Alzheimer Dad

I have been skuffling. Borrowing money from friends, to augment my paultry bookings and slender hiring as a substitute teacher. $300 from Gail, $40 from Annie, $200 from Mark...waiting til June when I start a full time program, waiting til May when the money (which was originally coming in March) from Bev will come. I have never been so poor, well not since I was 17 and living on $20 on the North Shore of Oahu, sewing bathing suits and selling them door to door..finally getting a job in a sandal shop..living on cookies and rotting my teeth..or before that in SF, eating sugar cubes with butter at my factory gig at N.Beach Leather, the night shift, the first weeks of employment..days at the phone company..but having to wait 2 weeks for each paycheck..that first 2 weeks..a can of peasoup to last all day..WELLL..I filed my taxes January 28th, and earmarked direct deposit, to make it early..but the IRS site said March 21st was my payday..I prayed though, because there was a grand total of $60 to my name, my son's bank account and piggy bank had been pilfered, the rent was late..when I called my bank, asking for a miracle..and low and behold..the tax return money came in! What day, you ask? My dad's birthday..Feb 24th..fully one month before the IRS date..HE doesn't want us to suffer...My dad is one with the ONE who doesn't want us to suffer. Hallelujah! I'm going grocery shopping!!

I don't live in a project, thank you very much, but a 100 year old shotgun shack duplex in a po' folks neighborhood..complete with cemented up chimneys and gaslight fixtures...even a new bullet hole in my son's bedroom window, courtesy a Blood or a Cryp or drunken Vietnam era Vet...Two times I've had helicopters flying over and cop cars surrounding my house..(seems that the break in my fence is a popular escape route for felons).... I will have the rent subsidy at least until March. They are trying to throw me off again, but I'm ready for them, this time...Maria will be here for 2 months, and will help with the rent.. ..A year ago, they were trying to kick me off ..permanently..because they needed the federal subsidy for better things..ie no-bid contracts..(i'm not speaking in meta text grabbing words...I feel like a Russian...whoops..that's a meta text grabbing word..or maybe not..no references to humvees and flack jackets.. speak of flax jackets instead..
.Anyway, an assistant to my local city councilman helped get me back on the section 8 program..after 3 months of hassle..they're trying to do it again. I brought in all my papers to the office, they said everything was hunky dory, but then sent a letter one month later saying I had been tossed because some papers were missing...KAFKA NEVER WENT THRU THIS MUCH NONSENSE.....but this time I'm READY!!! i'm hoping to buy a house with the money my step mother left me... It was going to come in March, her nephew (the executor) said, but now he says it's May...Hmmm..I'll then have .at least a down payment..so that I can be part of the American dream..at the ripe age of 54.and lift myself out of the "nouveau pauve".....that's if of course, tthat aformentioned nephew doesn't go hog wild and invest all Bev's money in a landfill or a website or something..and I have to live in a car...
I'll be looking for a 2 family house (one for the morgage, one for me& Jess), and I don't mind the hood, since once when I was in Florida contemplation moving in with Bev, there was a leaflet on the doorstep from the local Aryan Brotherhood association (there goes THAT FLAG again) with pictures of different skull sizes of "inferior" races...I figured it was no place to raise my hapa haole son...we don't get bothered in the ghetto, actually, my presence actually raises the property values on the block!!. the real estate people point me out "so what the schools are failing, and the neighborhoods lousy with firearms...see that little blond lady? if she can take it, so can you!!! .my contribution to the lovely mosaic...blond logic...actually white people in the "hood actually stare at each other, like "what are you doing here?"

I stopped myself from buying a Santa Barbara candle at the Western Beef, an ostensibly Christian owned, poorly managed food store on Staten Island. I say poorly managed, but I must add poorly designed. Somehow the checkout lanes are not made wide enough to accomodate a human being and a shopping cart, so one must stand in front of the cart or behind, to put the food on the conveyer belt. Since the carts are large (this is a bulk buying joint)..one must own a pair of arms about 5 feet in length, or stand on the end of the cart and shovel the stuff in..No one person (except perhaps a NY Knick) could get all the items from the cart, and here's probably where the nuclear family has the edge..one stands in the front of the cart and unloads, and the partner does the same from the back..This might be part of the subliminal suggestion from the management that the nuclear family is best. Certainly they've got every copy of TD Jake's books ever published (My favorite is "Woman, Thou Art Loosed"...which shows women when it is correct to dump that two timing, drinking, low life of a husband...Of course he would come in handy at the checkout of Western Beef..but I'm veering off somewhere else)....I always feel I stick out in the crowd at the supermarket, I look nothing like the other shoppers, most of whom are Inca day laborers who speak not a smattering of Ingles, or lower income African American and Carribean familes with baskets loaded down with carbohydrates on check day. I am a lower income white woman, and I feel as if,(to the Incans anyway), that I'm the only real gringa they've seen close up. So when I go to the laundromat or the aformentioned grocery store, I feel as if I'm being studied for mannerisms, etc. I sing along to the muzak under my breathe, and say "Excuse me" a lot. If I am to be a teaching model of my culture, I might as well model politeness, and a love of popular music. Can't hurt. Anyway, since Gail lent me money to get thru the next few weeks, I had to pass on the Santa Barbara candle, which was a shame, because I was thinking it could remind me to construct some stage patter about praying to Santa Barbara to let me have a house in her fair city in California. That was going to segue into a bit about St. Lazarus, how it's cool to pray to him, but just don't get his scented candle...I hope to have the entire Santa thisa and thata candle collection, as soon as i have disposable income. Hell, if I get a hit record, I could make a grotto..! Who knows?

Oprah had that guy on who lied about being in a rehab, and his life, and made a zillion dollars. I thought if i were to tell the truth, or if a hundred of people I know in AA were to tell their stories on paper, they would be infinitely more powerful than that hustler dope fiend liar. I could tell my story. I've decided to. Only how? Where's the beginning? Where's the imput point? Do I go in at menopause, when I buy a pack of Lucky Strikes cause a creep ass man has given me a hard time? Do I go in in Hawaii at age 17, where I ran away from my family? Like a surfer at Sunset or Pipeline, do I find the right wave, to begin? Or is there no real beginning? Waves are eternal, and constant, and one wave is unique, yet just like the one before and the ones after.

Hawaii seems to be creeping up on my memory, and Sunset Beach at Sunset, watching the sun go down, poi dogs running along the beach without leashes, some with scrofula, with puka shell neckaces, playing with sand crabs..naked children toddling between hippy parents dressed in homemade bathing suits and sandals.. smoking pot on the beach, watching the sun go down..some surfers still out there..
I lived in a shack as Sunset, I had been invited to work on a film crew, but when I arrived the company had dissolved, and all that was left was Russ, who was working construction, sharing the cottage with one medical student at UH, and a couple in the big bedroom. Russ offered me his bed, but I opted for the living room.
There was no work, but beautiful sunsets. I was adopted by Sheryl living on the 2nd house on the beach, who was married to Jerry. They had a little baby girl together, who was about one year old, so Sheryl stayed at home. She understand that Russ was trying to deviously get me to be his "old lady"..and helped me as best she could to keep things cool in a creepy situation. During the day I hung out with Sheryl, to avoid Russ, who was after me. Russ had been a bartender in St. Thomas, and knew I was going to film school in NY. After graduation, he had offered me a job in Hawaii, maiking surf movies.

I had no money. I wouldn't call my parents who would tell me to come home, I was too proud. And the North Shore was too beautiful. I played piano for the Hari Krishnas on Sundays, in exchange for food. Sheryl fed me too, and I helped her with her compost heap and her organic garden. We picked bananas and made banana bread. We picked mangos and made mango bread. THere was a sewing machine at Sheryl's and we started making "baggies", the surfers trunks, and shirts, and bikinis, some with puka shells on the strings. We made a little money. I sold the clothing door to door. The beach was full of California surfers from Venice and Huntington and Redondo beaches. They all knew the famous ones. I knew only the slum goddesses of the lower east side, the Drag Queens and Max's, the Psychedelicatessen..the Diggers, the Electric Circus, the Filmore and Andy Warhols' factory. Stan Vanderbeek and Larry Rivers were my Idols. I knew no surfers...These people said "bitchin, and stoked and right on..were pretty much asexual, and lived in the temple of the wave, between the coral reef and the shore..sometimes at Haliewa and Threee tables and sometimes at Pipeline or sunset. Everyone was blond and bleached. I was blond but not toned..wore high heels on the dirt road, until I finally broke down and bought some zoris..