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.
