He can’t get a job in ASL because it relies heavily on facial movement and expression. He did supposedly learn it as a kid and was supposedly an ASL translator on his mission, but if you know the basics you know he can’t communicate that way either.
One of the criteria for getting SSDI is loss of speech, by any method. Loss meaning “hard to understand, unintelligible, unsustainable” etc. There’s Russ’s in right there. He also may have received it as a child, back when he wasn’t eating except through a tube, and if his IQ was tested low he was even more sure to have received it-parents can do it for a child. Whether it continues on into adulthood or you have to reapply at 18, I don’t know. But just the speech thing would enable a doctor to sign off on it.
He may very well have a base government salary, and his job reduces it when he works, but when he doesn’t work he can count on it. and it’s not super high because he hasn’t worked much. Which is why he’s never concerned when out of work and can just walk away from a job if the bus schedules don’t line up.
Anyway, we’ll probably never know but it’s an interesting thought.
Russ is going to think everybody is a hooker. Like in Times Square, there are people in costume along the strip, including women dressed as the old-fashioned show-girls, with feathered headdresses and skimpy outfits that want money for a photo. Russ probably won’t understand that the Sinatra days are over and those aren’t real showgirls, and will hit on them, thinking they can get him backstage. (Lots of them are fat and dumpy too, so his reaction to that would be priceless).
A Russ on the Strip chapter would be great. I hope it happens!