Worthless Goddamn Cripple

I have no problem differentiating between hallucinations and factual events that occurred in my post-trauma surroundings. Though I had a flimsy grasp on reality immediately after I surfaced from the coma, the fleeting moments of lucidity proved themselves wildly enhanced. And my intuition had kicked itself into ultra-high gear.

A silent ambulance obeyed speed limits while it carried me from the intensive care unit of a standard hospital to a rehabilitation hospital where the thickheaded staff would try to subjugate me for the next three months. My faceless doctors had assigned me to a high-ceilinged three-bed ward. (During the course of my stay they would twice order me transferred to another room.) more »

Most residents excelled when glomming public aid checks¹ and securing government “benefits” i.e. handouts to which they were entitled (as opposed to petitioning for “assistance” which by definition requires effort). But when it came to bathing or digesting text full of big words and unaccompanied by colorful illustrations, they couldn’t understand why they should be bothered.

On three occasions the administration designated an HIV-positive resident as my roommate.² They realized I was probably the only denizen of the warehouse not so dirt stupid as to believe that you would “catch them AIDS” from doorknobs or airborne cooties. And I’m not some Neanderthal homophobe who assumes that all HIV-positive men are gay and therefore subhuman pariahs anyway. more »

The Torah teaches tolerance. It appeared that the old school Jews who owned the warehouse never got the memo. Or maybe they equated the tolerance of non-Jewish individuals with apathy because some out of touch old fart scholars decreed it so.

Whatever the case, Mr. Gold projected an irritating moral superiority that he claimed Judaism had bestowed upon him. It was obvious that the pint-sized administrator of the warehouse embraced the Jewish faith as a business strategy, only because the owners were devoutly Jewish. Mr. Gold often referred to Judaism as “weird,” and once remarked that he appreciated a faith that demanded frequent days off work to acknowledge holidays. more »

The clueless administration of the warehouse equated holiday celebration with normalcy. They put substantial effort into decorating for the major holidays, which means they occasionally ordered the mouth-breathing activities staff drones to adorn the warehouse with colorful and shiny festive crap (which no doubt mesmerized the housekeeping staff). more »

The warehouse administrator, Mr. Gold constantly proved himself an amoral subhuman. He had gained the physically and mentally infirm residents’ trust by tacitly claiming to have earned a degree that made him a medical doctor. In fact some community college had merely awarded him a certificate that qualified his sawed-off shyster ass to work as a garden-variety pharmacist. He might not have even done that—I don’t remember and anyway I knew him to be a pathological liar. more »