The first thing that becomes evident is that rental prices in the greater Los Angeles area are astronomical. I’m beginning to think that not only will I be looking for a roommate, but that Tish and I will be sharing a room. A small room. Even then, unless I’m very lucky, I’ll be paying close to a thousand dollars a month in rent. That doesn’t include food and transportation and anything else that I’m going to need.
I try and narrow my options down by searching out decent school districts, places where the public schools are good, as well as free. Tish is smart. I don’t want to lose that smartness in some overcrowded classroom where she won’t be getting the attention she needs and deserves. Of course the better schools are in the better cities and towns where we can’t afford to live. It takes three cafes in two states before something catches my eye on a random real estate page.
House sitting.
There’s an actual market for house sitting. Most of it is short term: one month here, three months there. Some of it is for a year or more. ALL of it is in high rent districts where it wouldn’t be bad to get a foot in the door. ALL of it would give me free housing with time to work at another job.
I make a splurge purchase, I get myself a Post Office Box in Culver City, so I have an address. On the map it looks centrally located to so many better areas: Beverly Hills, Marina Del Rey, Malibu, even Ranchos Palos Verdes. It’s near colleges. There’s usually a lot of part time, at home work available around colleges. I can type. I can type term papers. I make another splurge purchase, I buy myself a cell phone. A cheap one, with a cheap package and limitations, but now I have a phone number. I bill it to the P.O. Box. When we get to California proper, I’ll get rid of the Culver City address and get another in the town where Tish will go to school. Because Tish has to get into school as soon as possible. Because I need to have her somewhere safe while I go on interviews. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the summer months come around. Summer school, I hope, something free or cheap where she can go while I’m taking care of taking care of us. Just the thought of that brings back the fear of failing at this that’s been an extra piece of luggage on this adventure of ours.
I push my worries aside. I will not fail. I cannot fail, it’s simply not an option.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
Californian’s are friendly. So are most people, but Californians have this positive attitude that I’ve never encountered anywhere else. When I call to make inquiries about living arrangements and jobs I end up setting off a network of help that I never imagined. Other places I’ve been to have not been like this at all, in fact, as new people in town we were often met with suspicious looks and too many questions. Poverty can be like that. People tend to look at you, make an assessment, stick you in a slot, and leave you there. I’m sure the fact that we looked so transient, that our record of moving proved that we were, made certain communities less than willing to be helpful. Why make someone feel wanted and comfortable when they wouldn’t be sticking around for very long? Of course I never understood the logic in that. Maybe if they HAD made us feel welcomed to town we might have stayed.
This is not the rule of thumb in California. Or maybe I’m just getting lucky with the people I’m talking to. It’s about time, I could use a bit of luck. Not a lot, just a bit.
There’s a lot of comfort in knowing that I will have interviews lined up for work before I ever reach my destination. I even have a motel room set up that won’t break my budget. I’ve been told that it will be fine if Tish has to come with me to some agencies, I’ve been given advice on schools, I’ve been given a small list of potential housing arrangements. I have the names of shelters and places where I can get assistance with everything from food stamps to food bank freebies ‘just in case’. Things are falling into place with an ease that leaves me uncomfortable during the night when sleep isn’t coming easy.
Knowing that events in my life are lining up in a positive way, I slow our trek down a bit, not pushing myself to drive when I’m feeling tense or tired. Tish and I veer off course several times in New Mexico and Arizona. There are some places I’ve never been to that I would like to see, and if we had more time we would linger at the Petrified Forest or the Grand Canyon, or even head to the four corners, where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet. But there’s a nervous energy that drives me on, and my dwindling bank account is an impetus, too.
What we do stop for is to make some purchases of what are now becoming necessities. I need some clothes. If I’m going to work, I need something other than the faded jeans and T-shirts I own.
There are used clothing shops everywhere. Every town has a phone book and every phone book has a list of cut-rate clothiers. The selections are a little better than I’m used to in Phoenix. I seek out those places where upper class people donate their discards. I check out the Goodwill, the Salvation Army, places that I’ve shopped since I can remember. I don’t get much more than a few skirts and blouses, and a dress with a torn seam that I can easily repair that someone lets me have for free. It’s a pretty dress with a wrapped skirt and matching scarf that ties around the waist. There’s leafy pattern on it, a greenish-turquoise on white and it’s far and away the nicest thing I’ve ever owned, heck, it still has the tags on it, it’s never been worn. Because the dress was free I spend the five dollars I would have laid out for it on a pair of ropy sandals and a big, oversized bag of a similar ropy material to use as a purse. Tish picks out two bathing suits, some shorts and shirts, summery things to augment her wardrobe that’s lean in that department.
It’s the best I can do right now. I don’t know what kind of job I’ll have, and I don’t know what I’ll need, but now I can go to interviews looking okay, looking passable. And Tish will fit in instead of standing out in her cold weather hand-me-downs. She’s cheerful with her purchases, and the smile on her face makes me dip into our account once more for sunglasses for each of us. We put them on immediately, admire each other’s glamorous new looks.
It IS California after all.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
I don’t have a lot of hobbies, and I’ve been told that this is a problem. My hobbies always end up becoming vices, and that’s a problem, too.
I play golf every day. EVERY day. There are more than enough courses in the area, it’s something that takes up enormous amounts of time, and I don’t do it alone, my sponsor, Rene, comes with me. Without fail, he rounds me up at some ridiculous hour of the morning and we make it to a nine o’clock tee time. Without fail, we play eighteen holes of very bad golf that he usually wins, because he’s been playing very bad golf much longer than I have. Then, without fail, we head to an AA meeting.
We’re both card carrying members. We’ve both failed the program more than once. Still, we go, we sit, we share, and we drink coffee and smoke and make polite kinds of talk with ‘regulars’ and newcomers. We’ve changed groups a coupla times. Once because the group grew only because I was a member. Word must have gotten out that me, A.J. McLean, high maintenance pain in the ass, was on public display from two to three in the afternoons every day. Fans and gawkers were showing up. This was not good. And just recently we changed again, because I, well, I thirteenth stepped.
She was lovely, and a nice person, a genuinely nice person who wasn’t impressed with me, at least I didn’t think she was. We struck up the usual conversation over addictions and doctors and what brought us there on the one day that Rene couldn’t go with me. I was alone, and I don’t like being alone at the meetings and she stuck out as being alone too, so we talked. Then, after that meeting, we sat together all the time, and I didn’t care if Rene was there with me or not. After a while, I preferred that Rene NOT be there, and that’s when all my most recent trouble started, because I couldn’t leave it as us being just friends. Us being AA buddies. I had to take it further, and she was willing and I wanted her. That’s thirteenth stepping. Getting involved in a sexual relationship with another AA member. I found out later that it’s pretty common. I found out later that those relationships come from some other place than love, that they come from fear and need, two of my best friends. I found out later that when the relationship ends, it’s real embarrassing to have to see that person again. For both people. And I found out later that it hurts even if it wasn’t real, and that when it hurts, you maybe might use again. I know I did; pot and sleeping pills and big gulps of Jack Daniels that made me sick. I don’t know if she did. It was maybe the worse time in my life, even worse than when I had to go to rehab. Maybe. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been engaged to someone else at the time and I ended up losing that person, too.
So Rene and I go someplace else now, to a meeting that’s a little later in the afternoon, so we have time to grab something to eat somewhere between the golf and the meeting. Then we sit through the meeting and after that, I’m on my own. Which I hate.
My other hobby is shopping. It’s not really a hobby, it’s a sickness. I’m not supposed to be doing it, I’m supposed to be doing other, healthy things. I should be taking care of the dogs, or writing songs, or even walking on the beach or working out, not wasting hours going from shop to shop making all these random purchases. It’s impulse shopping, I think that’s what my shrink calls it. It’s a mask, or something like that, a substitute. I buy things I don’t need because I can’t buy the things I do, I don’t know, I just know that shopping kills time and I like new things, lots of new things. I like shoes. Sneakers. All kinds. I like hats, well, I need hats; I’m losing my hair. Like I need that shit along with all the rest of the crap I have to deal with. I’m twenty-freakin’-five years old and I have the hairline of a middle aged retiree. So I buy hats. And shirts and pants and dog toys and jewelry, I like jewelry. I buy up all this stuff until the shops close and there’s no where else to go but back to my smelly, cluttered house where the dogs have pissed the rugs and there are no phone messages for me because everyone I know is disgusted with me. Then I sit and chain smoke and try and call the people who WILL talk to me, but they’re usually busy with their own lives and don’t have the hours I need to fill available to fill with my bullshit. Then I try and clean up after the dogs, or not, and go to sleep, or not, and then it starts over again the next day.
Not a lot changes.
And there are people out there who think how great it is to be me.
I don’t want to be me.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
Shopkeepers are friendly and they all know me. They see me coming. They’ll close stores for me so I can shop in peace, so I can be alone. They don’t know that I wish they wouldn’t do that, but I understand why they do. I can draw a crowd sometimes, and it’s not a buying crowd, it’s a frenzied fan crowd that can get out of hand.
There’s a little, funky shop in West Hollywood that has some nice jewelry in it. Not diamonds and things like that, more like, you know, natural stones and big, showy pieces and chunky stuff that looks good on whoever wears it. Picking through it all I come up on a necklace that I have to have. HAVE to have. It’s all these bits and pieces of turquoise suspended on copper wires that wrap around and around in all these layers. It’s a choker, but the girl waiting on me shows me how it can be a bracelet, how the wires can bend or come apart, how it can be, like, a necklace AND a bracelet, or two bracelets. I just think it’s interesting and beautiful. Something to play with. The stones are uneven and spaced out in some random pattern that makes sense when you wear it.
I buy it on sight. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll take it over to my, my, I don’t know what she is anymore. She was my fiancée for about a year, but my thirteenth step was her last straw. Now we’re officially ‘on hold’ and by officially I mean it’s what we’ve told the public. It’s more like a truce. I don’t bug her and she goes about her business. We still see each other, we have to. I pay her rent, I pay for the car she took when she left. I mean, it’s the least I can do under the circumstances, I guess, she was living with me and she wasn’t working or anything, because I didn’t want her to have a job that cut into any of our time. Okay, that’s a lie. I didn’t want her to have a job because it would have cut into MY time that I wanted her spending with ME. So when I went and screwed everything up, she had to go somewhere because she wasn’t about to keep living with me and she didn’t want to stay in the house. She found herself something not to far from where we lived and she got herself a job waitressing, which is what she did before I came into her life. And I pay the big bills until we work this all out one way or the other.
I don’t know when that will be. I’m mixed up about it. It’s one of those things, those ‘issues’ in my life that’s a loose end I can’t seem to tie up. I mean, the shrinks, yes I have more than one, they think that maybe I shouldn’t have rushed into the relationship to begin with. That’s a lie, too. They told me point blank NOT to get involved, that recovering addicts don’t do well.
But I hate to be alone.
No, I’m not going to go over there tonight. Just thinking about it and all the reasons why I want to makes me decide not to. I’m not good company. In fact, as far as she’s concerned, right now I’m an unwelcome intrusion. I’ll just go home and put this away and maybe even forget that I bought it until it turns up some other day, or not at all.
I lose things all the time like that.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
