Month: August 2010

You Don’t Know Me

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Ben Folds with Regina Spektor:

After all these years, one of the things that still surprises me is that readers think they know who I am. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you know a lot about me (in some cases, far too much), but you really don’t know me the way you think you do.

It only stands to reason, of course. There are, after all, long-married couples who suddenly one day look at each other and say in horror, “Who are you? I really don’t know you at all!”

That sort of shock always comes from strategic omissions. I leave out a lot, you’d be surprised. I don’t really talk about my personal life anymore (that is, the important people in it), except in passing. It’s too weird, and it’s not fair to them. It was a lot easier to dump it all when I only had 150 readers, and none of them were people I actually knew.

And besides, the appearance of full disclosure is, in itself, a red herring. A writer’s device, as it were.

Now, some people who actually know me read my blog instead of calling me or seeing me. When they do finally get around to calling me, I fill them in on my life and they yawn. “Oh yeah, I already knew that, I read it on your blog.”

So that annoys me, and just for spite, I also make sure I never write about the juicy stuff. If you want it, you have to call. (See? You probably didn’t know I could be that spiteful AND thoughtful at the same time!)

Anyway, anything you read here is only an approximation of reality. I can’t help it, I’m a writer. You can’t trust us. The most you’ll ever get from us is our version.

Why?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

(Editor’s note: Another essay from commenter K., a wonderful writer who’s part of the gang filling in for me while I’m on vacation.)

Why the fuck should it be this way?

I just spent an hour on the phone with a friend of mine. She’s a janitor working for a contractor at the local private college, the one who pays low enough that my daughter and I qualified for low-income housing. She’s missing work today. She went to her rheumatologist yesterday, who didn’t really listen to her, who sent her some place that gave her some sort of inserts for her shoes without looking at her feet. And today she called in because her foot hurt her so bad, and the supervisor said, “We’re gonna have to have a talk.”

So. Is she going to have a job next week? Can she file for unemployment? Is she eligible for SSDI? What is she going to do? Where is she going to live? What kind of job can she get if she can’t be on her feet? Who can help her? (In one way, she’s half-lucky. A bunch of us browbeat her into applying for the Badgercare buy-in, so she’s got a skimpy insurance plan. It covers some of the treatments she needs. At $130 a month. She’s lucky her daughter can help her pay for it. Because she can’t afford it on her own.)

I’ve just gone through this with Daughter and with an ex-boyfriend, so I’ve got people to call, and places to go, and a list of information that needs to be gotten together for when you call, when you walk in the door. Mostly I’m the one who can say, “I’ve seen this, and it will be rough, but at the end, you’ll be safe.”

While we were on the phone, she told me a story her mother had told her about her dad, the one who handed her the genetic susceptibility for RA, the one who was disabled, the one who told her how much it hurt. He was standing in the back door, looking out at his garden, when a neighbor yelled out to someone, “Look at that lazy asshole.” Because he was disabled. Because he had RA.

Later today I’ll be calling another woman who worked with us. She’s probably got a ruptured disc, probably from mopping floors, and probably too fast. It’s hard work, using one of those old-fashioned swabbie-mops, swinging a heavy wet mop around – especially when the company is understaffing and you’ve got to hurry. I hear she’s crying, because she’s afraid. (She only “probably” has a ruptured disc, because between her and her husband, they make just a little bit too much to get on the state’s insurance. And an MRI costs, what – $2,500? Might as well be her weight in gold.)

So this is one of my unofficial roles, telling people that it will be hard, but that if they try, they will be safe. This is one of the things I’m worried about, going away to college, that I won’t be here for these people, to get them going in the right direction, to give them strength. I’m glad that I can do it, that I can pay back all the people who helped me get to a safe place. But it shouldn’t be up to me. It shouldn’t be happening at all.

I got no conclusions. I got no idea what it should be. I just know that it shouldn’t be like this. That it shouldn’t be so hard to tell people that they’re going to go on welfare. That it shouldn’t be such an awful thing for people to need help.

Fuck cowboys and their hopped-up shit.

Back to School

~ susie ~ 12 Comments

(Editor’s note: Another post from commenter K. while I’m on vacation.)

I’m going back to school this fall.

I started college when I was twenty, but for reasons that took several years of counseling to clarify, I dropped out. I’ve been working hard most of the last thirty-five years, and I figure I can go through school and be broke just as well as I can not go to school and be broke. In the meantime, I’ve learned some things that will help.

I’ve been a short-order cook in a coffee shop in a small town. I’ve been a clerk at a convenience store, more than once. My brother was one, too, for a while.

I did the census thing, knocked on people’s doors. Most people would open the door and talk to you, even though you could almost smell the fear coming off them, wondering what awful secret I was going to demand they reveal. When you stand there in front of them and talk to them, when you hand them a plate of food or a pack of cigarettes and wish them well, you stop being a cipher or a statistic, and become a human. Most people are scared and lonely, some, and are waiting to make that human connection, to shake your hand or invite you in to sit down, to tell you their story. Most people aren’t sitting around waiting for you to fall flat on your face, either; instead, they’re hoping you walk onstage and sing like an angel.

I was a janitor on a college campus. I cleaned offices and classrooms, and got to know people and let them get to know me, a little. I learned that most teachers actually want you to get some of that stuff they are shoveling into your brain, that their sense of self-worth is tied up with students learning, so that if you act like you are trying to learn, they will more than meet you half-way. And that there is really very little glamour or prestige tied up with being a college professor, so treat them like they are actual people, instead of freakishly confused aliens with ray guns. (Although a friend of mine who is a college professor told me I need to remember: some of them are crazy.)

Almost everybody I’ve talked to is convinced I can do this, and are envious of this adventure, and think I’m brave, and neither listen to nor believe the little voice in me that decides I’m out of my mind at least five times before breakfast. Except for the two people who said “You can’t make much money with an art degree, can you,” with no question mark at the end. I can’t make much money without one, so, whatever.

This one has been hard to learn. I am okay. Being the kind of person who picks up bits and pieces like a crow picking up shiny objects is okay. That being the kind of person who picks up bits and pieces and puts them into place like pieces in a puzzle is a good thing when one up and decides to go back to college. That having these little shiny bits and pieces on hand, and to be willing to give them to whoever might have a need, is a good thing. That I am okay, and that I will be okay, that my daughter will survive, that we will both grow.

That the future isn’t written yet. Everything is up in the air even more than usual, and that I might actually succeed. Maybe something good will happen. That maybe I should start thinking about what the future might look like. My future. Maybe.