The Impossible Escape: Life in the People’s Republic of Kalifornia
My American POV: Does your bubble look out on the same world as mine?
The wonder years.
I asked my grandmother in 1986 if I could buy stock in Microsoft. She said no. She said the stock market was too risky and I would lose it. I had $60,000 in a trust fund from my mother’s insurance company when she died. I didn’t ask to invest it all. Even just $1,000? My grandmother still said no. I was 17 years old.
The thought got lost in time as I had other things that occupied my mind; school, sex, work, friendships, working out, everything. Pretty much everything. I wasn’t as free as I was at 17 to sit and ponder such things like investing in the stock market.
If I had been allowed to invest that $1,000 in 1986, it would be worth $1.6 million today. Not that that matters. I would have needed to sell it in the 1990s to buy food and pay rent. From the age of 18 until I managed to escape at 33, I never made enough money to be able to afford living where I was born: the People’s Republic of Kalifornia.
Kalifornia: The koastal money pit where everyone looks like a million dollars and is probably in debt about the same amount.
I was always in debt. Always juggling monthly bills. Always feeling guilty for any entertainment expense. Never really allowed to enjoy a cup of coffee, or a movie because I always thought about how much it cost.
Even worse, I was constantly made to feel like a loser. The high cost of living in Kalifornia affected more than my finances. The calls and past due notifications from creditors were a constant reminder that I was a loser.
I was a very attractive young man, although I never really knew it or could see it myself. The narcissists and the bill collectors kept my ego far, far in check. Other people told me I was. I don’t have any pictures of me from my youth, but on occasion, when someone else shows me myself, I am shocked. I don’t know what I would have done differently with my life knowing that I was hot, but I mention it because it also affected my life, but not in the ways you would expect.
Komitting the unforgivable sin in Kalifornia: Smoking (cigarettes, not weed, that’s okay. . .now).
People were always looking at me. It didn’t help that I was a smoker. When I would light a cigarette while someone was gazing in my direction, the look on their face would change, shattering whatever fantasy was floating through their mind into a look of disgust. Being a young, attractive smoker in southern California in the 1980s and 90s made me the target of many ugly-faced looks.
The judgmental attitudes of my fellow Californians, like my smoking, affected my life in more ways than I will ever be aware. Because I was attractive, I caught people’s eye, even in the workplace. If the people at work knew that I smoked, that became a signal for them, a beacon to scrutinize me closer to find more of my faults.
My imperfections were pointed out to me at triple, perhaps quadruple the rate of those around me. There was inevitably those who tried to “fix” me as well. Bosses who restricted my breaks, knowing I would go outside to smoke. People who punished me ruthlessly, micromanaging me at work, writing me up, and holding me back ostensibly “for my own good” until I realized the error of my ways and quit smoking to appease their demands.
The stress of being under a microscope, micromanaged, constantly scrutinized, pitied, and judged just made me want to smoke more. Naturally, for my own good, the entire state took it upon themselves to become my big brother. They started to forbid smoking in places I went to relax or socialize. They banned smoking on the beaches, restaurants, the bars, even in my own home. Their blunt bludgeoning of me trying to make me submit to their will did not endear me to people.
I had started smoking to get away from people, to get time to myself. They would still move in on me in my alone time, cough, gag, and complain. I started to really hate people. I began to think that they were pretty stupid too. If you are going to cough, don’t go 100 feet out of your way to come stand next to me inhaling my smoke. Stay away.
I think humanity and I could have gotten along just fine if they weren’t always in my face, complaining about me. Nosy and barging in on my private time to recharge and have some peace and quiet to myself. However, 33 years later, that bridge was burnt down long ago, and not by a wayward cigarette butt tossed by me. I was always hyper-vigilant about such things. I had to be. It was the 80s and 90s in California. People would toss looks of hate in my distant direction no matter how cautious and polite I was.
As if the outrageous cost of rent wasn’t enough, taking 60% or more of my income and increasing, California, with my best interests at heart, raised the price per pack from $1 when I started to $8 over the years. We were at war. Neither side would budge.
The strange thing is, I don’t even like cigarettes. It became a matter of principle, a matter of freedom, a matter of respect. In my twenties, I didn’t realize that the stubbornly strong will of 25 million people would never end. My thinking at the time was that they must surely see how they are breaking me, making me into a bitter, hardened man. Making me into someone whose love and care for humanity was being broken down day by day until none remained.
Konform in Kalifornia or we will krush you.
Stubbornly self-righteous, and occasionally obese hypocrites who were prone to violence from an intense sugar addiction that they were in denial of, they never let up on their persecution of me. I must’ve had every one of my God given human rights violated over those 33 years in Kalifornia.
It was such a slow-moving encroachment on my rights to exist as a human being that each next step to crack down on me from denying me my state given right to a 10-minute break every few hours, to making me work over my lunch break, to making me the only employee on a team of 15 that had to ask permission to use the restroom so my boss could time me, making sure I wasn’t sneaking outside for a cigarette, that it wasn’t long before lines I thought were sacrosanct were being crossed without anyone blinking an eye.
Sexual harassment in the workplace? No problem. It’s “that guy.” Why not be adventurous and go for full blown sexual assault? Guess what? Not a problem! It’s “that guy, he needs to learn a lesson.”
The people of the great state of Kalifornia weren’t finished with me yet. They took the next unthinkable step. Think you should get paid to work? That’s a privilege for those we deem acceptable in our sight, not a right, not for scum like you. Yes, you have to come to work. No, we’re not going to pay you. There used to be a word for that.
My protestations were ignored. No lawyer would return a phone call from me. The state had been on the warpath against me for nearly 15 years by the time I managed to escape at 33. Human rights were, at least for me, far from guaranteed.
The great escape.
Since no employer at the time would hire someone who wasn’t already located within driving distance of their offices, the only way I could escape the personal Hell that Kalifornia had created for me was to escape overseas.
Overseas, people didn’t know that I was already found to be a sub-human, unworthy of the most basic protections offered under the law of nearly every nation. They didn’t get the memo to hate me on sight.
I developed friendships, even had a couple of longer-term relationships. I got promotions and respect. People listened to me when I spoke. People laughed at my jokes. People invited me to join them when they went out. They didn’t scrutinize me, trying to find my faults. They never even tried to rape me or enslave me.
Overall, life felt pretty normal, except for the fact that almost no one around me spoke English, I didn’t own a car, I used money that came in a variety of colors, I never listened to the radio, I didn’t really eat at home very much and rarely went grocery shopping, none of my favorite bands ever held a concert anywhere I lived, and I never went out to the movie theater, buying DVD’s to watch at home instead. Those things plus the conspicuous absence of Fritos or any corn chips for that matter, or now that I think about it, Mexican food of any kind, life was mostly normal.
The non-existent past-due notices, no bank fees, no returned payments, no credit cards, and virtually no mail (my monthly pay stub), no robocalls, and no telemarketers are a few more noticeable differences that come to mind. I never worried how I would pay for my car’s next major tune-up or the cost of repairs should I get into an accident.
I had no bills. Internet, water, electricity, cable TV were all-included in the rent. That is, if I paid rent because most of the time housing was part of my work contract. No car, so no car payments. Phones are pay as you go. Just buy a card if it needs recharging. The cost was so negligible, I can’t say how much my “phone bill” was. At most I’d guess $10 a month.
Koming home to America for the first time.
I forgot how much companies in the United States assault your time, taking over your life. Now, back in the United States, I have 22 automatic monthly payments deducted from my bank account. I have a pile of unopened mail with no time left in my day to get to it. For some reason, AARP writes me daily. My mailbox fills with unwanted coupons for everything under the sun except anything I actually need or want.
I get notices saying that notices were sent. I get mail telling me to check my mailbox for mail that will be sent in the future. I get mail informing me that I have opted for paperless transactions. America is bloody insane. I know they know it, but I don’t think they are aware of how deep the insanity goes.
I just worked for 3 days solid, clicking. That’s pretty much it. Clicking non-stop on various documents for various reasons, but mostly just clicking. As I am no longer in Kalifornia, I am even getting paid. I splurge regularly on Doordash delivery without a worry. (Clicking on documents pays pretty well.) Covid-19 has restricted me from any further activities since I’ve been back, so far.
Everyday, I go to the mailbox, throw away my mail, then go sit and click all day. I’ve gained 40 pounds since returning to the United States and being sequestered away sitting, pointing, and clicking like mad all day. This disturbs me greatly as I used to exercise 4 hours a day in Kalifornia just to keep up.
The way the country operates, I don’t even have enough time to click as much as I’m supposed to click. There are calls from telemarketers to ignore and more phone numbers to add to my blocked list. There’s the unopened pile of mail regarding God knows what that keeps growing.
There’s always some lonely company that misses talking to me, so they try to rip me off, forcing me to call and talk to them. That happens more often than I care to think about. There’s the 150 emails per day I receive that need to be marked as spam and deleted. Then there’s the 25 daily notifications from my phone that I don’t care about and don’t’ want to receive demanding my immediate attention.
The “culture” of the United States, as non-existent as it is, manages to absorb 25 hours of my day, every day. I can tell as I watch the unopened pile of mail from unknown origins pile up on my kitchen table.
At least I’m not in Kalifornia, going into debt just a little bit more each day. I don’t get any calls from creditors calling me scum or loser anymore. Still, something is missing from my life. Oh yeah! Other human beings. I wonder where they went.