I've been on disability for 2 years now. It's not nearly enough to pay for everything. but luckily my landlord lets me do odd jobs for him for reduced rent, and I work part time at a soap shop in the Quarter where they pay me cash under the table.
It's just too much stress working for the public. Everybody is horrible. I would often lose my shit, and then I'd be fired. disability was the better option. I don't want to be without a job. Jobs make you feel human again, but for those who think one can hold his own faculties when you have a mental disorder, you are mistaken. They are called a disorder because nothing is in order.
Mr. Frants is my landlord. It's not like the country, it's like more than one frant. He's an eighty-something year old rich white man who is the kindest most generous most loving person as long as you aren't black, hispanic, middle eastern, or female. Mrs. Frants is a former model, and she keeps all her favorite outfits on individual mannequins in a large room in their giant house. They live on Audubon Place--a turnt-up-nose gated community--right next door to Harry Connick Sr.
I've never been one to wake up early on my own, and my meds make it more and more difficult to do so, but when the sun is barely peaking over the trees, my phone goes off with a call from Mr. Frants. Someone had moved out of an apartment of his, and I've been helping him every day clean it and get it ready to rent. Today we were going to paint it.
I get some old clothes on, and he picks my up in his white truck about twenty minutes later. We stop by The Home Depot to get some paint. It was called something like buttercream mist, but it was just off white.
We go then to a double shotgun in Midcity, much like the one my mama lived in. So much in fact that the first time we came here I had a panic attack and locked myself in the bathroom for an hour. But Mr. Frants didn't seem to notice. I know he did, but he just ignored stuff like that just like how he ignores his wife's alzheimers. If you asked him about it, he'd say, "You can't be worryin' about things like that, son. They ain't nothin' you can do about it, so you just keep livin' life around it until it's all done."
We each have our own paint tray and roller, and he started in the front room painting, and I started in the back. The whole house the same color. He said he used to paint the rooms different colors, but it got to be too expensive, and aint nobody going to like every color anyway.
I love the smell of fresh paint, and the moist sound of the rollers rubbing against the wall was pleasing too. The up and down movement of the roller was a bit meditiative, and before I knew it, we were almost done. Mr. Frants left to go buy us lunch while I went with a brush and did all the edges. He brought back Popeye's chicken and mashed potatoes. We sat on two ten gallon paint buckets and used an ice chest as a table.
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