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No, my computer didn't implode. My life will be undergoing drastic changes. By Thursday, I will be living in a small North Carolina town, population three hundred. This has been a long time coming, but its impetus was sudden.
From the beginning, then.
Last weekend, we received notice that the utility company would need access to our apartment in order to replace the ancient gas lines. This caused us no small distress, as we are inveterate clutterbugs. We have more possessions than space in which to house them, and so, there are dunes of clothing and stuffed animals and teetering towers of books crammed into every crevice. Our sagging futon has long been a repository for DVDs and books. I have no need of chairs, you see, because I and the wheelchair are a symbiotic entity, and Roomie has long since accommodated himself to sitting cross-legged on the floor or in an office chair. In my house, chairs are ancillary tables.
And then, there is the floor. I'll be honest; my floor is filthy. Not because I secretly enjoy rolling in my own filth and sloughed bodily exudation in a perverse expression of self-worship, but because wheels track in exponentially more dirt than feet. Dirt secretes itself in the tread and settles over the frame, and when you come home, it drifts and slithers and slinks to the floor, where it waits to be ground into the linoleum with each subsequent pass of the wheel. It's insidious and never-ending.
I tried to keep the floor clean at first. So did Roomie. And for a while, I did. I hired a grad student to tidy up the apartment once a week and paid her forty dollars a week. For that forty dollars, she mopped the floors and cleaned the counters and folded the laundry. I did not ask her to clean the toilet. There are some things no one should ask of a stranger. To gaze upon someone else's shit stains is one of them. This arrangement worked splendidly until she finished her studies and moved on to greater dreams than "doing for" a disabled student. She left, and I was too shy and too embarrassed to ask for help. And too broke. Forty dollars a week is a lot when you're eking out a subsistence on Social Security.
We tried to keep it up, but dirt plus water equals wet, smeared tire tracks. Roomie felt like an asshole ordering me not to move for an hour at a time while the floor dried. So, we just...let it go. We covered the floor with blankets where we could and went on with life. Theoretically, the blankets were supposed to keep the dirt off the floor, but dirt has a life of its own and slipped beneath our carefully laid barriers. We sighed and shrugged and got used to it. Eventually, our path through the apartment could be tracked by the dark swathes on beige linoleum.
With the news of an imminent gas company invasion, we sprang into action, because we knew that the strangers who came to our door wouldn't be so sanguine about the marks of my passage. Roomie brought home soap and sponges and dutifully scrubbed the floor. He scrubbed so hard that he strained his lower back. The dirt disappeared, and confident that we had done well, we stored our valuables in the bedroom and locked the door. The bedroom floor he didn't clean because the notice assured us there would be no need for the strangers to enter it. We believed it.
The gashouse gang arrived at the appointed hour on Wednesday, and we left for the day. It was a nice day, peaceful and sedate. We went to campus and read in the union, and later, we lunched at Chili's. We came home at 2PM, full and relaxed.
And we knew. Someone had opened the bedroom door, the one we had so carefully locked and in which we had stored our financial information. And the bathroom door, too.
Two minutes after we got home, the building manager arrived under the pretense of fixing a loose faucet. I hadn't reported a loose tap. The gas company had. And they had seen the dunes of DVDs and books and hills of rumpled clothing and decided it was an unsafe working environment. They had complained to the building manager, and he had come to see for himself and unlocked the bedroom door. Where the marks of my passage lay undisturbed.
My name is on the lease, but it was Roomie he called outside. When I opened the door to see what was going on, he refused to speak until I closed it again. Apparently, I was too crippled to engage in such a complex discussion, but smart enough, human enough, to be responsible for the rent check.
When Roomie came back, he told me that the manager had lambasted him for the condition of the apartment and demanded to know "how much longer we intended to stay", as we've been here ten years. He dripped with disgust at the latter half of this statement, as though the length of my matriculation were more worthy of scorn than my admittedly execrable housekeeping skills. As an added bonus, he not so subtly hinted that we were lying dirtbags who had deliberately damaged the wall beneath the AC unit. The one I'd been waiting for maintenance to repair since 2007. When Roomie told him so, he checked the repair logs and claimed that no request had been filed. Hence, we were lying. It couldn't possibly be a mistake in the log.
He gave us ten days to clean the apartment or else. When pressed on the specificities of "or else", he refused to elaborate and stalked off.
And in that moment, we decided we didn't want to stay here anymore. We went inside and began to pack. We knew that no matter how well we cleaned, "or else" was going to be the only outcome. The building manager had already made up his mind, and we were simply too tired to change it.
The next morning, we were met at the door by a handyman.
"I'm here to clean your air conditioners and fix the wall. I cleaned them two years ago, didn't I? Guess I never got around to patchin' that wall."
Liar, liar. Asshole on fire.
We've been packing ever since. This morning, we called my mother, who knows more about cleaning and packing that I ever will. I was exceedingly reluctant at first, because to me, it was the final admission of failure. I was too stupid to finish college after thirteen years of trying and too useless to pack moving boxes. But Roomie insisted it was too much for him to do alone. What could I say? He rarely asks for anything, and he's spent the past ten years and two months wiping my ass when I can't and mopping piss and washing bloody underpants. I had a self-pitying cry, and then we called my mother.
She's coming with a U-Haul on Monday. She's already contacted the utility and phone company on my behalf. The cable is already installed in my new domicile, a three-bedroom, two-bath home she owns. She's already arranging for Clyde the handyman to widen the doors. Papa Chris will soon retrofit the bathroom with a shower chair and grab bars. After I arrive, she'll set up appointments with the dentist(I haven't been able to afford a dentist since 2001)and an appointment with a doctor for a wheelchair eval. She wants to get me a new motorized wheelchair so that I can regain some much-needed independence. Once I'm settled, she wants to help Roomie buy a car so that we cab go on road trips and look into jobs and volunteer work.
She's giddy, glad to have her baby back. I'm not sure how I feel. I'm embarrassed at the way it happened, but I'm not sorry it happened. I've need to leave for a long time but have been too fearful and stubborn to do it. Now I have no choice, and I am relieved. It's over. No more rent. No more papers. No more grinding worry that this time, they won't let me stay. I will be free. My only expenses will be the utilities and fifty-four dollars for phone service and high-speed wireless Internet. I will have room to breathe and, for the first time in my life, a chance to open a savings account.
I will have new responsibilities. I'm already looking into volunteering at the school or hospital as an interpreter for the six Hispanic families, or as a food sorter at the local food pantry. Maybe I'll adopt a dog from the animal hospital, finally bring home the furry companion I've always wanted. We'll see how the financial situation looks in six months.
Life is full of maybes, but it's brighter now than its been in years. I still have to deal with Son of Himmler and might be assessed financial penalties for the damaged wall, but good things are waiting for me. If I'm not around for a week or so, that's why. Well, that and the fact that it might take that long for the Internet to get activated at the new Chateau Guera.
Here's to new beginnings.
From the beginning, then.
Last weekend, we received notice that the utility company would need access to our apartment in order to replace the ancient gas lines. This caused us no small distress, as we are inveterate clutterbugs. We have more possessions than space in which to house them, and so, there are dunes of clothing and stuffed animals and teetering towers of books crammed into every crevice. Our sagging futon has long been a repository for DVDs and books. I have no need of chairs, you see, because I and the wheelchair are a symbiotic entity, and Roomie has long since accommodated himself to sitting cross-legged on the floor or in an office chair. In my house, chairs are ancillary tables.
And then, there is the floor. I'll be honest; my floor is filthy. Not because I secretly enjoy rolling in my own filth and sloughed bodily exudation in a perverse expression of self-worship, but because wheels track in exponentially more dirt than feet. Dirt secretes itself in the tread and settles over the frame, and when you come home, it drifts and slithers and slinks to the floor, where it waits to be ground into the linoleum with each subsequent pass of the wheel. It's insidious and never-ending.
I tried to keep the floor clean at first. So did Roomie. And for a while, I did. I hired a grad student to tidy up the apartment once a week and paid her forty dollars a week. For that forty dollars, she mopped the floors and cleaned the counters and folded the laundry. I did not ask her to clean the toilet. There are some things no one should ask of a stranger. To gaze upon someone else's shit stains is one of them. This arrangement worked splendidly until she finished her studies and moved on to greater dreams than "doing for" a disabled student. She left, and I was too shy and too embarrassed to ask for help. And too broke. Forty dollars a week is a lot when you're eking out a subsistence on Social Security.
We tried to keep it up, but dirt plus water equals wet, smeared tire tracks. Roomie felt like an asshole ordering me not to move for an hour at a time while the floor dried. So, we just...let it go. We covered the floor with blankets where we could and went on with life. Theoretically, the blankets were supposed to keep the dirt off the floor, but dirt has a life of its own and slipped beneath our carefully laid barriers. We sighed and shrugged and got used to it. Eventually, our path through the apartment could be tracked by the dark swathes on beige linoleum.
With the news of an imminent gas company invasion, we sprang into action, because we knew that the strangers who came to our door wouldn't be so sanguine about the marks of my passage. Roomie brought home soap and sponges and dutifully scrubbed the floor. He scrubbed so hard that he strained his lower back. The dirt disappeared, and confident that we had done well, we stored our valuables in the bedroom and locked the door. The bedroom floor he didn't clean because the notice assured us there would be no need for the strangers to enter it. We believed it.
The gashouse gang arrived at the appointed hour on Wednesday, and we left for the day. It was a nice day, peaceful and sedate. We went to campus and read in the union, and later, we lunched at Chili's. We came home at 2PM, full and relaxed.
And we knew. Someone had opened the bedroom door, the one we had so carefully locked and in which we had stored our financial information. And the bathroom door, too.
Two minutes after we got home, the building manager arrived under the pretense of fixing a loose faucet. I hadn't reported a loose tap. The gas company had. And they had seen the dunes of DVDs and books and hills of rumpled clothing and decided it was an unsafe working environment. They had complained to the building manager, and he had come to see for himself and unlocked the bedroom door. Where the marks of my passage lay undisturbed.
My name is on the lease, but it was Roomie he called outside. When I opened the door to see what was going on, he refused to speak until I closed it again. Apparently, I was too crippled to engage in such a complex discussion, but smart enough, human enough, to be responsible for the rent check.
When Roomie came back, he told me that the manager had lambasted him for the condition of the apartment and demanded to know "how much longer we intended to stay", as we've been here ten years. He dripped with disgust at the latter half of this statement, as though the length of my matriculation were more worthy of scorn than my admittedly execrable housekeeping skills. As an added bonus, he not so subtly hinted that we were lying dirtbags who had deliberately damaged the wall beneath the AC unit. The one I'd been waiting for maintenance to repair since 2007. When Roomie told him so, he checked the repair logs and claimed that no request had been filed. Hence, we were lying. It couldn't possibly be a mistake in the log.
He gave us ten days to clean the apartment or else. When pressed on the specificities of "or else", he refused to elaborate and stalked off.
And in that moment, we decided we didn't want to stay here anymore. We went inside and began to pack. We knew that no matter how well we cleaned, "or else" was going to be the only outcome. The building manager had already made up his mind, and we were simply too tired to change it.
The next morning, we were met at the door by a handyman.
"I'm here to clean your air conditioners and fix the wall. I cleaned them two years ago, didn't I? Guess I never got around to patchin' that wall."
Liar, liar. Asshole on fire.
We've been packing ever since. This morning, we called my mother, who knows more about cleaning and packing that I ever will. I was exceedingly reluctant at first, because to me, it was the final admission of failure. I was too stupid to finish college after thirteen years of trying and too useless to pack moving boxes. But Roomie insisted it was too much for him to do alone. What could I say? He rarely asks for anything, and he's spent the past ten years and two months wiping my ass when I can't and mopping piss and washing bloody underpants. I had a self-pitying cry, and then we called my mother.
She's coming with a U-Haul on Monday. She's already contacted the utility and phone company on my behalf. The cable is already installed in my new domicile, a three-bedroom, two-bath home she owns. She's already arranging for Clyde the handyman to widen the doors. Papa Chris will soon retrofit the bathroom with a shower chair and grab bars. After I arrive, she'll set up appointments with the dentist(I haven't been able to afford a dentist since 2001)and an appointment with a doctor for a wheelchair eval. She wants to get me a new motorized wheelchair so that I can regain some much-needed independence. Once I'm settled, she wants to help Roomie buy a car so that we cab go on road trips and look into jobs and volunteer work.
She's giddy, glad to have her baby back. I'm not sure how I feel. I'm embarrassed at the way it happened, but I'm not sorry it happened. I've need to leave for a long time but have been too fearful and stubborn to do it. Now I have no choice, and I am relieved. It's over. No more rent. No more papers. No more grinding worry that this time, they won't let me stay. I will be free. My only expenses will be the utilities and fifty-four dollars for phone service and high-speed wireless Internet. I will have room to breathe and, for the first time in my life, a chance to open a savings account.
I will have new responsibilities. I'm already looking into volunteering at the school or hospital as an interpreter for the six Hispanic families, or as a food sorter at the local food pantry. Maybe I'll adopt a dog from the animal hospital, finally bring home the furry companion I've always wanted. We'll see how the financial situation looks in six months.
Life is full of maybes, but it's brighter now than its been in years. I still have to deal with Son of Himmler and might be assessed financial penalties for the damaged wall, but good things are waiting for me. If I'm not around for a week or so, that's why. Well, that and the fact that it might take that long for the Internet to get activated at the new Chateau Guera.
Here's to new beginnings.
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