Eating of the Elbow

I'm sitting behind my computer, my headsets on, Paula and her friends chatting just outside my door. I don't know why it annoys me that they do that. I wear my headsets all day and jam to my music. I don't even hardly hear them. But maybe it's just the inconsiderate nature of the entire act. I know that the rooms are small and it's difficult to have more than four people in your room at one time, but give me a break. Put on some clothes and take the shit outside, or at least to the elevator area which has a separation door.

I huff. I'm acting as if my sorry ass is in the Hilton Hotel or something. Shit. The wall intercom buzzes loudly. Who is it? "Snow White would like to speak to you." It's sunny disposition Roberto. Yeah, I'll be down. I snatch up some clothes, grab my paperwork from Social Services and head down to see Snow White. When I get down there, she is with another client and Sugar Plum. I decide, well, since I have to wait anyway, why not go to Duane Reade and pick up our meds. I do, and when I return Snow White is by herself.

Strolling in I choose to stand as I address her. "So how's it going with Social Services?" She asks.
Going, they gave me my paperwork to appear in Fair Hearing and Work Eval. She scans through the papers, and there is not much enlightenment from her. Neither from Sugar Plum when she walks in. I then understand that I know just as much as they do. They are no more professional than I am. After fighting with Social Services for two years directly I've come to have a much better understanding of how the System Works than the Social Workers do. That's because I've been through the teeth of the machinery and not reading about it from a book.

I return to my room stunned and tired of facing off with useless mother- fuckers. Which is what tomorrow is going to be all about. People reading from a playbook, and when you ask them to think out of the box they can't. They are all made numb by the machinery of the system. They are so attached to...so dependent upon the system that you can't even think of unplugging them, of freeing their minds. That's Morpheus from the Matrix. But Goddamn if this isn't the very fucking same thing.

Tomorrow will be a funny navigation. Both of these so-called 'Mandatory' appointments have only two options: 1) The Job Farm, or 2) cutting of my benefits.

Let's look at this in detail. First there is the Job Farm, or what I playfully call The Farm. I've been there before, early on, before my psychiatrists and the MI/CA label that they slapped on me. Here's the deal. Either they find you a job, which as you already know, are plentiful out there, and on your first paycheck they cut your benefits; or you sit in a class room and learn computers. Not anything that you can use in the workplace mind you. They teach you how to open windows and click on icons and connect to the Internet, and other pedestrian shit like that, and sit and wait for classes to start and finish for 35hours a week for your benefits.

This wouldn't be such a bad thing if I weren't LIGHT YEARS ahead of the training that they'll be giving me. I could be teaching the class and answer some of the myriad questions that their simple minded teachers have. So basically, I'll be there LOOKING FOR A JOB. Something that they just WILL NOT HAVE. So, to keep me off the streets, they want me to sit around in a stupid class and waste a week of my life throwing around paper airplanes and fondling myself.

Look, if you don't have a job for me, I understand, but I'm working towards self sufficiency on my own also. I can do a much better job searching through craigslist for some sort of writing assignment to build my resume for a real writing gig somewhere. I can do that because I have the TIME TO DO THAT, and I'm not wasting it sitting in a room with a score of other dead heads who are people with nothing to do all day long and who really can't make their classes a learning experience.

The experience is a strange one. Realize that the Penal System, which works hand in hand with Social Services, ain't shit. What the prisons do after someone has spent years in it, is push them out into the street with just what they had on them coming in. Basically the shirts on their backs. What are these men and women supposed to do? Where do you think that they go if they don't have a support system waiting for them when they get out? What do you think? They either filter into the streets as homeless people, muggers, skeks and thieves, or into Social Services. They fall into this system which pens them into these little 'classrooms' to keep track of them and keep them off the streets. That's how that works. Have you ever thought about going to a school of higher learning with classmates who haven't even got a handle of basic skills and you try to leap frog them into 'computers'? Who's fooling who here?

Self rescue should account for something. But then, there is the obvious alternative: having my benefits cut. This my pal, I would gladly do, and just might let occur. Sitting down and thinking about it, I can swing the rent. If HUD is actually swinging the rent, then I can swing the food. The only thing that I can't swing are the meds. And I will not last long without medical coverage. That's the real nipple twister, medical coverage. But I guess that's the case with all Americans today isn't it?

I need my meds. Like I said, I won't last long without them, neither can I afford them. So I'll have to either bite the bullet or figure out how to overcome that obstacle, and quickly. It's a toss up between eating and survival. That sounds funny as Hell. Eating and survival. Like they are mutually exclusive.

Now it's all timing. I can have my benefits cut tomorrow, or on Monday. Which one? Hmmmm? Monday. That'll give me a chance to renew all of my meds this weekend before the cut off date if the machine grinds to a halt immediately. Being caught in this before, I believe it takes a few days for it to actually happen, so I may still be able to stock up on my meds before the well runs dry.

Yes, because if I fail to get the verdict that I need tomorrow, the appointment on Monday can go straight up their asses.

Anyways, I have made my choice. I'm not going to waste my time on their Farm or any Farm for that matter. I'll go back out into the streets before I do that...which just may happen. But I think I can do better myself sleeping on the subways and in the parks than to melt away in a room full of OTHER losers and leave it up to them to find me the pie in the sky: 'job in computers'. The real jobs that they are looking for are street and park sweepers. The same jobs that they give to the convicts when they come out of stir. Those are the real 'computer' jobs that they find.

Fuck it.

Whatever happens, happens. I'll just deal with it when the pie is sliced.

I hope I get the biggest piece.

Hobobob