California dreamin', Part 3

Surprise, surprise: another special post series I have neglected. I feel especially bad about this one since I had high hopes of spilling all my visceral and conflicting emotions about California and my nearly four years on the west coast. However, I realized my neglect is much more symbolic of what I now feel and think about the Golden State.

I never think about California. Though I lived there for a long time, experienced its good, bad, and ugly sides, and do have fond memories despite how badly I disparage it, I almost never think about it. Car commercials shot in downtown LA, movies set in SoCal, and odd hipster shit will stir memories; I will watch carefully to catch street names or landmarks I may recognize. Once in a while I will accidentally ask friends if they want to go to Las Barcas when I mean El Dorado or El Banditos. (If any of you find yourselves in Huntington Beach, eat at Las Barcas; it is in the little strip mall on the corner of Beach and Atlanta). Little mementos or things I bought while living on the west coast will sometimes make me think, “I got this in California.” But in regards to gratuitous nostalgia: never. I have no reason to think about it.

Around this time last year, Sweet Meat had a proposition for me. He and Zaza intend to get married in a couple years and move to San Francisco, and he wanted to know if I would move with them. We could move into a two-bedroom apartment, and rent would be cheaper since it would be split between three people. After all, he said, I had mentioned I would only move back to California if I were going to NorCal. As I listened to the rest of his reasoning (sometimes I think people are trying more to beguile than convince me), my stomach turned. Just the proposition about moving to California again made me sick.

About a month or so ago, before Zee German interviewed with UC Berkeley and accepted a job there, I had a depressing conversation with him over Skype. He could no longer stand his job at UCI or endure living in Southern California. He was beside himself, and I thought he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown or worse. He had applied for job after job after job for over a year and gotten nothing. After work he literally drove home, ate, and then started his second job of looking for another job somewhere outside of SoCal. He desperately wanted to get out, and was seriously thinking about going back to Germany. It was the kind of conversation we had had many times before, even before I left California, but this time a sense of hopelessness was palpable in his voice. Normally I told him to keep trying since it was the only thing he could do, and be thankful he was looking for a job while working; it was a hell of a lot better than being unemployed and looking for work. But this time I was speechless. Nothing would assuage his despair. I knew how he felt, and told him all I could do was empathize and listen.

Fast forward to now. He and his wife have moved to Berkeley and he started his new job yesterday. I called him Sunday to see how things were going. Though their move was a hassle and they can hear train whistles from the station a few blocks away, he says he can breathe again. He was upbeat and excited as he talked about walking — walking! — around Berkeley and San Francisco. At a certain point over the weekend, his wife said, “We live here now. We don’t have to go back.”

I smiled when he said that. I knew that feeling well, and it took a long time to sink in. I did not have to go back — ever, if I felt like it. I also never had to think about it. And I don’t.