I love Sundays. Sunday is a day that nobody generally has the time, will or desire to hassle me or cause me trouble. Everyone who is anyone is not working, and therefore leaving me to my own devices. There are no check ups from the women’s shelter who administrate my housing subsidy. There are no demands from anyone. I generally have nothing to do, no reason to do much except drink tea, write, play guitar and think about going for a walk down towards the water. I like walking until I see the sea. I head out of here and peek out towards the bay, climbing higher and higher, burning the soles off my favorite vans, and reluctantly using my walking stick. My legs are no good. My back is no good. I can barely get around on my bad days, but I refuse to stop walking. My highway days might be over, but I live in one of the most beautiful cities on earth and I refuse to fritter my days away in the pure luxury that is having my own apartment.
Ask me what my favorite past time is, and I will tell you it is sitting on my couch, with a hot drink, looking out the window at the world rushing past. I love my door locked my window open, my little color changing lamp glowing softly. I love my books – I have a Louis-Ferdinand Céline on the go. I love my music. I love my life here inside my apartment so much sometimes I just don’t want to go outside. I am hoarding the rest, the comfort, the feeling of safety and normality, just in case it all gets taken away from me next year when the subsidy runs out and I end up back out ‘there’. I have to come up with something. I can’t let it happen. I just don’t see how I am going to come up with the rent. There is plenty of time to walk the Embarcadero when I am unhoused once more. But for now here I am. I still have time to make a life, a career out of words, a future. I still have time to try and piece together a future from the tatters that were left from someone promising the world but delivering nothing but a pain in the ass and a bunch of false hope. Oh well. At least for now here I am.
Today a workman was meant to come and fix a busted pulley system on the window. I moved everything so he could get at the window, including a very prickly and much loved cactus, the table, chairs. I took down the curtains and put away my blankets. It changed my chill Sunday into a hive of early activity ready for the appointment. The cable that holds the window up had snapped due to old age (I know how it feels) and it would not stay open. I called the landlord after his workman failed to appear at the designated time. An hour and three quarters later he still was not here. The landlord said he couldn’t reach his man and we would reschedule. Then after I put my room back together, taken off my mask and begun to relax my phone rang. It was now almost three hours after the designated time. The landlord was asking me to let the guy in to fix the window. I was …pretty upset. I ran around, took the curtains back down, shifted everything as fast as I could, and in the process dropped my pampered cactus, smashing its pot and dropping it on my hand. Spikes stuck in my flesh. Blood drawn. Motherfucker. Sweeping up the shards and the gravelly dirt, tutting over the lost ‘branch’ of Kurt, the Cactus, and wondering if I should pull out the spikes with tweezers, I began cursing the day. It hadn’t even begun.
In came the workman. Shoes on. Yuck. Treading over my clean floor. He left the door open. A small loud woman walked into my house without introducing herself, also in her shoes. “It’s my wife!” he exclaimed. “I don’t have shoes in my house. Sorry.” I have no fucking idea why I was apologizing as these two unmasked bozos spread goodness knows what shit into my bedroom/living room. I would never stride into someone else’s house uninvited, unannounced and without even removing my shoes. Why did she think my home and my privacy was so worthless that she could just walk in without being asked in? Steam was coming out of my ears while I tried hard not to let anyone see I was upset or mad. That will never do. I am not allowed emotions or privacy, that shit has to be bought. It was past 4pm. Much banging, thankfully no smashing, and a curious amount of black dirt later, and a minor nervous breakdown over a maskless guy blowing over my window to remove dust and me snapping and asking him to please put a mask on, as it hung uselessly over an ear, he was done. The rude woman waited outside. I grabbed the damn lysol and started spraying, ruining my favorite soft socks, and cleaning up the outrageous and strange amount of dirt that had spread throughout my room.
The window works.
The window works but I am in a state of absolute high stress. A pandemic. A man who won’t wear a mask. Vaccines that don’t fucking work. A woman who thinks she can just waltz into my home without asking permission, wearing her filthy outside shoes. My space being invaded. A landlord who thinks my time and my day is worth nothing, but I have to be nice and I have to be polite because FUCK I need this home.
I am hoping that tomorrow absolutely nobody wants to talk to me ‘in real life’. I am taking back my Sunday, and going to have it on Monday. I intend to drink more tea than any one person needs, smoke up the rest of this haze, walk to the pot shop and buy myself a Christmas present, and think about the new year. Time flies further and further away from people I loved, dragging me with it. I can’t even see their faces any more. Abiding memories reflect back in the fixed window. Their voices ring out in my head. Sometimes it is clear, there is no moving on, there is just learning to live with an imperfect world as a flawed individual. There is one thing though, I am brutal in my self protection. I won’t be fucked around, spoken down to, messed around, walked all over, dominated or judged any more. This is my time. This is my space and I am fucked if I will let anyone tread all over it in hepatitis street shoes.
Sunday, bloody Sunday……