BACK IN BLACK: Part One (TheRapist Continued, Again)
I'll never forget the day...
Thursday, February 9th, at 6:00pm. That's when my world exploded.
I'd been pounded by negative energies with a driving baseline, shattering my eardrums so anything, even positive, was an irritation.
I had set myself up. I'd made myself a victim, attracting the wrong energy. I always lived my life under the rule of not inviting the unwanted, but I had opened the door to negativity. I told the universe JPG was weak, and nature, life, the fucking universe, never tolerates weakness. Natural selection; the strong survive, and the weak are pummeled to dust.
It was one of the few nights I had off from work. Like most nights, I was lying in my daddy chair, half-naked, watching On Demand programming, bored. Everything lost its thrill. Video games, movies, television, it was all tainted with psychobabble. They were escapisms keeping from dealing with real life and growing up. I wasn't writing. I had lost all inspirations and motivations to create. I thought I was void of ideas, but more accurately I was running from them. Characters and plotlines became ghosts and goblins I feared.
My wife answered the door. It was the manager, and I went into the bedroom to put on some pants. I'd already had it out with the man two months prior, when he was to repair a busted lock on my door. He was procrastinating and I confronted him to repair the lock. Three times he scheduled an appointment, and three times no one came. "You have three lock, you don't need a fourth." was his explanation. But that wasn't the point. He said he would replace the lock, and I was holding him to his word. Also, I wasn't paying rent so I could wrestle with my front door. I moved in with those locks, and I was paying to keep them. When they did finally show, they took the damaged lock, but didn't replace it, leaving a hole in my front door. When I complained again, their solution was switching the backdoor, putting it on the front, and covering the hole in the backdoor with a metal cover. I was told twenty-four hours and all would be as it should, but that never happened.
I wrote the owner, but she did nothing. I went to the Housing Department who advised to send two more letters for service before sending an inspector. I followed the rules, and nothing happened, so we scheduled for an inspection. The inspector came and went. He looked around and basically told us we were fucked. There was nothing he could do about the lock. The law said we didn't even have to have a security door, then he quickly pointed out what we thought was a gate was nothing more than a glorified screen door. There were several things around the house that needed attention and were left unfinished. All of which had nothing to do with housing code standards.
I stood dumbfounded as the inspector went room-to-room dismissing our complaints. We're good people and responsible tenants. We paid our rent on time. Never had a complaint against us. Still, there was nothing we could do to protect ourselves against what we would learn was the first attack. The second came on Thursday at 6 pm. I stood in my bedroom, slowing putting my pants on, and listening to the muffled voices of my wife and the manager. I waited for it to end, but when it didn't I knew I had to do something. I appeared behind my wife and the manager jumped back. I saw it, he knew it, and I still hold on to it. I made someone afraid. He handed us a slip of paper. My wife said we were being forced out. I hid my shock and anger while deepening my voice: “We’ll check with a lawyer in the morning, and see what she can and cannot do.”
When the door closed, we fell apart. My wife was in shock, and I prayed internally as I read the declaration to relocate my family so she could move her parents into our unit. It was the first time Id’ read any legal document so carefully, studying, looking for every interpretation, anything I could use to save us. The next day, I went to the Housing Department and there was nothing we could do to protect ourselves. Even thought there was a “bad faith clause” it was inactive unless we could prove they the owner didn’t move her parents in. I played phone tag with the Housing Rights Association. I called a lawyer, who read off twelve things I could sue for, if we could prove the owner was cheating us, which we couldn’t.
The first thing I did was go to my father, who had prepared for this ever since this same person kicked my mother out of her unit. My father had a place all lined up in one of his buildings. Honestly, I was excited. This was opportunity to really save some money. I’m well aware that my father’s properties are in areas I would prefer to steer clear of, but my mother’s place is decent, in a decent neighborhood. I thought, surely, as the father of his grandkids, we would get an even better place. Maybe, he’d even rent us a house.
84th Place. Crenshaw and 84th Place. It took a while for the address to seem familiar. I’d spent my youth there. Back when my father was in the furniture business and worked out of Mansion House. There was nothing to do for a ten year-old, but play in the back alley, and going back and forth to the local library to steal comics. As I drove to 84th, the scenery became more familiar and I was dreading my destination. When I got there, I was in shock. I knew exactly where I was, and I couldn’t believe this was where my father wanted his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren to live.
It was a dump. No need for me to describe any further. Simply, imagine a dump and you’ll see it. It was the universal definition for a dump. It intersects with every dump, in every reality, in ever dimension. I called my wife, but I was speechless. My shock went up against my instinct to run from danger, and shock was winning. I stared at that building, wondering what my father was thinking. Later than night, I returned with a friend who couldn’t wait for five minutes in his parked car without being afraid. As bad as the area was during the day, at night it was mush worse. John Carpenter couldn’t imagine a worse place. The freaks and bangers had crawled form the sewers and were walking the streets. I took some pictures with my cell for my wife and got the hell outta there.
Taking my father’s place was an option I could not entertain. It was my greatest fear made real. Since I was a kid, living in Orange County, I’ve been afraid of living out Good Times, Sanford and Son, and What’s Happening. Someone like me, who lives their life via television and movies, seeing those shows was terrifying. I’d never knowingly touched poverty for any longer than a weekend visit. Making my stay permanent was stupefying. Taking my family with me was unacceptable. That is when I truly became afraid. My safety net just fell apart and I was on my own. I had four weeks to find a new home with crap credit my only obstacle.
Fast forward: it took two weeks to find a new place to live. During that time, I barely slept, my children became ill, and we were subjected to human greed in its most base form: real estate.
Real estate has to be the gold rush of the millennium. We drove from West Los Angeles to North Hollywood and saw some of the crappiest apartments I’d never imagined. What passes for a “newly painted” apartment my six year old can surpass with a brush and water colors. Security was a luxury, and common human decency was as vacant as the apartments. We hit the bottom of the barrel when we answered an email from a Persian apartment manager/owner.
We were honest in our profile that we had poor credit, which made the email we received all the more suspicious. In two-weeks, it was the only email any manager or owner had sent. The apartment was east of Crenshaw. As my MPV turned into what could officially be called the ghetto, I felt my stomach turn. My wife rolled up her window, and my kids went silent. We were strangers in a strange land and no matter how brown my kids and I were it wouldn’t be enough.
Thursday, February 9th, at 6:00pm. That's when my world exploded.
I'd been pounded by negative energies with a driving baseline, shattering my eardrums so anything, even positive, was an irritation.
I had set myself up. I'd made myself a victim, attracting the wrong energy. I always lived my life under the rule of not inviting the unwanted, but I had opened the door to negativity. I told the universe JPG was weak, and nature, life, the fucking universe, never tolerates weakness. Natural selection; the strong survive, and the weak are pummeled to dust.
It was one of the few nights I had off from work. Like most nights, I was lying in my daddy chair, half-naked, watching On Demand programming, bored. Everything lost its thrill. Video games, movies, television, it was all tainted with psychobabble. They were escapisms keeping from dealing with real life and growing up. I wasn't writing. I had lost all inspirations and motivations to create. I thought I was void of ideas, but more accurately I was running from them. Characters and plotlines became ghosts and goblins I feared.
My wife answered the door. It was the manager, and I went into the bedroom to put on some pants. I'd already had it out with the man two months prior, when he was to repair a busted lock on my door. He was procrastinating and I confronted him to repair the lock. Three times he scheduled an appointment, and three times no one came. "You have three lock, you don't need a fourth." was his explanation. But that wasn't the point. He said he would replace the lock, and I was holding him to his word. Also, I wasn't paying rent so I could wrestle with my front door. I moved in with those locks, and I was paying to keep them. When they did finally show, they took the damaged lock, but didn't replace it, leaving a hole in my front door. When I complained again, their solution was switching the backdoor, putting it on the front, and covering the hole in the backdoor with a metal cover. I was told twenty-four hours and all would be as it should, but that never happened.
I wrote the owner, but she did nothing. I went to the Housing Department who advised to send two more letters for service before sending an inspector. I followed the rules, and nothing happened, so we scheduled for an inspection. The inspector came and went. He looked around and basically told us we were fucked. There was nothing he could do about the lock. The law said we didn't even have to have a security door, then he quickly pointed out what we thought was a gate was nothing more than a glorified screen door. There were several things around the house that needed attention and were left unfinished. All of which had nothing to do with housing code standards.
I stood dumbfounded as the inspector went room-to-room dismissing our complaints. We're good people and responsible tenants. We paid our rent on time. Never had a complaint against us. Still, there was nothing we could do to protect ourselves against what we would learn was the first attack. The second came on Thursday at 6 pm. I stood in my bedroom, slowing putting my pants on, and listening to the muffled voices of my wife and the manager. I waited for it to end, but when it didn't I knew I had to do something. I appeared behind my wife and the manager jumped back. I saw it, he knew it, and I still hold on to it. I made someone afraid. He handed us a slip of paper. My wife said we were being forced out. I hid my shock and anger while deepening my voice: “We’ll check with a lawyer in the morning, and see what she can and cannot do.”
When the door closed, we fell apart. My wife was in shock, and I prayed internally as I read the declaration to relocate my family so she could move her parents into our unit. It was the first time Id’ read any legal document so carefully, studying, looking for every interpretation, anything I could use to save us. The next day, I went to the Housing Department and there was nothing we could do to protect ourselves. Even thought there was a “bad faith clause” it was inactive unless we could prove they the owner didn’t move her parents in. I played phone tag with the Housing Rights Association. I called a lawyer, who read off twelve things I could sue for, if we could prove the owner was cheating us, which we couldn’t.
The first thing I did was go to my father, who had prepared for this ever since this same person kicked my mother out of her unit. My father had a place all lined up in one of his buildings. Honestly, I was excited. This was opportunity to really save some money. I’m well aware that my father’s properties are in areas I would prefer to steer clear of, but my mother’s place is decent, in a decent neighborhood. I thought, surely, as the father of his grandkids, we would get an even better place. Maybe, he’d even rent us a house.
84th Place. Crenshaw and 84th Place. It took a while for the address to seem familiar. I’d spent my youth there. Back when my father was in the furniture business and worked out of Mansion House. There was nothing to do for a ten year-old, but play in the back alley, and going back and forth to the local library to steal comics. As I drove to 84th, the scenery became more familiar and I was dreading my destination. When I got there, I was in shock. I knew exactly where I was, and I couldn’t believe this was where my father wanted his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren to live.
It was a dump. No need for me to describe any further. Simply, imagine a dump and you’ll see it. It was the universal definition for a dump. It intersects with every dump, in every reality, in ever dimension. I called my wife, but I was speechless. My shock went up against my instinct to run from danger, and shock was winning. I stared at that building, wondering what my father was thinking. Later than night, I returned with a friend who couldn’t wait for five minutes in his parked car without being afraid. As bad as the area was during the day, at night it was mush worse. John Carpenter couldn’t imagine a worse place. The freaks and bangers had crawled form the sewers and were walking the streets. I took some pictures with my cell for my wife and got the hell outta there.
Taking my father’s place was an option I could not entertain. It was my greatest fear made real. Since I was a kid, living in Orange County, I’ve been afraid of living out Good Times, Sanford and Son, and What’s Happening. Someone like me, who lives their life via television and movies, seeing those shows was terrifying. I’d never knowingly touched poverty for any longer than a weekend visit. Making my stay permanent was stupefying. Taking my family with me was unacceptable. That is when I truly became afraid. My safety net just fell apart and I was on my own. I had four weeks to find a new home with crap credit my only obstacle.
Fast forward: it took two weeks to find a new place to live. During that time, I barely slept, my children became ill, and we were subjected to human greed in its most base form: real estate.
Real estate has to be the gold rush of the millennium. We drove from West Los Angeles to North Hollywood and saw some of the crappiest apartments I’d never imagined. What passes for a “newly painted” apartment my six year old can surpass with a brush and water colors. Security was a luxury, and common human decency was as vacant as the apartments. We hit the bottom of the barrel when we answered an email from a Persian apartment manager/owner.
We were honest in our profile that we had poor credit, which made the email we received all the more suspicious. In two-weeks, it was the only email any manager or owner had sent. The apartment was east of Crenshaw. As my MPV turned into what could officially be called the ghetto, I felt my stomach turn. My wife rolled up her window, and my kids went silent. We were strangers in a strange land and no matter how brown my kids and I were it wouldn’t be enough.
posted by QABBAL at 2:29 AM
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