This.Is.War.
My friends, I have written about the cultural wars in this country and of my astonishment and dismay that we, as a people, are so horrendously divided and at odds. Last night the war manifested right on my doorstep. My housemate called the Los Angeles Police Department with a mind to having me arrested and removed from my home of four years. Why? Because I backed up our landlord in his decision to throw out a vagrant and undesirable, a “deplorable” of the platinum mint variety, and my housemate showed his true colors as a low life Trumpite. He couldn’t handle two adults making a decision against him and his lady friend. So in a spiteful show of pure harassment and with zero cause, after ripping a piece of pizza out of my mouth, he brought on the Big Guns, the Men in Blue, apparently thinking I would shatter into pieces — or something. What I did, when the cops arrived, was inch my way down the staircase, one step at a time, leaning on the wall on the left and using the rail on the right, such is my wont to do because I have nerve damage in my right leg, and I said good evening to them.
I listened to the complaints of me being “alcoholic” and “drunk” and “out of control” being related to the cops by my 6’3” 450 pound housemate, and I said to the officer at the bottom of the steps, “Sir, I’ll be happy to dance a jig down a straight line. May I use my cane?” The cop just looked at me, in that non committal way they have when confronted with paradoxical and conflicting information. The alcoholic comment is so far off the walls I can’t begin to tell you. I had been sharing a bottle of wine with Gerry’s son’s girlfriend earlier in the evening but we were not even buzzed, let alone intoxicated or out of control. And, just by the by, even if I had been inebriated, it’s perfect legal to do so in your own home. As a matter of fact, that’s what the cops recommend.
So, there was a little more commentary about what a horrible person I was, and then I casually mentioned to the nice officer that my charming housemate had taken my food out of the refrigerator and said unto me that I could no longer use the refrigerator and the cop straightened him out at once and told him that he could not do that, it was against the law. The idiot was actually giving me a good case for elder abuse charges with the district attorney as opposed to giving L.A.P.D. cause to do anything against me.
Bottom line, the cop told him there was zero crime being committed and that his only recourse was civil, i.e., to evict me and he turned to leave, while Gerry solemnly intoned that he and the owner of the house would do that today. I went upstairs and called Rene, the owner, and he started laughing at this incredulous tale. His words to me were, “Is he kidding? If anybody goes it will be him.” He also said, “I can’t believe that he did this because we got rid of his little plaything.” I said, “Neither can I. I am gobsmacked.”
The “plaything” is a woman I’ll call Nancy and I also have called her the “evangelical wing nut.” She has “visions” on a regular basis and one of the visions that was planted in her brain is that Donald Trump, whom she loves, will be president for eight years followed by Mike Pence, whom she really loves because she heard on the Christian Broadcasting Network that Jesus talks to him. When she used to live here before and told me her views on the GOP ticket I went into a screaming meltdown and told her my views and we have not spoken since. I lived with a cold war in this household for nine months until she had a fit one night and left sobbing at 4:30 a.m. and I was responsible for that too. At 1:30 a.m. I told her she had five minutes to get the bleep out of the bathroom before I got the axe from the garage and chopped down the door, ala “The Shining.” My level of ire was due to the fact that she had already been in the bathroom for seven and a half hours and I had had it finally. (This was common behavior on her part.) Just by the by, nobody laughed harder than Rene, even though it was his property I was threatening to lay waste to.
So, three weeks ago, this woman, who is a vagrant and an undesirable, who has been banned from this property by the owner returned, ostensibly for a few days and Gerry and I fought bitterly over her being here and I threatened to call Rene. As fate would have it, Rene drove by the house and saw her car and called me and asked me how long she had been here and I told him the truth. Since then I’ve been living in a war zone. Gerry has rechristened me “Judas.”
There are a great many more anecdotes I could share, about how Nancy would tell Gerry that I was possessed by demons, which she claimed to be able to see and that my problem with my leg was because I would not hear the word of God, this level of bullshit, but they all distill down to one common theme: Nancy is a total loser and of course she supports Trump. Gerry, I have decided recently, is also a total loser and the rocks in her head fit the holes in his. It’s sad that Gerry and I are no longer friends, because we were close at one time. That is no longer possible because the cultural rift, of people who watch YouTube conspiracy theory videos as opposed to those of us who watch Joy-Ann Reid and Rachel Maddow, for example, is simply too great. The chasm between the progressives and the knuckle draggers has never been wider. We’re literally living in two alternate realities which are co-located and co-existing side by side, but which, paradoxically, do not touch. Lines of communication are down.
For many years there was an uneasy detente with each camp silently mocking the other. No more. The gloves are off and open hostility prevails. Friends are turning on friends, children on Fox News- watching-parents, worker against worker. I talk to people and they share these stories with me and I share mine.
I think I can bottom line it thusly: I mentioned sharing a glass of wine with the girlfriend of Gerry’s son. What I told her is that the proof of a life’s worth is whether you’re happy or not. I don’t have a great deal of money, largely due to becoming disabled when I planned to work for ten more years. But that is no impediment to success on other levels. I have re-invented myself in my sixties as a writer, which is a life long love of mine. I write creatively and of course I write political blogs. i have friends who share my interests and life is good. While I may not be sitting on a fortune, neither do I lack for anything. My needs are covered and I have joy. Gerry, on the other hand, is, miserable. That’s not just my judgement, that is his free confession. He hates life and the world. He is dis-eased, physically, mentally and spiritually. Emotionally, in my opinion, he is dwarfed.
This literally is a house divided, with the liberal upstairs in the sunshine, with the view of the San Gabriel mountains, blogging away and enjoying life, and the Trumpites downstairs, which is dark and cloistered both physically and metaphorically. That’s where all the conflict and chaos is. When you come up the stairs, you come into the peace and the light. Sanity prevails.
I can’t write the ending to this tale because I haven’t lived it yet, but I believe I shall overcome this, and make the right decisions to move forward in my life; and I believe that in the long run, we all shall overcome and our society will heal. Such is my prayer.
Peace.