West Side Living

Well, the flight was unremarkable, we didn’t crash and Florence Henderson didn’t speak jive… Which I am thankful for. We flew on JetBlue, which was great and arrived in Oakland right on time. Diane’s friend Toni picked us up at the airport, again right on time and we drove to her apartment in sunny _Walnut Creek_ California.

Sounds perfect right?

That’s just the problem! Maybe it’s the New Yorker in me trying to find faults in everything, or perhaps the cynical Metropolitan who can’t trust in the kindness of strangers, or even perhaps that I may be a complete asshole and need to return to my therapist, but everything here seems a little too perfect. Not a cloud in the sky; not a chance of drizzle; not a frown in site. Everybody’s happy, affluent, and white.

Even the mosquitoes are picky about who they bite.

It’s kind of like when you visit the zoo and you see the lemmings in their “natural environment” and everything looks kosher, but something about it just seems a little bit off. It might be the cracking paint, or the dead trees with plastic leaves, or the outline of the door in the far off mountain ranges. I feel like the lemming. A lemming in the wrong display.

I’m expecting a handler to give me a banana at any moment.

I will report back at my next base camp and tell yall where I’m at in my anthropological studies of the West Coast. So for now, Funtime Ben signing off.