A Very Long Day

 Waiting for the N today, a man standing nearby asked me how long I had to keep the collar on. “A total of 6 weeks,” I told him.  “Did you just have it done?” “I had it done in May.” I had a fusion,” he said, gesturing to his neck. “This is my third spine surgery,” I replied.  I had a lumbar laminectomy, and a cervical decompression and now this.” “The lumbar one must be worse,” he said.  “It is because you can’t really sit or stand,” I told him.

 

The train came, we got on and he sat beside me. “After my surgery  I fell 10 feet off a ladder while I was visiting my mother in Florida. I thought I hurt my shoulder because I landed on it so the next day when I couldn’t lift my arm I went to urgent care. They did an X-ray and then called me back to say I needed a CT scan. I had broken one of the titanium screws and shattered the spacer between the discs and fractured the bone.  So then I had to have surgery again. The surgeon said I should be paralyzed or dead but it turned out ok.  I had it done at Mt. Sinai.  “Who was your doctor?” he asked.   “Dr. Chaudhary did the first two, but Dr Magretis did this one.”  “Magretis is my doctor too!” he said, surprised.  

 

“I’m a retired cop,”he said and it suddenly dawned on me that my shirt said “Riker’s is a death sentence,” but he didn’t seem bothered by it.  “After 9/11 my health really fell apart, but the program at Stonybrook is so focused on cancer they ‘re not really studying other things. “Cancer and respiratory issues,” I said thinking of the students and teachers who were in class at Stuyvesant that day.  “They tested my blood for metals, but it had been sixteen years, so they said they might have been there and gone away.  They told me all my issues were probably from 9/11 but they can’t prove it.” 

We both got off at Union Square and I headed to the 6, on my way to yet another appointment.  

 

Once again, I wound up at my office on my day off, this time completing an annual report I have to submit as the legal guardian of one of my homeless trans clients. It’s a pretty complicated report, and I still wasn’t done when I had to get on zoom to speak on a panel about voucher discrimination and the LGBTQ community.

 

The panel consisted of two lawyers, a formerly homeless gay realtor, and me.  The situation with the vouchers is complicated.  Many landlords refuse to take them, which is illegal source of income discrimination.  Often they have stereotypes about what people who wind up in the shelters are like and then that combines with rampant racism and homo/transphobia. 

 

 I knew about those things, but the realtor also explained that if landlords take more than a certain percentage of voucher holders, their insurance goes up.  Apparently this is based on the insurance companies assuming voucher holders don’t work, are home more, and are therefore more likely to cause fires, which is total nonsense.  

 

The hour-long conversation was wide ranging.  I talked about how our clients, being young, have no experience with apartment searches, leases etc which makes them especially vulnerable to scams and how the new restrictions on changing genders on federal documents is leaving clients trying to apply for apartments with mismatched documents.  The realtor warned about data being stolen from real listings to create fraudulent online listings, and told us that people should stick to Street Easy to avoid those.  The lawyer from GMHC explained that having HASA often puts people as HIV+ to potential landlords which can create more discrimination.

 

Unlock NYC, the hosting organization, has created various tools - including one that allows people to record conversations with realtors and landlords – to help people with the meticulous documentation that is needed to bring a source of income discrimination complaint.  They also do “fairness checks” where they will pretend to be a well off person inquiring about the apartment after a voucher hold has been told it’s no longer available.

 

We could have kept discussing these issues for another hour, but it was 7pm so we logged off and I went back to the guardianship report.  By the time it was finished, it was 10pm and I was falling asleep at my desk, so I headed home.

 

The subway was full of World Cup fans in various colors depending on their preferred team, but they thinned out as we got deeper into Brooklyn.  By the time we got to the last stop, there was just a man and his two young sons decked out in pale blue  with both boys holding golden soccer balls. 

 

“Does this elevator go to the street?” the father asked me and I nodded yes and then explained it’s actually two elevators to get to the street. “What country are you rooting for?” I asked, not recognizing their gear. “Argentina,” he said. “How about you?”  I had to admit that although I used to play and I still have a soccer ball in my closet, the one that Kate and I used to do drills up and down our dormitory hallways, I’m not really watching the soccer. I’m watching the people. 

He understood right away, nodding in agreement. “There are people from all over the world,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of Mexicans,” I said. “We’re from Argentina not Mexico,” he said, “We’re further south,” apparently assuming a that as an American I had no idea about geography. “I know,” I told him, “the Mexicans are wearing yellow so I know that you’re not part of them. “What’s great is that they’re all getting along,” I said, and he agreed as we emerged into the Brooklyn night.