THREE-It All Comes Crashing Down – Part I: The Eviction Call
When you’ve built a life over 28 years and lose it in a single phone call, there’s no handbook. Just a bench, a ‘Ukulele dream, and a kid who still believes in you.
5.27.24
I’m walking down to the Stanley Marketplace. It’s a beautiful Monday morning, the sun is out.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s my landlord. She’d said on Saturday that she wanted to talk with me.
Now I find out what about: she wants her place back.
The place I’m renting. The place on Havana where I was living a dignified life on my own.
She wants to discontinue our rental agreement.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” I imagine her saying.
Now I have… she gives me… how many days? How many days to get out?
Until the 16th of July.
Seven weeks and a day.
Even through the fog of the 5 mg of THC I took earlier that morning, I’m devastated.
This is it. This is where my life ends.
I tough it out. Eat my lunch at the Mexican place in the Stanley Marketplace. The last meal of the condemned.
As I’m walking back home, I stop and sit in the bright sunlight on a bench by Westerly Creek. I have to call Corvo. Corvo was planning on living with me for the summer. Now they’re going to have to make other plans.
“So Dad, what are you going to do?”
I lie and say, “I have faith that whatever happens, I will be put into a situation the same as this or better.”
(After all, that’s what happened when I moved out of Botanica. I went into a situation that was a nicer place to live, with a better job that provided for rent and then some.)
I tell Corvo, only half-joking, that maybe I’ll just sit on this park bench like Eckhart Tolle, vibing in the present moment, playing with my lip.
At home that evening, I finish the four beers I have in the fridge. The last alcohol I’ll consume for a long while.
I FaceTime Corvo again.
“I’m drinking,” I say.
“That’s fair,” says Corvo.
The next seven weeks, I spend a lot of time in bed.
I don’t have any money in the savings account. I have a couple of paychecks coming that will cover my rent in June. But I definitely don’t have enough money to put a deposit on a new place.
Who would agree to have me as a renter?
I’d get a good reference from my landlord, sure, but my credit score is in the tank. I’ve been behind on two of my credit cards for several months.
I look into low-income housing assistance through the State of Colorado, but it seems like a long way out.
I start to ask friends and acquaintances if they know of any place—because I’m looking for a new place to live.
In the back of my mind, I think I might live with my brother. He offered this last year.
He’s always been interested in my financial situation. I’m not sure why.
Anyway, I’m starting to think I need to find work for the summer, and if I could only make it through September, maybe I’d have the job at the community college again.
Definitely, I could work as a guest artist at the arts school again.
Wait… I can’t do that anymore. I don’t have a place to live, and no prospects of finding one over the summer when I’m broke as a joke.
Saturday after the news, I’m driving with a friend up to a Toastmasters “Hike and Speak.” I give the news to the group: I’m looking for a place to live.
Someone suggests I put it on a vision board. What can I manifest?
Another person says there’s a company that rents to health professionals.
When I speak, I’m still fired up about a creative project I’ve conceived called J3SUS—short for the James 3.0 Super ‘Ukulele Show.
As part of my speech, I sing “The Lord is Good to Me” from Johnny Appleseed, a cappella.
J3SUS was going to be my “bold gesture,” the Hail Mary that proved to Denver that I was still relevant. (Cue the guy from Animal House.)
It’s June 1. Tomorrow, Corvo will arrive to spend the next six weeks with me.
June 2.
Corvo’s at the door. A homecoming for the warrior who’s been killing it at school.
A big embrace from me.
I love you. I’m sorry. Forgive me.
That has been a theme.
I love you. I’m sorry. Forgive me.
I’ve been reading a book that suggests practicing Ho‘oponopono. Several nights, I repeat it like a mantra. In my bed, all through the night.
Sometime in June, I assess what I still have left.
Which of these things can I turn into money?
I sell my beloved/accursed Eric Johnson Stratocaster for $800 to some guy from Weld County. He meets me in the parking lot by the townhome. I exchange the guitar for cash like it’s some kind of drug deal going down.
(This was the guitar I bought with some of the inheritance money I got when my mom died in 2011. The day it arrived, I went to a party, got drunk, and crashed riding my bicycle home. Eight-year-old Corvo discovered me passed out by the entertainment center next to my own vomit. The Stratocaster has always been associated with that experience for me.)
I sell the violin I bought when Corvo was in 3rd grade. The violin I used to help Corvo learn to play-me staying just a few steps ahead. The instrument I played in the 2nd violin section at the Jesuit University where I taught.
I put it on Craigslist. At 10:30 in the evening, I walk across the street with the violin to meet a dad from some South American country in the parking lot of King Soopers. I get out the violin, tune it up, and play a G minor chord, adding a little vibrato. The notes resonate from my fingers. Now it belongs to his daughter, who’s starting middle school orchestra. I tell her to take good care of it, and to make lots of beautiful music.
I sell my beloved pair of Beyerdynamic microphones.
It took me years to save up and finally purchase them. They served me well—recording True Elf Beauties, Mandojazz, all the stuff my former girlfriend played on piano.
They didn’t serve me at all in Havana. The EMF interference was too much.
I sell my Bose L1 PA system. The gear that I was sure was going to change the game for me. Sold for $950 cash to a guy from Castle Rock who’s going to use it as a sound system for high school football games.
All this gear I’ve acquired over the years. Important pieces of my life, sold off in parking lots to anonymous strangers—because to me right now, money is more important.
I’m disappointed. Especially about the violin.
One day, Corvo and I go to Trader Joe’s to buy groceries.
Carrying our stuff back to the car, someone gives us a pitch to sell us a membership to some wildlife conservation fund.
After five minutes of the pitch, Corvo says, “thanks for asking but we don’t have any money. I’m a poet and he’s a musician.”
That moment kind of says it all.
At breakfast the next morning, I break down in tears.
“Corvo,” I say, “please tell me everything is going to be okay.”
I don’t want to push too much of this burden on my kid, but I am distraught.
My life—the life I spent 28 years building in Denver—is coming to an end.
And I can’t tell if I’m letting it go, or if it’s finally letting go of me.
Coming up: It All Comes Crashing Down—Part II: Toastmasters, Old Friends, and Hot Dogs on the Fourth of July.