64
Settling into my new apartment, and effectively the next leg of my
life, there were some surprises of both sorts and some new goals to
achieve.
When I went to fill the water bed on my first evening, I discovered
that the bathroom faucet had a crack underneath its spout. Unable to
get that addressed right away, I walked to the hardware store and
bought myself an extension hose so I could fill up the bed from the
kitchen sink. This worked, though I hadn't realized how long it took
the waterbed heater to bring the surface to a comfortable
temperature. No problem, with the long couch in the
living room area I could sleep on that my first night. Not so,
as lying down on it for the first time I realized just how course and
scratchy the upholstery was; while I had checked the springs to make
sure they were good, it never occurred to me to rub my arms against
it to check for smoothness. I quickly figured that I could use the
water bed comforter like a sleeping bag, the bottom half on the
couch, the top half wrapped over me for warmth. While it didn't make
the best night given the pinching pain of bones pressing on nerves,
it did get me through.
By the second day my computer was all set-up as well as the stereo
and television and I made my first walk to the grocery store to stock
up on food. I made the mistake of buying food that fit into the
shopping cart and not that I could comfortably carry. But I huffed
and puffed and got it all back in one trip, though my arms ached for
most of the rest of the day. Now it was a question of what key
things I wanted to do with the rest of my lump sum back payment.
The first was to find an agent and see if I could sell my first
scripting attempt for 'The Other Show' I liked and had started to
write for, in practice. I got a listing of all of the registered
agents from the Writer's Guild Of America, all in Los Angeles, and
wrote up a base query letter noting my background and asking if
they'd be willing to represent me. Then for the one hundred or so
names and addresses, I popped in their information at the top of the
letter and printed it up, etc.. Buying a box of envelopes from the
office supply store as well as a roll of stamps from the post office,
I spent much of the next two days stuffing the envelopes, sealing and
stamping them. As luck would have it, there was a postal box just a
few blocks away and I made a trip to mail the letters.
On the way back I noticed the 7-Eleven and stopped there next to
discover I could use my food stamps to buy Big
Gulps. Now with the full amount of food stamps to play with
rather than the reduced amount I lived off of at my mother's, I
decided to dedicate a dollar food stamp each day for a soda. This
gave me a daily reason to get out of the apartment and walk the three
blocks to pick it up. Even though it used thirty food stamps a
month, with the greater amount I was now receiving I still had more
to play with for regular groceries.
With the agent query letters out of the way, I decided to buy myself
a lifetime membership in the local Science Fiction club. As the club
had been underfunded due to the lost membership checks by the earlier
staff, I had been making ends meet by printing up the various monthly
and Quarterly newsletters at a self serve copier rather than having
the copy store do it. I further supplemented the club coffers by
trading in the spare books that the publishers sent to us. While
they were free for club members willing to write a review for the
monthly newsletter, invariably there were still some books left over.
At first, these had started to pile up as I didn't know what to do
with them and then I got the idea to take them to used books stores
for cash. They liked having new books to mix with the used ones on
their shelves and the few dollars I got helped to keep the club
afloat. Now with my lifetime membership money credited to the
club, effectively the club
membership times twenty years,
we now had a comfortable cushion to pay for all the other existing
membership mailings, cash to reimburse visiting author traveling
expenses, and plenty of spare money to buy the club some supplies to
make my life easier: Such as a rubber stamp with the address on it
to save me from repeatedly writing it by hand, and a long armed
stapler to make stapling the folded, magazine-like Quarterly issues
so much easier. In the previous years I had been carefully piercing
the center of each unfolded copy with a small stapler and then
pushing through and bending over each staple by hand for both the
club's Quarterly as well as my own The Doctor Who Reports. This
process took a lot of patience and skin off my finger tips. With the
long armed stapler I could now just slip in the unfolded pages and
clump-clump, staples were in and all I had to do was fold.
This reduced the assembly time for the issues by nearly two thirds.
While I had driven my car to the apartment's parking lot, I couldn't
afford the gas and upkeep for it on my monthly income and so I listed
it for sale, saying I'd take the best offer. After a week of people
coming, looking, and passing, I finally had someone offer one hundred
and sixty dollars for it. I think he was planning on it being a
starting place for price dickering, but I just accepted it so I
wouldn't have to worry about the car anymore or possibly extending
the ad for another few weeks until another buyer came. Another
reason for wanting to get rid of the car was that I was no longer
sure of my driving skills. The last few times I had driven I had
some close calls due to my lagging, emaciated, reflexes and possibly
emaciating nerves as well. Once the car was gone, when it came
time to renew my adult driver's license in Colorado, I didn't,
instead opting for a state identification card which would work for
all non-driving purposes.
With the apartment nestled between four bus routes, and the bus
system being based on a spoke & hub system that used transfers
with a one hour grace period, I found I was able to take a bus
downtown on one route, get the transfer and then rather than boarding
a connecting bus, I would spend forty-five minutes in the downtown
area to visit my credit union, pick up the club's mail at the post
office, or visit the comics and science fiction & fantasy book
store before returning to the bus hub and using the transfer to take
a different bus route that also passed by my new apartment.
Essentially I was able to make downtown return trips for a single
punch of my fare card. While I would rarely do all three downtown
tasks with one trip, I remember I did so once.
With the broken bath room faucet, I decided I didn't want to make my
first impression as a new tenant to be of a complainer. So I decided
to replace it myself using my own money. I had done it before at my
mother's mobile home for her so I was familiar with what needed to be
done. Picking up a faucet of the right size at the hardware store,
and using my tools collected over the preceding decade of my life, I
had it installed and working in only a couple of hours. Slow for a
plumber, but much cheaper for me. It wasn't until I had been at the
apartment for a few weeks that I discovered the woman manager had a
husband who was designated the repair man and, in reflection, I
supposed I should have asked him to repair it himself...
My mother was still bugged that I wouldn't tell her where my new
place was. She called my father back in New England thinking I might
have told him. But when it was clear to her that I hadn't spoken to
him in years, she covered up the reason she had called by twisting it
into ''notifying him'' that I had moved into my first apartment and
as
a good father he should help chip in some
'congratulations money' to help me settle in. As
she didn't have my address, she told him to mail it to her.
Before it arrived, she next decided to take me out to a
'congratulations lunch' and offered to pick me up. And where
would that be? Not in a position to turn down free food, I told
her to pick me up at the 7-Eleven a few blocks away. After lunch and
talking to me about the move and the great news on my disability
income she decided we could browse at the local Salvation Army
thrift store in case there was anything else I needed for the
apartment. Even though there wasn't, it had been years since she had
last been nice to me and I didn't want it to end so quickly; I
accepted.
Sure enough I didn't see anything I needed for the apartment, but
then my eyes caught the encyclopedia set they had for sale. Before
the age of Wikipedia and other online reference sites, an
encyclopedia set was the easiest way to find out about something you
might need to know of when writing a story. And I wrote
stories... Still, they wanted too much money for it and so we
browsed at other things before my mother drove me back to the
apartment. Or at least that was her hope but I had her drop me off
at the same 7-Eleven and in case she might get a clue based on which
direction I started walking in, I went inside the store for my daily
soda and made sure she was gone before I walked to the apartment.
But it was too late, I had already made my mistake.
She called me an hour later. She had decided to buy that
encyclopedia set I had been eying, where should she bring it
to...? I told her not to worry about it but she said that she
had already spent the money and couldn't return it. I envisioned
having her take it to the 7-Eleven but given the number of hardcover
books and weight of it all, I knew I couldn't carry it back. I
debated having her leave it at the mobile home and my taking the bus
several times to pick up a few volumes at a time until I had brought
it all to the apartment by myself. But that would use up a fare
punch card in no time as well as waste tens of hours riding the bus.
And still, as a writer it'd be awfully handy to have a set of
my own. My resolve broke and I told her to meet me at the 7-Eleven,
while I hoped it would seem to her I still wasn't going to let her
know where I lived, I realized it would be easier for me to show her
once I met her at the car, than to explain the cross streets to her.
Once she met me, I showed her how to get to my apartment and she
helped me carry in the book set. She looked around and was very
impressed with the size given the amount I was paying. She also
liked the water bed as well and within a few months bought one for
herself and set it up in my old bedroom at the mobile home.
The following week she brought by the card and check from my
father, telling me how she had called him... And she gave me back my
copy of the key to her mobile home, in case I ever wanted to visit
sometime.
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