Dirtbag Blues
I'm scared.
A pre-trial concilatory hearing is coming up on Wednesday...less than 48 hours away. I'll be facing my bastard ex-employer who jipped me out of a month's pay in a courtroom downtown....
I'll be at a disadvantage, since I'll be in a setting I'm predisposed to being nervous in...I've been in courtrooms before. Some of you might be more familiar with an incident I've sometimes passingly talked about when I was 14, involving a vandalism charge. Other incidents involving police officers have also shaped my outlook towards governing institutions and law inforcement....being molested by a police officer at 6, being sexually harrassed by the father of one in Guelph, just shy of twenty years later....
ANd people wonder why I don't like cops.
That and HE, my ex-employer, scares the shit out of me too...his harassing bombarding phone calls haven't ceased since I reported him to the labour board last July...and before you go asking, yes, I HAVE taken the phone calls to the police. They said they couldn't do anything because there wasn't any outright THREAT in the phone calls...that is to say no outright promise of HARM worded....just, maybe annoyance and scariness, they admitted. YEAH. How did one officer put it, "Unfortunately, it isn't against the law to be an jerk."
But mostly it'll be the setting.
My friend J, who's the neice of someone very high up in Toronto Law Enforcement got married to a boy who's family is very high up in Toronto Fire Department over the weekend. I was invited and it was a very beautiful wedding, but the whole time I was there, I was painfully aware that I was a person who very firmly belonged on the bad side of the line drawn between people who liked cops and people who didn't, in a room full of poeple who WERE cops.
It was disheartening.
I'm a punk. Punk firmly expresses what I am. Not in the Rock and Roll, "ANarchy IN the UK", Sid Vicious sense, but the more traditional, less reclaimed, less positiove sense of the word. I'm a person, who for some reason, will always look guilty in a courtroom, even if I haven't done anything. Because I have a very loose understanding of the law as people see it...it's not stubborness. I just seem to FAIL at staying out of trouble.
ANd this douche bag is going to have a lawyer who will pin me to the wall. They're relying on me being on my own, inexperienced and young.
I am all those things.
ANd also I'm just a punk....He's an actual criminal. If I FAIL at staying out of trouble...he constantly makes it his business to play around IN trouble. He'll be more familiar with the territory.
No I'm not looking forward to Wednesday. I'm shitting in my pants.
But the asshole stepped on me and thought I'd let him walk away with it.
$1600
That's nothing to him. He owns a million dollar home.
$1600 dollars would be two months' rent for me come September. That's money I worked for.
Even if I fall flat on my face I've got to show. I've got to face him down. I've got to fight.
I just wish I was less frightened by the whole situation.
A pre-trial concilatory hearing is coming up on Wednesday...less than 48 hours away. I'll be facing my bastard ex-employer who jipped me out of a month's pay in a courtroom downtown....
I'll be at a disadvantage, since I'll be in a setting I'm predisposed to being nervous in...I've been in courtrooms before. Some of you might be more familiar with an incident I've sometimes passingly talked about when I was 14, involving a vandalism charge. Other incidents involving police officers have also shaped my outlook towards governing institutions and law inforcement....being molested by a police officer at 6, being sexually harrassed by the father of one in Guelph, just shy of twenty years later....
ANd people wonder why I don't like cops.
That and HE, my ex-employer, scares the shit out of me too...his harassing bombarding phone calls haven't ceased since I reported him to the labour board last July...and before you go asking, yes, I HAVE taken the phone calls to the police. They said they couldn't do anything because there wasn't any outright THREAT in the phone calls...that is to say no outright promise of HARM worded....just, maybe annoyance and scariness, they admitted. YEAH. How did one officer put it, "Unfortunately, it isn't against the law to be an jerk."
But mostly it'll be the setting.
My friend J, who's the neice of someone very high up in Toronto Law Enforcement got married to a boy who's family is very high up in Toronto Fire Department over the weekend. I was invited and it was a very beautiful wedding, but the whole time I was there, I was painfully aware that I was a person who very firmly belonged on the bad side of the line drawn between people who liked cops and people who didn't, in a room full of poeple who WERE cops.
It was disheartening.
I'm a punk. Punk firmly expresses what I am. Not in the Rock and Roll, "ANarchy IN the UK", Sid Vicious sense, but the more traditional, less reclaimed, less positiove sense of the word. I'm a person, who for some reason, will always look guilty in a courtroom, even if I haven't done anything. Because I have a very loose understanding of the law as people see it...it's not stubborness. I just seem to FAIL at staying out of trouble.
ANd this douche bag is going to have a lawyer who will pin me to the wall. They're relying on me being on my own, inexperienced and young.
I am all those things.
ANd also I'm just a punk....He's an actual criminal. If I FAIL at staying out of trouble...he constantly makes it his business to play around IN trouble. He'll be more familiar with the territory.
No I'm not looking forward to Wednesday. I'm shitting in my pants.
But the asshole stepped on me and thought I'd let him walk away with it.
$1600
That's nothing to him. He owns a million dollar home.
$1600 dollars would be two months' rent for me come September. That's money I worked for.
Even if I fall flat on my face I've got to show. I've got to face him down. I've got to fight.
I just wish I was less frightened by the whole situation.