With no direction home, like a rolling stone

Les Claypool, although more recognized as a TV anthem composer and Primus frontman than he is recognized as an author, wrote a book called South of the Pumphouse. The book is loosely based on Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea only the setting of this slightly twisted tale is a little town called El Sobrante and other of it's surrounding areas in this section of the east bay.  El Sobrante is an unincorporated town policed by the county sherriff's office which is based 30 miles away. The town has no mayor and only one fire department (which is incredibly inconvenient when more than one basement meth lab explodes at a time). No writer that I know of has ever captured the character of a town so vibrantly than Claypool did. Granted, I can't imagine many (if any) people have even thought about writing about the town. Claypool describes the town as a haven for methamphetamine abusers (tweakers), wife-beaters, alcoholics, and blue collar nobodies. He couldn't be more accurate and even wrote a song while with Primus about the people of the town called Those Damned Blue-Collared Tweakers.

I used to live in El Sobrante for about 4 years. I bore witness to the many annoying quirks of this town while I was there including having to wait for my street to be opened up because of police barricades that were put up while federal officers raided a meth lab at the end of my block. The town is like a black hole; no matter how hard you try to escape it, it always seems to suck you back in. I will probably be living there with Sean sometime in the upcoming months. Sean has also experienced the annoying quirks of the town but all too recently.

   Sean lives with his dad, his brother, and his sister, Maureen and her husband and son in El Sobrante. About a week ago, I got a call from Sean at around 11PM saying that his tweaker-sister's husband, an MMA hopeful who weighs twice as Sean and has two strikes on his record, while tweaking out on meth, angrily accused Sean of stealing a pack of cigarettes. Sean had nothing to do with the vanishing prison currency and while explaining such to the angry tweaker, he was punched square in the face by his brother-in-law's boulder-like fist. 

He sustained a very swollen and black left eye and two large cuts on his lips from them being rapidly forced in to his incisors. Sean asked me if I still had a room for rent that he could stay in indefinitely. He had borrowed two month's rent from his brother and I was his last hope of getting out of the unstable environment. While living on the futon in my living room, Sean asked his dad to finally kick his deadbeat sister out of the house so that he could go back home without fearing for his life. All of this came at a really unexpected and nearly convenient time because Adam and I were down to our last week and last hope of getting the spare room filled. We hadn't been able to find anyone and with Sean offering to pay for two months, Adam and I were able to buy some time to arrange to move out on our own terms. Sean went back home today after his dad changed the locks and gave Maureen the boot.

So now I'm left in a bit of a jam: I am forced to move again. After the recent mess with my checking account, I missed two car payments. Because I haven't been able to fully recover yet from that debacle, I won't be able to afford the increase in rent that Adam and I are taking on to reduce the cost of the spare room. A coworker of mine, Randy, who has been a very supportive friend to me in the last few months, offered to let me stay on his couch rent free until Me, Sean, and our buddy, Brian are allowed to take over the rent at Sean's house. At least with that option I can try and pull my finances out of dire straights. So for at least two months, I'll have to box up my life again and put it away in storage.

   Of course, El Sobrante will live up to it's reputation as a black hole and pull me back in to it's dark matter. Even only living there 4 years was apparently enough to plant roots. I have a feeling like I might be homesick for my entire life.

   

Bombardment

This blog entry is dedicated to the memory of my dog, Mickey.

It's been a long time since I've made an entry in this blog. About three months. Not really a huge amount of time, but probably the most eventful quarter-year I've ever had.

For starters, my dog was murdered.

After John moved out of the house, Mom had a hard time paying her bills and the rent. I was sucked in to these money problems when my phone (which is still on a joint plan with my Mom) was repeatedly getting cut off due to my Mom not paying the bill. My brother convinced her to allow one of his friends to move in and help out with the rent. One night while my Mom was at her new boyfriend's house in Napa, my brother's roommate got shithoused drunk and got really pissed off with my brother. The roommate locked Patrick out of the house and proceded to pummel my old, innocent dog, Mickey. The police were called but the damage was done; Mickey was left to die in the house while the roommate made a hasty escape before the cops could show. The next morning, Mickey had to be put down.

I only found out about this because of a call I got at work from John's brother, Vince. He was wondering about what happened with Mickey and spoke of whether or not he needs to get the cops over to my Mom's house.

In the end, the police and the District Attorney's office were involved. They spent about two weeks just trying to find the roommate but eventually caught up to him. He was charged with two felonies and will be serving prison time. I hope this guy burns in hell.

I went back to Mexico this year. I hadn't been since I left the church three or four years ago. This time it was with a different church who used to go down with my church. We stayed with families who lived in the town. I have never felt such a strong connection with the people down there than I did this time. I don't know if it was the hospitality or if it was just me being around a nurturing group of people after being away from such groups for a while or if it was a combination of the two but I do know that I have never cried on the day we left and I have never wanted to stay there so badly in any of the previous years I went. I'll be writing a separate blog about the trip soon.

I made a lot of new friends on the trip including Valentin, who randomly invited me several times to go night fishing at the Berkeley marina and catch stingrays and sharks. One night I went there to meet him after work and came across him and his buddy trying to figure out how to haul up a 150-lb. stingray.

They ended up having to drag it from almost 3/4 of the length of the pier and dragged it up on shore. Aside from that really exciting moment, going out there at nighttime is so peaceful. Just sitting in my camping chair bundled up, listening to waves, waiting for a bite all made me incredibly relaxed amidst my troubles.

I got together a box of things that reminded me of Kate. That box contains:

-1 pair of plastic gag teeth

-1 piece of artwork made w/ izze soda caps and construction paper

-1 piece of artwork made with copper wire and marbles

-1 pair of sunglasses

-1 high school ID of Kate's

-1 copy of the Juno soundtrack

-1 copy of the book All About Us completely filled out

-1 hangman puzzle book with some pages filled out by us

-1 handmade tie made by Kate

-1 wooden frog

-1 scrapbook of us given to me for my birthday

-3 small plastic bags filled with confetti

-7 handmade stickers taken from encyclopedia pictures

399 PHOTOGRAPHS

I was originally intending to burn the contents of the box on an upcoming camping trip,but the angel on my shoulder aka my friend from photo class, Jessica Beach, told me that the better idea would be to tape up the box and stow it away for a while. When I asked her to take it for me, she agreed.

I randomly ran into Meaghan Yarnold, the sister of my old friend Patrick(Pappy) at a party that my friend, Morgan had. Since then we have randomly been hanging out for the last few weeks. The new late night hang out is Happy Donuts on San Pablo Ave. in Albany. The donut shop is open 24-hours and we've found ourselves there at 3am just talking about stuff we remembered about each other from all the years back.

It's been only three months since we've moved in to this apartment but Andy has already moved out to live with his girlfriend. I feel a bit abandoned and tossed aside about it but I wasn't completely surprised that this happened or how soon it happened. At least, not yet. Right now I'm too worried about finding a new roommate and being able to afford my rent since my rent would have to go up $75 just to make it fair to any perspective roommates. Especially after what happened with my checking account.

Apparently, someone obtained my checking information by hacking a gas pump ATM. They "hot carded" it which means they put that information on to a dummy card and just charged everything as a credit. The card was used in New York and bought someone a bunch of stuff from Champs Sports and McDonald's. Whoever was using it overdrew my checking account by nearly $400. Since then, I've had my money reimbursed to me but not before I missed my last car payment. Right now I am trying to refinance my car loan to get my car company off my back and to free up some money to help with rent and to feed myself.

These last three months have tested me greatly. There have been many times in these last months where I've wanted to kill myself just to end all of this hardship. I've had a lot of help-both with verbal support and monetary support-that have helped me to get through this. I've felt like a 16th-century British Navy Schooner being bombarded by a haggard-assed black pirate ship with Satan's blood being used to swab the deck and spiked cannonballs that released hot acid, flesh-eating swine flu, and Dane Cook (Dane Cook get's released like a damn Pokemon) when they crashed through the fragile wooden hull of my ship.

SO I WAS IN THIS CANNONBALL. *unnecessary amounts of laughter for something that obviously isn't a punch line* AND I CRASHED THROUGH THIS SHIP. *unnecessary interpretive gestures* And I was like "DUDE! DID SOMEBODY SEE THAT?!" *raise the "reverse rock fingers" as the crowd shits itself with excitement*

Now that things are starting to shape out a little better, I'm able to take a breath to vent a little bit. I can guarantee that I'm going to run to trouble again sometime later down the line. But I'm also becoming a lot more confident with myself and I'm able to respond like an adult to the trials of life.