Tag: welfare

Further Blair House Dramas

Me in my kitchen at Blair House. The Deer-in-the-headlight expression is from my brother sneaking up on me with a camera.

What can be said about Blair House that hasn’t been told about any other slum? Except it was prettier. Blair House was a four-building garden apartment built sometime in the early 1950s. It sat on the top of a hill and was surrounded by trees. One summer, we were inundated by Scarlet Tanagers. These birds tended to avoid inhabited places, but the olive-green females were bopping around, too. There were also deer, rabbits, and our share of mice and rats.
The place was falling apart. The decorative pillars had rotted inside, becoming homes for wasps and those damned yellow jackets. Blair House was lousy with yellow jackets. Our air conditioner had been a condo for yellow jackets since before we moved in. I don’t remember ever using it. One day a neighbor took a swig of soda and swallowed a yellow jacket. The surgeons had to open him up to get it out. I don’t think he was the same since.
Inside wasn’t much better. The water pressure was so low we had to flush the toilet by pouring a bucket of water into the bowl. The bathroom had a nasty mold problem. I tried scrubbing the walls with chlorine, but it didn’t do any good. We had to live with it for over a year before the drywall got replaced. Our last Thanksgiving there was ruined because the oven broke while I was cooking a goose.
Blair House was privately owned by a rather nice but dotty fellow with a colostomy bag. He inherited the complex from his parents and turned it into section 8 housing for maximum financial security with minimum management and maintenance effort. But at least he sprang for an exterminator to rid us of wasps and yellow jackets when they grew too thick. And when I showed him the mold, he did fix the bathroom. But two years into our tenancy, it was sold to a bank, and yuppie vermin took over the ownership.
Our four years in Blair House were divided into two parts, before and after Bill Clinton. Poppa-Doc Bush was still president during part one. I moved in late September or early October of 1991. By my next birthday in November, the American voters chose Slick Willy Clinton to continue Reagan’s trickle-down policies. It was still your father’s poverty when I got there. Rents were increasing, but welfare, food stamps, AFDC, and Section 8 were still fully funded. I could afford out-of-pocket medical care if I really needed it. Or I could get treated in an emergency room for free.
I have a friend who keeps saying she never voted for Clinton because she knew he wasn’t a liberal. Maybe I could say the same thing if I lived somebody else’s life. If you’ve read “Countdown to Blair House,” you’d know I was up to my ass in alligators. Without evidence, I hoped Slick Willy would try to keep his promises and improve things. I even phone banked for him in the evenings. Did I ever get that wrong!
In my defense, I wasn’t the only person desperate enough to fall for Clinton’s shit. All my neighbors at Blair House believed it. Most of all, they loved the idea of universal health. There was the dizzying prospect of upward mobility without worrying about medical care. If people didn’t have to limit their incomes to stay on Medicaid, there wouldn’t be anything keeping them from looking for better jobs. Better jobs meant getting off Section 8 housing. It meant no more food stamps. Best of all, it meant no more social workers intruding into our lives.
Clinton’s campaign and election brought optimism to poor people, and that optimism embraced everybody at Blair House. Even the residents at the developmentally disabled group home were happy because everybody around them was happy. A few, like The Biker, didn’t care one way or another, but he was genuinely pleased to see the rest of us excited.
Blair House was a never-ending kaleidoscope of drama. Such as the newlywed couple who lived behind us. The husband was a farmhand, and the wife was a waitress. (Yes, there were still farmhands in Warren County back then.) His father had been a live-in farm laborer for over thirty years. The son took over the job and moved to Blair House. But the parents couldn’t adjust to life in Boca Raton and tried to move back to their old house, which had been turned into a grain shed. So they moved in with their son and daughter-in-law without notice. And They brought their Australian shepherd with them.
Nobody had any trouble with the dog except Manager. You see, the poor pooch was trained to herd sheep. And there weren’t any sheep in Blair House. So what’s an industrious canine to do but improvise? Since there were no sheep around, he decided to herd toddlers instead. I was alone in the living when our oldest came running in, yelling, “Dad, Dad, a dog’s holding my brother hostage!” Believe it or not, that was not the weirdest thing that ever came out of the kid’s mouth.
I followed him into the courtyard, and five toddlers, two or three cats, and the odd squirrel were standing in a knot under a big tree. And the dog circled them and stopped any of the cats from darting off. And if a child tried to leave, the dog would take the kid by the pant leg and gently pull him back. That was one of the funniest things I ever saw, and I wish I had taken a picture. The dog trotted up to me, tail wagging high and proud, just bursting to be praised for doing such a craftsman-like job. And I was all, “who’s the good boy?”
That mutt was the best thing that happened since the invention of the babysitter. A watchful four-footed nanny was the answer to a parent’s prayer. He was gentle, diligent, and loyal. His daddy, the retired farmhand, said god help the person who tried to hurt any of the kids or cats. And that was something I wanted to hear. We were getting reports of a suspicious van at the elementary school. That dog was worth his weight in diamonds!
Of course, Manager had to ruin it. I swear, if Jesus was bringing us all into heaven, she would find a way to ruin the moment. Manager came out having a tantrum over the “horrible” animal. Then she looked at me. My arms were crossed, and I tapped my foot. “There was no harm done,” I said quietly. So far, my partner and I were the only people who stood up to her, and she was getting scared of us. She stopped dead in mid-tirade while I stared her down.
Most of my neighbors had been cowed by years of pandering to social workers. They deferred to Manager because they assumed she had the power she claimed to have. But the winds were changing. I had been living in Blair House for nearly two years, and there wasn’t a damn thing Manager could do about it. People were learning she was not all-powerful. A couple of other parents even came outside to support the dog and weren’t backing down! Mothers were asking Manager not to be such an (in so many words.) bitch. It was turning into a rebellion Manager couldn’t win.
If she succeeded in making the old guy get rid of the dog, people would hate her more than ever, which could lead to a revolution. If she tried and failed, the revolution would happen immediately. People would start treating her like my partner, and I treated her. So Manager retreated while threatening reprisals if her son was ever tormented by the dog again. She pulled the kid away, who was crying for more doggy time. Did I mention how much I hated that woman?
I knew that Manager wouldn’t let the matter drop. She was a sneak, and you always had to watch out for the knife to the back. I expected her to call animal control behind our backs. So I worked to head that off. I helped the old guy get his dog vaccinated and licensed. That earned me brownie points with his son and daughter-in-law. They spent most of their free time looking for a new place to live.
I would have hated to see the old couple separated from their dog. They had a tough enough time adjusting to retirement. There was a herd of about a dozen sheep nearby, so I spoke to the owners, and as luck would have it, the owners needed a well-trained dog. So I got them together with the dog’s owner, and the pup’s life became a Loony-Toons script. Each morning he would leave the house and cut through the woods to herd sheep. After a hard day of bossing sheep, he would come home to dinner and tummy rubs from his humans. The old folks got to keep their doggy, and Manager was foiled again. It got to the point where my neighbors were coming to me with their Manager problems.
Too much energy was wasted on dealing with Manager’s antics. My partner made a hobby of foiling her. This would result in screaming matches where Manager would yell threats, and my partner would laugh in her face. I always used a more indirect method of foiling her, but if it did lead to an argument, I never raised my voice. I would smile and say, “go ahead; I have a lawyer on standby.” That was purely a bluff on my part, but it always sent her packing.
Not long after our second New Year at Blair House, we hit a deer. Our car was totaled. I was a prisoner at Blair House for nine entire months. That meant I had nine months of constant Manager drama. Not having transportation, I was limited to odd jobs and getting to them by bicycle. And there is nothing I loved more after a day of Alzheimer’s respite work or mowing lawns than to come home to more Manager drama.
Not that Manager was always a bad thing to have around. We got behind on the rent during those nine months, and we were sick with worry. One night, the anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t sleep. I was waiting for the eviction notice and didn’t have a game plan. It was early morning, a time when nobody expected to see me. I was at my bedroom window and overheard a conversation between Manager and The Biker. It went down something like this.
“The Landlord lost the building for taxes, and it’s being auctioned,” Manager said to The Biker.
“That sucks,” The Biker replied. “What happens to us?”
“We’ve got leases, so they can’t evict us right away,” Manager replied. “But I destroyed the ledgers, so they won’t know how much rent we’ve been taking.”
At that point, I had to tiptoe away so they wouldn’t hear me laughing. No wonder the original landlord lost the building with friends like that. But I slept easier that night knowing that Manager’s greed worked in my favor. We stopped worrying about our portion of the rent until I got working again. We were also a lot more civil to Manager. Which was a mistake.
Chris and Debbie had become the biggest Blair House soap opera. I talked about them in The Night Carlos Died. We never saw them sober anymore. Chris had lost his maintenance position, and his free rent went with it. He moved into Debbie’s apartment, and they spent their days drinking themselves stupid. In their defense, their housemate had just been shot by the cops. But that was no excuse to pick a fight with The Biker.
Those two were the meanest drunks I had ever met. They took to downing a quart of cheap vodka between them and getting into screaming matches. Chris would come downstairs to stay away from Debbie. Usually, he’d wait until Debbie had passed out and go back upstairs, where he’d join her in the Land of Nod. But this time, The Biker came out to ask him to please keep it down. It was a reasonable request, and The Biker was careful to mind his manners.
He did nothing to deserve Chris turning around and giving him the same verbal abuse he had just given his girlfriend. Chris was such an asshole when drunk that he inspired me to quit what little drinking I did do. And I wouldn’t have blamed The Biker for tossing him across the lawn again. Instead, The Biker destroyed all the outlaw stereotypes by calling the cops. Chris stayed where he was and kept screaming at The Biker’s door. I had come out to see what all the noise was about and stayed to watch things unfold.
I was thrilled to see Officer Clark (not his real name) arrive to de-escalate the problem. I wasn’t as friendly with Clark as I was with a few other officers, but I respected the hell out of him. Officer Clark was the hardest-working cop in Belvidere. He was hell on speeders, hunters, and deer spotters. Not only did he bust them, but he also reported arrests to professional groups like the medical licensing board or the Bar Association. You would be amazed how many doctors and lawyers went to Belvidere to get cross-eyed drunk and shoot at anything that moved. And Clark also confiscated tons of Saturday Night Specials and other illegal handguns from deer spotters. Clark was focused on keeping people safe and did an outstanding job.
So this was the officer dispatched to get Chris back under control. Clark had an edge to him that made even drunks cautious, and he was usually able to get Chris under control. But not this time. Clark got out of his vehicle and confronted Chris, and Chris kept getting more out of control, yelling and screaming in Clark’s face. Finally, Clark put a warning hand on Chris’s shoulder, and Chris tore the glasses off Clark’s face and threw them against the wall. I could hear the lenses crack. Clark had his back to me, but I could see Chris, and he wore the same expression my stepson had while testing the limits.
Belvidere, NJ, did not deserve its police force. I was positive that Clark was going to lose his shit. I felt sick from anticipating the violence. Instead, Clark took Chris down with a non-violent Aikido move. Chris was face down on the ground but not hurt. Clark should have taken Chris in, and that was that.
As bad luck would have it, Debbie had woken up and followed Chris outside so they could continue their screaming session on the front lawn. Instead, she saw Officer Clark handcuffing Chris’s hands behind his back. She forgot she was mad at Chris and focused all her drunken rage on Clark. Debbie ran up behind Clark and kicked him in the ass. Hard! I could hear Clark cry out! He stumbled forward, pulling Chris’s arms in directions they weren’t supposed to go. Chris screamed in agony, and Debbie tried to kick Clark a second time. Only he dodged, and she fell on her ass. At that point, I laughed so hard that I didn’t see the second patrol car arrive.
My partner and our kids came out in time to see two more officers arrive to help Clark. Chris had his face in the grass, his arms cuffed behind him. Debbie was on her back, windmilling her limbs so Clark couldn’t get the cuffs on her. The other two cops had to hold her down while Clark cuffed her.
“Don’t get involved,” my partner advised.
“Like I’m going to walk into that debacle?” I responded. “I’m just going to help Clark find his glasses.”
The kids watched Chris and Debbie get dragged into separate police cars. A third patrol car arrived to drive Clark back to the station. He couldn’t drive without his glasses. I found them for him, but there wasn’t any good news. One arm had been bent in half, and a lens had crazed.
“I’m sorry, Clark,” I said.
“I paid 200 dollars for shatterproof lenses,” he mourned.
“I’d be looking to get my money back,” I replied lightly, trying to improve his mood. Officer Clark had a very difficult day. His glasses got broken, there was a nasty streak on his temple, and a drunk kicked him in the ass. I should not have tried to wise-ass a laugh out of him…
“Chris is paying for my new pair,” Clark replied, giving me the stink-eye.
“I think that’s fair,” I said. “And I’m going to talk to Chris about this. He usually listens to me, and….”
“Chris and Debbie are going to jail,” Officer Clark interrupted with such finality that I stopped trying. And truth be told, I didn’t blame him. Those two had been out of control since Carlos was shot. And all Clark wanted to do was calm the situation. It was entirely Chris and Debbie’s fault they ended up doing 60 days in Warren County Prison. And it did them some good to be in jail. They were going to kill themselves if they didn’t dry out.
Officer Clark could have had Chris and Debbie put away for a few years. But he didn’t see the point. He dropped the assault on a police officer charge on a plea deal. They spent two months in jail with two years probation and addiction counseling. And those two months were the most surreal I can remember because Manager decided we were friends. I still shudder when I look back at this and blame myself for being civil to her. I should have known it was a bad idea.
It started during deer season when drunks with guns descended on Belvidere like an invading army. Chris and Debbie had just started their sentences. It was a warm September day, and I was reading on the front stoop, where I was least likely to be hit by a stray bullet. Manager came running past me and yelled, “come on, get up!” Please don’t ask me why I got up and followed her. I must have been curious as to what flew up her ass. And I was also very bored. I followed her behind the dumpster, and she stopped in a clearing and started looking around.
“What are we looking for?” I asked her, not seeing anything.
“There were hunters here, and it’s illegal for them to be this close to the building,” she replied.
That gave me a split moment of brain freeze. Then the words “What. THE. FUCK!!!” echoed through my mind, and I started looking around more carefully. I may not be Daniel Boone, but my father taught me a few things about tracking. And there was a long trail of broken saplings and weeds heading towards the road. The hunters must have already been on their way to a deer processor.
I wanted to grab her by the neck, shake her, and scream, “are you trying to get us killed?” But I refrained. Mostly because I felt like an idiot for following her. And having been raised by dangerous lunatics, I had learned to be moderate in my responses. “What were you going to do if there were hunters here?” I asked her patiently.
A blank look crossed her face. She had to think hard about that one. Then she said, “go back to the house and call the police.”
“Why didn’t you just call the police?” I asked.
“They told me not to call them unless I saw the hunters,” she said. “I heard the gunshot, so I ran out to look.”
What could I do except go home? Then I had to face my partner’s reaction. “Why the hell did you follow her? Are you nuts? You could have been shot!”
How does one answer those questions, except with the truth? “I was wondering what she was panicking over, and how long did it take you to figure out I’m nuts?”
“Don’t let Manager mess with you like this,” they told me.
“I don’t understand why she’s even talking to me,” I replied. This was before Manager played stupid games with the social workers. I was still trying to keep it civil and professional whenever possible.
“Chris is in jail, and she’s looking for somebody to boss around,” my partner explained.
I saw the light. I often noticed how Manager bullied Chris as if they were still in a relationship. She would have told Chris to follow her as she called out to me. And for the same stupid shit. “And I’m walking into it,” I said.
“Don’t do her any more favors,” my partner suggested.
“Do I look stupid?” I asked them.
“Do I have to answer that?” my partner replied.
Of course, my partner was right. The next day she asked me to haul some trash out, just like she would with Chris.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “But you know I have a bad back and knees. I’d hurt myself.”
She soon learned to ask The Biker to do the odd jobs, which was actually the right guy to go to. The Biker had taken over as maintenance man, and he got the free rent. So why go to me? I think it’s because I’m flypaper for freaks. For the next few weeks, Manager kept coming to me to discuss all her evil thoughts and illegal plans. As if I were her partner in crime. I never invited it. I didn’t want it. And I felt no remorse about going to my neighbors and telling them about the underhanded trick Manager was about to pull on them.
Another thing Manager kept doing was asking me about Chris and Debbie’s apartment. Debbie had two elderly and obese cats, and my partner and I were caring for them. We checked on the kitties two or three times a day, and I managed to make friends with one of them. His brother was so timid he hid in a closet, and I had to look inside to ensure he was still breathing.
Manager kept asking me what condition the apartment was in. And it was very well maintained. The only sign of alcoholism was the open quart of vodka on the kitchen counter. I was tempted to pour it down the sink and eliminate the bottle. But I knew I would hate it if anybody did that to me. So I contented myself with not capping the bottle and letting the contents evaporate.
The questions escalated. Manager started to ask about the furniture. What furniture did they have in the living room? Of course, I only gave the vaguest of answers. We sealed Debbie’s door with scotch tape, and the seal hadn’t been broken. She could have used her pass key to get in. In fact, I was amazed she hadn’t already.
One day, the tape had been pulled from the door frame. I wasn’t surprised. The day before, she tried to thrust a Polaroid camera into my hands and demanded I take pictures. I explained that it was illegal and refused. Manager couldn’t contain herself any further and had to look. She used her passkey and broke the seal. As soon as my partner saw the break-in, they reported it to Warren County Legal Aid, who acted as Chris and Debbie’s attorneys.
The next day, I returned from riding my bike in the Poconos, and Manager finally came to the point. Chris had an antique china cabinet that belonged to his mother. Manager wanted it. She figured that as the ex-wife, she was entitled to it, and it didn’t matter that Chris’s mother passed after the divorce. She tried to bully my partner into opening the door, so The Biker could carry it out for her. But you don’t even think about bullying my partner, and The Biker would have no part in it. I have no idea why she wouldn’t use her passkey. I guess she wanted to blame my partner if the police got involved.
Undaunted, Manager came to me and told me she was planning to illegally evict Chris and Debbie for being in arrears. She hired a couple of guys to go in and bring all of Chris and Debbie’s stuff put on the curb and the china cabinet in her apartment. She told me I could take the cats in if I wanted to. Otherwise, she was going to have them put down. That woman was so evil even Cruella Deville wouldn’t associate with her.
Chris and Debbie had already been in the process of being legally evicted. But Blair House was in legal limbo. There needed to be an owner or agent authorized to sign the papers and take legal possession of the apartment. Chris and Debbie could only be removed from their apartment once Blair House was sold. And that took months. Once again, only the gods of madness know why Manager came to me. Maybe she thought I would be scared into letting her into Chris and Debbie’s apartment.
I didn’t like Warren County Legal Aid in the least, and I had damn good reason not to trust them. But they were the only game in town and a five-minute walk from my front door. I explained the situation to the secretary and was pleasantly surprised when they made themselves useful.
The next day, Manager got a court order hand delivered by Officer Clark. There would be no illegal eviction. Chris and Debbie’s property stayed right where it was. When Debbie got out of jail, her cats were waiting for her. By then, the timidest cat would let me pet him a little. Chris came home to his beloved mother’s china cabinet. And Manager never said a civil word to me again. Soon the building was auctioned to a bank, and it was outright war between us.
Maybe a week after Chris was released, he came to the house and dropped his car’s registration on the table. “It’s your problem now,” he said. Thanks to my partner’s wonderful mother, we could pay all the fees to get back on the road. I was working again. But Clinton’s welfare reform was going into effect, and life was never the same again.

Countdown to Blair House. Part Three: Bill in the Multiverse of Madness

And it looks so normal from the outside.

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.

Countdown to Blair House, Part 2: I Fought The Law and the Law Cheated.

It looks the same as it did 30 years ago. That is so damned depressing

If only real life were like Hallmark movies. I’d be the hero who exposed the evil landlord and brought the corrupt public servants to justice. I would get the key to the city, and Mom and Dad would find Jesus. Then their mental illnesses would vanish into White Republican remission. Cue the inspirational music, roll the credits, and the part of Bill Dunlap was played by Johnny Depp in his Mad Hatter costume.
However, real life is nothing like Hallmark movies. And I never received anything that even resembled justice or fairness. But I did learn some important lessons. The first and most important is that poor people’s lives mean nothing. I kept that building from exploding, and I didn’t get as much as a thank you. Looking at the building thirty years later, I doubt if the lead paint had been abated. I did get the landlord a good one, and he was fined and forced to make repairs. But it didn’t seem to inconvenience him in the least. He was even elected mayor for a term or two. This taught me to distrust local as well as national politics. Because the rot begins at the bottom and creeps its way up.
The funniest thing about it is I couldn’t have won as much as I had if I knew what I was doing. I didn’t even know that the state AG had an office investigating housing and safety laws violations. I contacted them while in a blind panic with my crazy-ass parents making things as hard as possible. The absolute hell of it was the AG housing investigation department doesn’t exist anymore. It vanished around the time Diane Witman was governor of New Jersey.
My legal protection ended when the landlord got busted. It was such a slam/dunk case I didn’t even need to testify in court. But that meant I was alone. Yes, I had my Larry Marra training, but I didn’t have the experience to really put it to practical use. Needless to say, there are many things I would have done differently. I should never have let down my guard. But the head of Section 8 called me, apologized, and called the lead exposure a tragedy.
That was pure bullshit because just about every apartment on Section 8’s lists had lead paint. And some of them actually had higher lead levels than the death trap. We had many possibilities, but none of them passed the lead tests. We also scoured the classified ads and came up with a couple of possibilities that did pass the lead test.
As ridiculous as it may sound, we were still scheduled for landlord/tenant court. We could still end up with an eviction on our record, and then Section 8 would have no choice but to drop us. The hell of it was, this wasn’t the first time we faced eviction from this landlord. We didn’t clear out the old apartment fast enough to suit him. So he decided to go in and throw out all the stuff we hadn’t had time to move yet. I called the cops on the sunuvabitch and reported it as a robbery. According to the New Jersey tenant handbook, that was my right. He had to give us the legally mandated two more days to move our stuff or face theft charges. Mr. Landlord was not happy.
Of course, the petty fascist wouldn’t take that lying down. So he filed an eviction order for non-payment of rent. Then he went on a two-week vacation and was somewhat dismayed we hadn’t panicked and ran away while he was gone. We paid our rent by postal money orders back then, and it took a week to get evidence that he filed the eviction after he cashed our money order. And keep in mind that this little fuck-weasel became mayor.
Needless to say, we didn’t trust our ex-landlord, and we were terrified. Being poor people, Warren County Legal Aid was our only recourse. We came to them six years before. Their only lawyer had first taken the job, and our landlord at the time was an outlaw biker. Our lawyer ate him alive. We went to him during the bullshit rent eviction, and I wasn’t happy with his representation. He made us bring in the rent we didn’t owe even though we brought proof we didn’t owe it, and we were stuck with court fees. So we weren’t so trusting when we came to him for the third time. In short, he should have been disbarred from the legal advice he gave us. He told us not to bother even showing up.
The lesson there was never to trust any official office, be it government, NGO, or non-profit. We would have been screwed if we weren’t educated. My partner grew up in a real estate company and had her license at 18. We both knew this was bullshit advice, and we decided to represent ourselves instead.
I didn’t feel up to the task. In fact, I was totally daunted and tried to find legal representation the same way I found the building investigator. I got out the blue pages and started calling. Alas, lightning didn’t strike twice. But I did get some wisdom from a friendly paralegal with a strong Latino accent. In words of one sentence, he patiently explained that I was totally fucked. There were absolutely no laws that protected anybody from economic discrimination. What few laws there were had no mechanisms for enforcing them. In short, as long as it couldn’t be proven to be racially or religiously motivated, there was nothing anybody could do about it.
That’s the ugly truth that the movies try to conceal. Economic discrimination is ingrained in American law and society. There are no standards for justice except money. Conservatives who experience it firsthand get the idiotic idea that African Americans get preferential treatment. Liberals want to pretend that economic discrimination is limited to Blacks and minorities. But the reality is that economic oppression doesn’t discriminate. Once you no longer have the money for legal representation, a white man is as screwed as a black man. But the white man is much more likely to survive the screwing.
It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we lost our Section 8. Between my partner’s benefits and my job, we could have afforded 1992 rents. It would have been hard, but once we had our living arrangements settled, I could look for a job that didn’t have seasonal layoffs. At the same time, we didn’t want an eviction screwing up our lives either. And we could be evicted if we weren’t in court to defend ourselves. So I spent a few days in the library, putting my hard-earned Larry Marra education to work. I prepared a counterargument claiming a constructive eviction and requesting first and last month’s rent on a new place, the return of our damage deposit, moving expenses, and damages. In other words, I did all the work the asshole at legal aid didn’t.
I wasn’t all that certain about the damages. I wasn’t sure about anything. Between my father’s loud and constant pessimism and my mother’s delusions, my head was in a horrible place. My partner was severely depressed and didn’t feel ready for the trial. To be candid, I was terrified beyond anything I had felt before. It wasn’t the court case or the housing; it was my parents. Being back in that seething pressure cooker of insanity did terrible things to my self-confidence and sense of worth. I knew I would lose, but I intended to put up a fight.
You could have knocked me down with a feather when the landlord conceded. Today I would have expected it because the bastard didn’t have a case. I could tell he didn’t expect us to be there by the look on his face, and he must have just discovered we filed a rebuttal because he was reading it on the bench. So he weaseled out of it by dropping the case. And once he dropped the case, I didn’t have a chance to present my side of it. The judge banged his gavel, and that was it. We didn’t lose anything, we didn’t gain anything, and we would need to file our own case if we wanted any financial compensation. That was when I decided to try for pro bono representation and sue the living hell out of everybody.
Of course, it was a setup. As soon as our city councilman landlord dropped his case, the rest of the power structure stepped in to protect him. I found this out from an old friend from high school. He was one of the landlords whose apartments were too high in lead. He had the decency to let me know Section 8 was bad-mouthing me behind my back. He had called them for a reference, and the head of Section 8 said my partner was a perfect tenant, but I was big trouble. I confirmed it by having my father pose as a landlord and call Section 8. They called my partner a perfect tenant but said I was big trouble. No matter how you look at it, that was illegal, but there was absolutely nobody to report it to. I was helpless against it unless I could find a lawyer.
This is where things get complicated. We had been spending as much time as possible away from my parents. We tried to be ghosts, sneaking in at night, feeding the kids, and going to bed. We also got up early and tried to be gone before my parents got up. But then I decided to start seeing if I could find a lawyer. I stayed home with the yellow pages and started calling. Finally, I got hold of an office manager who started the conversation, “I already spoke to your mother.”
“Why were you talking to my mother?” I asked. My stomach felt like I had been pushed out of an airplane, and I was plummeting to my doom.
I found out my mother had also been lawyer shopping. She wanted to sue on her own behalf. They tried to explain she didn’t have the legal standing to sue. She would respond with, “I am the GRANDMOTHER,” and start getting verbally abusive and demanding to speak to the attorney.
I got the same story from numerous legal secretaries. Mom had been harassing law offices for weeks, and nobody was even willing to hear my case. Mom had totally poisoned the well. I was so furious that I sought out my partner and told them what had happened. They had a sickening idea. What if Mom was calling Section 8 behind our backs?
I had that falling out of an airplane feeling while I called Section 8 from a phone booth. That’s when I found out Mom had been calling and verbally abusing them. I apologized profusely. I would have gotten on my knees if I had been there. I explained that my mother was extremely mentally ill. (Only I said she was as mad as a March Hare) and that she never spoke on my behalf or even with my knowledge.
That was when I found out about the third betrayal. Two landlords had accepted our application. Section 8 had called to tell us, but my mother answered and took the messages, and never let us know.
What was my mother’s motivation? I assure you it wasn’t any real attachment to her grandson. Cats were her only emotional connection. Mom was after the AFDC, the food stamps, and anything else she could get her mitts on because she was entitled to it.
She would grab every penny of birthday or holiday money from when I was little. She made it clear that minors had no property rights, and even our favorite toys were hers. And when I had summer jobs, she couldn’t wait to forge my name and cash my paycheck.
Don’t think my family was camping in her living room out of the goodness of Mom’s heart. We were paying her sixty dollars a week for the privilege of being abused. On top of that, my father refused to do his yearly tax work. He kicked back depending on the First National Bank of Bill to make up the slack.
So it made sense that my mother wouldn’t pass on our messages. If we left, the sixty dollars a week would go with us. Her mind was also deteriorating. She was over 20 years older than Dad. Her kidneys were shutting down from two decades of eating a pure protein diet and the nicotine-related double bypass and aneurysm surgery took its toll. She was falling into her final depressive cycle, and it was ghastly beyond any she had before. In four years, she would die like a mad animal.
Of course, she denied not giving us our messages. She got so indignant that I knew damn well she was lying through her teeth. But the rationale over calling the lawyers was beyond insane. She claimed that she was legally entitled to financial compensation for her suffering as the Grandmother. And the hell of it was, she sincerely believed it.
At that point, we needed to get away. I was calling friends in NYC to see if we could find a place to crash for a while. My partner went to see if she could transfer her benefits out of state and met her new caseworker.
I grew up on welfare since I was 14 years old in St. John’s County, Florida. Some of the most vicious and petty people I ever met were social workers. I don’t trust them as a matter of course. And I hate being on public assistance to the point where I was reluctant to file for unemployment. But this new caseworker was different. She was a hanger-on from the 60s and early 70s when idealistic college grads willingly went into social work to make a difference. Jimmy Carter purged most of them when he cut the social services budget in the 70s. Then they were replaced by born-again Christians who used their clout to impose their religion on their clients.
The new caseworker pointed out that we were now homeless. Back then, crashing on your barking mad parents’ floor wasn’t considered being housed. My partner and the kids were entitled to emergency housing. And if I gave up my unemployment, I could join my family in emergency housing. We would be away from the crazy people and apartment hunt in peace. As I said before, I hate being on any public assistance. But there was no way I would pass up a deal like that.
Emergency housing meant the County would put us up in a hotel room, and we had a choice of two. The first was the Hotel Lafayette across the Delaware River in Easton, PA. The building was over a century old, and you could bet your life it was chock full of lead paint. Besides, it was the hangout of pimps, prostitutes, junkies, and pushers.
Option Two was the Broadway Motel, way out in the boonies. Broadway, NJ, was the home of over a thousand livestock and maybe two hundred people at the most. The Motel was surrounded by cornfields. There was a bar and a pizzeria across the street. We lived on pizza, calzones, and non-perishables we got with our food stamps for the next month. We kept milk in a cooler outside the front door.
We moved in during the last few days of January, and things weren’t all that grim at first. My mother-in-law took a vacation week and stayed with us, helping us get to housing appointments and grocery shopping. My partner’s ex-husband had grown up in Broadway, and we were on good terms with their ex-in-laws. So we weren’t entirely isolated.
Our caseworker showed up on the first with our checks, food stamps, and housing lists from both Phillipsburg and the County. And that was the last we ever saw of her. She disappeared without a word. We reached her boss when we tried to call her, and he told us he was our caseworker. From that moment on, we didn’t get a lick of support from welfare. I think that was also part of the plan.
There were four of us in that tiny cramped hotel room, and it didn’t look as if we were getting out of there any time soon. We had already burned through the Pee-burg landlord lists. So I called them again just to be on the safe side. The county lists were at least three years out of date, but I called them anyway. I got the papers every day and called everything. We had a few nibbles, but the houses were contaminated with lead paint. And my reputation as a trouble-maker didn’t make things any easier. And the more frustrating things got, the worse I got. I was on an anger treadmill, and I didn’t know how to get off.
It got to the point where I couldn’t stop calling landlords past eight PM, and I wanted to start again at 7:30 AM. I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there next to my partner, staring at the ceiling, worrying about what would happen next. One night I heard a scrabbling in the cardboard box we used for a larder. I thought one of the hotel cats had gotten in, so I got up to see what she was up to. It was a mouse trying to gnaw its way into a can of deviled ham.
We stopped and stared at each other. I could see its beady little eyes glittering in the flashing neon lights. Then, rather than running, as I expected, it went on the attack. I was a hundred times bigger than the little bastard, but he launched himself at me anyway. I jumped back, but it hit me in the belly button, dropped down a few inches, and bit into my underpants, hanging off my crotch by its sharp little teeth.
I knew I would scare everybody if I screamed, so I clamped my jaw and held my breath as I did a Tom Cruise trying to shake that critter off my junk. I jumped up and down and gyrated my hips like David Lee Roth. Finally, the little bastard flew, taking a patch of my shorts in its little mouth. It thumped against the far wall. I grabbed a can of peaches and bounded after it, but the wee bastard vanished into the wainscoting.
The damned thing must have been a shrew. I doubt mice have that sort of chutzpah. Besides, the motel management had so many cats and dogs even Jerry Mouse couldn’t have gotten into one of those rooms.
My partner and I were constantly arguing over nothing. We were losing hope of ever getting an apartment, and our new case worker was calling and pressuring us every day. We were both depressed, and our oldest was acting out in school and at home. Or what passed for a home.
I think I would have acted better if I knew I had ADHD. My poor brain was in overload. I was suffering from sensory overload, and I was totally fixated on going back to work. I grew up on welfare and still confused employment with freedom. Because even wage slavery was better than a life controlled by social workers. I was terrified of not going back to my lousy job. I was deaf to any alternatives that didn’t include me being able to commute to Allentown when my job reopened.
Even if I didn’t have ADHD, I have no doubt that what happened next was planned from the moment we moved into the Motel. On March 1st, we received reduced food stamps, no welfare check, had our Medicaid revoked, and were given 24 hours to leave the Motel. We were now helpless with minimum support. We were utterly dependent on the County for everything.
“But that’s illegal,” yells the middle-class reader. “They have to give you notice before they cut your benefits.” And yes, it was as illegal as all hell. But there we were, stuck in the middle of corn fields and horse farms with no welfare. We could have appealed, but what the hell were we supposed to survive until the appeal? Mark out 20 acres and demand a mule? Besides, they didn’t even give us the appeal form. Remember, we were dealing with local government. Laws were for the little people. True, we could have moved back in with my parents, but that was out of the question.
I hadn’t the first clue how, but I wanted to fight it. I was ready to die fighting to get to a job selling circus tickets over the phone. But there wasn’t anything to fight with. I was fresh out of ammo, and the County of Warren had a howitzer aimed at me. Our new caseworker offered to drive my partner to the welfare office to renegotiate. I wasn’t invited. I stayed in the hotel room with the boys and went through the blue pages for the 5,000th time since this absurdity began. But there wasn’t anybody left to call.
My partner came back in tears. Welfare had everything ready for her. They reinstated her welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid for her and for our oldest. All she had to do was sign a child support order against me that was retroactive to January 1st.
Remember the end of 1984, when Winston Smith had the cage full of rats strapped to his face, and he had to say “Do it to Julia” to save himself? That’s precisely what the low-life motherfuckers in Warren County Welfare did to my partner. They presented as female back then, and they were always quiet and shy. The petty fascists figured that they would just get rid of me, and it would all go away. After a few months in stir, they would assign me a minimum wage job and garnish my wages. And by then, they figured my partner would move on because social workers have that sort of low opinion of their clients. Since I was literally indigent, I was in for a lengthy jail sentence.
I can hear the neoliberal Democratic chorus singing, “but you have to support your child.” And I respond with, “I hate you all.” Child support laws are just like antiabortion laws. They exist to punish people for being poor. My partner and son didn’t see as much as a red cent from the child support arrears I was told I owed. From there on, they only received fifty dollars a month which was a fraction of what I paid. So don’t give me any shit about supporting my son. There wasn’t (and still isn’t) a day in his life when I wasn’t there for him.
Middle-class men can simply hire a lawyer and totally fuck over their wives and kids. The laws are deliberately written for them to do this. But poor people are low-hanging fruit.
My partner is no idiot; they knew what welfare was doing. I knew it too, but I was angry at them anyway. I had been mad for so long and at so many people that I didn’t know how not to be angry. We had a nasty fight, and I forced them to kick me out. It wasn’t just the right thing for them; it was the only possible thing to do. So I left, and I only had one place left to go. That’s right, Mom and Dad, just the people who take a terrible situation and worsen it.
For those who might be interested, my partner and I will be celebrating our 40th year together in June of 2023. So I raise my middle finger to Warren County Welfare.