"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch about it on the Internet." -Simon, from The Book of Simon
Some bios list credentials, such as: Education BFA in Illustration, Massachusetts College of Art Occupation Former Production Slave, Ballantine Books Comics Credits Columnist, Writer, Artist, Editor Etc…
And some bios tell a story, such as: I can remember sitting in front of my television one morning, watching the old Batman show, when Julie Newmar appeared in that skintight black leather outfit as Catwoman. It was my first boy/girl thing. >A year later I was in kindergarten telling Katherine Burke that I loved her. It’s pretty much been a string of stupid mistakes ever since…
Still other bios state an intent, such as: This is a series of essays illustrating the life of one particular struggling artist as he plods through the world and occasionally bumps into some interesting shit.
But most bios just sit to the right of the column and are never looked at. So ignore this space and just read the damn column already…
Last Friday I had my day in court. And, since this column is here for you to read, that means I wasn’t evicted. Yeah, yeah, hold the applause. I know you’re all so glad to still have me around, not talking about comics. Don’t worry, I’m not out of the woods just yet. There’s still a chance I might be out on my ass sometime soon. Just be happy that there are only ten more of these ramblings left after this one.
Stand Accused The exact charges that I was appearing in court to answer for were failure to pay rent starting back in November and up through the month of February. Quite a long time. I waited out a few notices and warnings until I was sure I was down to my last lick and finally had to do something. So I went in on the last day I had before a marshal notice would be filed and entered my answer. By then it was March, which meant they were adding that month to the tally as well. However, also by that time I had managed to scrape together enough to send in payment for November and December. When asked what my answer was to the charges, I told the fat, limping man behind the bulletproof glass that I had already paid at least half. He gave me a court date for the following Friday and advised me to bring in receipts if I had them. Of course, in this case receipts would be cancelled checks, which hadn’t been returned from the bank just yet. So it looked like I’d have to rely on my natural charm to get me by. As you can probably guess, I thought for sure I was fucked.
I spent a week mildly freaking and massively brooding about my impending eviction. I used to think I had a lot of shit. That was until I got the chance to live alone. Now I’ve got a lot of shit times two. The last time I had to empty an apartment and move it damn near killed me because of the sheer volume of furniture, books, comic book boxes, clothes, and Star Wars toys I had collected. Needless to say, I was not looking forward to just the simple act of moving all that crap, never mind the inconvenience of having no place to put it. Watts was waiting in the wings the whole time with info on storage space, which was good because I was going to need a lot of it. With terrible thoughts of packing all my worldly possessions into an aluminum, padlocked box somewhere in Brooklyn, I returned to the Housing Part of the Civil Court of New York, County of Queens.
There wasn’t much sleep to be had the night before. In fact, I think I finally drifted away around five a.m., having to be in the court at eleven. I picked out a button down white shirt and a black v-neck sweater to go with a pair of trendy faded carpenter jeans. Maybe not the most responsible looking outfit to wear to court, but I appeared well groomed enough. And besides, if I was going down I wasn’t going down looking like a tool in a pair of Dockers.
In the courtroom I took a seat along the back wall. The judge was a just-passing-middle-aged woman who seemed to have a healthy mothering instinct. To each person who appeared before her she offered as much legal advice as possible and then wished them luck that everything turned out for them. I relaxed a little; glad that, at the very least, I didn’t get some adult nerd with a vendetta against society because the jocks used to pick on him in the schoolyard when he was six years old. For the first time since I really started worrying about eviction, things looked like they might not be so bad.
Scum of The Earth People everywhere talk a lot of shit about lawyers. The sleazy lawyer has become as much a negative stereotype as the lazy Mexican or the Asian guy who’s good with math. Well, I don’t want to go around saying anything bad about Mexicans or Asians, but I don’t have one iota of reticence about further perpetuating the stereotype that lawyers are nothing but a pile of steaming shitbags.
There I am, sitting in the back of the courtroom, thinking maybe I’ve got a chance with the kindly judge behind the bench, when in walks this guy who looks like Riff Raff from Rocky Horror got a haircut. He calls out my name and leads me into the hallway. Then he disappears and I get a handshake from the realtor’s beefy lawyer. Why is it that lawyers and car salesmen all have huge hands? There’s something symbolic in there I think. We’re going to call this guy Slickopopolous, because he was a lawyer and he was Greek.
Slickopopolous confronts me in an oh-so-compassionate tone, off handedly remarking about how I’ve missed a few rent payments, like it’s no big deal. I explain to him that I had already sent in some of the money due and that I knew the rest was coming to me thanks to some recent freelance jobs (that part wasn’t bullshit). He asks me why I’ve been so late and I explain about becoming unemployed, leaving out the details and making it sound more like I was fired than that I stupidly quit my job in the gamble that my book would be sold. I didn’t lie; I just cleverly phrased the truth. The one funny moment was when he mentioned the job they had me listed as having and I was reminded of how a friend and I scammed them into thinking a major financial firm was bringing me to New York to be their ‘webmaster’ at a tidy annual salary in order to get my apartment. It caught me off guard and I needed half a beat before I could cover the deception. But that was the end of the humor that day.
Riff Raff and Slickopopolous take me into a tiny office next to the courtroom where we work out a schedule for paying my back rent. Version 1 was an extremely tight payment plan that I thought there was a slim chance of me adhering to and, if I didn’t, I would come close or they’d just end up taking me back to court. But then they explained that once I signed the form the schedule was on I waved my rights to a trial and missing a single date would bring the marshal to my door instantly, no negotiation. So I admitted that I probably wasn’t going to be able to stick to the first plan and we worked out a second one. Thanks to their fast-talking, double-talking, and just general pressure in numbers, they laid out a second version that wasn’t much better than the first. This one included due dates over the next six weeks for rent from January through April, which would get me all caught up and leave me a whole three days to come up with the rent for May. I could tell it wasn’t going to get much better and that eviction was inevitable. So I figured I would agree to the schedule and that would, at the very least, buy me a few weeks to get my stuff moved out before the marshal came to escort me off the property. In defeat I signed the form and we headed into the courtroom to see the judge.
All I can say is thank Christ for kindly old ladies. Slickopopolous and Riff Raff gleefully handed their form to the judge and sat back down at the Plaintiff desk to my right. The judge looked it over and stopped everything. She pointed out to the two weasels that they had included a due date for April’s rent on the schedule, even though it was still March. The two wily fuckers tried to talk their way around it, but the judge finally said she wasn’t going to sign off on the schedule the way it was. She told them to remove the part about April’s rent. As they obeyed like the bitches they are, she explained to me that they were trying to make it a court order that I pay April’s rent by a certain date, in effect altering the lease agreement and allowing them the chance to kick me out if I can’t make that month on time. Basically, their issue with me is about overdue rent, something from the past, and they were trying to get court authority over upcoming rent, something from the future. And the judge saw right through their scam. Oh, it was glorious.
So Slickopopolous and Riff Raff brought the amended schedule back to the judge and she signed off on it. The ultimate schedule is going to be a close call on every one of the due dates, but I know I can make each one because of the freelance work I have done and am doing for Watts. April is going to be late, very late. In fact, there is a good chance that this whole cycle will repeat itself in another four months. But for now, Slickopopolous is getting the money he wants and I get to keep a roof over my head. Whether I’ll be able to pay my utilities and put food in my stomach…well, that’s a whole other bag of worms.
From The Monkey House a/k/a Simon It’s the system, man, the system
The Random: The entryway to the bank after hours may not be the best place to panhandle. Sure, that’s the place where the money is and people are always coming through snagging cash from the machine. But the ATM hands out twenties, maybe tens, and I doubt many people are going to hand over that much cash to a guy who holds the door for them and offers God’s blessing. Begging, I think, seems to be a profession that deals in volume, not in the one big score.
