500 Dekalb street, near Franklin in bed-sty. Never been there before. People smoke outside a heavy tinted door. Inside bright lights and a few dozen empty chairs (red, blue, green and yellow plastic) wait for people to sit, slouch, complain, cry, deal with kids, and stare blankly ahead. Meanwhile security guards in blue blazers and black and silver striped ties look bewildered when you ask "where do I go, I've never been here before"

"Um, hmm. try the second floor, the elevator's back there," and they point somewhere which may as well be nowhere because hallways wind all ways up down sideways and signs point backwards, but damn, the lighting is good.

The second floor is a scene altogether different. All the chairs are filled, it's loud, and it seems I should ask a woman at a window that I wouldn't be able to reach if I were still in a wheel chair "what should I do?"

I sign my name. I take some papers. I luckily brought my own pen.

They want to know my skills, my income, my employment status, my social, my date of birth, if I'm there for Medicaid, public assistance, food stamps, or all three. At some point they want to know "is this a one shot deal" and I have to ask the woman sitting next to me what that means. She told me to go for it all, which I didn't really understand, so I checked everything.

Then I went to the fourth floor, I guess I spent a few hours in a blue chair and then another few in a red chair. A woman told me my glasses made me look younger "thinner frames do that you know" and another snarled about the appointment with her lawyer that she was going to be late for. Kids shrieked and toys flew across the sky. One woman cried.

My case worker, Ms. S, had cool short dreads with bright red highlights and a lot of posters in her cubicle that complained about work. She was selling Hershey bars for maybe her kid and I hoped they were for hungry "clients" but she offered me nothing except a fake pen to sign my name electronically about a dozen times and sent me home to get some bills since my name isn't on my lease. The receptionist on the fourth floor was hardly receiving. She was more like a yelpshionist, yelping, maybe barking orders and complaints and what an ugly frown shaped her growl.

And why do all these people behind the counters and cubicles and security guards talk about food, like the great chicken at such and such a place and the super salads at the other such and such place and car loans and house payments in front of all these poor people? I know its work and that's just what people do at work. It seemed cruel though.

I have two words permanently carved in my future: WELFARE REFORM!

So as I'm sure you are wondering: friends are paying my rent and buying my food right now, my folks can't keep sending checks because they've got their own bills, and I've still no income since "the accident" - ah, so dramatic. Some people think welfare is demeaning, or disempowering, but somehow food stamps feel better than asking to borrow $100 every week from whoever will give it to me. So yeah, the rest of the day, I mean 10 hours of the day was spent up and down elevators, in and out of plastic chairs, finger prints, photographs, sign, sign, sign my name, talk with people worse off than me, some better, and oh did I feel white. Like super neon winter whiter than those god-awful fluorescent lights. But most people didn't seem to care. Just me, maybe.

I left with a $10 metro card, $155 in food credits (they don't have stamps anymore, they have these debit cards that you just swipe at the grocery store for anything except paper goods, cosmetics, cleaning supplies, and liquor: good thing I have a few months supply of tampons!) Then there are appointments over the next few weeks to see doctors to determine if I really am "disabled" and how much so, interviews, etc. I can't imagine being a working mom or dad trying to do all this shit. luckily I'm just me and all I have to do is go to the gym 4 times a week and physical therapy twice, see my friends and some doctors, think about school, organize my bills, deal with insurance and lawyers, plan fundraisers, scramble for cash, read, write, go to bed by 11 and get up by 7, take my meds. I have no one else to feed or take care of. I'm lucky.

And please don't worry, I'll make it through this. There's a benefit party planned tentatively for August 13th that (if you come) should get me through to September and we'll probably do something at tonic that will get me to my school loans, and the hospitals can wait to get paid, they're used to it.

It's been something, I'll tell you what.





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