I am smoking outside the Beverly Hills Courthouse awaiting arraignment on a criminal charge of driving with a suspended license. I wrote notes, but my mouth gets dry - I am SO NERVOUS. Maybe this will not work against me somehow. Maybe the judge will give a shit. And listen. I don't know. Amazingly enough I have already been crying before I even got in front of a judge. The series of frustrations just builds and pushes me around so that I am seriously distracted. I will ask for a PD but I do not think it will be allowed. On the list for the room there is a PD named for most of the cases - next to my name it is blank. I will ask. I've got a character reference from ===- a spreadsheet explaining the impossibility of clearing up all the GUNK I'm faced with - my ins. binder - Rory's interdistrict permit - my card from program 1 (and another court date in 6 days - I thought it was the 27th - it's the 23rd and another $150 due at that time!) The car is still where it is, not being driven around by me. John wants to join AAA and I am ready. Lord I am so fucking nervous! I can't pay what they insist I pay. The money is not there. I think many, many people - and the line of demarcation gets wider, wider, wider: they really do not have a CLUE about hardship. I think Pete Wilson swivels around in a $2,000 chair pretending he's in the oval office and says, "Let them eat cake, let them eat catsup," several times a day. Les Miserables is my life. I still want to write the essay and find someone to draw the cartoon. However, I do not know if I ever will. If I ever can take this frustration, and make it sensible without whining - I am not forgetting my culpability. But the agencies in place (especially the DMV) give not a flying fuck about situations such as unemployment, fatherless children, RENT, food, Christmas (bah humbug!). There is no provision, no allowance, no RECOGNITION of SITUATIONS.
Situations that happen - turn a basically good, tax-paying, hard-working citizen into a homeless criminal.
It seems to me that there is something quite basically wrong about that. The day after I lost my job, I went to the DMV with $100 - all I could muster. I was out of work, the sole support of a 3-year-old, being evicted from the home I had maintained BY MYSELF for 7 1/2 years - as I raised my baby's 3 older siblings. The woman at the counter could do absolutely nothing but give me a receipt for my $100 - and express her sympathy.
I think I got a parking ticket in every city in the South Bay - and Lancaster too. The tags, the tags - the car would not pass smog, needed two motors inside of one year -which was the same year I lived in my sister's house in Lancaster and went through the process required to obtain the schooling required to obtain a position that would pay enough money for us to live, then went through the school, six months of commuting between Torrance and Lancaster in a car that was not tagged and would not pass smog though I paid all the money they said I must and more! I went to the smog referee and he said, SORRY. NOTHING I CAN DO. OKAY? OKAY? I said No! it's not okay it's fucked up…and left.
I do get a public defender! Hopefully that means I will be able to get MY facts in front of the judge. But the DMV is the CATCH 22 and I will most likely be screwed. And if I cannot drive for a long long time: I will lose my job. What I think I should do is get my taxes and send it to the DMV - all of it, just sign the check over to the DMV. It won't pay the court fines, but it'll pay the DMV.. at least in court you get to stand before a judge and tell your story.. one of my problems is that when I do that, my mouth goes dry and I forget things - like the fact that I support a fatherless 5-year-old.
I went to the restroom - christ why am I like this!? I cannot seem to stop this CRYING. Sometimes I'm glad I can do it - cause when I'm done I'm cleaner, stronger, as if the space where the tears were had been a dam built to disallow a smile. But I would rather just SAVE IT right now, thanks anyway. I have to be able to speak clearly! I have to be composed!

2-19-98

I got continued to 3-10-98 - and am supposed to have my license at that time - if I can show that the only reason I was suspended was because I hadn't been able to get the SR22, I MAY not go down on the suspended license BULLSHIT. Nothing, of course, can be done about the $700+ required to get the Mazda. I need to appear in Inglewood - but I want to do the DMV first, just in case it goes through - like the sheriffs -but time is wasting, I have no RIDE! and it's preparing to pour yet again.
Frustration is making me insane. INSANE. I did not get my tax forms, who knows why!? They should have come, but they did not. So - I used to get them at the bank- Nope. not anymore. So - the post office carries them. - stopped there on the way in yesterday - NOPE. not anymore - only a library. And I don't have a RIDE!
The advance for the car has been promised. But I NEED an extra licensed driver to go get the car because - OF COURSE! - I haven't been able to go to the DMV. Is this making sense? Does my frustration seem understandable? If I start screaming and don’t stop, will they take me away? Will it ever be different in this life time?
thanks,
I needed to get that off my chest. And if nothing else I plan to send letters to lawmakers and DMV bigwigs - it will not help, but can it hurt? Rory and I are just statistical NOTHINGS - though I work hard, and I work always, there does not seem a way that we will ever be clear you know? No happy Christmas, no presents that cost, no car we can keep, no place we can stay, no SECURITY, no chance to relax No fruits of our labor - that all goes somewhere else. Soon I will be indentured to - I already am. What the fuck- I want to meet it and beat it and WIN one fucking time before I die. But on the other hand, I just want to start screaming and not stop. cause frustration makes me crazy, and it does not seem to end.
etcetera