness type of shit that would link up to Lee's faked death, a la President Kennedy and the grassy knoll type of situation, ya feel me, peeps? We all have that kind of paranoid, conspiracy-theory friend. I told him that it was definitely possible for a real martial artist like Bruce Lee to bust that kind of move on film with nunchucks**, hard as it was, because in addition to his professional acting chops, he really was master martial artist.

After his grunting concession to that blatantly obvious and very well-known fact from martial arts movie history (I know, "hood rats", I know. I'm rollin' my eyes, too), I couldn't help but notice that my friend had decided that today was the day to sport (from his colorful bevy of them) a charming camouflage print do-rag*** decorated jauntily with silhouettes of very large guns because, of course, he and his wacky friends have indeed gone upstate to a remote location (or so they thought) to get drunk, get loud, and mow down trees... or not, as the case may be.

You see, another one of my handyman's wacky theories was finding out if you can indeed get 1) crazy drunk, 2) whacked out of your mind on blow, and then 3) shoot down a tree, if you only have enough ammo and the right AK-47. It's just one of those things that freakin' Ricans do. You see, back in the day, some o' my peeps were so desperate for cool green spaces in the 'hood that they decided city parks sucked (too much crime), and that parking by the side of a busy highway upon first seeing any type of grass at all was perfectly fine, car exhaust be damned. It was so widespread a thing that as we drove back from the city, my family called them "Puerto Rican picnics" because you are not supposed to park by the side of a busy highway just to eat with your little children. It is, in fact, highly illegal, as is almost every recreation that my friend attempts in his leisure time.

He proceeded to tell me about how they pissed off the farmer next door (because, you know, that early rising scumbag with all the kids and animals to take care of is racist, man), and then the cops were called, with tickets, fines, and summons issued, all because my dumb-ass friend and his stoopid crew of wackadoos from the 'hood thought it was funny to shoot at shit in the dark of night, with the lights of a distant farmhouse next door suddenly signalling to them that is, indeed, not okay to do that to your neighbor, you dumb fuck.

And no, he didn't chop down a tree in his friend's backyard at three a.m. with his big gun (nor did any of his friends), because there ain't enough ammo in the world to do that job well, and also because (this is key, kids) that IS NOT what our Constitution guarantees (nor do any of the Amendments), but he decided with more than a few beers in him to take what we fight for everyday and wipe his butt with it, because despite charming t.v. sitcoms about "making it", a locale change for him and his motley crew can't make up for what education and life skills can really do for them. He needs that. Not more ammo. Certainly not more guns.


*     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms 
**    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunchaku  
***  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-rag

International Male

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/395120567281045414/

Years ago, my "Irish Twin" and I used to freak out hysterically over some of his unwanted mail, which included openly gay menswear from an underwear brand called "International Male". We would giggle until tears poured out of our eyes in the kitchen, laughing over his dead-on impression of the intensely wide-eyed stare that typified most of the leering expressions of the scantily clad male models inside. We'd never seen something that gay before, certainly not sitting on the wood counter-tops of our parents' renovated kitchen, which included that suburban staple of life with kids, those blond wood kitchen stools made for quick breakfasts and fast exits, not softcore gay porn.

It was an impression of gay life that stuck with me for many years, and I found it to be dead-on, because years later, I entered the very gay worlds of art, design, media, and New York City nightlife. The first "lesbians" I met were introduced to me next to the dance floor at a disco called "Danceteria" that catered to a domestic country crowd with it's retro look, pop tunes, and "gay lite" versions of reality. My friend's cousin from Harlem was her boyfriend and prom date, and he served as our ambassador to club life on the night of our junior prom, like a scene out of a Huey Lewis video when the music skips to a stop across the DJs record, as the white kids from the 'burbs enter onto the dance floor, which wasn't far off from what really happened.

We were all wearing prom dresses and tuxes that were clearly the product of better upbringings with more money than the original mean streets we all came from as New Yorkers, which was exactly the point behind it for my parents who wanted better for us than they had. Nevertheless, Lawrence laughingly told me (after a few minutes of banal conversation) that his two friends were "gay, Marie" in a deprecating way, because he condescendingly assumed that I didn't know what a "lesbian" looked like in "real life", though that was far from the truth. "Gayness", as me and my brothers already knew just from our mail, didn't exclude itself from families who moved out of the city to the suburbs, because we all had openly gay family members, but my friend's friend didn't know that. 

He saw us as naive "white" people (even though my art classmate, boyfriend, and junior prom date, Raphael, is from a prominent Puerto Rican family), in stark contrast to what he thought was his more authentically-crafted street persona as a handsome, knowing, hip, African-American male from Harlem. After all, the very word "Harlem" has a connotation that's worldwide for a very specific lifestyle, and as a savvy wanna-be musician looking to move up in the scene, he sold his version of our world wherever he could peddle it. It was actually the beginning of my internship in the arts, as I navigated the characters who haunted the edges of what would become my actual world of real artistic credulity and not his, but back in the 80s, he made it look good, and at the time when we were teenagers, appearances mattered more than the truth to someone like him.

Years later, when I transitioned from being a constant, steady girlfriend to a series of former male classmates, friends, and workplace acquaintances to a defiantly stay-at-home single woman by choice (there's only so many bars, nightclubs, and parties one can go to, after all, because hangovers only get worse with time, and besides that, I'm that horrid anti-thesis of manic club life: the devotedly sleepy working-class "early riser", something I learned to cover up as "uncool" in college, though my steadily productive, daily work habits have made me far more successful than anyone in my crowd could ever drunkenly hope to be), I dove briefly into the compulsively driven world of internet dating. I was at an age where my career goals mattered more to me than some workplace-affiliated fling could ever aspire to be, because my work and my life is far more important to me than some casual guy who wants to sleep with me. 

Trade my formerly active sex life for a really solid design portfolio with excellent work I made on my own? Yes, please! It was exactly what I always wanted: my name on great-looking books out there in the real world, on bookshelves everywhere. This mama also paid all of her bills on her own for too many years to count. No good reason to mess with my money, you know what I mean? Men may come and go, but the truth I had in my 30s was that I was the only one who remained and endured in my lifestyle, because that's what I could count on after all my long-term, monogamous relationships with men. I was worth much more than some guy who may be passing through town, because that's exactly how a lot of corporately sponsored out-of-towners treat New York City; like our lives are just some small part of their big ATM account that they can endlessly withdraw from without ever giving back to those of us who gave them such an excellent life. Uh uh, boyfriend. This girl is sapped!

When I finally began concentrating on myself in earnest, my work grew in stature with the more time I put into it, because I was no longer intruded upon by someone (or something) in my household who needed taking care of besides me. It was a relief, it was eerily quiet, and it was (at times) achingly lonely. After finding myself on a computer for anywhere from 8-14 hours a day, for sometimes 6-7 days week (and this went on for many many years, readers), I naturally surfed in between the bone-crushing, high-pressure deadlines at work, as I waited for some big file to upload to the printer. Anyone who remembers old Internet connections will know that lengthy time bar of which I write of. Oh...watch this for hours? It's like trying to watch ceiling pant dry; not much happens when you're looking. 

As computer systems improved, so did my multifunction job performance, because I could put the dull mechanical stuff in the background of my computer screen while I kept my brain active, alive, and thinking. We all did it in art and design departments throughout the world, and soon the people around us in the offices who are our group of daily onlookers as we sat immobile for hours realized why: the quicker the human brain powering the machine, the better the work, and the better the work we design, the more money we make as a company. It gives us the necessary freedom we need to produce complex visual communication regularly, but it also led to some nasty habits that could be compulsively addictive to the wrong kind of brain, and given the laxity most people wrongly presume working artists have, we attracted a lot of those brains, too, at least in the beginning of desktop publishing, when people also wrongly thought that modern artistry is like sitting at a typewriter. Once they gave it a "go", most of our co-workers realized that our job is more like powering a rocket ship as a NASA-employed engineer working in several different languages at once, and at lighting quick speed. We cleared out most of the kooks with time, eventually, as they learned to take their constantly fretting selves elsewhere, to safer hobbies and easier workplaces better able to provide for people afflicted with their predilections.

But in the beginning of online dating, that's exactly what was out there, as it was reflected onscreen: those Internet cafe junkies who stayed up all night looking for sexual thrills, spills, and quick jerk-off fodder. At first, I used my old, paid-for email account (before "free" e-mail service was offered with future revenue-producing caveats attached: I know, how quaint) and deliberately bad, blurry images of myself to attract guys looking to get to know me, and it worked in many ways. Instead of some "yahoo" fresh to the city looking for a sexy dark-eyed, "exotic" native to show him the city's ropes, I connected with highly-educated, well-earning respectable men like myself, albeit with a creative flair or two attached necessarily, for maximum compatibility. It worked!

Men would actually write to me over a series of days or weeks, getting to know me and my interests in the search for a real partner and not some bed-hopping club queen. Because I paid for access to the dating portion of my email provider's also paid-for email service, I attracted professional men who were older than me, just as I intended. In those early art directing days, I met the de rigeur European man du jour for lovely New York women with a French-sounding last name: the West Village-residing financial planner transplanted by his fancy Parisian firm. <shrugs to self, sitting at a computer>...at least I won't have to pay for half of all of our dates, I thought. Why not? He was handsome enough, and the wintertime was getting lonelier. There were only so many snowy walks in the park I could take with my Mal before getting weary of that, too, and my body was already in excellent shape through a combination of his hard pulling and the typically low-paying publishing paychecks that kept me housed and running, barely.

I met Francois offline in the safe area near NYU that is St. Mark's place, at a more upscale pub joint that caters to students and tourists. I was wearing my Old Navy light blue parka and a red, cowl-necked sweater that was form-fitting, and he was shocked. "How...how...how are you still single?" he sputtered to me over our first pints together. "You look like a petite model!" It was hard to fathom, and he was sensitive still about his newly developed fluency in English. Sigh...how to explain that I had already been a mother to other people's lives and children? I spoke about it in the best ways I could at the time, and when the night turned snowy again with sparkling snowflakes that dusted everything in the silent streets under an enchantingly lit stardust, he became entranced with the magical spell that beautiful New York City has on all the people who fall in love with the greatest city on earth. It was like being in a real, live version of Christopher Cross' song Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do): you can't help it.

I took him to a jazz club further uptown, and by the time the sets were almost over, I knew I had him eating out of the palm of my hand. We took a lightly gliding taxi back to his awesome (and very expensive) West Village townhome apartment, on the exact same block that the fictional character Carrie lived on, in the hit t.v. series "Sex and the City" (we saw the "Sex and the City" tours with touristy women wearing big feather boas and eating cupcakes from the then-trendy Magnolia Bakery down the block), because back then I was living for real what a bunch of out-of-town actresses were playing on t.v.: the hip, media-driven, New York City native girl showing a tall, strikingly handsome Frenchman with a fabulous apartment on one of the planet's most expensive neighborhoods a rockin' good time. It was for him, in fact, the best time ever, and that's exactly what it's all about for us here 'round the way, friends: having the best time ever. Thanks, NPH.

Sick House

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

As soon as I moved into a cheaper, smaller fourth floor walk-up in the 'hood, I knew it was trouble. Like my mom's typical "old lady" development, I could feel people tensely watching me behind their paranoid peepholes. It was also unnaturally quiet in the middle of the day for a New York townhome with multiple family dwellings, because gentrification has its own set of difficulties for native New Yorkers like me to contend with. Where were the laughing kids playing in the hallways, or the savory smells of homemade food that's always on the stove? Pampered white people bring economic stability with them, but with a serious fee that's often too steep an emotional price for us to pay for them, because they fucking hate actual hardcore urban living.

I can somewhat understand it. After returning home from out west, an old workplace "frenemy" of mine from back in the day took a picture of me with a rare shocked look on my face, as I took in the midtown skyscraper landscape anew with fresh eyes. This ain't like back there. What's even weirder for people like me is that after I get into the groove, I rock this town like I was born to it, which I am. That shocks a lot of people, especially out-of-towners who think they know what city living is all about. No, you don't. Unless you helped build and power this town like me and my crew for several generations, you don't have that kind of claim to this land, and that is actual soil underneath all this new concrete, "homey".

Same thing with rich white folk who've been transplanted here by their corporate firms from afar. I think they think we can't tell how stressed out they really are, because they think it's "uncool" to show the toll that this town takes on everyone, but their bulging wide eyes give it away every time. You feel it right away, too, just like every time I visited my mom's old person's development: I knew every set of retired, bifocal eyes took a look (or two) at me from underneath their old-fashioned lace curtains, as I walked it back and forth from her apartment to the parking lot (waiting to mess with me in that extremely hyper-tense way that older city people have), like the kind of curtains that Irish ladies who take tea at the exact same time every single afternoon (because they HAVE TO conform to some kind of a ritual, wink wink), ones that they put up as soon as possible to maintain that strict sense of privacy they feel entitled to in the plush suburbs.

Not so in the city. We live on top of one another atop some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. To me, it's a mostly happy communal lifestyle, but for those poor unfortunate people from wherever the fuck they come from, it's too much scrutiny for them to take. These are the type of people who lie for a living, and the kind of accountability that comes with close living is something they don't know how to process very well. As much as I will always love "Brownstone Brooklyn" (always, peeps, always), I also hated the tense, jittery prosperity that drives out people like us for cheaper points north periodically, though that's part of our lifestyle, too.

It's like you can feel their nervous juggling acts through the very walls that have absorbed the small vicious fights they try to have quietly so the neighbors can't hear, unlike the raucous drunk Micks who've inhabited these types of low income buildings for years. I don't like either type of dysfunction (the rich kind nor the drunk kind), but at least some drunk fuck is an easy mark for us natives: just add booze, and start the countdown to crazy. Easy to beat. Weirdo neighbors from other countries took to fantasizing about my "downfall" like the easy target of New York wealth and privilege they wanted me to be, or so they mistakenly thought.

The problem was (is), it took (takes) years to "push out" someone like me, because that doesn't actually happen unless I want it to, and they didn't (don't) control it; other savvier, harder, native New Yorkers had (have) to artificially rig it through a crooked homegrown system, and by the time it did (does) happen, my ousting had (has) lost all the luster that they used to spark with, over glasses of cheap white wine and overly shiny eyeballs that I never want to neighbor with. Not once. Because this native girl grew up with tea, tenseness, and mental patient standoffs like it was part of her landscape. "Sick house" or not, in our fair city of Gotham or out in the countryside, it just doesn't matter, Micks. I know it when I feel it. Don't you?

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

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

The Staff of Life

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

John 6:35 (King James Version)

³⁵ And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. 

Over the years, we've had to endure the hype and common misconceptions that come with humans and their many food-related disorders. "Coeliac Disease"* is serious, I know. My stepmother has it. Do you? No?! Then, you don't need a gluten-free diet. In fact, my father followed her seriously restricted diet for many years (in solidarity of her and her limited cooking skills), because he doesn't really cook except for the occasional backyard barbecue, like any other typically American dad. He said for many years that it helped him with his joint pain, though the dry arid climate of West Texas helped more by far. 

Now, they both take medication for heart disease (my dad also has stents in the major arteries leading to his heart), because they both have genetic tendencies towards that kind of health-related problem. Homosapiens are not Neanderthal types of primates anymore, so why would you believe that eating like one is beneficial to your modern-day health? Some of the worst content I designed during my time in the publishing industry was wrongly formed in the bad combination of tying food to the weepy "self-help" subculture, because a lot of people with mental problems try to effect a total cure upon their brain disorders through dieting, and that isn't enough of the right kind of health care.

Don't get me wrong. Healthy eating does work wonders for our overall health, and proper nutrition is essential to continued good health, but hopping on a trendy diet bandwagon will only get you so far. Just ask the former "Queen of Daytime Talk" herself, an entertainment brand so famous that she gets by with just one name (like any real rock star), now driven so low by her recent drop from the public's constant eye that she finally admitted in a widely televised ad what we all know about her to be true: she's just another paid corporate shill for one of the worst "touchy-feely" diet food purveyors, because despite all of her money, fame, and long-term access to the "best of the best", she's still off in the head, thus filling the core of herself with food instead.

What kind of message do you think that sends to very people who made her rich and famous, particularly from one of our most beleaguered populations that she openly stole from, the African-American single mother struggling to keep her (and her family's) head above water? She bankrupted all of them as far as I'm concerned, and if I were you, ladies, I'd drop all of her magazines, book projects, and t.v. shows today. Start the new year of 2016 right, by giving your hard-won economic support to those people among you who are genuine enough to love you back for your faith, not to just another "Mad Black Woman" who sang the blues publicly and ate all of her feelings (in between ridiculously unhealthy juice "fasts"), because all the money and fame in the world ain't gonna give her back what her own mama and daddy took from her, and neither will you.

Just leave food out of it! I got that covered and now so do you, you just didn't know it, yet. You have everything you need inside of you already, and what G-d hasn't provided, my local bakery can give me with freshly baked warm bread straight outta their ovens (for a mere $1.79!), in a long Italian-style loaf so big, that I cut it while it's fresh and freeze it in sections, defrosting each part as I need it over the course of a week. Who else will tell you that for free? Well, a lot of us will. All you have to do is listen. We're here. Happy New Year.

https://hotbreadkitchen.org/who-we-are/

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

Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

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

One of my favorite "poverty stories" from my mom centered around my Norman Irish/French-Swiss (from Alsace-Lorraine) grandfather's Christmas Eve tippling. He "slaved like an African" as he used to say, underneath the ground in New York City's dirtiest environments, just to make sure other families were provided for, even while he worked to make up the difference to his own, as is customary among first generation immigrant families establishing a strong foothold in a new land, which is exactly what my ancestors have always done. I've always taken an enormous amount of pride from my previous generations accomplishments, and this charming lapse in my grandfather's customary tight rein upon his family freed me more than he could guess, though I suspect he knew the outlets that I needed, because he needed them, too. After all, he raised my mother.

You see, parents of seriously disordered family members (and children made parents before their time) need an extraordinary amount of strength to break through the addictions, compulsions, tics, and nervous disorders of the people they care for, in order to provide for them, but that doesn't mean they always appreciate it. My mom regularly panics when she's confronted with the severity of her illnesses, threatening the most serious hurt and abuses she feels she can deliver upon the heads of the very people who care for her the most. Like every high-performing person before me, the stress of caring for the sick and infirm is an extreme life condition to bear up under, one that's greatly relieved at times by the tempered mellowness of a good stiff drink, and an Irish one at that.

My grandfather kept a good bottle of strong Irish whiskey on hand at our house at all times, for those times when he needed relief from the very people who were most dependent upon him at the time of my growing up, which was my youngest aunt and grandmother. I always felt an enormous amount of empathy towards him, as he taught us in our home about the merits of a great crystal glass (also an Irish tradition), and the grace of a "good pour" to deliver the optimal amount of pleasure from a single glass of excellently-brewed malt savored in a hard-won peace, safely apart as we were at those times from the more wild extremes of our extended family. People like us, who are always in charge under penalty of death or serious hurt to a loved one for our slight lapses in their consistent care, learned early on to cherish the finer things in life like those that simple, well-done crafts provide for us.

It was no different for me. When I was forced by economic brutalities visited upon me through a careful network of systems I didn't design (hence the corrupt injustice of it all) to live with my mother for a time, 
I drained every drop of alcohol in her place. Even my mom's Italian relatives who have no real stomach or palate for drink took part in a relieving glass in the evening, needed as it was after a grueling day in the life of Diane. I found a stash of plastic-bottled whiskey my brother hid in the back of her pantry many years ago (and drained it dry with my mom's visiting cousin from Texas who always stays for free on her couch), an old weird bottle of homemade strawberry wine brought over years ago by an equally weird friend of hers (and never touched, because my mom and her siblings trained each other to covertly hide their compulsive addictions behind more superficially acceptable forms of release, like shopping and eating), and any other booze I could find, because life with the seriously sick is one hell of a ride.

So when my mom complained her faint little baby complaints about my grandfather's evening tippling bought with the scant extra he had leftover from a holiday paycheck that was spent all year in the planning of its expense carefully (just like I do, with every penny accounted for correctly in my tight household), doled out as it was among her and her siblings first, because they whined so much about this mythical "deprivation" of theirs that they suffered with, I admired the restraint and the courage that it took to channel all of his energy towards moving this family forward, even if it skipped a generation or two. So what if he got drunk off his holiday pay? What did any of them do around him (except for my loving grandmother) but bitch and moan about their phantom complaints brought on by the delusions of their own fevered minds, distorted as they were about his true priorities that were sound (in me), and have withstood the test of time.

So what if he only had enough leftover to buy the last Christmas tree on the lot, and often a small sparse one at that? When my mom and me and my middle brother recovered enough financially to become a family unit again, one of our first acts as a newly divorced family was to fly as a group to visit my violently out-of-place New York brother adrift in the blandly white Midwest, to celebrate Christmas together again as a family. We giggled as we gathered around his little apartment tree, happily surprised and pleased with ourselves for pulling off the impossible by becoming a family again, against all the odds in every book there is. That's what I think about when I think about my Christmases past: how incredibly lucky and blessed I am to be alive and with you all, in this miraculous century of miracles and light. 
Merry Christmas to you, in 2015. See you soon.

The Santa Con

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

Blackface is weird in every century, because stupid rich white people think they can get away with it. After all, if you're corrupt and you know it, who better to look down upon than a people notoriously kicked around by an entire culture designed to abuse them? We had to fight our nation's bloodiest war just to protect humans from treating other people like cattle, with a lot less respect than that at times. 

Sickness doesn't whack you in the face like a punch delivered expertly in a boxing ring. No, psychoses just creeps up on you, festering in those isolated pockets where such illness traditionally breeds: in the rural back-country, far from the modern civilized world, making it odder still that New Yorkers openly harbor such blatant prejudices against their own neighbors, as they have for generations. 

First, it starts out with that one Jewish kid in school envious about the many Christmas gifts the pretty blond shiska girl gets; you know, the one he fetishes over to the extreme, without ever doing her the human courtesy of greeting her properly, with normal eye contact and a wide open smile that says "hello" to you, before you hear it spoken aloud. Dehumanization is a necessary part of any disenfranchisement program, and the seemingly sophisticated provincial that New York breeds is a particularly dangerous kind at that.

The pseudo-intellectual cosmopolitan knows all about local theater (heavy on the musically-inclined Jewish crowd), or the most recent New Yorker op-ed commentaries (heavy on the Jewish liberal afraid of what lies west of the Hudson River, where those scary burly "bridge-and-tunnel" people live), but you'd be surprised that they're most often more afraid of the savvy native living in their midst, with a much wider and well-balanced view of the world that we live in. And so the ball rolls further downhill, away from what they think is their right as a hometown crowd in our fair city. First, the retail stores closed (no shopping), as do our gentile restaurants (no "Chicken Parmesan" on our holiday), and then before you know it, every store will be closed in honor of the birth of one very special Jewish boy.

Because even as cynical Hollywood cranks out nasty movies (hey there, Canadian "Jew-Fro") based on your Jewish attendance during our holy day, they forget that the sole focus of this day is the birth of a humble Jewish boy born destined to create one of the world's greatest faiths. Isn't it ironic that the sneering drunken holiday some Jewish people have created to blaspheme our holiday is the very same one born of their faith? So, the next time you think it's harmless to dress up like a slut and gorge yourself during our religious holy day (ooo, you're so "naughty"), because you mistakenly thought Christmas is about shopping and some big fat guy in a red suit, let me assure, it is not, and we're watching you very carefully.

For more on the real religious traditions tied to our traditional (and modest) forms of gift-giving, I invite you to explore the actual histories tied to our faith. For instance, did you know that the man known throughout Scandinavia as "Saint Nicholas" (taking his name from an earlier saint*, as is our naming tradition) earned his title by giving dowry gifts of money to the poor girls in town, so as to hasten their marriages**? Because that's the truth. I know! Soooo much better than the dumbly-dressed bar slut. OK, then check this one out. The North Star was said to have served as a guide to "The Three Wise Men"*** (who were kings) by guiding them across the winter sky to converge upon Jesus' birthday place in Bethlehem****, then a Jewish city? No?! They brought gifts of gold (gelt), frankincense, and myrrh, and today we still burn incense in church and at home, during certain rituals.

So come on in! Everyone's invited to celebrate this party. You haven't been left out in the cold, at all. You have the whole world at your feet through His Birthday (of Our Savior), through the gift of faith that is our annual message of peace to you. Now, put down that beer, you stupidly-dressed bar slut. Ain't nobody care about yo' ass, ho.

 

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/home/ 

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

*         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas
**       http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/three-impoverished-maidens/
***     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi
****   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem

Grand

http://www.equalvoiceforfamilies.org/if-you-love-somebody-grandparents-raising-kids/?gclid=CM3xoaOL5skCFc2RHwodBloIYg

Like every family out there in the real world, mine also struggle with mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, learning impairments, developmental disabilities, age, abuse, neglect, and sometimes extreme ethnic prejudices. My father's sister Marilyn was so challenged that she spawned (and then abandoned) two families, back-to-back. First was my cousin Brian, born to an Italian-American man I've never met, and then summarily dropped off at my paternal grandparents' door, without ever getting a "thank you" or one single, decent paycheck to cover his expenses, I'm sure. And why would she have done that, when she was proud to show off her white vinyl Go-Go boots instead of her own son, tucked away as they were under his bed in my grandparent's Queens apartment?

No, she was proud rather of being deemed "good looking" enough back in the day to dance for men for money, thus creating a generation of orphans we've yet to shake in this century. My "Grandpa Fred" made good money from his cab-driving by then (as the proud, hard-working owner of a medallion, an amazingly incredible feat given his poor, immigrant, Depression-Era roots), and so my cousin at least had my grandmother and him, a solid roof over his head, and my grandpa's really good food in his tummy, even though it still wasn't enough to conquer his drug addiction in the future.

I'm just glad that they were able to provide for him for a time, enough to be considered a real family, especially since my step-grandfather and grandmother never had kids of their own. What a blessing in disguise it must have been for them as an older couple! As bad as my father's family is with their notorious "disappearing acts", I'm extraordinarily proud of them and their loving giving to Brian, alone in the world without a father and mother as he was. At least he had them, and at least he has us. That's a lot more than many of our most beleaguered children around the world (and around the way) have.

We need to support our elders and grandparents who decide to adopt their children's children, whether from infirmity or neglect, as a way to stem the bleeding our sacred family's have been suffering under; this weight that we all need to bear as equally as we can. Thank you to my man Ernie Anastos (geez, stay positive, will ya?) and the wonderfully gentle Kathy Gibson for highlighting her parenting support platform for those grandparents who can adopt, so that all of our children may thrive to great success in the future. We need every hand we can take for this battle that we're in. Thank you! This one's for you today, fighting the good fight every single day you get 'em fed, dressed, and out the door to school. You're not alone anymore. We're here.

http://stfrancispantries.org/community-programs/back-to-school-picnic-2014.html

http://www.stfrancispantries.org/community-programs/back-to-school-picnic-2015.html

http://stfrancispantries.org/community-programs/mothers-day-luncheon-2014.html 

For the rest of you, you need to do this NOW. That means tech support for those elders in your community who have school-age children using computers and smartphones and tablets and laptops (standard in most school districts nowadays), free backpacks at the beginning of each and every school year that they have enrolled children, plus free pantries for food and toiletries. Ever look at a Social Security check? Yeah, make that work. Ladies, I know you feel me on this one.