The morning conversations on the porch turn into all-day conversations. In a matter of days I knew all the tenants. Turns out they aren’t so bad. Sure, Lenny likes prostitutes, Ted is a drunkard, Camila is a tweaker, Ron is a burnout, Maria is a manic depressive, JJ’s brain is permanently fried, and Diego’s brain never worked well to begin with, but these people were good company. We all have our weaknesses.
Out on the porch steps, California’s sun could work its soothing magic and dispel any of the soul’s melancholy. The porch became a therapeutic escape from dwelling on my dreadful situation. The pulverizing grip and piercing bite of Hopelessness was kept at bay by relaxing conversations with the nearly homeless.
I’m relaxing in a hammock that I bought yesterday after I sold the last of my designer clothes. The porch is big enough for a couple hammocks and a few lawn chairs. The stairs leading up to the porch serve as overflow seating. The sun is setting and the thermometer in the door jamb says it’s eighty-one degrees. I’ve got a pack of cigarettes and a coke within arm’s reach. A freshly lit Marlboro is pinched between my lips.
Ted is telling a story about his brother, Tino.
“So anyway, Tino’s kid—I ain’t remember the kid’s name, he’s like a ten year old—Tino’s kid come runnin’ into his room at like ten o’clock at night, right? And Tino’s drillin’ his girl—doggy style, I think, haha—so he yells at the kid to get lost. Haha, well the kid, says, ’Dad, I just heard the doggy door open, but Ralf’—that’s their dog’s name, he’s a huge bullmastiff and his doggy door is big enough for a full grown robber to crawl through—‘Ralf,’ the kid says, ‘was sittin’ on the couch next to me.’ So Tino says ’k, I’ll deal with it, wait outside the door,’ and finishes fuckin’ his girl! Hahaha, took him like two or three minutes. Haha and he does this knowin’ that a robber might be in his spot. And Tino’s got his son and a daughter livin’ with him, right? So after Tino blows his load he pulls on some clothes. He tells the philly to stay in the bed and pulls his shotgun out of the closet.
“Well, for reasons I ain’t been able to figure out, Tino always dry fires his shot gun to make double sure it ain’t loaded. Points it at the ground and dry fires it. He just plans on scarin’ the intruder, not blowin’ his head off. Seems strange to me that you’d have a shotgun and not use it like God intended it to be used.”
“Right,” JJ cut in, “I saw on 60 Minutes once that if you’re gonna point a gun at somebody you gotta be ready to use it. Or that you gotta use it. Yeah, that you only point a gun at somebody if you’re surely gonna shoot ’em.”
“Cops say that too,” Maria adds.
“Yeah, I dunno,” Ted says, “but either way it’s just somethin’ he does. So, hahah, oh God, so he cocks his shotgun, steps out into the hall, and pulls the trigger. BLAM! Hahaha, I kid you not, he fuckin’ shot straight through the ceiling! Hahaha, he had left it loaded from the last time he went skeet shooting. Didn’t even check the chamber before pulling the trigger!”
At this point we’re all rocking in laughter. Ted’s story is funny enough, but when he yelled “BLAM!” JJ jumped so high he almost fell off the stairs. Then he had Sprite coming out of his nose from laughing so hard.
“Hahaha, second time that night he blew his load! Haha, but that ain’t it, that ain’t it,” Ted insists. “So he looks up at this hole he just blasted in his ceiling and realizes he’s right under his daughter’s room. So he drops the gun and runs up the stairs. Not even thinkin’. At this point his dog is losin’ its shit. Just barkin’ up a goddamn storm. Loud, big barks too. I mean this thing is huge. So, he gets upstairs and sees that he missed his daughter by several feet, but she’s ballin’, of course, ya know she’s like only four or five years old. Tino picks her up and he’s sayin’ like, ‘Hey, hey, it’s okay, calm down, it was just a bang is all,’ and he’s lookin’ around at the damage he’s caused to his place, right? And he’s thinkin’, damn, I’ma get evicted for sure. Haha, well, he looks through the hole in the floor and can see down into the hallway where he fired from. But he ain’t see no shotgun! It’s gone! And keep in mind, his son just told him that somebody broke into the house. So he takes his daughter into the bathroom and lays her in the tub, tells her to stay put, and—”
“Puts her in the tub?” Ron asks.
“Yeah, they’re metal,” Ted says.
“Oh, in case he shoots at her again? Hahaha.”
“Haha, yeah, or in case anybody else starts shootin’.”
Camila adds, “Ya know, they say to get into your bathtub if there is a tornado or somethin’ like that.”
“Camila, damn,” Ron says. “When was the last time you saw a fuckin’ tornado in Los Angeles.”
“Well, I was just givin’ an example. Tornados, earthquakes, forest fires. Ya know, whatever catastrophe is goin’ on, they say you’re supposed to get in the bathtub. ‘Cause it’s metal.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” JJ asks after realizing that we only have half-baths with showers in the Merry-Go-House.
“We fend for ourselves, like we always been doin’,” Ron answers.
“Don’t matter,” Ted says, “anyways, puts his daughter in the tub and tells her to stay put. Then starts creepin’ down the stairs to see where his son is. When he gets to the bottom of the stairs he hears some rustling in his kitchen. And that’s where the dog door is. The dog is still barkin’ somethin’ fierce in the living room, which is next to the kitchen, so Tino’s thinkin’ that the dog’s probably got the robber pinned to a corner or somthin’, just waitin’ for backup. Tino makes his way down the hall, cautiously and all, ya know, and peaks around the corner into the living room. And... BLAM!”
JJ jumps back and hits his head on one of the porch pillars. Glowing ash falls from his cigarette and onto his shirt.
“Hahah, fuckin’ wall next to him explodes and he falls to the ground. BLAM! Again! This time the floor in front of his face explodes like a land mine just went off. Then there’s the sound of a different gun goin’ off, fuckin’ POW, POW, POW, POW, POW! He’s gettin’ showered in drywall and paint and glass and all sorts of shit. BLAM! A third time! He manages to slide back behind the wall in his hallway and crawls out the front door. His ears are ringin’ and he can’t see shit because he got drywall and dust in his eyes.”
“Wait,” Camila asks, “he’s just leavin’ his family in the house with the robber?”
“Ha, well, no. He’s just tryina collect himself. I mean the guy was just takin’ heavy fire, ya know? Can’t help his family much if he’s pumped full of birdshot. So he crawls out onto his porch and is immediately tackled to the ground. His face is shoved into his porch so hard he gets a black eye. He arm is bent back around his back and he’s got like three guys sittin’ on him. They’re yellin’ shit at him but he can’t hear anything because of the shotgun blasts. Haha, ears are still ringin’. They cuff him—so now he’s realizin’ these must be cops, probably called by his neighbors—and they drag him off his porch, down his stairs, and out to his sidewalk, then just drop him there. Right on his face. Tino fuckin’ loses two teeth on the sidewalk right then.
“So, what had happened was, his philly panicked when Tino shot through the hallway ceiling. She didn’t know it was him that was shooting because he pulled the door shut behind him. Well she rolled off the bed and grabbed a 9mm revolver that Tino keeps under his mattress. She curled up in the corner of the room and had the revolver trained on the door. Well Tino’s room is right next to the kitchen and the living room, so she’s right in the middle of all this chaos. When the second shotgun blast ripped through the corner of the wall Tino was peeks around, that blasted right through the room Tino’s girl was crouched in. So she panicked and emptied the revolver into the wall! Hahaha, just fuckin’ opened fire into the wall that Tino was standing on the other side of. POW, POW, POW, POW, POW! If he wouldn’ta hit the deck he’d a been Swiss cheese! Hahaha! So, oh God, hahaha, so the police storm the place in full SWAT gear. They kick down Ti
no’s bedroom door and almost smoke his girl because she’s pointing this empty revolver at them. How she didn’t get smoked, I just do not know.”
“Was she white?” JJ asks.
“Um, yeah, Tino’s got a Colombian girl... but I don’t think... actually, yeah, that’s probably it, now that you mention it. She’s pretty light skinned.”
“So wait, what about the kids?” Camila asks.
“Jesus, hold on, the story ain’t over,” Ted says. He had paused to replace his cigarette. “So SWAT goes into the livin’ room after Tino’s room and find a loudass barking dog and the ten-year-old kid hidin’ behind him. And next to the ten year old? Hahah, the fuckin’ shotgun! The kid was in the livin’ room when Tino shot through the ceiling and looked around the corner when he heard footsteps running upstairs. He saw the shotgun on the ground and brought it back to the couch to protect himself. When Tino came back downstairs, the kid didn’t recognize him because he was covered in dust from the first shot he fired into the ceiling. So the kid just opened fire. Hahaha, just about blew his pops to high heaven! Ahahaha!”
“So, did they catch the robber?” I ask.
“Oh! Haha, yeah, ha, that’s the best part. So they comb the bullet-ridden house lookin’ for the culprit that started this whole mess, and they ain’t seein’ nobody. They all scratchin’ they heads thinkin’ the kid made it all up when, I kid you not, one of the officers pulls a racoon out of the sink! Ahahaha!”
“Wait, what?” Ron asks.
“A racoon, ya know?”
“Yeah, I know what a racoon is, but why was a racoon in the sink?”
“Because, Ron,” Camila answers, “the racoon was what went through the doggy door. The kid just heard the door flap but didn’t see that it was just a racoon that came in.”
“Ooooooohhh, ahaha. Oh man, that is good, hahaha.” Ron holds his sides and bounces up and down when he laughs. It looks cartoonish. “So did they arrest him?”
“Ha! The racoon?” Ted asks.
Everybody on the porch is beside themselves in uncontrollable laughter. Camila accidentally spits her cigarette out, Diego spills his Kool-Aid, JJ is back to sneezing Sprite and sliding down the stairs. Kay comes out after a few minutes to make sure everything is okay (she lives in the house with us). Soon she’s laughing too and she doesn’t even know why. The whole scene is probably enough to send anybody watching into fits of laughter. The laughter dies out after a few resurgences, then Ted ties up the loose end.
“No, no Ron, they didn’t arrest the racoon or anybody else. In fact, Tino sued the city for $250,000 for police brutality.”
Diego then tells a story about a hunting trip gone awry, and Camila follows it with one about her sister accidently shooting herself in the face with mace. Then we get into a philosophical discussion about gun control.
At the end of the night Kay tells us we better get to bed. Some of the tenants call her “mom.” She tells us that she doesn’t want to get any noise complaints, so “let’s hit the sack.”
When I latch the deadbolt and turn around to the room I’m staying in, it’s as if Hopelessness itself is sitting on the mattress. “Quite the night you had out there,” I thought it said, “welcome back to the room that you live in. To the life that you’re leading. To the mess you’ve made. So, I guess this is you now, huh?”
“This ain’t me,” I mumble to myself.
“Ain’t? Boy, really getting cozy with the locals for not being you. Either way, sure seems like you’re you, but maybe it’s worse than that.” Hopelessness sighs.
“I’m wealthy and influential. Bad luck doesn’t change a person.”
“But does good luck?”
“Everything I’ve accomplished has been the result of hard work, luck is just opportunity meeting preparation. I prepared myself and created the opportunity. I’m doing the same now. Wait and see.”
“I will wait. And I will see.”
I put on headphones and turn up the volume loud enough to where I can’t hear myself think. My thoughts were turning toxic, I had to drown them out.
I make the first month’s rent, barely. Month two I’m twenty dollars short, but Kay lets it slide on account of my good behavior. Humiliated, I apply for a few odd jobs within walking distance of the Merry-Go-House, but they won’t hire a convicted felon. An industrial linen cleaning company gave me a job, but I fail the first two random drug tests and miss a day of work, so they fire me. The California Employment Development Department denies my claim for unemployment. I have enough pills to make half of rent, but I have to sell my laptop to cover the other half. I hardly have enough for cigarettes.
Most the tenants at the Merry-Go-House have their bills paid by the government. They get Supplemental Security Income on account of their age or some mental or physical disability that “prevents them from working.” That’s what I need to get into. They always have enough to pay rent, buy tobacco and food, and have enough left over to buy a few lottery tickets. I ask JJ to put me in touch with whoever it is in the government that provides the benefits. JJ has no idea what I’m talking about. So I ask Kay.
Kay lets me use her computer and shows me how to apply online. Since I’m not over 65 or blind, I will have to have a “disability.” My bad back will probably count. The other requirements are easy to meet: little to no income and few resources, value of the things owned less than $2,000, and citizenship. I should be a shoo-in. The paperwork seems endless. I’m in Kay’s office for a few hours a day clicking through forms and answering questions. After I finish, a week later I get an email confirming receipt of my application, and am told that the application process may take up to six months. Six months. For money I needed now. I call the number included in the email (for my “local Social Security Office”) and tell them that I need my money now. They tell me they understand, and transfer me to the county social security agency, which they say is in a better position to provide immediate assistance.
The county social security agency tells me they understand. For the most immediate assistance, all I need to do is come down to their office with my birth certificate or social security card, documentation of my medical condition (including names of doctors, hospitals, and clinics, results of medical tests, and proof of how the condition affects my daily life), documentation of my income (including a list of the types of jobs I’ve had over the past fifteen years and copies of tax records or W-2 forms), and documentation of my assets (must include bank statements). Kay helped me get as much of this together as we could find online and in my email inbox. All we can come up with is my dismal bank statement. Severely overdrawn. I also have my social security card and prescriptions. With that documentation, Kay gives me a ride to the county social security agency.
The agency is in a nice building, relative to other government buildings. But it still looks, smells, and sounds like the DMV. I tell Kay I’ll call her when I’m done. I take a number and wait. They make me wait for a DMV amount of time, then call my number. I’m led to a desk with a plate-glass partition and am asked for my name and documentation. I slide my documents through a slot in the bottom of the window, and tell the social worker (I assume that’s what she is) that I already filled out an online application, but that I was told to come here for emergency assistance. She nods without taking her sleepy eyes from her computer. She asks me for the rest of my documentation, and I tell her that’s everything I have.
She asks me to wait one second and walks away. Many, many seconds later, she returns with pamphlets in her hands. She explains to me that since I am able to work, I will not receive any emergency assistance, but that my application for SSI benefits is still being reviewed (look for a letter in three to six months). I stop her right there and tell her that I am unable to work. My back, I say. She nods and looks down at the booklets in her hands. These are other ways you can receive assistance. CalFresh (like food stamps) and Medi-Cal (this can help you with your medical expenses). Additionally, she continues, here is information on food
kitchens in your area, and shelters if you need somewhere to stay.
Shelters? I ask the government to help me out, just a little bit, and they give me booklets on shelters in my area? I tell the social worker I’m not standing for this bullshit and she tells me I’ll need to lower my voice or be removed by security. I tell her she’s a terrible, heartless social worker and that I just need some help. Just a thousand a month. That’s all I need. Just give me a thousand a month.
A tall gentleman in black clothing is then standing next to me. He looks down at me and says it’s time to go. I protest by staying seated, and he wraps his iron hand around my upper arm and lifts me out of my chair. With his other hand he picks up the booklets and my documentation that the social worker slid under the partition. He walks me out of the building and hands me my papers. He smiles the whole time. Like he lives for hurting people who need help. Sadist.
Kay picks me up and apologizes for being late. She’s sad to hear things didn’t go well in there. Probably because it means that I might miss rent soon, and then she’ll be making less money. I ask her to stop by the gas station on the way home so I can buy a lottery ticket and cigarettes. I’m practically begging God to just give me a break, maybe another $5,000 win. Something small is better than nothing. But, please, God, let this ticket be a winner.
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