What Ever Happened To The American Dream?

It was already halfway through December. The 'industry' was about to shut down for the festive season. I was looking forward to more work in January having just signed up with one more casting company. I got more leads from friends and signed up with more. Some require you to pay a registration, some a monthly fee, some both. You do what you have to to get where you wanna, which is what I did and still continue to do.

I was busy looking for another place to stay, story of my life. Nothing solid was coming up on that side. I was also looking for a job, part time, full time, whatever! I prayed for a nice, smooth Christmas, where I wasn't going to feel molested both at home and at work. It's sad when people have to pray for that. That should come naturally at this day in age, especially in a first world country like America. Whatever happened to the American Dream?

Julie, my half Nigerian, half American friend had invited me to spend Christmas with her and her Russian Boyfriend. I was honored that even though we didn't know each other that well, she felt comfortable enough to invite me over her place. Thank goodness I wasn't going to be stuck with Speed that day. My other option would have been to work that day. Neither of them were as fun as spending it with a new friend and meet more new people.

Week before Christmas, I took a day off from work. I was so tired, and really not up to going to work, I felt lie crap. I sent Client a text excusing myself. I sent it around lunch time. I was supposed to be at work at 8pm. I gathered he had enough time to find a replacement. He always checked his messages, I mean the guy is bedridden, he does everything within that room. Of course he went for 'walks' on his chair in the day time, they would take him out etc, which was nice and therapeutic.

That night, around 8pm, I got a text from him telling me that he only just saw my text, he wasn't impressed that I didn't think to call to tell him that I wasn't going to show up that night, he told me that in future, I should call. Apparently, he couldn't find someone to fill in for me. I didn't buy that someone who was always on his phone didn't check his phone for 7 hours. I went back to work the following. After taking a day off, I felt what it would be like not to go to work again. I really had to think hard before going back the following day but I did. Plus, I had one more day's work before payday. Alas that was to be after my two off days. If I was going to get paid, I had to work until payday, get paid and then think about quitting. That night, the night after I took a day off, Client told me that he though I was still mad at him from the night he wouldn't let me leave early. I just smiled in response. He asked if we were ok, I told him of course not! He asked me never to scare him like that again. Apparently, because I am always smiling, he automatically assumed that I was a robot that had no opinions and feelings. I smiled in response to that too.

The following morning, he told me that I had changed. I asked him how, he told me that since that argument, I wasn't that smiley, chirpie Brook he knew. Well beau, that's what happens when you take someone for granted! You see a different side of theirs, one that you might not like. He told me that the other aides yell at him when they are mad, they tell him how they feel, he wasn't sure where he stood with me. I told him that I was there to work and not to show my feelings, I put my feelings aside when I am at work. I am not there to show people where they stand with me. I don't have that privilege.  While I am at work, I have to do what I am supposed to do. If I am not happy with how things are at work, then I will remove myself. I told him that I am not one to change people and how they do things. People should be themselves, if I am happy with how they are, great, if not, then I remove myself to the situation, it's that simple. They will find someone who is into the kind of person they are, or not but I can only control myself, and how I handle things. He told me he was very happy with my professionalism and wished his other colleagues had the same thought process. Well.... good luck with that, I'm on my way out!

I got a call from Jen, she was just checking on me. Conversation went something like:
Jen: Hey, how are you doing?
Me: Good, thanks, you?
Jen: Ok thanks, how are things with the new roommate?
Me: Ok thanks
Jen: Have you slept with him yet?
Me: What's that got to do with anything?
Jen: I'm just asking, remember I predicted you were going to?
Me: I haven't slept with him.
Jen: I thought you liked him? How's work? Have you quit yet?
Me: No, why do you have to expect the worst out of everything?
Jen: It's not that I am expecting the worst but I know you. You are always moving and changing jobs.
Me: But you don't even know me. I only had one other place to stay when I moved here which didn't work out and one job.
Jen: I don't believe that things are good
Me: Well, I can't help you there, gotta go. Bye!
Click

It's like she didn't call to check up on me, she just wanted to see if she was right about her lousy predictions. I wasn't interested.

I had my two days off at work, then it was Friday, Payday. Only I got paid the following morning, Saturday. At the end of my shift. Client called thirty minutes before I arrived. I didn't pick up. He sent me a text asking what time to expect me at work. I am always on time. I didn't understand why he felt the need to call to ask. I got there just before 8. He seemed relieved to see me. He told me he didn't think I was going to be back at work. And not get paid? Are you joking? I just smiled.

I worked my last night in peace, knowing it was the last supper. The following morning, he almost forgot to pay me. Good thing I kept saying to myself, 'don't forget to get paid!' My check wasn't even with the rest of them, maybe he really didn't think I was going to be back. Which is strange, did he think if I didn't return, I wouldn't want to get paid for the days I worked? Anyway, I got paid. When I left, he went, 'see you tonight?' I replied, 'bye!' knowing that was it. I was done.

That day, around noon, I sent him a text, 'hi XXX, I will not be coming back to work. Brook.' I wasn't going to call him, I had lost all respect for this pervert of a man, I sent him a text that was courteous enough. I didn't want him stranded that night, expecting me to show up. Plus I didn't want him reporting me to the department of health for neglect. He never responded to my text. I didn't care.

I slept all day that day, I had been so tired from working day and night. I was up early the following day. Around 3am. I watched some tv shows on the laptop. There is a lot of light in Speed's apartment, everything has a light bulb in it. If it didn't come that way, he puts one in there. All his clocks have light in or around them. I had trouble sleeping in there, especially in the daytime, when the body isn't really up for it. No pun intended. I would sometimes unplug the switch of the Living room clock's light just to make it a little dimmer in the room but he would turn it on as soon as he got back home, he didn't care. He wouldn't ask why I had it off, which was obvious plus I had mentioned at some point that I liked the room dark when I went to sleep. He promised me a totally different living arrangement to what I got when he found out I wasn't going to sleep with him. You would swear I wasn't paying rent there. He was so obsessed with whether or not I was going to sleep than the fact that I was there as a paying tenant and that should matter more and he had an obligation to treat me with respect and to at least try to make me feel comfortable. It's not like I was expecting him to turn off all the lights while he was asleep and he liked the lights on, no. This is in the daytime, a time he is supposed to be at work, seeing as he had told me he had a job when I moved in. Next thing he made it his full time job to obsess over me.

He is the type of person who goes to a room just after you and turns the light off if you left in on or vice versa. If you open the window, he will close it and or vice versa. If you drink water in the kitchen and leave the glass by the side of the sink, he will put it back in the cupboard, regardless of whether you are going to be back to use it again. If I am busy on the laptop in the kitchen, or whatever, and I leave the light on because I am going to the bathroom, when I go back, the light's been switched off. He has the coldest apartment in all of Southern California, he walks around in two sweaters, jeans and sneakers all day, all night. His heater wasn't working, so he would turn the stove on in the kitchen to heat up the apartment. The kitchen is a separate room, so the stove took forever to heat the rest of the apartment. He had the stove really low too cos he's saving gas.

If I am home alone, cold and turn on the stove, then doze off on the couch, I would wake up freezing, cos he got home, turned off the stove and left. It's like are you freaking kidding me? But when he is at home, he sleeps with the stove on.

My first morning after quitting my job, Speed woke up mad. He told me that he hardly slept that night because I was busy on the computer. I asked him what about my using the computer woke him up. He told me it was the clicking of the keys, only I was watching a tv show, so I am not sure what keys he was talking about. I had my earphones on, so there was no sound plus heellooooo, you're hard hearing! What are you talking about? I think because he saw that I was on the computer in the middle of the night, and not in his bed sucking him off or whatever fantasies he had about the two of us, he got mad and wanted to pick a fight. He didn't hear anything cos even if there was something to hear, he is hard hearing, he wouldn't have heard it, but he assumed that if I was on the computer, I must have been typing, so he was going to complain about that.

I told him that he had told me that he is not a light sleeper and seeing as how much light there already is in the entire apartment, I didn't think the light from my laptop was going to disturb him plus I like my screen really dark, so it didn't really add anymore light to the already well lit apartment. He was very emotional, he went on and on, he gets quite worked up #AngerIssues. I got pissed off and told him that the problem was not with what I was doing, it was the fact that at 56 years old, he can't afford his own place to stay and has to share a studio apartment with random people and this time, he found one who refuses to sleep with him. He is bitter over that and can't get over it like he promised he would if I wasn't willing to be in a relationship with him when I first moved in. He was lying then, trying to impress me about how much of a gentleman that he was ok with whether or not I was going to date him. Unfortunately, none of that worked, I wasn't interested in him. He is the least attractive person I have ever met in my life, both physically and otherwise.  He told me that that was rude and uncalled for. There was no need for me to attack him like that, I am the most rudest, most cruel person he has ever met in his life. I added that that was because I wouldn't sleep with him. If I had agreed to be his concubine, he wouldn't see any of those characters in me.

He had begged me to quit my job and now that I had, my first night home, he wasn't happy. There was no pleasing that man. Imagine if I had quit because of him!

Christmas Eve, Julie asked if I wanted to tag along while she ran errands. I was like sure, any reason to get the heck out of this place! The industry was closed the the year, I had nothing to do to keep myself busy. We met up on Hollywood Boulevard and headed south, she had a few things she needed to do. I just tagged along. I went home nice and tired that night and ready for bed. Speed got home around 10pm and watched tv. He shifted my feet on the couch and sat to watch tv. He had the tv on full blast, That woke me up as the tv is right in front of the couch where I slept. He watched TV until around 2 the following morning. He did that for the next few nights,probably out of spite. He is very catty. I woke up early that morning and went to use the PC in the dining room space of the kitchen. God forbid I should wake him up from his beauty sleep. He complained again the following day,about how loud I was moving around the apartment at 2am. I was like Speed, please, STOP IT! You went to bed around two, how could I have woken you up when you yourself only went to bed that time?

That night, he was in a good mood / romantic mood smdh. He asked that we watched a movie together. I told him I was tired, plus I'm a grandma, I go to bed early. He watched by himself, left to buy weed, came home, smoked and watched some more, it was very late by then, I had such a headache from lack of sleep. It was kinda like being at Man's, he used to get home around 1am too, turn on all the lights, the tv, have it on full blast and smoke weed. I felt cursed that I ended up in a similar situation to what I thought I had run away from. I asked Speed to lower the volume. He told me that it was low. How can you argue with a hard hearing person about something like volume? What was low to him was still very high to me,especially late at night, when it's quiet outside. He got pissed off and turned the tv off and went to bed breathing very heavily. He was fuming!