pt 33 "The Real Estate Racket (and a lack of panties)" unedited

Chapter:

The real estate thing proved to be another scam, preying on people with the lure of seemingly easy money: “Come get a real estate license. You can make big commissions. Our courses are only 2500 dollars!” Arrgh! I suppose that’s what you get when you take the way out that seems easiest- and that’s closer to broke.

Nobody seems to have a sense of pride or respect for honest work anymore. My hard work was really getting me nowhere but my foolish pride and my resentment towards my ex-wife, were killing me slowly but surely. It was no secret to me, that I was no better than those I criticized.

My labors earned me a room of my own in the basement, which I converted into a music studio. In reality, I had been assigned a task to turn a utility area into a usable den but my fantasy of having a career in the media, conveniently replacing Danny’s loft space studio, kept me from seeing that. I think The Fabulous T-Birds were playing in my head while I set to building a bulkhead around the ductwork of the furnace. The framing needed to be built in order to drywall. It needed plenty of soundproofing and some carpet. Julie had me build a closet that she could grow pot in as well. Danny helped me build some counter space, appropriate for the computer, keyboards, and appliances, which included a Tascam Four Track Analog recording system that he had gifted me.

One day, while Danny was making plans to move out of the building, Andy was making plans to move in. He quickly befriended Sean Adams, and his band mate, Mike. “Ace music Dave” was there bringing orders of guitar strings to musicians that day. Mike’s girlfriend, Laura, was painting a recreation of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, on the walls of their studio space. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was there spending time trying to save their relationship. I think I was the only one that picked up on life budding elsewhere in the room. Taking it upon myself, I tried to warn them about Andy but they were already under his spell. The guys were snowed.

That’s when Dave changed the subject, telling me about a guy interested in selling his DJ business. Julie agreed that, since it came with a listing in the Yellow Pages, it was a good investment. Danny and I weren’t interested in the DJ business. We only wanted the P.A. system that was for sale. It was a great buy, and we happened to need it for the upcoming Memorial Day show. The guy selling it wanted us to go do a DJ gig for a wedding reception, saying he’d loan us the speakers to do it with, and that we could think about buying the business. We said we would do the gig, and that we would think about the prospect of the DJ business. Julie called him back two hours later, saying we’d take the business off of his hands, and asked where to meet up with him to do the transaction. Now, it appeared as though we were the owners of “AA Bands and DJ’s”.

The wedding gig was on a Saturday, and was being held at a Country Club, in Jenison, which threw up red flags to me but Julie said there was absolutely nothing to worry about. She said it would be an easy two hundred bucks.

It seemed like I was the only one around the day Andy actually moved into the building, so it was me that ended up stuck with helping him move his things, which also meant helping him move his things from the woman’s house he was leaving. Judging by the looks on her face, she had been mistreated for the last time.

There were many pieces of musical merchandise, mainly brand new electric guitars that still were in their boxes. Every bit of it was hot. Chet, his boss, was storing a lot of this loot in the basement of his home. The story was, so Andy wouldn’t sell it all for drugs while he was supposed to be getting clean from Heroine and Crack Cocaine- just another con job on Chet. It worked well for a while but Chet was just as much of a crook, robbing people with a smile and some paint equipment. Andy swore that he was no longer using but everything, other than his words, said something else entirely. One of those things that spoke to me was the motor home he left for abandoned in the lot at the building we moved him into. It was eventually towed to the impound yard and sold for scrap.

As people progressed toward leaving the building in the weeks that followed, Andy was liquidating the things he had been accumulating. Story was that he had to move back to Florida to help his mother, meaning he wouldn’t be there very long. He had survived shooting a near fatal dose of bleach into his arm almost two years ago, and now was on his way to spend time with his mother while his body was yet to realize he was walking dead.

He offered to sell his P.A. equipment to me for seven hundred bucks. The lighting system, a good size mixer, amplifier, a pair of one thousand watt Yamaha speakers, light cans, miscellaneous lines and patch cords, etc. It was a great deal that I just couldn’t believe- too good. He knew Julie had the money to pay for it, and I was right in the middle of gearing up for the show. It just made sense at the time, so she bought it for me. She liked the music room so much that she bought a mini fridge with a tap handle and a carbonic system for a pony keg to put in there too. Yeah, I really thought I had things made now.

Julie went with me to do the wedding reception gig in Jenison. The father had called beforehand to explain what music tracks they wanted, and when they wanted them to be played. It was pretty exciting for me even though it was a wedding reception, which almost every band dreads. I had spent days going to thrift stores, buying all the music tapes and CD’s I could find that might be good additions to a DJ library. I just couldn’t remember, did he say NO Hawaiian shirts or did he say WEAR Hawaiian shirts?

We arrived and set up. I first smelled a rat when, after an hour, we were never offered a drink or any type of hospitality. Having never done a wedding gig before, I was under the impression that it’s a celebration regardless of whether you are “just” the DJ or not. Not even a glass of water was offered to us.

At one point, some of the girls came and gathered around to have their pictures taken with me. Little did I realize, they were sent by the father of the bride. They were gathering pictures to use against me.

The next day I received a phone call from an irate Dutchman who felt like stiffing someone on his wedding expenses. He was yelling, demanding his two hundred dollars back because I showed up wearing long hair and a Hawaiian shirt! It didn’t settle well on me, since I had just been woke from sleep, so I was irate as well but more so.

Julie took the phone from me and somewhere along the conversation, agreed to refund him his precious money. This only confirmed my fears, and I was quick to chalk it up to one of the reasons nobody likes doing weddings, moving on with my renewed opinion about Jenison.

Now my attention was on satisfying myself over the DJ service purchase by calling the guy to discuss the Yellow page listing, which was tied to his phone number. I smelled another rat. The problem I now had, was that my life had become so infested and overrun with rats, a simple extermination wouldn’t work well enough. He ended up stiffing me on the whole transaction and walking away with the money we gave him, and the DJ business. This was going to require something more drastic but I didn’t know what.

It seemed like a good idea to focus on my work with Bob, and with making woodcrafts from the scraps on the floor, among the so-called waste. The magic in my artistic vision spotted the table leg scraps that had been made when they were cut to length recently. I cut the four sided, hollow blocks into cubes, and transformed them into a pair of Dice. They made a desktop pencil caddy that I found pretty darn cool, looking just like Dice frozen in action.

There were some cedar pieces among the scraps from the fabrication of round top window casings that, to me, looked like birds flying. It was an abstract vision that gave the artwork to me. It happened to be Julie Wickman’s birthday, so I took to making a wall mount shadow box display using the “birds”, and some scrap beard-board for the back panel. A glow of pride warmed me that afternoon as the artworks took shape.    

A birthday party was planned to be held in the bar portion of Holly’s Landing- a hotel on the Grand River, off of Ann street. A Blues band was playing that night, surprising me when I got there. It wasn’t very busy, which made it nice because the crowd was fairly small, having about forty people but then again I wasn’t really paying close attention to the crowd.

My focus was on presenting my gift and getting into party mode with the music, dancing and beer. The cardboard box I had wrapped the shadow box in had something that I had written on it, which was something to the affect of it not being a Mel Gibson Blow-up Doll. It was my attempt at being funny because Julie was a big Mel Gibson fan at the time.

When I presented it to her, I took her into a side room to do it. A few of her friends, in their curiosity, followed us to be part of the unveiling. Hoping for a big reaction, I didn’t want to just leave it for her to open later. Perception, having been contaminated with alcohol, was that she didn’t really think much of it.

Maybe it only looked nice to me, sort of like a new parent with their infant. Oh well, it wasn’t going to stop me from what I would do later on, which was throw myself at her once again, especially since she was such a good person, and the perfect representation of everything I wanted in a partner for life. She had a job, owned properties, had a child, and a crafting hobby, and she wasn’t an addict. That was the big one, and exactly the reason she didn’t want me around for much more than a place to crash when I was too drunk to find my way to my own part of town. She trusted me in her home, and with her adopted son, Simon.

Occasionally, she would call to have me service her home or rental property or to bring her some delight. It was like I was looking in the window at something I wanted but could not afford for myself. Life went on.

In the meantime, I was at the end of the rope with everything. My court battle regarding the enforcement of my, so-called, visitation was won but after only a few visits, it all blew back apart. Before actually winning, Mindy had agreed to allow me to see the children but only under her supervision. Having her chaperone the children didn’t stop me from taking advantage of the opportunity to see them. We had a mediation at the Kent County Friend of the Court building, where we spoke with the mediator but when I had my chance to speak, Mindy was rude and impeded on my communication, to which I exclaimed that she needed to “shut the phuk up”. The facilitator did not approve of this, recommending that I go to anger management classes. After laughing it off, to my self and a few friends, I never complied.

In the meantime I have a second family court battle. My oldest child’s mother, Mary, came by the house to push off her youngest child, Heather, onto me as if she was mine. She had steadily maintained that I am the father of Heather regardless of the fact that I have had a Vasectomy since 1994, when I was married to Mindy. This added to my feelings that the wolves were trying to tear me apart. It was only natural, and convenient, to numb my pains with alcohol and camaraderie while grieving over one more nightmare, which served as a convenient excuse to continue self medicating.

Really, I don’t think I ever dreamed of being so popular with women. A paternity test was finally done. Several weeks went by before the results came back. It wasn’t until then, that I was released from that accusation. Now, Mary is fully cared for in a home for a Psychiatric illness that plagued everyone in our families for so very long. The bad part is, Sarah, was negatively influenced by her mother all those years, which constantly chipped away and destroyed my attempts at nurturing our relationship. It continues to be an obstacle that I hope time will, someday, heal.

The good part is that Sarah’s Great Grandmother influenced her positively, thank God. Sarah was the only one on her mother’s side of the family that ever graduated, never becoming pregnant or involved with drugs, and went on to get accepted into the Air Force. She was tested and given the opportunity to go into Intelligence but decided to become involved in the weather, as a Meteorologist.

My consolation prize is that she became very well educated, and takes after me, so I am told, despite my attempts to gain custody of her before Mindy compromised my life by using my Attorney, Betty Bronkema, in that custody effort. She secured her to handle her divorce from me after my accident. This complaint has never been properly filed. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered how to file a serious complaint against an Attorney or Judge.

Cody and Scarlett were thrilled to be able to see their father. Our first meeting place was at a park down the trail from our home, on the Rogue River. The kids were ecstatic to go there, especially since I announced that we were to fish, bringing Dusty along with us. Mindy ignored her though, and Dusty knew it.

Dusty was not able to understand why Mindy did not give her any sort of acknowledgement, while I set the kids up to fish. Scarlett showed huge excitement, a bit more than Cody. It was obvious that she did not get to go fishing much, if ever. So while they casted and giggled, I took pictures and shot video with Julie’s camera.

Dusty was in obvious pain, so I decided to take the dog for a walk through the river, taking the camera to get some pictures of my kids from the opposite bank. We found a shallow spot to cross upstream, wading in to some deeper areas along the way back down to where we could get a good shot.

The cold water flowed around Dusty’s hips, supporting some of her weight, as it became a bit deeper. Dusty became a bit more lively with the joy she was experiencing from the therapeutic effect of the water, cooling her hips. It must have helped to relieve her pain. It seemed obvious in her radiance. Dusty smiled and smiled.

Scarlett and Cody continued to fish but there was no action at that time of the day for them. Cody wanted to get his feet wet with Dusty and I, while Scarlett wouldn’t put the pole down for anything. She didn’t care if she had caught one or not, having so much fun just going through the motions of being able to fish.

Scarlett continued to cast and retrieve her spinner, while her mother sat in the grass with a book, and her allergies. It was nice to see her endure the aggravation she had, sneezing and hacking, scratching and tearing. It was all part of my plan for my time with the kids, and to make it inconvenient for Mindy, since she was making an inconvenience upon US. The prize for the day was when I climbed up the bank from the water. Dusty carefully climbed out too, only instead of shaking off the water where she was, she walked over to Mindy, stopping directly in front of her to shake it off there. She was an arms-length away with her book, sitting in the weeds, as Dusty made her testament against her “mamma’s” cold heart, covering her with the river’s mud and wetness. It was biblical. Julie was filming the scene as it happened, capturing screams and all. Never, since the divorce, had I been happier to see Mindy than that moment.

After winning the enforcement order, the kids and I celebrated with a big home-cooked meal complete with a toast, to our new independence.  It was the last time I would see the kids despite the efforts to coordinate having them again. Mindy began to schedule so many things in their days that they were too occupied to think about having time with their dad. Yet, one day she had the time to take my call, only to prey upon my love again.

Mindy wanted me to acknowledge that the kids were now old enough to find time to see me on their own terms, asking me not to call because it was pressuring them. I didn’t think that would be a problem but the truth was that she had been pressuring them on her end. Only God knows what she said, did, or implied. And only time would tell what damages the kids have sustained at her subjection.  

As for Julie, she continued to complain of back pain. Rather than live accordingly, she opted for the breast reduction plan- the easiest way out, which came with Vicodin. This was the main reason why she had taken the job with Hunt Construction. Of course, she did so little that I am shocked she was never fired. “Double-clicking the mouse”, and smoking pot between web-surfing sessions, seemed to be all she ever did. She smoked so much pot and masturbated so much that her fingers were pickled, and her body odor smelled like Marijuana resin. You could actually smell the Chlorophyll coming out of her armpits.

Anyways, Julie finally got her breast reduction, and another bottle of painkillers. Bruce called me to come and help with getting a roll of carpet in my truck for him, which involved an afternoon of drinking that led into an evening of drinking. Danimal and the guys were all hanging out on the river too. They guys all wanted to hear us perform, so Danimal and I started belting out some of our pieces. It was all part of the routine, and we loved sharing. Some were drumming along on the various drums that were always around, as the sun stole it’s light from us completely.

It was around nine p.m. when Julie called, asking me to come home to help her bathe. The bags that were hanging from her, draining the blood and fluids, along with an obstinate daughter, made it impossible for her to do by herself.

Jean was also in need of attention throughout the day, and with me not being there to perform the duties, it made her realize my importance once more. 

Bruce had offered to get me a ride home but I refused, thinking I could get three miles to the house okay. When I got in my truck, the radio wasn’t working because a fuse had blown. My big idea was to pull a fuse from somewhere else. The courtesy lights seemed like a good option, and I was tickled with myself to be so smart. Everything was fine until I turned off of Northland Drive. The lights went up behind me. I kept driving, thinking that it wasn’t possible for them to want to pull ME over- I was good. Yeah, I was excellent, up until I realized that they did want to pull me over. My house was so close I wanted to just keep driving and stop to chat there. The house was only another mile away, as Radar Love played on the radio. After a short distance, I realized I was bordering on a fleeing charge. I just didn’t want to have the truck towed, knowing I was going to go to jail for driving under the influence. The officer came to the window to go through the routine. Eventually I was placed in the car with my hands cuffed behind me. Somehow I managed to get my cell phone from my pocket, calling Julie in hopes that she could come up and get my truck. The officer called for backup, and when he arrived, he went up the road to get her. The truck ended up home without the added expense of being impounded. For that, I was thankful.

When I went to court on Monday, Judge Servass gave me a suspended sentence. It was a comical dialogue between us, since my answer to why my blood alcohol level was a .024, yet, remained to have command of my faculties, showing little sign of intoxication, was that I was German and Polish, having a natural inclination to hold my liquor. He chuckled at that.   
  

Several months later someone decided to take Jean’s 2004 Saturn Ion up to the Circle K convenience store for another jumbo but it was raining, which caused for some slick roads if you were in too big of a hurry to get to the store before it closed, and back before anyone knew you had left. If it hadn’t been for the front wheel drive, they would have never been able to get the car off of West River Drive after careening into a Fire Hydrant. The trunk was half caved in, and the driver’s side rear tire was completely folded up underneath. Nobody would have a clear idea of the damage until the next day.

A ride was called for them get out of the area before any cops showed up, especially since this person didn’t have a license. It’s the only way the auto insurance would have paid for the damage. The next day an officer came by the house to see why there was a disabled vehicle sitting on the road, and to write a report because it was clear that there was an accident. Mostly, what made it clear was that there was a broken hydrant, and that the township wanted to know why they needed a crew at two in the morning to cap the water flow. And since there was a car sitting across the road with a massive wound, it was only natural for them to begin by tracing the ownership of that vehicle, which belonged to an elderly woman with a bad state of Alzheimer’s. For some reason the bill for the hydrant repair was sent to me.

The next day Bruce showed up to go look at the situation with a cocktail in his hand but he found that a cop was there to do an accident report. Deciding not to stop, he went up two more houses to a garage sale, where he milled about until the officer left. After seeing the mess that had been made of the vehicle, we quickly realized that it was going to need to go to a body shop, and that it needed to be hauled away with a flatbed truck. Comstock Body shop got to deal with the task, sending a flatbed to pick it up.

Julie was not excited about what had become of the brand new car. She wasn’t excited about having to claim responsibility for it either but it was the only way it was going to be repaired because this other person had no way to remedy the problem. With the possibility of becoming the center of attention regarding her affairs, that she’d rather not have questioned, she had no choice. The only thing I could do to help was to not criticize any part of it and resolve not to let anyone else use the car.

Strangely enough, offering envelopes were showing up more frequently from the Catholic Church Jean belonged to. Since I retrieved the mail, they found the trash very quickly. Surely they were aware of Jeans memory issues, taking full advantage of it.

Often she would say, “I could eat something”, even though she had just eaten. Once, a pile of Pistachio shells were in front of her, and Pistachios were still in her teeth- she had eaten a whole bowl of them. When I told her she had eaten them she scoffed with, “I beg your pardon”.

Jean had a piano that she would play once in a while but whenever she went past it she would ask, “Who’s Piano is this?” I would tell her that it was hers but she would deny ever knowing how to play. The piano would make a noise as if a key was struck, her dead husband communicating from the spirit world. It had to be because we had it looked at, thinking it was a mouse. No mice or sign of a mouse was found.

The Memorial Day show came and went. When fall arrived, it was time for another Barn Party at a friend of ours that Bruce had introduced us to. The farm was in Rockford and was very popular with a local community radio crowd that we all were a part of- we called them the WYCE crowd.

We were invited to come and play, so Danimal and I loaded up the vehicles with our band equipment. Julie and Casey followed in the Saturn, while Danimal drove my truck, and I drove Julie’s Sidekick. My luck with incidents involving Deer was unfavorable. As we drove north, on Northland Drive, we all watched as a Deer came lumbering from the hillside, on our right, to cross the road, impeding with my pathway. It hit the front passenger side of the Sidekick and just kept going. It astonished me because there were other drivers on the road with me, and Julie was right behind me watching the whole thing. There was nothing I could do to avoid it. I looked back at her in disbelief, and questioning what to do with hand signals. She just waved me on to continue and not stop. When we got to the destination, the damage was a small dent in the corner where the headlight assembly met with the quarter panel on the passenger side. There was hair wedged in the cracks of the assembly that would make it obvious it was a Deer, so she could later report it. When she did, the cop didn’t believe her one bit.

Dusty accompanied us to the party, making quite a spectacle as she walked around on stage with us while we played, like she was part of the band. I guess she was part of the band. It was pretty sweet having her there. People were worried that she was going to get after the Chickens, and that she looked pretty serious, sporting all of the classic features of a Grey Wolf. Time told a different story, and people were all trying to get a small piece of Dusty’s affection throughout the evening.

Danimal had brought an artist from the loft building that was a glass blower. It made sense to me because I knew Danny would drink his share for the night, and that The Glassman, as we called him, would not drink much at all. I wanted him to drive the truck home. When it came time to leave, the Glassman would realize it was a manual transmission. His foot slipped off of the clutch pedal and the truck stalled out. After a moment or two of struggle, Danny took the reigns, backing the truck into a car that was parked too closely. It only bumped the car but the kid called the cops because he must have had his dad’s car and didn’t want to get reamed out for it. When the announcement was made that the cops were coming, the Glassman took off from the scene. Danny was arrested for drunk driving and the truck was impounded, costing me two hundred dollars to get out. The exhaust had been damaged where the tailpipe hit the kids bumper and needed to be strapped up since it was folded badly and dragging.

Danny ended up serving a six-month sentence in the Kent county jail but managed to get placed in an Honor Camp Program near Greenville. He did about five months with good time. Danny had already purged all of his excess belongings in his anticipation of moving from the building, storing everything else at Julie Wickman’s house on the Westside of Grand Rapids. Since he had been staying around town with various people, it wasn’t too big of deal for him to serve jail time, giving him time to sober up from years of alcoholism.

Shortly after Danny went to jail, I went to jail too. This was the last time I was imposed on by Friend of the Court. I served a ninety-day sentence. The cops were coming to the house with a warrant when we were leaving the house one morning, passing us as we came out of Alcove Drive. Instinctively, I knew they were coming for me but didn’t say anything about it for the sake of freaking Julie out. The bubbles went up and we were pulled over. After an exchange of words, I got out for them to take me on their warrant, slipping off my insulated flannel shirt that had a half ounce of bud and a glass bowl in the pocket- in order to help them with less paperwork involving registering my property at the station. The officer appreciated my consideration.

When I was finally released, some 72 odd days or more later, I came home to a disaster. Beer bottles were littering the lower level of the home, along with pot stems and seed everywhere. Food packaging was littered in piles around the sitting areas. Laundry was accumulated in corners of the rooms, along with trash in heaps next to, and around, the area of the overflowed trash cans. This was definitely not the look of a two hundred fifty thousand-dollar home that you’d find in a sub-division on a cal du sac. When I got to the bathroom, the toilet was a disaster all its own, having not been cleaned since before I left, and had not been flushed for days. There were clothes heaped behind the door near the shower where they had been thrown. It wasn’t hard to figure out that NO housework had been done. Just for fun, I counted the underwear in the pile. There was nine pair in the pile behind the door.

They released Danimal from jail in 2006 at the end of April, I believe. The first day he was out I met up with him at Bruce’s. He set the beer down in the flowerbed as I pulled up with Julie, in an attempt to hide the fact that he was already drinking again. It was sad to see since we talked so much about sobriety, and Danny wanted it so badly but Bruce kept a large cooler full of beer on the back deck next to the hot tub, making it available for anyone to help himself or herself to, which we all did. Sometimes I would grab a six-pack when I needed it after the stores were closed, replacing it later or intending to.

By this time in the caretaking game, I was tending to Jean all day long, everything except for changing her diapers and bathing her, which had now become necessary.

Danny would call from Bruce’s in an effort to get me out of the house but I stayed to do what needed to be done. He would get frustrated because I wasn’t there spending time with him, exclaiming, “You’re missing out on life!”  He was swimming in Versluice Lake and doing hot tubs, kayaking the river and playing music, all while spending time with our friends but here I was, his other half in all of that- his muse and his soul mate. What he really meant was that he was out of time in life, and wanted to spend every day he could with his friend- his “brother of another mother”, Zach. Danny’s health was deteriorating, and he had already spent enough time discussing it.

Danny was now crashing at Robert’s house on Coit Avenue, next to Lookout Hill, while he served his community service to cover the court fees. They came and picked him up every morning except Sundays. Robert was glad to help Danny out, as Danny had helped him out in the past. Since Robert was a Paranoid Schizophrenic, he didn’t have much to do with his days, making it convenient to have Danny around to do things with. Danny didn’t have any money at all, begging his boss to pay him just a dollar an hour, which he refused. Danny lowered his request to a quarter per hour but was still humiliated with refusal.

Bob had me working on some projects, keeping me busy through the week. His plans to keep me around were out of necessity, involving a renovation on a six hundred some odd thousand-dollar home in East Grand Rapids. Julie sometimes took me to the site since I had no driver’s license at the time from my recent drunk driving incident.

Bob enlisted another guy to be there with me, a show of force but only for appearances and to keep the man-hour clock racking up time. This particular guy, Rob, was not skilled. Everything he did took an enormous amount of time. While he was running baseboard, which was about all he could do, everything else was my job, especially the, so-called, impossible. Those were the things I enjoyed doing, the things that were challenging and rewarding, to me, as a tradesman. My job was always doing anything that couldn’t be done with satisfactory results or couldn’t be done because no one wanted to be seen as the hacks and imposters to the trades that they truly were. Things like marrying crown molding into rounded and angular walls and ceilings were unheard of... and when I do things like that, I am wished away to be unheard of also.

end of section three from the original manuscript