Fresh off the bus from the bustling Bay Area, you found yourself marooned in Hobcallow—a sun-bleached corner of California that could only be generously described as a town. With zero friends and even fewer social obligations, you embraced your solitude like a monk taking a vow of silence. Your one-bedroom apartment became your sanctuary—no roommates, no forced small talk, just you and the sweet luxury of never having to negotiate chores or TV channels.
Your companions? A stack of CDs featuring Morrissey, The Smiths, and other bands that sounded like group therapy sessions set to a minor key. The soundtrack was perfect as you labored over your novel Hercu-Dome, your dystopian magnum opus in which society punished the overweight with Orwellian fervor for failing to meet state-mandated body standards.
When you weren’t writing, you plinked away on your Yamaha ebony upright, conjuring self-indulgent sonatas that only the most pretentious muses could appreciate. You didn’t read music so much as let it ooze out of you—luscious chords here, shameless glissandos there—while imagining some ethereal goddess materializing in your living room to stroke your ego as you struck a soulful pose.
Compared to the misery of your college days in the Bay Area, your Hobcallow digs felt like a five-star resort. Back then, you hadn’t been living so much as squatting in a glorified crawlspace. That room had a gaping hole in the wall, perfectly positioned at bed level, letting in gusts of cold air so vengeful it felt like the Bay’s fog had developed a personal vendetta against you. Sleeping wasn’t rest—it was combat. You huddled under layers like you were gearing up for an Everest summit—jacket, hat, and gloves included, if the wind got particularly sassy.
Your diet back then was a tragicomedy in three acts: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cheerios were the lead performer, while bean-and-cheese burritos played the understudy when you felt adventurous. These “burritos” were little more than refried sludge folded into tortillas with all the flexibility of a sheet of drywall. The cheese? The kind that refused to melt out of pure spite, clinging to the tortilla like it was serving a life sentence. Each bite reminded you that you weren’t starving—but you were nowhere near thriving either.
Your transportation situation was another chapter in your tale of woe. You drove a ten-year-old Toyota Tercel that was less car and more haunted maraca. Every time you touched the brakes, the thing let out a tortured groan, like it wanted to die with dignity. Navigating the Bay Area hills required a white-knuckled grip and a whispered prayer that the Tercel wouldn’t roll backward into a bus full of nuns and cyclists. Fixing it became a twisted game of financial Russian roulette: either repair the brakes or buy groceries. One of you had to suffer.
Money? Scarcer than warmth in that arctic excuse for a room. Every broken item—of which there were many—demanded a patch job involving duct tape, superstition, and whatever scraps you could scavenge. Gathering enough quarters for the laundromat felt like winning a regional lottery. “Luxury” meant adding an extra spoonful of salsa to your burrito—living on the edge by upgrading the spice level in a meal otherwise soaked in depression.
Looking back, it was a miracle you escaped that purgatory with your sanity—or whatever passed for it. That drafty hellhole taught you resilience, sure, but more than anything, it taught you to laugh at the sheer absurdity of trying to survive in a city that demanded gold while you were scraping together lint and hope.
So there you were, newly settled in this desert hideaway, craving a hint of the luxury you’d never known. On weekends, you tanned your lean, 195-pound frame beside The Springs’ apartment pool—a so-called “luxury” pool that only deserved the title because the sign said so. Real friendships didn’t blossom there—friendships were messy and overrated—but you collected a small cluster of “acquaintances,” a bizarre cast of characters who could only exist in this sun-scorched limbo.
You weren’t thriving, but at least you weren’t freezing or chewing on cardboard disguised as food. And in a place like Hobcallow, that was as close to paradise as you were ever going to get.
Cinemorphosis 
Leave a comment