Thug Life 4E

Trifling 'hood rats ain't nuthin' new to me. Like I've explained to y'all  before, the first real criminals I met who tried to scam me were my very own family."Home" and "house" and "safe" were never really words that signified good places for me to live in, as my sickest family members told me every time they thought I "stepped out" of line of their controlling manipulations. Continually consistent and strongly applied coercion is the very first sign to working class kids that our parents or older siblings are gearing up for their next big push at us, in a series of highly coordinated acts that spoke of their persistent ability to attack me behind my back as a child, which solidified my "head of household" status to me over and over again, at a very young age, when I was just some po' girl chile with no one to help me out, and nowhere to go.

Except that I did. I always had my excellently faithful grandparents to back me up with their good health and superior strength, as a direct contradiction to the fearful paranoia that so deeply marks the sickest people around us. They illegally violated our privacy and sense of security every time they were caught abusing us, and that could happen at any time, with their violently frenzied periods of deep paranoia that define the day-to-day reality that is mental illness and psychoses. It became so bad, me and my brothers began threatening exposure to our school teachers and social services, with the achievement of a new family policy clearly stipulating that there would be no hits to the head, so as to prevent telling marks from clearly showing where anyone of authority could see them, not that we thought foster care was any better than what we had. We knew.

It didn't stop my mom from beating up my oldest brother into a broken arm that he covered up for her expertly at Nyack Hospital's ER back in the day, with the conveniently well-practiced excuse of "falling down the stairs" at the ready by both parties that they carefully rehearsed during the car ride over. It was easy for him to do, too, because my brother had prior sports injuries that my mom could frame into a clear sense of his proven carelessness as a wild boy child. 

Our "savage" genetics were also an easy target for her to blame us for any of her abuse that she aimed at us. We were raked over the coals by the mad people around us, to the point of our collective perfection in comparison to their obviously bad behavior, which was then thrown into our faces, too. "What are you, like, 'perfect' or something?" We learned to avoid crazy people the way a cat burglar breaks into a city apartment during the summertime, through an open window by a conveniently placed fire escape.

My self-defense makes attempts at scamming me into this absurdly surreal game of "cat-and-mouse" that I can best with both hands, arms, and legs bound tightly, with a blindfold on. And it continued throughout my life at every public venue I ever "dared" to appear at, including the very public abuse that I suffer(ed) at this public library, because it doesn't matter where I go or what I do, who I am with, and what I look like. It doesn't actually have anything to do with me at all, because I don't do anything wrong, which is a huge problem for a violently acting-out criminal sitting next to me at a public computer, or on the bus to the city, or on the subway, or at work in some office.

It became a pattern that, no matter how cleverly and craftily done, I managed to fight back against —on little food, sleep, money, clothing, medicine, support, and/or shelter—sussed out in record time, to the horrified amazement of yet another delusional individual who felt protected enough to attack me in full clear view of several authority figures in charge who had every opportunity to clear up the situation with one word in my favor. But, that's part of the job, right?

Over time, I even developed a handy "cheat sheet" formula for businesses and other public venues that preferred to witness ongoing abuse that goes unchecked without protecting me, because, you know, I'm obviously society's number one scumbag. One: hire a bitchy thick blond to "man" your reception area with an even bigger desk to match her overblown ego. Two: allow her to gossip loudly and spread rumors within clear earshot of large groups of people who will then feign a planned indifference that you will pretend to control with Three: a series of intentionally inept "scolds" done purely for publicity's sake, before telling your mistress(es) behind closed doors to keep on doing exactly what she's been doing, because, again, I'm the beautiful, high-performing single woman on an extremely tight budget that you like to squeeze as part of some con game.

She, in turn, will blow on her troll dolls in an unchecked madness that you will laugh about in an obviously evil way, because you like seeing your lead bitch with fangs rave at a woman out of your league. So, on this very special Friday, let's go over your "Special Needs" list of rules that even a kindergartner understands, just in case you plead ignorance or impairment. Ready? Okay, here we go!

Children Ten Commandments

1. Have no other gods.
2. Have no idols.
3. Honor God's name.
4. Honor the Sabbath day.
5. Honor your parents.
6. Do not murder.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not perjure yourself.
10. Do not covet.

Got it? Good! Now, let's go over every flaw you have, in clear language that even you can understand, with your list of serious impairment(s):

Vice		Virtues
Lust	Luxuria	Chastity	Castitas
Gluttony	Gula	Temperance	Temperantia
Greed	Avaritia	Charity (or, sometimes, Generosity)†	Caritas (Liberalitas)
Sloth	Tristitia/Acedia	Diligence	Industria
Wrath	Ira	Patience	Patientia
Envy	Invidia	Kindness	Humanitas
Pride	Superbia	Humility	Humilitas

^†This virtue is generally considered to be the greatest and the most important of all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins

Don't play this here New York mama for a "sucka", kids. That is all. See you next week. Be ready. It's "go" time!

Welfare Burger

True punk-rock spirit, as evidenced back in the day. Keep on it, man.

It's hard for our brothers and sisters around the world to tap into our common consciousness, beset as they are in this world by the woes cast upon them through continued war, famine, and injustice. That's why it's so important for us to speak up whenever we encounter wrong, difficult as they may be to do at times, because we often traverse the worst adversities when we are at our loneliest low points in life, but just like that old Christian poem "Footsteps"*, it just seems that way from the outside looking in. It is then when you are carried by The Lord Our G-d, as His Most Faithfully Beleaguered in Faith. As so often happens in my life, outsiders see one reality when in truth, it's the exact opposite of what they presume it to be, and that very deception is what leads them down the wrong path.

I meat a bleary-eyed Ecuadorean the other day on the street while he was waiting for the bus. I'd noticed him from the other side of the street before, because he stared at me like I was levitating across the sidewalk in front of his apartment building, instead of me hatted up and running an errand, sans makeup. In fact, when we crossed paths, I explained to him that I spend zero dollars ($0) on my appearance. But, but...he sputtered, swaying a little on his heels, I'm so pretty! Now that you've gotten to know me better, that sounds funny, right? Like, asking Jesus when he got his last pedicure while he walks around poorly shod in a pair of old worn sandals, but I was charmed by my new friend.

After all, that's what he was raised to believe in. Pretty girl = easy street, just add (+) one man. Done deal! Of course, that's an absurd way to think, because I'm not a prostitute for hire based solely on my looks (not that I mind beauty as a visual artist because it's part of my world) but in many American cultures, beauty is mythologized to such an extent (especially if you're a drunk, divorced, red-eyed Central American grandpa waiting on a cold Northern sidewalk for a public bus that's on slow rollin' country time), that talking to someone like me seems like, how can this be true ?! Oh, it be, brother man. I assure you of that, esse.

You see, when you're out there in the real world, you don't just get a small slice of pie from the same place over and over again (my G-d, the horror of that!), you eat "the whole enchilada" as they say, and that's exactly how me and my crew play this game called life: like it's winning just to be here, because we come across a lot of "walking dead" out there; bombed-out, brain-dead folks just wandering listlessly throughout their days, so unconscious and unplugged from the world as it exists, waiting to die. A nightmare...and so, when we see something we don't like, we say something, because speaking up is an action that leads to other actions, even if at first it's just misguided thoughts (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/06/say-something.html). It's all part of your training.

Most of my peers have already reached the type of early success that puts us in direct proximity to junior staff who need constant mentoring and teaching because we're tradespeople, and giving back to underlings is crafted into our lifestyles. I teach every day that I'm alive, even if it doesn't fit into your misconceptions about relegating learning to some far away classroom staffed by someone else, even though that someone else is probably someone I went to school with, here in New York, and I can also out-teach any day of the week. My creative hierarchies necessitated me into learning many many abilities so well just to stay competitive and on the job, that I can teach you in another language (in your native language, since you can't speak mine), using whatever tools you have handy.

After you do that for many years like we have, you develop a sophisticated routine centered around schooling. And so, when my Coloradan ex-boyfriend decided to take his act on the road by lecturing the Asian liquor store owner down the block from us in our Denver neighborhood, I couldn't have clapped harder for him in appreciation if I tried. It was one of my most favorite characteristics about him: that he used his power and prestige as a high-earning white man in our society to tell people what they avoided hearing through deliberately planned abusive neglect, by feigning continued ignorance about well-known facets of our American lives. On one such afternoon, I guess Kent had enough of the hypocritical bullshit, because he told me that he finally told the Korean owner what was up, and I was enraptured.

Kent liked to buy some booze to put into his little biker backpack that they make just for riders to squeeze liquid into their mouths during a ride (yeah, not the best use of it, but you don't know his full story and it is massively bad), so he could meander around town on the many bike paths that line the area in an inter-connected web that's the envy of older cities, though the common practice of compulsive over-exercise to cover up a serious mental disorder as it is used out west is a whole other article entirely. Suffice to say that he was familiar with the lay of the land, as he'd lived in town for many years, spending his days driving through he streets that he didn't bike, as a Master Electrician with his own junior apprentice to school in the trade.

I guess he figured he'd had enough of the shit show we'd seen play out unfairly in society over the years, because he and I talked about the judicious use of "mixed residential" zoning laws that are the mark of enlightened urban planning in newer cities like Denver, escaping the common traps most older cities succumb to, like the bust-and-boom, up-and-down patterns that characterize the instant ghettos and gentrified private parks with silver key access that define New York City life. We'd seen our native cities go down fast that way, like he had with the council flats in England, and I did with the projects in the city. Urban planning had created instant ghettos that insured encircled and entrapped cycles of poverty that no one could escape from, let alone a terrorized impoverished people who'd descended from the cruel mistreatment of corrupt plantation owners from centuries past.

We had enough, and it was reflected through his band's song titles about injustices that I felt keenly in my life, too. Kent told me back at our place that as he was walking back to the cooler for a cold drink, he couldn't help but razz the wealthy owner into embarrassment. We'd seen him cruise up to his immigrant business in the 'hood with a brand new Benz curbside, strategically placed as it was right across the street from public housing that was clearly demarcated as such with bolted-on plaques across the front row of old brick townhomes, across the street from his ghetto liquor store. Who the fuck did he think he was? What right did he have to come here and pick off the "po' black folk" with instant access to the very poison that killed them and their brains, by walling himself behind a plastic partition like some pussy?

Kent and I had seen him roll up in his fancy car in our urban neighborhood with his clean little prep school boy, all nice and pressed in his fancy private school clothes, but what right did he have to set up shop across the street from the poorest folks in town? Huh? Kent said he just stood there towering over this little guy and his small prep school kid. They played the whole smiling " haha...no speaky engrish" game with him that they'd been taught by the very people they bought the place from, with one very important caveat left unwritten but certainly lived out loud for the whole block to see: American assimilation is possible in one quick generation, you just have to sell out the more beset "minority" beneath you on the totem pole, even though there's no fucking way any Chinese-American can be a fucking minority, when China and the Americas are this fucking big. 

Nice try, though. "Kunta-Kente"**, you're my straight-up superhero, man! Don't ever change, bro, no matter how hard they grind you down. You're beautiful to me, baby. "Papa" this! We did, you know that, right? We really did show that small town what living is all about, be it with this century's immigrants or the very next ones. Still have your passport with your little boy Visa photo? That shit's adorable, kid, even if you did have a rough go of coming and going whilst traveling back and forth from "The Motherland", because someone (ahem, you know who) fluffed your fucking birth date on your kiddie passport, to give you a ride every time you exited and entered the country of your own free will. Who would do that to their kid going into a new country, you know? We do! Don't change a thing, baby. You're perfect just the way G-d made you to be. Amen to you, brother. This one's for you and yours today, baby. We're all red on the inside: http://taylorseafood.co.uk/ and http://www.taylorfoods.co.uk/

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=welfare+burger

* http://www.onlythebible.com/Poems/Footprints-in-the-Sand-Poem.html

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

History 3x

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma,_Alabama

History often repeats itself, which is exactly what my father said to me over and over again. He's learning impaired (Dyslexia), so he's always liked plaques, signs, homey knitted samplers with folksy sayings, mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers...anything that reminds him what life should be like. It's annoying, but I also remember almost everything he told me, because he's repeated it so often, too, which is irksome at times. I prefer free-form originality and evolutionary progression; he likes the solidity of comfort and the sentimentality of old routines. 

We both like productivity and early mornings when no one else is around, which is why the appearance of hipsters here in Rockland County concerns me so much: if shitheads paid by their companies to relocate to trendy neighborhoods can't afford the city anymore, we're all doomed within the tri-state area, and these are not New Yorkers you mix with. They want conformity and trends; not newness and culture. They are not from here.

It was with this sense of repetition that I saw the events in Tennessee unfold on the evening news for awhile, acting like hicks in these isolated pockets always seem to do; seemingly armed with "the truth" and a mostly white local government armed to the teeth to back her outrageous sense of entitlement. In one of the early scenes from "Selma", Oprah Winfrey's character goes to the county courthouse to register as a voter, a fairly new federal right granted to African-American citizens. She's given a verbal test that even a seasoned historian would fail, a test that does nothing to dim her spirit. That's what hard-won rights granted to free people tend to do.

Armed with the truth, she gathers her community to protest in response to this one illegal act that defies logic, only the expression of a deeply ingrained ignorance that typically signifies inbred ignorance so entrenched, it is nothing short of violent, which is also point of the part. How do you break into the minds of a better, stronger people who use the the very effective tool of passive resistance as a societal tool to create change? You use anger and hatred against them, whipping folks up into a massive mob mentality with no reason or boundaries. That's what I saw on national television: some ugly redneck denying people their civil right to marry, and you must know by now how that goes down with me. It doesn't.

I was reminded of another historical event that affected me greatly; the story of New Yorker Solomon Northup's* nasty capture and subsequent sale south of the Mason-Dixon line, because it was once legal there to buy and sell humans like they're animals. And what can you do to property? Anything you g-ddamn want, which is what a bunch of fucked up retards did, to cover up the fact that they couldn't labor under a hot sun (like an African can), or do it efficiently (like poor folk always do), or turn a profit on a land they emigrated to from another land (like every American immigrant before them has had to do). There's no talking to people that insane.

It's not that the people of the north were always so righteous. Solomon took his name from the upstate farmer who set him free. He was also the gentleman who came looking for him when word got back to his hometown and family that he'd been illegally tricked into capture, like any gentleman worth his weight in salt would. After that, it was on. The Northups convinced Solomon to write down his true account the year he returned home, while it was still fresh in his mind, but also as part of his testimony in a legal proceeding that went on for years, transcending state boundaries, because that's the mindset of the truly righteous in this world: we don't ever give up, and we don't ever give in.

We became their willing collaborators, constructing the Underground Railroad** to help families on their road to freedom, and we fought a bloody Civil War on the basis of those freedoms, rights that are the legal right for every free American citizen, which we will do again, so it is in this vein that I will write this one more time to you, Southerner: Don't tread on me. Ever. Bitch.

Your homework, fuck-up:
*    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Northup
**  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad

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

The law, shithead:  

http://cnn.it/1eM7m6g

Christmas Movie

Two little Christmas trees: one for Bernard, and one for me (2014).

After my father left his family for points west, seeking fame and fortune with a new model wife that was (and is) his secretary, we were left to our own devices, and we knew that, because our mom repeatedly told us so. Mommie Dearest wasn't just some histrionic soap opera of a movie that appealed to gay men; we lived its' truth each and every day. Not long after my father left with his money, borrowing against the home we lived in, we almost immediately fell onto hard times financially, which was the exact revenge he was looking to put upon our heads, as a price for his supposed long term suffering. It was cruel, childish, spiteful, and mean, which was exactly what he wanted, because he wanted us to feel the same hurt he felt as the child of alcoholics, except this hurt he would deliver by alternating giving and then withdrawing money from us, giving him the power to hurt us and then publicly pretend to heal us whole with his generosity, as he saw fit: a cheap phony publicity stunt that fooled no one, and it still doesn't.

Suffice to say, my mother began having nervous breakdowns, which was the burden he wanted to fall on us, like reigning blows down upon our young heads, except this wasn't something he and my mom could get caught for by the local child protective services. It was cleverly vicious, secretive, and mean, which again, was the whole point: to make us feel that, whenever he wanted to, he could bring a sharp blade down upon our necks to hurt us from afar, if he so choose, for whatever reasons he saw fit, so that we could never win and "beat" him, sick as that is. And so began his pattern of control with money as a resource, always keeping us needy and afraid, the exact opposite of the comfort a father is supposed to provide for his children, so that we would forever relive the horrors of his childhood over and over again, using my mother's mental illness as the delivery mechanism he employed through covert manipulation. It became a simple equation: squeeze her = hurt us. Easy. He would continue to do that forever until his death that would reach to extend long after he was gone, until I finally put a stop to it, but more on that story some other day. His sneaky nasty behavior would be done quickly, shakily, and hastily, like that of a furtive sidelong glance over the shoulder, looking for witnesses to his crimes. He refused health care for his mental problems, again, to cause suffering through his arrogance and spite, like the mean drunks who so harassed and terrified him in his youth.

And so, my mother told us during one very histrionic episode, when my young teenage brother and I tried in vain to console her, we said we would chip in for all our household expenses by financially carrying our own weight, which we already did through household chores in excess, supposedly to "earn" our "allowance", but really, we kept the entire house going through our continued labors. In retaliation for the gift of offering her our services readily, (My brother: "Come on, Mom. It won't be that bad. We'll get jobs and chip in. It'll be okay."), my mother burst into childish angry tears, turning bright red, bringing forth the veins on her forehead, horribly contorting her features into a wrathful mask of hate, and spitting out curses at me when I backed him up. "YOU STUPID BITCH!" she screamed as she turned on me, "You don't get it!! We're broke!", slamming her bedroom door in both of our freshly frightened faces. My brother and I stood in mute horror for a moment, in the hallway outside her shut door, before slowly and quietly walking back to our rooms alone, to sit in quiet contemplation of our lives and this new found responsibility as heads of household. I was just 14 years old, and my brother 15. "What are we going to do?" I softly asked him. "I don't know. I guess we have to find jobs this weekend." I wearily sat down on my small twin bed, keeping my door slightly ajar so my Irish twin could see me and come talk to me, if he so chose. Oh. Yes. That. Work.

We had worked on and off since childhood, with our kiddie elementary school work permits for paper routes, but this was different. If we didn't figure it out, we could die, and neither of us really wanted that. We wanted to live. I began my official work history with Social Security services at age 15, as did my brother, which found me and my mother alone one Christmas day, because he had to go to work. You see, for many Jews in New York, Christmas is just another inconvenience of closed shopping malls and restaurants. Their holiday fare eventually became Chinese food, after discovering their shared non-Christian status in the "Open" sign glowing brightly in the window of the local Chinese restaurant in their neighborhood, such is the close proximity that is our vast Melting Pot in New York City, thus beginning their own New World tradition. 

But, that still left us to tend to them here in Rockland County, just as we tended to ourselves and every other person around us who needs us, and there were legions who sought us out, even back then, tender and young as we were as new parents, but we did do it, by the grace of G-d's gifts bestowed upon us, the least of which are our extraordinary patience, incredible work ethic, kind and generous compassion and empathy, with a deep sensitivity and regard for the suffering of others. I still thank G-d for keeping those qualities intact in us, especially in the soft bright blues eyes of a young boy who went to work for the local Jewish people here in our home county, as a clerk in a movie theater one rainy afternoon, returning home with a huge bag of popcorn to surprise us with, when we let out a sigh of relief at his safe return home, finally beginning our true Christmas Day together as a family, a holiday we could only start after his labors ended, alone and derided by the very people who understood our suffering the least. 
They mocked him for being slow behind the food counter (because he was working alone on a holiday, as a teenage movie theater manager), or if he got their order mixed up due to the sheer volume of their derisively snorted requests, or because he didn't take their money fast enough for their tickets, mocking him when he swept up the aisles of the theater for having the decency to tend to them on his holiday, while they rested in comfortable darkness to watch some banal movie onscreen, like a zoned-out legion of half dead zombies.

I want you to think of him this holiday, when you belligerently complain about the delayed or postponed or cancelled release of some stupid ass-kissing buddy comedy that you've been so "cruelly" deprived of this year. You see the pure face of a beautiful blue-eyed boy in a dark theater on a dark Christmas morning opening some mall theater alone, as I had to see him, with tears in his eyes, cleaning up the garbage that you threw at him when he walked past you slowly up the aisle to do yet another task for you, like clean the bathroom you fouled up with your mess of mocking graffiti and strewn toilet paper, mixed with piss and vomit and shit and stink and mess. You think about that this year instead, and May G-d have mercy on your soul for your cruelty, selfishness, false pride, and injustice. May G-d help you during His Final Judgement when He weighs your sins in front of you one by one, when you cannot turn away from them. May G-d be with you then. 

Amen to you on this Christmas in the year of Our Lord, 2014.  Amen to you, with my blessings for a safe, healthy, happy holiday.