AS I SAID in my last post, for
lower-income people in the United States and its global empire,
December is by far “the cruelest month.”
As so often is the case, the political
is also the personal. Two-thirds of every December is stolen from me
by indignities imposed on the poor to rub our noses in the
metaphorical dung-heap of our alleged “worthlessness,” the
imaginary condition for which we are ever-more-forcefully
condemned.
First there is the paperwork
required to annually re-certify my Medicare subsidies and food
assistance: 30 pages of forms and documents including birth
certificate, photographic identification and military records
demanded by the Washington State Department of Social and
Health Services. The birth certificate, driving license and discharge papers are to
prove my identity has not somehow magically changed since last year;
the remainder of the documentation is to verify I remain enough
economically wretched to qualify for assistance – as if there
were any possibility the U.S. economy might ever again improve to the
point a person of my age and skills could find a job.
Completing all this mandatory tedium invariably takes up most of an entire week. I have no clerical
skills; I am a writer and editor – not somebody's secretary or
clerk-typist. I am also dyslexic, and my penchant for typing errors
– especially transpositions of vital numbers – is profoundly
vexing. The chore is beyond drudgery, so oppressive it leaves me
emotionally drained.
Then of course there is the grand
climax. I arise at 5 the next morning so I can be at the welfare
bureau no later than 7, ensuring I'll be at or near the head of the
line when its doors open at 8 a.m. That way – assuming my papers
are in order – I'm sure to be interviewed sometime the same day.
(It's really an interrogation, though in deference to my age the
caseworkers are always scrupulously polite.)
Meanwhile gnawing at the edges of my
consciousness is the huge anxiety – sheer terror, actually – the
whole process invariably evokes. Will I be thrown off the Medicare
subsidies? Will my food assistance be slashed – or eliminated
entirely?
Next after the annual welfare ordeal
comes the physical labor of preparing my apartment for the quarterly
premises inspection, the invasive procedure by which we lower-income
elderly and disabled people who live in government housing are
reminded – four times each year – of the extent to which we
truly are regarded as worthless bums, irresponsible if not actually
criminal.
The necessary house-cleaning requires
hours of bending and stooping, which for me is painful, often
excruciatingly so. This in turn forces me to spread the chore out
over six or seven days – the loss of another full week.The inspection
itself is a proverbial snap, hardly more than a formality, but were I
to leave my apartment in its usual messy condition, it would surely
be otherwise.
And even after I pass the inspection, the discomfort is
far from over: recovering from the cleanup-induced back pain usually
takes another three to five days, occasionally as long as a full
week, once (after I badly wrenched my back cleaning the toilet), an
entire month.
People, especially women, sometimes
ask me why I don't clean as I go, so getting ready for the inspection
is (presumably) less work.
The answer is the clean-as-I-go
approach merely multiplies the bending and stooping. Every surface in
my kitchen is off-white – not just the stove-top and counter-tops
(which I do clean daily), but all other vertical and horizontal
surfaces as well: cabinets, stove, refrigerator and floors. All of
these need regular cleaning. But the associated pain limits me to
cleaning them only just before inspections.
That's because I'm literally a cripple,
hobbled by a bad knee and a complex back problem – multiple damaged
vertebra – with both afflictions radically worsened by
osteoarthritis.
Each is the legacy of
an injury. A hard fall in 1977 – I slid off a rainslick loading ramp
while trying to heft an antique ice-box into a moving-van –
required surgical removal of all the cartilage from my right knee.
The back injury was inflicted in 1978 by one of the millions of
defiantly habitual drunken drivers who characterize both the
gasoline-powered moral imbecility of the United States and the
desperate need of its peoples for constant intoxication to dull the
anguish of their empty lives.
My vehicular assailant had been
arrested for drunken driving 19 times before he careened out of
control on a busy throughfare and skidded across four lanes of
traffic to broadside me in a shopping-center driveway. He was typical
of the maliciously sociopathic alcoholics who routinely haunt – and
hunt – U.S. streets and roads: it was only mid-afternoon, but
already he was dead drunk. Witnesses said he lost control of his car
because he was speeding on rainslick pavement, trying to drive and
beat his wife at the same time.
Verily, the collision itself was Godzilla
versus Bambi: his 442 Oldsmobile, my (brand new) Honda
Civic. The cops said it was a miracle I wasn't killed. Given the resultant disabilities, I find the miracle dubious at best.
Thinking about how painful it is to
clean my apartment, it came to me this morning the kitchen color
scheme in these apartments is truly cunning, obviously intended to
do exactly what it does: show even the smallest speck of dirt.
Thereby it forces us to keep it clean – or suffer the obvious lack
of cleanliness that would facilitate eviction. It's another proof of
the lower-income-seniors-are-irresponsible-bums paradigm that governs
public housing.
The same bigotry denies us gas cooking.
For me – because I was never before reduced to cooking on an
electric range, and because after eight years of living here it is
obvious I will never learn how – denial of gas cooking means most
of my food is burned on the outside and raw on the inside.
Why don't I move? Income, pure and
simple: these are the only sorts of accommodations I am allowed.
Thanks entirely to the generosity of my
former wife and present-day dear friend Adrienne, that problem has
been resolved, though I have yet to install the new machine. I
remain wary because – at least in my life – all such processes
are haunted by that prick Murphy and his relentless law: anything
that can go wrong invariably will.
But I'll (presumably) return, if not
later this year, then very early in 2013 – especially now that
Democrat Candidate Obama the Orator is shape-shifting back into
Republican President Barack the Betrayer, his closeted GOPorker
hostility toward lower-income people again becoming obvious in
the ongoing “fiscal cliff” debate.
Thus another of my Dismal Decembers:
with Christmas only a week away, I can scarcely muster sufficient
enthusiasm to snarl “bah, humbug.”
LB/18 December 2012
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