Doesn't it make you sick to see this guy exploiting all of his unfair advantages?
So, I get off work and I go into the driver's room There's this asshole sitting there watching Fox news, as he does every night. I find that I am being asked some over personal questions as to just what my retirement income will be. I make a little joke, "Look, I'll have a check coming every month and if I have to panhandle for the last week of the month, I don't give a shit."
The asshole says, "Yeah, but those panhandlers make 60 or 80 thousand bucks a year. They're all hustlers."
So, I say, "Asshole, err I mean Bob, that sounds like an excellent hustle. Why are you working when you can make that kind of easy money standin' around in the rain?"
Asshole says, "What about the guy in the wheelchair on Van Ness? He always gets all hunched up and looks bad when he's panhandling but you see him later and he's doing wheelies. He probably doesn't even need that wheelchair."
I say, "What a lucky guy. Living that good life in a nice wheelchair. Why don't you get a nice wheelchair like that and start living large?"
Asshole says, "You know what I mean. Those guys have put together a scam."
I say, "Bob, I hate to break it to you. There's a lot of fuckin' scams in this world. That TV you worship is a fuckin' scam. The banking system is a fuckin' scam. Putting on a suit and keeping up appearances so you can lie to people and steal their money is a fuckin' scam. Don't be chickenshit Bob."
So, Asshole says, "You know what I mean. Half of those guys don't even need those wheelchairs. They're lying!"
"Alright Bob, don't scam. Be an honest man. Show some ambition and initiative. Be a man Bob. A moment of pain and a lifetime of privilege. Take a fuckin' chainsaw and cut your fuckin' legs off. You deserve it Bob. Shit, you owe it to yourself."
At this point I'm so angry I'm shaking. I walk out and call Doctor Wayne. Doctor Wayne is another one of those wheelchair scammers. He has cerebral palsy. What a fuckin' scam. He was told that he was mentally retarded and spent much of his childhood in some of those real plush California state hospitals. He has a PhD in psychology. He is remarkably kind and patient.
"So, Wayne, could I have handled this any better?"
"No," he says, "but you probably should have cut it short and told him to fuck himself."
Really, there are assholes out there who feel oppressed and exploited by guys in wheelchairs. Fuck me.
Fuck them.
9 comments:
No. You handled it alright. The line about the chainsaw was a nice touch.
There are quite a few people around here in wheelchairs. As the result of intravenous drug abuse, most commonly. I lived across the hall from this one guy before he lost his right leg. He was alright. A honest as a junkie can be under the circumstances. Probably, he surmised early on that I had nothing much to steal. Plus. I was a good few inches taller than him and unweakened by addiction.
A couple of years back he moved into my neighbourhood. I see him out some mornings wheeling directly the uncoming traffic. Not so much an out and out death wish as a gesture of contempt.
He hides his works under a tartan blanket.
Anyway. For a few years I worked in this awful call centre a few underground stops from where I live. Most people in there were dedicated smokers. All weathers we would huddle in doorways on our coffee break to burn a couple and chew the fat.
Directly opposite was a public toilet.
In the mornings I would travel to work with some people I recognized from the same flats I live in still. Or other projects nearby.
They would travel into town in their regular clothes and proceed directly to the public toilet where the would change into rags. No kidding. I would see them out there every coffee break bumming change into little styrofoam cups. Later in the evening I might sometimes travel back home with them on the tube.
So far as I could gather, they worked a regular nine to five shift to supplement their welfare checks.
Now. I am not advocating a pogrom. It's just an observation. All of those people bumming change on the corner were as able bodied as me, regardless.
The guy in your driver's room is a fucking idiot. Right off the bat, his fishing for details on your retirement income is enough to qualify for a fat lip. Every place I've worked too there are cockroaches like that.
Smart alec motherfuckers who want to know everbody else's business.
I live in New York. The homeless are omnipresent... whatever their "scam", I wouldn't trade places with 'em for anything. The guy in the waiting room needs a beating.
Begging has been an occupation for as long as there have been cities. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there were beggars in Uruk, Mesopotamia, holding up cuneiform tablets saying, "Will work for food."
If you look at the useless shit that people do for a living these days, begging seems as honorable as most occupations. Clothes are pretty easy to come by. If someone is dressed in rags, it wouldn't surprise me if he was doing it for effect. I still don't give a shit. I get dressed up like a parking enforcement cop in blue polyester clothes. It has the effect of making me look like a bus driver. You have to look the part to do the job.
Ib, it crossed my mind that there is an Americanism here that you probably wouldn't get. Fox News is the broadcast outlet for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the rest of that little gang of Father Coughlin imitators. Bob, the asshole, spends his breaktime watching those fucks and feeling sorry for himself and all of the other oppressed and exploited white men who are being ground down by gimps and immigrants and women and children and all of the other cruel oppressors of the modern world.
Now, I kind of got the part about the tartan blanket, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. What are the semiotics of tartan blankets in the context of opiate habituation? Dude.
Nazz, good to hear from you. The only person who doesn't feel like beating the guy is Doctor Wayne. Hard to believe but true: he's spent his whole life having people tell him that he sure is lucky being plugged into that sweet government money. He works harder than anyone I've ever known and every time he accomplishes something there are people who will say that he only did it because he is one of those lucky cripples. I'd imagine that Wayne probably wanted to kill the first 500 or so people who said that shit but many years later he is pretty sanguine in his understanding of pukes and cowards.
What I understand with no compunction is the burning rage.
The tide.
That fucker was 'begging' for all he got. Wayne was right. In that it might have been more concise just to cut him off a whole lot earlier. A bit more 'John Wayne'. Still. I am myself what you might call a slow burner.
I get into the shaking part with the best of them.
Tartan is tartan. No less or more.
I like the guy, but there is too much water. His loss is not my loss.
"Bob" is undoubtably an asshole. No poetry. No sense.
Fuck him. Let him see smell the shit from burning ovens. He would not get it. There are no neck nazis everywhere, just waiting for the opportunity to sew some runes onto their shirts.
Jon,
Dr. Wayne's advice seems very 'sage'
There was a bit of "scandal" here in NYC recently when the state attorney general sued the people behind "The United Homeless Organization." It seems that this couple was making money leasing out tables, big plastic jugs, and fake permits to homeless guys for a day rate. The guys would rent the equipment, claim to be begging for an advocacy organization, and keep the donations, except for what they paid for the daily lease of materials. Now as far as I can see here it's a small scandal that somebody's making money off leasing things to homeless guys; I feel kind of creepy about that, but the homeless guys claiming to be UHO reps are not cranking in millions of dollars; they're still begging for pennies, which they clearly need, and I got no problem with that. I figure as a person with a place to live, the semblance of a job, and a fridge full of food I don't care whether somebody who needs money spends it on food or crack or a place to sleep or a prop so that his begging is more effective; I try to give something when asked.
There was a discussion of all this on a blog I read a lot, not a very progressive one apparently, and I seemed to be the only person not outraged at the homeless beggars. Everybody I was arguing with insisted that the beggars were all fakers, all walking away with a thick wad of cash at the end of the day. There was repeated telling of various old sawhorses about "friends of friends" who "saw" a beggar climb into a limo around the corner from his cardboard box at the end of the day.
It's dispiriting to find out that there are so many coldhearted assholes out there. Me I always figure the good times don't last forever; God forbid I'm ever out on the street.
Don't know if I could have cut it as short as Dr. Wayne suggested....
'Cause I'm pretty sure I would have had to add the title of John Clellon Holmes' most famous work to the front end of the phrase.
OK?
.
Is begging better or worse than whoring? We are all prostitutes to some degree or another; we comodify our bodies or our brains (just another body part, really) and turn it out on the street. That street may be Wall Street, Main Street or Santa Rosa Avenue, a board room, a bedroom, or a school room. Sanctimonious twits abound: the average IQ is 100. Dog save us all!
I don't often run into the homeless in my neck of the woods. But when I have, like in Birmingham or Anniston, I have always emptied my pockets and purse to them. I always, with out fail have been made fun of by whom ever saw me do it.
I am presented with need greater than my own... I give all I have...I sleep with peace.
It is not my worry how the money is spent. I gave it to them and it is now their decision what is their greatest need.
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