FALL, 2002

1.

One of the social workers behind the desk called Marty’s number just after a thirty-something loser had his number called by a social worker a few feet down the counter. This man had an incredibly loud tone of voice, and so Marty was forced to navigate through his own sentences with a scattered attention (he’d smoked some weed just two hours before getting on the bus to the Department of Health and Human Services). He tried to answer the questions put to him, which he’d heard and answered many times; and with this loud-voiced loser to his left it became like trying to count some series of objects with a man next to you calling out various random numbers.

“You didn’t fill out what your income is,” the thirty-something loser’s social worker said, while Marty tried to apply his mind to his own social worker.

“That’s because I have no income,” said the thin, dark haired nerdy fellow. His sweat was beading on his forehead and his black-framed glasses were slipping slowly down his nose.

“Then did your income recently stop--you didn’t check that box.”

“No,” said the man; “I haven’t had an income in years.”

“In how long?”

“Years.”

“Are you homeless?”

“No,” said the man. “I live with my mother.”

“Then fill out your mother’s income.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Hers is too high. Look, since I’m a person--an adult individual--don’t I get some food stamps?”

“Do you prepare and eat your meals with your mother,” asked the social worker. She said it like that with no question mark--not like a question but a statement.

“Yes,” said the man.

“Then your mother’s income is what you put here.”

“But I won’t continue to eat meals with my mother if I can get some food stamps,” said the man in a whiny tone.

“Do you currently prepare and eat meals with your mother,” repeated the social worker.

The man did not answer but walked on out the door.

Marty knew these questions by now and knew what all of them meant. He knew that when Alex was working and he wasn’t, Marty ate his meals alone and they didn’t share. If they were just on unemployment, either one or the other or both, they ate their meals together because this crunched the numbers the most to their favor when it came to food stamps. When they both weren’t working and just one was getting unemployment, that was like Christmas for them in terms of food stamps because they’d get a good two fifty worth of food stamps a month.

In this case it was Alex that was neither working nor getting unemployment, Marty’s unemployment check having to cover them both. Alex was too bummed about life in general to make it to the Department of Health and Human Services for any sort of assistance. Marty knew Alex would agree to come if he brought it up, but he would just miss his appointment whether he’d agreed or not. It was hard to know just what had Alex so bummed out these days; but then again when people live like we do, thought Marty, it’s hard not to be constantly depressed.

There was something about coming here that made Marty self-conscious, as if he were scamming them. But he wasn’t scamming them--he answered every question truthfully, reported his true income, all of it. But he went into a kind of stonewall mode where he tried to answer yes or no to everything, no elaboration. He got the feeling the social workers were just overstressed pen pushers anyhow and they preferred this yes or no attitude. He was constantly afraid they would pry into something he’d said, alert as he was to cover a lie at any moment; but the truth was he never had to lie, and was doing nothing wrong. But free food money seemed to him some sort of scam in itself. He knew the social workers viewed this the same way, viewed every applicant as a potential fraud; but so long as the right boxes were checked and the rules were abided by and the proper verifications were received, they were happy, whether there were lies involved or not.

It didn’t quite sink in when he got home that his food stamps were worth just a hundred and forty a month. What in hell? . . . But then he remembered--they had no phone service, so there was no phone expense to deduct. Makes a lot of sense, he thought: if I had phone service to pay for I’d get thirty bucks more, but since I’m not paying for a phone I don’t have I get less--that bill was never deducted.

In the days when food stamps were actual bills it always gave him a sense of wealth to look at a good hundred-dollar stack of the colorful papers. But now they were magnetic cards with an account that was filled with credit by the county, which he could swipe at the checkout line then enter his PIN; so all he had to glance at was the card that he knew was worth a hundred and forty bucks of free groceries per month. This digital shit takes all the sense of reality out of reality, he thought.