Y SIN EMBARGO magazine

Por Alfredo de la Rosa para Y SIN EMBARGO

I.

In the harsh, frigid, winter of 2008, at 78, I was evicted from my small, comfortable studio apartment in subsidized elderly housing in Boulder, Colorado. I had become homeless, an event I had planned to write about, but in the severity of the coldest winter of my time in the Rocky Mountains I began to hedge on what slowly emerged as a quirky take on being elderly and clueless in America.

I bought some time going to court to fight the eviction. I happened to be out of the state when the incident cited in the complaint occurred. At bottom, I wanted to have it expunged to avoid being perceived as a crank that a landlords wouldn’t want on the property. But, as I am quitting Boulder with the winters colder as I get older, I interrupted a witness, bored with her testimony, to tell the judge that I will stipulate to my guilt, even as my strong evidentiary defense asserted otherwise.

Following the hearing, I sent an email to the building manager:

“I’ve been living out of my suitcase for almost three months. At my age it is difficult to continue and I need to regain my health. Please use my deposit money to have my things hauled to the dumpster, as I am too old, weak and run down to do it myself.”

I was not disposed to staying in this town. The city, the owner of the property, had allowed the place over a five-year period to become overrun with bed bugs. It seems that in 2002 a homeless man took residence in the apartment two floors above me before deciding to return to the streets. He had left behind, however, a place infested with bed bugs. While the city had the apartment fumigated, the neighboring units had not been treated nor had the apartments on the floors below, including mine, been fumigated. Predictably, the bed bugs were allowed to propagate over five years and migrate into my unit, and into others as well.

A week into the new year, 2008, after weeks of living out of my suitcase, I took a trip to Taos, New Mexico, to visit old friends. I had not disconnected my computers wired to the internet on copper wire. Because of this, the contractors that the city hired found my apartment unprepared for treatment. The walls behind my desks needed to be gotten to and finding them inaccessible reported to the landlord who then cited me. Stoned on pain killers–16 to 20 a day that I was taking just to be able to walk (I was suffering from a two-month siege of gout) I was uncaring about the citation. I toyed with the idea of writing about being a homeless geezer in America. The city evicted me for being snotty.

With the discovery of pests in my unit, the pest control contractor had emptied my apartment of all my clothing, bedding, books, art, photographs–everything but my computers and the kitchen sink–stripping the walls of wallpaper, so that fumigation would be complete. The treatment would last three or four months or more, my unit being inspected and treated one day a week over time. During the next three months I was obliged to live out of a suitcase with clothing newly purchased at Target and Sears in my own residence, as I continued to pay rent. I showered at the gym. But eating meals was a problem. I was quickly reduced to a string bean-thin 110 pounds.

Living so monkish a regimen made me reactive to even small intakes of purines. As a result, I was overtaken with an attack of gout, a form of arthritis, a condition I suffered from since 35, but avoidable if I stayed clear of eating high-purine foods. Earlier in the year my doctor had taken me off the medication that prevented gout attacks. I agreed, as I hadn’t had an attack in five years. So, when on my Spartan regimen a gout attack occurred I began taking 16 to 20 pain killers a day just to be able to walk.

My Taos friend, Dana, a former gallery owner and art dealer, now an attorney, thinks my assignment to do a series on being a homeless geezer in upscale America a great adventure. My children are noncommittal about such a risky, perhaps even foolish, gig, but they appear to be supportive, knowing until now few details. My brother worries for me, as do others, among them Bohemian pals from the 1960s. I would rather die an early death or, as my mother did quitting New York for an old age in Spain at 75, leap into the dark, than live a safe life in an America of chance, change, makeover and reinvention. Here one can live a dangerous life. If I’m hurt, I won’t be damaged.

We shall see whether I kick into the Beat scuffle mode of survival that sustained many of us after WWII when like-minded were with Jack on the road.

Will I be the meek and complying neighbor of dozing geezers nodding out the days of their lives in a cuckoo’s nest?

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