If You Don't Cook, are you a Criminal?

When I was growing up my mother ruled the kitchen. Touching anything in it or helping was out of bounds. It was her domain. As for the housework, I never bothered doing anything but occasionally tidying my little room. there was a woman that came in once a week to clean up. And my mother did the rest. Laundry was also my mother's domain. She had a washer and later a dryer. These were mysterious machines to me. I remember the smell of freshly cleaned laundry in the winter. She used to hang up our clothing in the little boiler room in the basement to dry. In the summer she had a clothesline in the back. I never thought to help her, and she never asked.

I left home brutally. One day a man came in and threw me outside. He said that this was the last day I would ever be inside, and I would have to live outside from then on. I stayed on the street just outside my house for several weeks: incredibly to myself, day, and night. then he took me to New York for some reason. We got to give Little Stevie Wonder his big break by opening a closed theatre to the passerby so he would have an audience to listen to his music. He had come with his young mother (he was a small boy) all the way from the south to have his big break in New York City. Only when he got onstage, he found out that New York theatres closed Sundays. This guy, Patrick, who kept me outside, somehow had free reins of the theatre. He opened the doors. The Little boy danced and sang. And the rest is Stevie Wonder History.

As for me, I returned home to the house I once knew. No one knew what to do with me. NO one was there who was my family. So, an obliging janitor from the Psychiatric Hospital down the street got me a session as a Playboy bunny model. That is why what I remember from then on, I a blur but that the main thing was a lot of confusion and screaming pain.

I remember a man waiting near the grocery school near our high school offering vague promises of marriage. I vaguely remember ending up as a call girl in Korea. I remember that this guy dressed me up as a vamp for my high school prom and the students elected me high school Queen. As I have been thinking about stuff it comes to me that that is how this janitor from the hospital got the great idea to make me into a Playboy Bunny model. Yes? No?

I remember getting a role in the new Star Trek series on production in California. I was to be the romantic lead opposite the star William Shatner. They did not have a lot of money so they would use one model to play opposite him. I was poor with a broken face. He was going to have a lot of energy. So, he would work to heal my face. As the face would heal it would go through distinct stages. At each stage, I would become another female romantic lead to play opposite the star. My memories are unsure. I remember he chose me for the part because Mr. Shatner was smaller than the rest of the people there: it was a height thing. I was about his size.

I also remember the film crew dressing me in a little tiny leopard skin outfit. I was to imitate a jungle warrior, and it was like a cat print bathing suit. They were filming me to make some publicity material for the series and the photographer told me to go onto the street somewhere on Sunset Strip in Hollywood and menace cars with my spear. I remember that.

What I do not remember is my parents or any of the neighbours standing up for me. I remember living in a very repressive household in which sex was taboo, so all this sexy stuff was extremely difficult for me to manage. It was incredibly wrong.

Another thing is that obviously, we were quite poor. So, what I do not completely understand is why my mother stopped me from learning about any kind of housework at all. Why did this little family unit forbid me to do that? Society has both forbidden and condemned this lack for my whole life, I have extraordinarily little ability (and now I am old) to cook or clean. In fact, much of the insanity I have had has to do with starvation and a bad living environment. Even now as I write fortune bids me to find a new place. For many years I have lived in my present home and for many years they did not permit me to even prepare an alternative meal. In other words, once more the authorities forbid cooking. Now that I must leave, I am wondering what is going to happen: Am I expected to gather food anyway I can and live that way? I still do not cook, and I still do not clean very well. I know that you are supposed to do this. And I have experienced living by myself and not being too able to do this. And there has been extraordinarily little support to help me learn how to do this all my life. And yet society has punished me for this lack. I wonder what is going to happen now.

 

Can You Take Meals On Wheels

The most vivid memory I have of leaving the proverbial nest was a feeling of excruciating pain.  I was not the one, who bright-eyed and radiant, left her parent's home to pursue a brilliant and happy university term. Instead, solemn despair was my companion.  And after university, I found myself jobless. These factors motivated me to do two things: the free time I had let me indulge in the flourishing high art scene of my city.  My father had one way of thinking: either you work or you volunteer.  So I spent some hours each week volunteering for different charities.  I suppose it was obvious I was in a considerable amount of emotional upset so I was given many assignments to deal with women in an unfortunate state of poverty.  The choice of volunteering I was assigned to was also influenced by my own personal poverty which was considerable at the time.  for this reason, I got to visit and help many women in extremely poor dwellings.

there were a variety of reasons that such women found themselves unable to cook.  For this reason, an organization around the city, called Meals on Wheels, provided, for a small sum, hot meals for lunchtime. I would arrive at the assigned house, almost always to take the lady or gentlemen to a hospital appointment, and sometimes would find the meal for the day on the counter. or half-eaten on the kitchen table. Sometimes, we would be preparing for the appointment and the doorbell would ring.  At the door would be an often, poorly clad, but cheery young person, with a large red box. She or he would open the box and bring out the various kinds of food for my client (to eat after our appointment).  Often the delivery person arrived on a bicycle, even in the winter.  She or he would wear a uniform that to me, was quite radical.  Bicycle shorts over leggings with sneakers.  At the time very few people wore that type of clothing except for the few daring cyclists who broke with tradition and rode their bicycles all through the snow-driven winter.

The thing that I remember most was the real, gut-wrenching poverty of the situation.  My client, confused or ill, still wearing their humble morning clothes.  The dusty and dark appearance of the apartments.  The fact that their food arrived in humble aluminum containers added to the effect.  It seemed to me that only the very poor would have the unfortunate but lucky opportunity to be able to purchase their one solid meal from Meals on Wheels.

As I fast forward many years into my life and to the present days, it has come to be that I too was offered the opportunity to benefit from the Meals on Wheels.  Duly, I called them up and asked for prices.  I was relieved to find that I could indeed benefit from their service.  However, I had been in a residence for women for many years that did not permit me to cook my own meals.  Now that it is time for me to find another home, I find myself in the rather unexpected position of being too poor to qualify for meals on wheels.  Why? Well, to occupy me and keep the old moral up I have been working on my own company.  I have now, as has been suggested, created a fairly large bank of artwork to sell. therefore I am looking for a space in which I can continue my business.  And the places I have found after a rather lengthy search to date, all demand that you must purchase a fridge and a stove.  

My brother has suggested starting purchasing things like furniture and fridge, a little at a time to release the financial burden.  But if you do not have a fridge or a stove, then you cannot take advantage of Meals on Wheels.  So I am too poor to qualify for Meals on Wheels.  Life deals you some unusual cards sometimes.