Last blog post, as you may recall, we left our hero so beyond fucked he couldn’t even hitchhike back. His partner had been forced to sign a child support order against him. He had no money because he was tricked into giving up his unemployment benefits and was still waiting to be called back to work. Two months of unrelenting stress had triggered ADHD symptoms he didn’t know he had. He couldn’t relax or stop being angry for a moment. Remember, he had a jail sentence hanging over his head. And, worse of all, he had nowhere to go but his bat shit crazy parents.
Somebody with more sense than me would have dashed across the river into Pennsylvania. Or I could have hightailed it to Manhattan. That’s what my partner’s ex-husband did, and he paid all of $700 in child support in fifteen years because it was too much of a pain to collect from him. They picked on me because I was low-hanging fruit. Besides, my partner’s ex-husband never cost a Phillipsburg city council member half a million dollars in repairs and fines.
I stuck around because I would be damned if I was going to let those bastards in Section 8 and Welfare run me off. So I decided to go full Larry Marra on their asses. In retrospect, that was the decision that changed my life. Never again would I go into a situation where the state would have that kind of control over me.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but Welfare managed to get in my skull. I was furious at my partner for signing that child support order. I vented like crazy when I called my parents, and then I was leaving my partner forever.
My resolve shattered when I got back and saw the grin on my mother’s face. She reminded me of the Irish Goddess of Battle and Death. Maybe it was the green in her complexion. Still, I could easily picture her in the middle of a battlefield surrounded by crows feeding on corpses. Mom was sympathetic and assured me I could stay for free until my job started and pay the back rent in installments. And I wasn’t to worry about a thing; she would devise the perfect plan to get custody of my son.
Then my father mentioned the child support order and that I had ten days to pay $200 or end up in jail. You should have seen Mom’s grin vanish! She went from goddess triumphant to foiled madwoman in seconds. Her fists balled up, and she stamped in a fury. She resolved that we would have to gain control of the baby immediately.
“No,” I said. I was angry at my partner, but it was only on the surface. There was no way in hell I was going to demand custody. Not only would it have been devastatingly cruel to my partner, but there was no way in hell I would hand my son over to those lunatics.
Something inside me snapped, and I wasn’t willing to humor them anymore. There were 10,000 reasons why I wasn’t going to go for custody; I chose the one that best suited my purpose. “I don’t have a job, and I’m camping in your living room. There isn’t a judge in hell who would award me custody.”
Mom’s grin came back, “That’s easy to get around,” she said with a laugh. “Your father and I will sue for temporary custody until you get on your feet. So I’ll get the AFDC, and we can buy a house together.”
You see? A sane person would have seen my point and table the matter. But not Mom. She believed she was entitled to anything she wanted and expected the world to provide it to her. And god help the world, and anybody around her, when she didn’t get it. This was why I didn’t just come out and tell her I would not demand custody. She might have gotten violent and started throwing things.
I looked around the living room like I was about to give a presentation and stared at my father. “You know that the court will do a background check?” I asked with a bit of a chuckle.
Ten years ago, Dad had been the accountant for a meat packing plant that shipped cocaine with the sausages. He pleaded insanity and locked himself in a funny farm for a few months. He couldn’t have passed an SPCA background check. And they both knew it.
The real world was their kryptonite, and I dumped a pocketful of reality on their laps. Dad had the grace to look slightly embarrassed and shrugged at Mom. Mom looked at him like he was going to pay for it again. Then she slunk off to her room, muttering something about me enjoying prison life. And my stomach grew cold. From that moment on, I stopped thinking about them as “Mom and Dad” and started referring to them by their first names.
They did one good thing for me. I didn’t have enough room in my head to be angry at them; the City of Phillipsburg and Warren County, and my partner and I stopped being mad at them before I went to bed that night. There was an awkwardness between us due to the child support order. But we talked that out as well as other things. But we both had the willingness to work them out. But I never told my parents, and I didn’t even tell Bob and Virginia when I moved back in with my family.
Bob and Virginia gave me a lot of extra motivation to beat that child support charge. I didn’t want to ask them for help. Virginia had a few thousand dollars stashed in the purses piled on the bottom of her closet. But she wouldn’t lend me any unless I agreed to sue for custody. So I went to the library and studied. For the first time, I learned about my enemy instead of blindly reacting. Larry would have been proud of the way I methodically researched the problem.
One of the most important lessons I learned from Larry is that everything you need to know is in the public domain. All you have to do is ask for it. So I went to the friendly references librarian and asked her if the library had a copy of the County Welfare Social Worker’s handbook. And, of course, they had a copy because it is required by law.
It only took an hour before I caught Warren County Welfare on several, shall we say, irregularities. The biggest whopper was we were never offered an appeal. Had we made an immediate appeal, they would have had to reinstate us immediately. We were never provided the form. I was not receiving unemployment when I signed for county welfare. They had no legal reason to terminate us. The most damning of all is I was homeless. Back then, homelessness was a defense against child support. That changed under Clinton, but I’m getting ahead of the story.
At that point, I had grounds for all sorts of appeals, but not enough to keep myself out of jail. Even if I had the $95 to file my appeal, it would still not prevent the arrest order from being executed. The warrant was already ordered. I was essentially turning myself in for arrest.
I learned other things about Welfare and child support I never knew before. For instance, none of the money ever goes to the child. The money garnished from parents goes into the general appropriations fund. It is used for office supplies, furniture, company cars, etc. And as enlightening as all that was, it wasn’t pertinent to my goals. So I went to study the next enemy, child support. I only found a few cryptic references to them in the welfare handbook, so I started looking elsewhere.
Three days later, I wasn’t anywhere closer to my goal. The Child Support Unit was like god. Everybody claimed they existed, but nobody could define them. Reagan’s Child Support Act mandated that every county welfare office have a child support unit. Still, there was no instruction on how it was organized or to who it was responsible. There was absolutely no accountability on the federal level. After a few more red-eyed hours, I discovered that there was no state oversight. Every county child support unit was an entity unto itself and not beholden to anybody for their actions.
Another two days were spent double-checking my work because I couldn’t believe what I had read. Welfare and Child Support were two different entities. And even if I could overturn Welfare’s child support order, the child support unit was obligated to arrest me until they received the proper notice from Welfare. I was utterly screwed. My only hope was to demand a blood test. Under those circumstances, the hearing officer would have to give me an extra thirty days under the condition of my immediate compliance.
A friend suggested that I let them put me in jail. His name was Ronnie, and I met him in High School. He claimed his cousin had the same welfare and child support problems I was suffering. His court-appointed attorney filed the appeal, and his cousin was out in less than a month. He didn’t seem to understand my reluctance to go to jail. Ronnie was black and unjust incarceration was a part of his life like the common cold.
I was convinced I was going to jail. Knowing that I might get a lawyer in jail was cold comfort.
I had rebuffed all of Virginia’s tries at tempting me to sell my son for my freedom, and she hadn’t even poked her head out to say goodbye. Then Bob spent the whole trip telling me what a shit parent my partner was and how it was in my son’s best interests to have them help raise him.
Bob wasn’t happy to see my partner waiting for me with the kids. He warned me not to stay away from them. He said it was a mistake, but the kids were already running to greet me. Then my partner gave me the two hundred dollars I needed to stay out of jail. They had sold our refrigerator for seven hundred dollars. They slipped me the balance after the hearing so my mother wouldn’t know I had it. Now you know why my partner and I are still together after 39 years. I would have to be brain-damaged to leave a person like that.
The hearing officer was my high school American history teacher to make life more surreal! There was no mistaking him. There couldn’t be two people who looked like Charles Laughton crossed with a frog.
Too bad my old history teacher wasn’t wearing a kangaroo suit. It would have given a spark of humor to what was essentially depressing bullshit. I was given two choices, pay two hundred dollars or go to jail. No arguments. I wasn’t even provided the courtesy of a blood test. So following the teachings of Larry, I requested to speak for the record. My least favorite teacher of all time gave me permission, and I said I was paying under protest because I was homeless at the time of the order. I then cited the regulation and its reference number, all proper. And pulled out the two hundred dollars for the bailiff.
Draw Charles Laughton as a frog with a shocked expression, which was close to the look on that old bastard’s face. I had just set up an appeal as neatly as an attorney, and he fell for it. He glowered at me as I paid the bailiff, and he hit the gavel and gave me another ten days to become current on my child support. My partner supplied the money for that, and I left Belvidere with over three hundred dollars my parents never found out about. I filed my appeal before returning to the car so Bob could drive me home.
I can still picture Ronnie pointing at me and saying, “You could have saved your woman that money if you went to jail.” He may have been right, or he may have been wrong, but I don’t think I would have gotten a fair deal from Warren County had I gone to jail.
Virginia wasn’t pleased to learn about my freedom, nor was she happy about who was responsible. I was verbally abused for about ten minutes when she found out. At that point, I treated her like I used to treat other bullies and tuned her out. But then she went into rationalizing mode and decided my partner kept me out of jail out of guilt, and I was entitled to that money. And since I didn’t have to worry about prison anymore, I could spend more time researching how to get custody of THE BABY.
Once I avoided jail, I could focus on other important matters, such as a new job. The job I had was supposed to be a placeholder until I could find a good job, anyway. But the job situation in 1992 was just as bad as today. More people ran out of unemployment than actually found real jobs. Today, I wonder why more people haven’t figured out how the unemployment statistics are rigged. The increasing number of homeless families should really give people a clue.
Of course, I didn’t trust my parents to take messages for me. All prospective employers called my partner in the hotel room. I made it a point to call three times daily for my replies. I didn’t get any. But I haunted the unemployment offices and perused the classified ads constantly.
My primary purpose in life became avoiding Bob and Virginia at all costs. And when I had to be in their presence, I’d put on my Walkman and drown them out with The Who. And believe me, the shit got really crazy. Virginia was determined to get custody of “The Baby to the point where she got paranoid about it. She left her room to accuse me of being on my partner’s side instead of hers at random times. She frequently woke me up with that crap. I had to keep assuring her I was not planning on moving back in with my partner, even though I had to lie through my teeth.
As luck would have it, my job started a week before I found out about it. I had forgotten to give my manager the motel room number, and Virginia didn’t pass on the message. I just happened to pass the Allentown office while searching for a new job and saw the outfit was back together. I came home with a job that night.
The good thing was I was working a split shift. We were on the phones from nine to one in the afternoon. Then from five to nine in the evening. That meant I left the apartment before the gruesome twosome woke up, and they were in their respective rooms when I came home. The bad thing was I never got to see the kids or my partner. I had to satisfy myself with phone calls.
Another good thing was the half shift on Saturday. That was not only time and a half; it meant another morning when I didn’t have to wade through Virginia’s bullshit. Bob had pretty much retreated to his room and left me alone. But Virginia was still determined to gain custody of “THE BABY.” So I would take the greyhound to New York on Saturday Afternoons. Only I found fewer and fewer people to hang out with. The scene had moved forward without me. Most of my old friends had either moved on themselves, moved to California, died, or became megastars. It got to the point where I felt lonelier during my New York expeditions than I did back in the Lehigh Valley.
The best thing was I made more in commissions than I did on my hourly. And while this raised my child support payments by twenty bucks, my mother never found out about it. So my rent didn’t go up, and I still had a few dollars after expenses. Besides, working in that boiler room was the best thing to have happened to me after the emotional roller-coaster I survived. It was dirt easy work, and I ended the week with a half-decent paycheck.
It was also strangely comforting to be working with a bunch of guys who survived the same shit I did. All of them had child support horror stories. That included my friend Jules who couldn’t live with his family due to Lehigh County, Pennsylvania’s primitive welfare rules. Yet every Saturday, he’d stay at the office, have a beer, and then go to the park with his girlfriend and their three kids. Those guys taught me I had more in common with them than the middle-class pretensions my parents imposed on me.
Don’t think for one second that Mom had given up her opium dream of getting control of my son. I came home one night, and Virginia was waiting for me, and it wasn’t rent day. She was there to “warn” me that my father was going to report my partner as an unfit parent. Then Virginia told the biggest whopper of the evening. She said she tried to talk my father out of it.
Of course, I didn’t believe it. I knew my mother to be a habitual liar since grade school. In junior high, I noticed that they played good cop/bad cop on me when they wanted to get me to do something I didn’t want to do. Usually, Bob was the good cop begging me to calm my mother by doing whatever she said. But if they were being really sneaky, Virginia was the good cop.
Bob had a weird form of Munchhausen by proxy. He loved diagnosing my brother and me with strange ailments, which he treated by changing our diets. Thanks to him, I have an extreme reaction to lactose and other dietary-based disabilities. Bob wanted to diagnose and treat my stepson, but there was no way my partner would put up with that.
One Sunday, he and I ran down to Easton for something and had a surprise meeting with my partner and the kids. My mother-in-law had driven down from civilization and took them on an outing. Stepson had a bag of fudge and ate a piece right in front of my father, who had a meltdown over it.
It was his contention that my stepson had behavior problems due to diet. And he obsessed over that piece of candy for days! I suspect Virginia kept pressing his buttons until he worked up enough crazy to report my partner for letting their nine-year-old eat a piece of fudge.
I was still trying to get my head around the situation and devise a counter plan. At the same time, my mother jumped into a long rant about how my partner was an unfit parent. (I hope everybody is enjoying this irony because I wasn’t.) Then launched back into her favorite hallucination. I was going to sue for custody of “THE BABY” and get control of the AFDC. And we could all buy a house together.
Looking back at it, I think Virginia drove me into a psychotic episode. I should have been furiously angry, and I think Virginia was as unnerved by my calm as I was. I was on the other side of anger, where everything is as clear as crystal and violence is the solution to everything.
“He’s not calling DYFS,” I said, referring to the Department of Youth and Family Services.
“I don’t think I can stop him,” Virginia said, looking more green than usual. She had never seen me ice cold like that before. And I doubt anybody else ever has.
“Then I will beat the son of a bitch to death with a baseball bat,” I said, and I meant every word. And if I had a baseball bat, I’m not sure if I could have held back.
“What did you say?” my mother asked. She was scared. It’s totally out of character for me to threaten actual violence. I might jokingly threaten to slap somebody with a dead halibut or some other slapstick, but never real violence. And it took my mother to reduce me to it.
“I said I was going to beat him to death with a baseball bat,” I replied.
Bob chose that moment to enter the room. “Look, Bill, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and you have to agree that your ex isn’t a fit parent,” he said and stopped dead from the expression on my face.
“She’s been seeing a psychologist,” said my mother, the bipolar who didn’t take her medicine. I silenced her with a look.
“Dad, if you even think about calling DYFS, I’m going to beat you to death with a baseball bat,” I said.
He grinned at me like I was joking. “I am dead serious,” I told them. “Now, if you will excuse me, I’m heading out to find somewhere else to stay.”
They stared at me as if I grew a second head or something. “But what about the $60 a week?” my mother asked. They were spending that money on necessities since my father had refused to do much tax work since I moved in.
I got out my backpack and started stuffing my few changes of clothes into it. Virginia unfroze and started explaining how this was a huge misunderstanding. I let her talk me into staying because I was hungry and wanted my dinner.
Knowing them as well or better than they knew me, I called DYFS on Monday. I explained the situation, including Bob and Virginia’s diagnosis. The woman I spoke to was quite sympathetic and assured me I wasn’t the only person with crazy parents. While I appreciate her support, I don’t think many parents were quite as batshit crazy as mine. They were only inches from being Turpins.
Bob and Virginia left me alone for a few days. Then they tried to ratpack me. When they couldn’t amuse themselves through the art of manipulation, they always went with brute force bullying. They were yelling at me that I had to sue for custody of “THE BABY” because it was the best thing for the kids. Especially if my stepson went into foster care.
“No,” I said before they even got halfway started. Then I looked my mother straight in the eye and said, “that AFDC is there to take care of my son’s needs, not yours. You have no right to it, and you damned well know it. Now lay off; I had a long shift.”
Believe it or not, they stopped. I had a wonderful week where my parents avoided me as assiduously as I stayed away from them. It was an enjoyable time. Not only that, but we got good news. My partner and kids got a new place to live, The Blair House Apartments in Belvidere.
And on top of that, my mother-in-law managed to scare up a car. The problem was my partner was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to join them. Please note, this was not County Welfare’s orders, nor was it County Section 8. It was the apartment manager who made that decision. But we had been subjected to so many weird rules and rulings we believed it.
They moved into the new apartment at the beginning of June, and I wasn’t due for my child support appeal until September. And we didn’t learn the apartment manager had been bullshitting us until the hearing. So I spent three and a half months in the Multiverse of Madness that I didn’t have to. And a fun-filled three months they were.
The Traumatic 90s 