Fear and Loathing in Monterey Bay

I have found that when you live in another place other that the one you've known all your life you see things a little different.
I lived for a little under a year in a little town near Baltimore, Maryland. It was a lower to middle-class town. The type of places that white people moved to when the city got too congested for them. There were large factories that all dried out around the place. Retired people, the working poor, white trash, black folks trying to find someplace safe to live.
I come from a place of ethnic diversity. Every color of the rainbow can be found within Cali's borders. Viet-Namese, Chinese, Pacific Islanders, Koreans, More Mexican that you can swing a dead Chihuihia at, East Indians, etc. Baltimore seemed to me like Blacks and variations on White. In that way it was kinda nice, I mean, you didn't have to speak Spanish to order McDonald's. It was strange to live in a place where English was the primary language.
When I'd tell people I was from California their first reaction was "why the hell are you here?" I would say variations on "I fell in love with a girl..." (cue The White Stripes here)
The weather where I'm from in CA is very temperate. I've lived near the pacific ocean all my life. If it's too hot, the fog will come in by sundown. Baltimore's summers nearly drove me mad. Walking to the bus stop in 90 degree heat with 100 percent humidity is the fiery drizzle-shits my friend. I could feel the sweat collecting in the small of my back as I stood there in my work clothes waiting for that #4 bus. As for the winters, I didn't mind the snow at all. Getting around was a bitch sometimes but watching it fall from the sky was magic to me.
The people are different too. People in Baltimore actually wanted to get to know me. This one boggled my mind. In Cali I've always been the one that never got the second glance. I made friends there I hope I'll always have. Here I've never been lucky enough to find a friend who didn't turn out to be a total jackass. Hell, I lost my best friend when my girlfriend decided to go back to her ex...
After the break up I thought that coming back to Cali would clear my head and maybe put me on the path to something new. Now I'm not so sure. When you live with your parents you fall back into old behaviors. The me that was on the east Coast living-w/-Girlfriend is turning into the guy-living-with-Parents. It doesn't help matters that I got deposited into the employment dead zone of the year. Nobody is hiring, ok, nobody worth a shit is hiring. If I could get a job at a bookstore I would die a happy guy. I've put in so many apps I'm beginning to think they have it out for me. That there is a secret society of bookstore managers that meet in secret in a hollowed out bunker on the former Fort Ord. Dressed like evil minions from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer they plot and plan.
"He want to work around books and magazines and has too much retail experience! Thus, it never Shall Be!" ( cue thunder ) "We shall hire people with nose rings and don't know Edgar Allen Poe from David Allen Coe!" Bwahahahahahahahahahahah
*Ahem*
I guess I'll have to learn to love the bootheel of the retail/hospitality business pressed up against the fleshy part of my neck. Smile and bite the pillow as I surrender myself to my corporate masters. I will hate their fucking guts until the day that I die and I will never let them have my soul. The Swine. They Will Never Win.

D-