Surviving It All

STANDING IN LINE for our food stamps, I thought of my new love, a tiny Asian stripper with two young kids working it in a KCDC housing project polluted with bloody gangsters while trying hard to make it out – killing rats and the resident sewer roaches, wanting that degree from the community college, somehow avoid the crackheads and junkies, just escape.

Cops patrolling the streets stopped me every time I entered the barbed wired hood, glaring toxic hate. Nighttime together always generated steamy passion but everything else seemed cold and surreal to me for far too long. 

As I waited for the food stamps I flashed back to my old dead life, but I had a new one here and now and I’d somehow make it work.

We were both driven by routine, but we didn’t have the types we’d preferred. We’d smoke, drink cheap beer, comb the papers for any decent jobs while waiting for nonexistent disability checks and we’d use food stamps to – wait a minute! $78/month for food?  Seriously? How the hell could two adults and two babies make it on that? Screw that entitlements bullshit! Rich politicians had no clue and no hearts.

Still there were ways to make it. There were always ways for most things. Sometimes you had to endure humiliation, sometimes you had to be creative and sometimes you simply had to be tenacious. All applied to me.

So, stomachs half-full, we’d make hard, rough love on the dirty mattress covering our slum apartment floor while wishing for a new bigger, safer roach trap afterwards. Most days we’d sit on the porch of the tenement watching the police cars whisk by and ask each other questions – what meds did we need, did we want kids – more kids and if so, how, and always what about marriage, marriage, marriage? (She was becoming obsessed.) Often, we’d wander to the food bank and the thrift store hoping to score cheap pasta and a dollar shirt. She’d ask when things would get better. I asked the same question but there didn’t seem to be many answers.

I didn’t like not working and couldn’t believe I hadn’t scored a job, some job, any job. I’d started working when I was 10 years old, lawn care service, gardening, babysitting, selling produce on the side of the road. I’d even started my own neighborhood newspaper and sold actual ads around town. 

When I turned 15, my father let me drive our old ’66 Chevy Impala and I was finally able to get a “real” job – at a fast-food restaurant. Where else at that age? I never stopped working. For most of my life, I worked a good 15-20 hours a day, for years, and I’d made the mistake of thinking I was damn near invincible, only to eventually find out I wasn’t. 

After the breakdown, now minus job and a decade long relationship, I’d moved across the country, back to what felt like the middle of nowhere, depressed about being down on my luck, of the constant struggle to survive, but confident I’d somehow land on my feet. I’d been homeless twice and seen and endured some horrible things then and otherwise, but I’d always bounced back and landed on my feet. I’d done a little bit of everything, blue collar and white collar, should be able to work in many different industries.

Wrong. There was nothing. No jobs, no insurance, no money. I tried restaurants, schools, hospitals, delivery companies and even call centers – and I HATE call centers! We went months without me finding anything, surviving on a tiny government check and what she made working part-time at the daycare center – which had to go to our own damn daycare needs anyway!

Months later, it had taken a long time for me to find something but finally I was bouncing at a biker bar for $6 an hour while sporting the occasional bruise when she called me there. “Did you get the food stamps?” she asked.

I took a drag on my cigarette and muttered “Yeah.”

“So you’re seeing someone else now?” my tiny ex-princess asked.

“Nah but as soon as I can save up enough, I’m getting a new tattoo, baby,” I replied.

Silence on the other end. 

I asked, “So how’s it going with Steve? Getting married soon?” 

She said she’s crying all the time.

She had always talked about marriage, pushing me hard. I couldn’t do it though. After the abrupt end of that 10-year relationship, I had big commitment issues so even as she asked and pressured, I didn’t take it that seriously and maybe that’d been a mistake. I guess she’d been referring to me all that time after all, not Steve. But she’d wanted to get married, connecting it somehow with immediate happiness. I didn’t know about that, but I hoped she’d gotten married and was finally happy. Me? I’d move on and keep moving.

— SCOTT C. HOLSTAD

Scott C. Holstad has authored 50+ books & has appeared in many journals. He’s moved more than 35 times, went to high school and college in Knoxville, Tenn., then too much more academics, largely in the L.A. area. He now lives near Gettysburg, Penn., with his family. He loves geopolitics, books, vinyl and hockey. Visit his website.