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.