Long Way From Home (Troy, NY Job Searching, Losing Teeth, And Life At 41)

Another entry in the life journal of Elliot Passantino, writer of his true life Bukowski meets Hunter S Thompson and star bio like adventures in struggle, near fame and poverty.

I’m a long way from home mom, and home’s a long way from me. Been 16 years since you died on a rainy Tuesday and even longer since the hacks fucked up my mouth with crooked posts and bad root canals. You remember the Dumbos, the mustached old fool and his curly black haired wife who looked like Rhoda and Valerie Bertinelli, the most romantic couple in Northern New Jersey dentistry, fiddling away on my poisoned teeth as Billy Joel echoed through the laughing

gas in the background. They ripped apart my mouth with me high on laughing gas and novocane to the point that one time I kept laughing and laughing and laughing freaking them out as Billy Joel echoed and rippled across the sound waves. They made me stay a little longer to calm down making me late to my shitty college job of pushing shopping carts. My butch lesbian boss wasn’t

happy about me being late but I paid her back by giving her Vicotin the dentist lovebirds prescribed me.

The butch lesbian used it for her back and shoulders and things got better between us but as for my teeth, they continued to go to shit.

The two romantic dental lovebirds fucked up every

crown post and root canal they did on me before retiring

without warning and moving to Florida. That was over

18 years ago and since then every dentist I’ve seen from

NJ to L.A. has remarked on how crappy my teeth, how

after double root canals on the ones the Dumbos fixed

my teeth are all dead and rotting, poisoning my gums

and nasal membranes with absesses. For 18 years the

dentists from Santa Monica to West New York to

downtown Los Angeles have been telling me how fucked

I am, that I will lose many of my teeth. I paid most of them

to learn this while not paying at least three but now the

hour of their teeth damnation prophecies has come. Last week a new

dentist pulled the third tooth to be removed from my teeth

and now as I recover a filling has gotten loose in a dead

tooth barely covered by cracked crown. For the last

two years the dentists have been saying this too now must

come out and suddenly it seems like it’s going to happen.

It makes me cry, it makes me mad and has my father

cursing the Dumbos on the phone, recalling how much

he had to pay those idiots back in the early violent years

of my parents’ separation. Back then I at least had free

room and board and the hope that life would improve.

I guess it has in many ways while not so much in others,

now finding me in another limbic region of the country

due to the fraudulent tourism advertising of close friends.

Like in West New York, like in Los Angeles, like in

Nashville, I’m alone in a place I don’t understand where

jobs are unavailable even after five months of non stop,

door to door interviews and applications. Five fucking

months in this hillbilly mountain region where

the Barnes and Noble scream with babies and loud

elderly and kids never disciplined to shut the fuck up

while the few smart, book loving citizens left in this

world try to read a book. Five months walking the streets

of another town filled with eye candy popping shops,

cute bars I have no money to visit and job applications

where every ounce of my experience or struggle is

insulted or negated.

The stupid blonde twenty something twat who

ignores my 12 years of waitering to ask if I will be her

line cook. This dumb asshole did only a few months

before a hand job or short skirt got her a promotion

that gave her no new forms of intelligence. When I

asked to see the real manager she made excuses, insisting

against all the evidence of my two page resume I was

perfect for being a line cook. I never heard from the

dumb girl again.

The manager at Lowes hesitates approaching me

as I hold my resume in my folder and has no interest in

even getting to know me. I reveal kindly, politely, that

I was referred to her by an associate at the local hack

job career fair and even emailed her my resume for

driver. She tells me, almost proudly that she never

reads my emails and though they still need a driver

won’t go to read my email or resume nor will she

even talk to me. I’m told to go home and apply on

the Lowe’s website. I politely agree to, baffled by this

woman’s flagrant idiotic manner returning home to

find out the driver position is no longer listed on the

website.

I search the labrynth of hallways and buildings

making up Albany’s biggest hospital, searching the

campus on a shit fucking icy rainy day in January for

the human resources. Rod’s had Uber passenger after

passenger tell him the hospital is hiring so I’ve applied

for various jobs I don’t understand on a job listings

site you need a fucking medical degree to understand.

Still here I am like a rat in a maze looking for the human

resources cheese going through chapels, waiting rooms

and hallways to find at last a human resources desk.

As the limping wounded and downtrodden surround me

the human resources nurses tell me to go out the door,

down the street, across the street, passed the Panera

and Starbucks to the human resources office. I listen

being whipped by wind and ran until at last being

allowed into an office by cute blonde polish guard. She

points me the way to the stocky kind Asian man working

the human resources desk who tells me even though I’ve

applied for various jobs he can’t read my resume.

What?

I tell him I have resumes with me, wishing to

apply and take to someone in person. Still he insists it’s

useless that he’s not in charge and only until the computer

places my online applications in certain bins can he or

anyone from the hospital look at my credentials. I’m

flabbergasted asking if he understands how ludicrous that

sounds. He agrees how crazy it is, blaming it all on the

internet while still not accepting my resumes or allowing

me to talk to anyone in person.

And on and on it goes, like walking into Panera

after the online application to meet a manager who

won’t meet with me. The overweight but kind temp

agency manager who has the flu and can’t shake my hand

with no jobs to offer me but excited to hear about the

extra work I just did on a Scorcese film. And then

of course the auto auction job that hires me then fires

me two days before orientation and the driver job

that never hires me after hiring me at the end of a

lengthy phone interview. This has been my job hunt

for five months while commuting two and a half hours

every week at ungodly pre dawn hours to work as SAG

extra on film sets overseen by heroes like Scorcese and

Stiller. On those days I almost faint by the end of the

day before a nap and gym visit to one of the many Planet

Fitnesses available. I then go back home and stay up

all night wired until crashing. Or I stay at the Prancer

Hotel.

6 years I’ve house sat or stayed at the Prancer

Hotel, the mansion like house of my best friend’s parents

seated high atop a mountain in New Jersey. After many

hijinks there these last few years last month I drove my

jeep off the graveside cliff nearly tipping over. I managed

to stop just in time after the black ice greased driveway

stole all friction from out underneath my nearly bare

tires. I saw my life flash before my eyes as my jeep

slid against all braking down the steep driveway and

over the crest, only halted by the destroyed remains

of shrubbery. With my rear driver’s side tire hanging in

the air, I grabbed my phone and jumped out terrified

of what could happen next. Fearing the jeep may tip

over I called my best buddy Clive who eventually

made his way to his parents house, beating triple A

and me accepting the advice of many texting concerned

friends who said I should just drive the jeep off the cliff

and see what happens. Clive used a tow on his massive

pickup truck to pull my jeep up into safety and I was

very grateful before making my way to Ben Stiller’s

set. Clive and I made a pact not to tell Clive’s half mad

bipolar OCD brother Jasper knowing it would just

give the prick more fuel for the fire he’s been throwing

at me for years. For some reason Jasper even with

a beautiful wife and newborn kid would rather check

up on me at the Prancer house to berate me about how

clean or clean the place is.

Whats insane is that he doesn’t live there and his

parents, aware of my part time residency there, won’t be

back for months. This never has mattered to Jasper nor

will it ever. When I lived there permanently for four

months at a time he would appear without warning

to do inspection that if I was not present for would

learn of via angry texts or phonically, accusing me of

being disrespectful and unclean. I endured this for

three years of housesitting his parent’s house and now

just staying there three times since January have

endured it again. The threat of his OCD riddled

prick attacking me for whatever stain or dish in the

sink he finds recently lead me to sweep mop and

trash sweep the entire house, even rounding up

garbage and recyclables there before my arrival. I

did all that while leaving food for him which of course

he refused to eat before I returned last week to stay

there again.

On Tuesday I lost my third teeth, on Wednesday

I worked for Scorcese and on Thursday I decided to

go home to Troy just to pay my rent, wait out a blizzard

and return back by the weekend. I knew I was leaving

trash in the one can, a plate and utensils in the sink

and some old coffee but I figured that Jasper with a

newborn and sick family would not be stopping by

anytime soon.

Of course I was wrong.

On Saturday morning, upon waking up hungover

after celebrating the divorce of my father from the most

evil woman alive, I discovered the first of many insulting

berating abusive texts sent from Jasper himself. They

began by calling me a slob and cursing me out in various

ways for leaving the place a disaster zone. When I defended

myself asking what the fuck was going on Jasper immediately declared myself unworthy of even questioning

his wrath before calling me a dangerous child and all other

horrible things. Of course none of this was called for,

not over one plate two utensils garbage and pee in a toilet

left inflated the way it was found by me the first night I

stayed there in January. None of that matters to Jasper

or the fucking universe in dealing out the maddening

amount of bullshit I’m handled daily, whether its going

off a cliff, coming home to two fucking pitfalls barking

at me in building whose lease declared prohibition of

dogs or facing the next loss of tooth from my mouth.

But of course it all adds up eventually so that on a

Sunday evening I get a slew of terrifying panic attacks

that feel like real heart attacks leading me to the hospital.

Three hours at the hospital where two EKGs come

back as fine before a nurse foolishly thinks I need a third

before I get back my chest X ray results to learn I’m fine.

Yeah, I’m fine as they come, falling apart at the seams,

hoping for a miracle, riding the wave and wondering

when I won’t feel so far from home.

I do / Via I own and created it

Elliot in the Belly of the Beast