Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (14 page)

A question I’d often pondered:
what was the difference
between
feudalism and
U.S. capitalism?
As a serf, you
had a job for life
; as an employee, you
had the “Work
At Will” clause, which meant
you could be
shit-
canned
at anyone’s will
.
Serfdom
was probably preferable, since you
didn’t have to deal with
sterile
state agencies like this one
: s
creaming children, wasted
time
.
I
stepped into
my
outlaw’s
truck.
Christ, I was tired.

The depression that had been trailing me
hitched a
permanent
ride, and no amount of Paxil could
dispel it
.
I had always been prone to black moods –
can you tell
?
– but
since I’d gone on SSRI
’
s
, a numbness had
replaced the sadness,
and that was OK
by
me
.
Now
,
m
y
anesthetized
self
tore away in strips,
leaving
only
panic
.

I started to feel worthless.
No
one
wanted me, after all
.
Was I good enough?
Did I
even
have any skills?
Was I kidding myself that at fifty, I was still
viable
in the workforce
?
There were no Banks
left
to work at
– they were either gone or gorging at Uncle Sam’s trough.
There were no studio jobs –
the industry
was
closed tighter than
Rupert Murdoch’s
asshole
.
I wouldn't have minded
a temporary slot
– making latt
é
s at Starbucks; taking inventory at Target – but these jobs, too, were un
attainable
, with lines of hundreds round the block, fray
ing suits on aging bodies, pain
etched
on once-happy
faces.

For once, I couldn't thin
k my way out of
this impasse
--
invent
some
clever
plan that would make
everything
right.
I started to fantasize about
crime:
could I
become the Bernie Madoff of wire fraud
?
Episodes of
American Greed
reran
in my
head
,
but
always with
the same finale: jail.
Then
came the
more insidious thoughts:  of suicide.

I hadn’t
considered this since my
twenties
,
when I’d been
bouncing off the ceiling at Fox.
But
now, in the dark
days of November ’09
, s
pent lying on
my
inflatable bed
, sending
résumés
into an Intervoid
where keyword
s were currency and
replies were almost quaint
,
my DSM took a plunge: toward
suicidal ideation
.

Was there any
way
that was truly painless?
You
could
run
your car
in a closed garage, but that would take an hour:
besides, I didn’t have a garage.
You could light an indoor Hibachi and go out on a cloud of
BBQ
, but that might blow up the block
.
You could jump off a building in
defiant
flight
, but
what if you landed on someone? Or God forbid,
in this town, dented a Mercedes
?

What about guns, America’s pastime?
I had once owned a Ruger
revolver
–
a
.
38
/.357, double-action,
six-inch barrel
– but Nigel, being British, had made me
give it up
.
Still,
blowing your brains out could
not
be
construed
as
painless.
What about a barrel in the mouth?
Something
told
me that would be painful
too
, and pain, as we know,
hurts.

My black thoughts of self-harm rolled th
emselves into a ball, colliding
and
adhering to
an even darker mass
:
raw
hatred
of
my
sister
.
Where was
s
he,
you ask,
Dear Reader, while I was pl
otting
my end,
filing for food stamps
,
and shambling
toward
certain homelessness?

As I said,
s
he’d paid for the bankr
uptcy; allowed me to
stay in
her home
for the non-extendable
eight
week stint
.
In the past,
to help pay credit cards,
s
he
had
given me money, and for that I was
certainly
grateful.
But
s
he’d decided, in October, that
s
he wanted to go
off
and think about our relationship.
For the first time in h
er
life,
s
he
actually
saw a therapist.
Ostensibly
, I’d driven h
er
to it.

The problem with her
absenc
e,
and
its
concomitant
silence
, is that it came
just
as my life
blew up
.
I had fantasies, daylight dreams, where I shot myself on h
er
front lawn, a sign hanging from my neck:
“Don’t Be A Victim.”

EXT. WEALTHY NEIGHBORHOOD
–
DAY

A
GUN
SHOT RINGS OUT

People POUR OUT
of various mansions, the architecture eclectic.

Rich Neighbor #1

There’s a fat woman lying on the Goldstein’s grass.

Gardener #1

Ella está muerta.
(She’s dead)

Rich Neighbor #2

Oh, that’s too bad. Can they call someone?

Nanny #1

They say that’s the sister.

Rich Neighbor #2

What an appallingly dented truck!

Rachel’s Maid

(knowingly)

She hasn’t made a payment in months.

All

(
together
)

Tsk, tsk. . .

I started to plan my own funeral.
Mentally counting, I figured I would have
a crowd
of eighty, from all parts of the country:
California,
Arizona, Nevada,
New Mexico,
New Hampshire
,
Washington.
My in-laws from England
might even
fly in.

The service
would be held at Hillside,
next
to Al Jolson’s
monument.
As with Jolie, there would
be a mosaic
of Moses
propped
above my tomb. Harold
Schulweis would
preside
since
he was
a noted
rabbi and technical expert for
The Simpsons
.
My
second
cousin,
a
prominent Congressman
’s wife
, would make a poignant speech.
There would be no tears – only jokes.

The USC Marching B
and would escort my coffin gravesi
de
, and Rachel – known for
elaborate parties
– would have my face lasered on M&M’s,
as she’d done for my
nephew’s Bar Mitzvah.
Rachel would sing, in her Streisandish voice, “The Way She Makes Me Feel.”
Jay
the cantor would
recite Kaddish
, and
doves
would be thrown to the sky.
In other words, nothing
fancy
:
just a simple, tasteful
affair.

Things only got worse.
Some days, I would sleep until five (P.M.), narcotized by the heaviness creeping over me.
I would rail that Jerry’s Deli
was no longer open all night so
that
I coul
d get a bagel and cream cheese.
One
evening
– for some reason – Aurora
had
locked me out
.
I drove to an Internet c
afé
and actually sent the following email to
a
contact at
Megalith
Pictures:

Dear Ellie
:

I see that you've posted the
Manager’s
job, and I know that the intent is to promote from within.
I just wanted to put this before you:

Since being laid off from
WaMu
and
Vectron
this year, I now have all of $150.00 in this world.
Unemployment is a whopping $
180
/week.
I have no health insurance, car insurance, phone
–
nothing.
I can't pay rent and I can't support my 14 year old daughter.
Call me the poster girl for the New Depression.

The other people at
Megalith
have jobs and a semblance of something.
Honestly, I have gone from making $110,000.00 last year to virtually nothing.
It wasn't from profligate spending, but
supporting
an ex-spouse
(
Ed’s Note:
I wish!)
in Seattle.

I am a really smart, skilled person
–
ask
Tom
at Fox.
I know
distribution, IT
, the trial
balance
–
all of it.

Being a Jew from Encino South, I never thought I would end up h
ere, but trust me Ellie
, it can happen to any of us.

Thank You,

Amy

These
are the depths to which I
s
unk
,
swimming by the side of monsters
along the
Marianas Trench
.
Pride meant nothing.
Dignity
was passé.
The only
thing that mattered was
getting
a job – any job – so I
didn’t end up
at
the Post O
ffice with the crazy lady
in the wheelchair
, drunkenly begging for change.

Believe it or not, I scored
an interview from that email.
A real,
face-to-face
interview where I showed up at
Megalith
Pictures on
the
lot where I used to
work.
I
entered
my old building.
I had
n’t been here since
1990
,
but
the
floor tile was still the same.
It
was the day
before Thanksgiving, when even s
tudio
masters
allow
drones to leave early.
So the fact that
they would see me
–
at
4
P.M., no less
–
was
encouraging.