Magic

A horror show. No, not a fake movie: the real deal.

Every year my aunt Marilyn gave us the worst gifts should could get away with, and that was the point. She had responsibilities an an adult she hated. She gave one son to her mother to take care of, then left her daughter by another father to drugs, jail, and prostitution, hiding behind the falsely fretting, hand-wringing, long-suffering mother posture. It was sneaky and clever, which was also the point. She wanted to be seen as devilishly smart, like the thief who can't get caught, locked in a childish game of cat and mouse with life that included the people around her who were closest to her. She had a wild teenage past, complete with bad tattoos and a stint as a Go-Go dancer, with lurid white vinyl boots and the also-requisite bad attitude that fell flat with the laissez-faire Acadians in her clan, pragmatic and slow to anger, every single one of us. Wayward youth? So what! Same, man! And ain't that the world we were dealt? Ho hum.

In response to our sangfroid demeanor, she upped the ante to get the attention she wanted. And so, she embarked on a career as a petty antagonist, with her barbs and pat, trite, oft-repeated quips, her rapid-fire, snappy replies, and her nearly constant smoking and drinking. It still didn't really bother us, though, because we love a raucous bon temp, too! What's next? She had a genius IQ that she hid out of laziness and spite, choosing to become my father's ever-dependent. When she lost a job, he had her go to a bank (my dad started in business as a banker), where they promptly sent her to a facility for IQ testing, which, unfortunately for her schemes, came back genius level. They told my dad that she could do whatever she wanted, but that she chose not to. She could have any job at the bank, but she chose the easiest one of all: a teller. She liked being easy, and that's what she did, over and over again, in full view of us.

It was the same with our so-called "Christmas gifts", or birthday presents, or school graduations, or weddings, or...you get the point. She had to make an appearance to save face by honoring her benefactor's kids (my father), but how best to subtly show her disdain? Aha! Tacky presents. Eureka! It wasn't something you could necessarily prove in a court of law, but it delivered the intended bad effects upon the recipient, with just the right amount of bitchy, clever pettiness, the exact affect she wanted.

And so it went, the same bad joke every year: ugly wool sweaters that immediately caused our skin to itch, which my mom backed up by forcing us to wear in front of her as a "thank you" that was really a "fuck you" without the gesture or words to prove it. Huh. Clever, girl. 
If the scariest horror movie that year was an evil puppet gone psycho, she sat there at the table, smoking and listening to us talk about it, so she could buy a ventriloquist dummy for me that she could pass off as a beloved relic from her youth: "Oh, Mortimer Snerd! I loved him!", from a show none of us kids had ever heard of. She laughed when I said it gave me the heebie jeebies at night (because that was the point), so I simply solved the problem by putting it in the back of my small bedroom closet with a blanket over it. Done. It went away eventually at a garage sale, just like her pin cushion that was the shape of a Victorian woman's expensively shod foot, knowing that I didn't sew regularly as a hobby, because I had so many others that she could openly ignore.

She pretended not to know me, just like she neglected the birth connection she shared with her offspring. We were disposable, and she remained angry that she was never center stage until the day she died from a slow suicide of cigarettes and alcohol, refusing until the very last day she struggled for breath on this earth, choking on the kitchen floor of the house my father bought then gave to her after he moved on, refusing to quit her bad habits even after the diagnosis was delivered with an oxygen tank for her to breathe with, and oh, the horror of that, forever depriving us of someone who could be the funniest, warmest soul you ever met, delivering a big loss we all keenly felt, the power of her final hurt put upon us for the rest of our lives. 

Long may she rest in the peace she never found nor gave to those she was supposed to love the most and hold onto the hardest. She was my father's only sibling in the world, a man who paid dearly for her every sin with generosity and faithfulness without ever getting the genuine, heartfelt "thank you" he deserved for his consistent, regular attendance and filial duty to her, by leaving him alone in a world he chose to excel in, because he chose to live. 

Amen to you, my faithful who are also "The Faithful", during this time that is our continued Holy Week.
 

A horror show in a box cleverly disguised as a "gift".

Loosey Goosey

When the bottom fell out of my life financially and economically through spiteful intent and malicious design, after my supposed friends and family abandoned me, I found that abandonment embodied in a ramshackle tenement, in what was also supposed to be one of the "best" neighborhoods in New York City: Park Slope, Brooklyn. By no coincidence, it is comprised mostly of white out-of-towners who ask to be resettled there through their also-wealthy realtors and big money companies, so that they can feel some sense of security living in a town with a really bad reputation, much hyped as it is on t.v. and in movies. It is not my native New York.

It should then also come as no surprise to us, as New Yorkers, that we awoke Sunday morning to a loudly trumpeted double murder and suicide luridly served up and gleefully splashed across every local "news" program, a horror that was supposedly committed in response to "racism" (a divisive concept I do not believe in, because it is a human construct that does not actually exist in our blood that flows freely), but which is actually madness in the guise of evil. I was not fooled by the gunman's racist exhortations online, a mockery to all of us during this season of glad tidings and one very special birthday, but isn't that the point, the very hell that we women relive each and every day? We give birth, only to watch men and boys kill each other (our children) in each others' name. One life is given, and two are taken away, or two are taken and one is murdered, but the result for a woman is always the same: grief, pain, and mourning, as we watch our children taken away from us, after laboring so hard to keep them alive and safe under our charge, brief a time as it is.

And so it was with me, when I was forced into poverty and homelessness by the very people who pledged to give me life and succor it gladly in G-d's name, in His House, and standing on His alter; a move I made done in quick fear to a rotten, filthy hole of a building with horrors inside that also existed in full view of one of the wealthiest neighborhood's in the world, like a sacrilege to any who dared enter it, in the form of a roach-filled, rat-infested tenement that was the only thing I could afford to pay at the time before another corporate job started (at half the salary and below my level, you know, to fully take advantage of my vulnerable status). My labor only encouraged the tenants who lived there, beneath me in every regard, to feed off my body and blood as I worked unholy hours every day and night for them. I gave them everything: first as my money earned through my labor which is made from my honest and good hard work, my few scant hours of free time filled up with their petty tricks lies, deceits, and nonsense, all my best advice and attentions, my good wishes, all my richest and most worthy gifts freely given to them, and still it did no good. They still choose each day to waste G-d's precious riches.

The man who introduced me into his world and environment was recommended this dirty place through the local bodega, the very same place that sold him "loose" cigarettes, an unknown element to me before I came first to sleep on his floor in his sleeping bag and then, after I paid he and the super to help me empty out another filthy room adjacent to his little cell, was the same place I made clean so I that could sleep in that chamber of horrors that was padlocked with a chain instead of a doorknob before I went to work in the city, earning more for them to take from me cruelly, as they devised. 

This focal point of crime disguised as just another local bodega served as the community hot spot for criminal endeavors, because I asked my fallen friend to tell me about it. The same bodega owner who sold him cigarettes one by one in a small paper bag also took advantage of his derangement and continued poverty by directing him to an illegal tenement where he squatted, until the rich old white lady owner from Long Island found out that super was also in on the take, and kicked us out through some rich white lawyers working the city housing court system, because we hadn't given her enough to stay in her illegal building. After all my battles there were won, I actually paid what is considered "fair market value" for the privilege of staying in her squalor.

They told my mentally ill friend at the bodega (because he was new to this place that he always aspired to be, susceptible as he was: a broken ghetto kid from Brownsville) where to buy pot, and they advertised in their store window how they could illegal hack into your iPhone for a $50 fee (which was locked because you couldn't pay your phone bill) through something also unknown to me at the time that's called a "jailbreak". My friend and a neighbor had to teach me how to do it, where to go, and which man to ask for at the bodega for these services. They were that unknown to me at the time; these strange, foreign, shadowy, secretive underworld concepts that baffled me and still do, like the criminal who spends ten years plotting a crime that's over in ten minutes, never recouping his actual loss spent planning such hopeless endeavors. That's how wasteful and stupid it was to me, emotions not dulled or diminished today through the time and distance that has passed.

So the next time some carnival barker (with his obvious freckles and slick pompadour) appears on t.v., the same one who refuses to pay taxes in our home state and city where he also resides, tries to convince you that we exist in a society that's as flat and dull as any generic black and white cookie bought in a corner bodega that can easily be broken in half, remember my words here as you read my true life tale, before you rush to judgement about who is the criminal and who is the thief. Chances are that when you look in the mirror, it's you, and that this current tired rerun being played out on t.v. for sport and amusement is a phoney crusade made from fool's gold.

http://www.withsprinklesontop.net

Merry Christmas to you during His Holy Days
of Peace, Prosperity, and Love.