Cinemorphosis

Category: Confessions

  • Kettlebells, Groats, and the Ghost of Cardiac Doom

    Kettlebells, Groats, and the Ghost of Cardiac Doom

    I’m 63, and my body is a museum of movement trends. I’ve done Olympic weightlifting, bodybuilding, power yoga, and for the last 12 years, kettlebells—because nothing says “midlife stability” like swinging a cannonball on a handle five days a week while trying not to herniate a disk. I eat well—if by “well” you mean “like a disciplined wolf at a cheat-day buffet.” Animal products still feature in my diet, usually in portions that would make a cardiologist raise one eyebrow and reach for their prescription pad. I’m a good 30 pounds overweight and have cut back recently but perhaps not enough. 

    Lately, I’ve started worrying about the future: namely, a heart stent. The idea of threading a balloon through my groin to unclog a bacon-clogged artery isn’t my preferred retirement plan. So I’m contemplating a semi-vegan diet—not for virtue-signaling, but for vascular survival. Greek yogurt and whey powder will stay, though. I refuse to shrivel into a human twig for the sake of purity. Sarcopenia can go pound tempeh.

    My dream breakfast resembles a Pinterest board curated by a monk with delusions of grandeur: steel-cut oats, yogurt, whey, berries, walnuts, and dark roast coffee. Lunch is the same symphony with the oatmeal swapped for buckwheat groats, in honor of my Polish great-great grandmother who, I’m certain, could crush a man’s spirit with one glance and a bowl of groats. Dinner? A nutritional yeast-drenched, spice-blasted tempeh tableau, with beans, roasted vegetables, and maybe a solemn scoop of cottage cheese followed by an apple—the dessert equivalent of a tax deduction.

    Snacks? Don’t speak to me of snacks. They are the sneaky saboteurs of caloric creep, the grinning goblins that ruin otherwise virtuous intentions. Between meals, I’ll drink water, and maybe a diet soda or two to convince myself I’m still living on the edge.

    Of course, this plan risks collapsing under the crushing weight of its own monotony. Worse, I dread becoming that guy at family events—the joyless dietary specter haunting the buffet table with his lentil sermon. I don’t want pity, nor do I want to be admired for abstaining from Costco sheet cake while others live in reckless, frosted bliss.

    To preserve my sanity and prevent my relatives from staging a flavor intervention, I may allow one restaurant meal a week—a carefully sanctioned culinary parole. A sanity-saving bite of indulgence before I return to the tofu mines.

  • The Consumer Comedown: Life After the Perfect Purchase

    The Consumer Comedown: Life After the Perfect Purchase

    Here’s a champagne-flavored tragedy for the modern shopper: you spent days spelunking through the caves of YouTube reviews, waded through audiophile forums run by people named “BassGod69,” weighed driver specs like you were decoding the Rosetta Stone—and then, against all odds, you bought the damn thing. In my case, a pair of Sony WH-CH720N noise-canceling headphones for a criminally reasonable $89. And here’s the kicker: they’re perfect.

    They cancel noise. They soothe my brain like a white-noise monk whispering sweet nothings into my temporal lobes. I nap like a Roman emperor after a wine-soaked orgy. They do exactly what they promised—and I hate them for it. Because now, the thrill is gone. The obsessive hunt, the maddening delight of indecision, the dopamine jolt from a new Amazon tab—vanished. I am cursed with satisfaction.

    I miss the chaos. I miss pretending I knew what a “neodymium magnet” was or why I suddenly cared about the acoustic impedance of earcups. I miss the parasocial arguments with review bros who spoke of “soundstage” like they were discussing string theory. My afternoons are now unburdened, and I am quietly enraged by the calm.

    So here I sit, encased in perfect audio bliss, gnawing on the bone of my own post-purchase emptiness. The headphones work. My contentment is complete. And I feel, tragically, restless.

  • How to Pretend You’re Still Alive at Week Eleven

    How to Pretend You’re Still Alive at Week Eleven

    After ninety minutes of hammering out lesson plans in my academic cave—also known as my college office—I realized my legs had entered that special purgatory between rigor mortis and a blood clot. So I stood up, performed a stretch that felt like a rusty marionette being yanked upright, and took a walk down the hallway.

    Out in our little shared faculty suite, I found my colleague from Foreign Languages hunched behind a desk like a war-weary translator decoding enemy communiqués. She looked up briefly from a pile of student papers, and when I asked how she was holding up, she gave the most honest answer academia ever produces: “Exhausted.” It was 2 p.m., and she still had a five-hour sentence left on her campus shift. I nodded grimly. The semester was two-thirds over, the point in the academic calendar when everything begins to sag—mood, posture, faith in humanity.

    “I get it,” I told her. “The late-semester ennui is baked into the profession.” I’ve been battling it for decades. It seeps into your bones and makes your students shuffle into class like underfed extras from a Civil War hospital drama—late, listless, and visibly haunted by their own poor decisions. Their faces are a collage of sleep deprivation, existential dread, and the dawning realization that the syllabus waits for no one.

    This is when you have to throw them a curveball. You can’t coast on grammar worksheets and MLA citation reviews. The status quo is the problem. I tell them to try yoga, breathing exercises, isometrics. If they’re feeling especially apocalyptic, I might even roll a zombie movie and spin it as a cautionary tale about pandemics and the erosion of civic trust. It’s a reach—but sometimes you need to swing for the fences, even if all you hit is a foul ball.

    Most of these tricks will fail. The semester will end the way all semesters do—in caffeine, chaos, and emotional triage. But at least you went down swinging. At least you reminded yourself, in that bleak final inning, that you’re not just a grading machine—you’re still alive.

  • Why I Refuse to Journal Like a Good Little Introvert

    Why I Refuse to Journal Like a Good Little Introvert

    One of my most cherished moments of accidental transcendence happened somewhere between the cow-scented fields of Bakersfield and the fog-choked sprawl of San Francisco in the spring of 1990. I was climbing the Altamont Pass in a battered 1982 Toyota Tercel that handled like a shopping cart when The Sundays’ “Here’s Where the Story Ends” crackled to life on the radio. Harriet Wheeler’s voice—equal parts cathedral and confession booth—floated through the speakers, and suddenly I wasn’t commuting through California; I was levitating above it. I wasn’t driving—I was ascending. In that moment, I stumbled into something bigger than myself, gifted by two Brits, David Gavurin and his partner Wheeler, who recorded their luminous dispatches, then vanished from the stage like saints escaping the tabloid apocalypse.

    They made beauty, and then they walked away. No farewell tour, no social media mea culpas, no sad attempts at reinvention. Just a few perfect songs and the audacity to say, that’s enough. They’re my heroes—not for what they did, but for what they didn’t do. They resisted the narcotic of attention. They said no to the stage and yes to obscurity, which in our fame-gluttonous culture is the moral equivalent of monkhood.

    I, by contrast, never quite shut up.

    I’ve been peddling stories since high school, where I’d hold court at lunch tables, unspooling feverish tales of misadventure like a cracked-out bard. At 63, I still haven’t kicked the habit. But unlike the craven influencer class, I hope I’m not just hustling dopamine hits. I tell stories because I need to make sense of this deranged carnival we call modern life. It’s an instinct, like blinking or checking the fridge when you’re not even hungry.

    Some stories are survival tools disguised as art. Viktor Frankl wrote to preserve his sanity in a death camp. Phil Stutz prescribes narrative like medicine. And when I hear a brilliant podcaster dissect the absurdity of daily life, it feels like eavesdropping on salvation. It’s not just performance—it’s connection. Human beings, after all, are just gossiping apes trying to explain why the hell we’re here.

    Storytelling is the futile, glorious act of forcing chaos into coherence. It’s pinning butterflies to corkboard. Life is all noise—emails, funerals, fast food, missed calls—and stories give it a beat, a structure, a moral, even if it’s just “don’t marry a narcissist” or “never trust a man who wears sandals to a job interview.”

    So why not keep it to myself? Why not scribble in a journal and hide it in the sock drawer next to my failed dreams and mismatched batteries? Because I find journaling about as appealing as listening to my own Spotify playlist on repeat in a sensory deprivation tank. No thanks. I don’t want to be alone with my curated echo chamber. I want a café. A digital one, maybe, with only a few scattered patrons. But still—voices, questions, and the hum of others trying to make sense of it all.

    I’ll never be famous. I’ll never go viral. But if someone reads my ramblings and thinks, me too—then that’s enough. I’m not trying to be an algorithm’s golden child. I’m just trying to find some order in the mess. Just like I always have.

  • Headphone Mode: How We Rewired Ourselves to Escape Reality

    Headphone Mode: How We Rewired Ourselves to Escape Reality

    In the summer of 2023, during a family odyssey through Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — a trip defined by heat, dehydration, and regrettable buffet choices — I noticed my then-13-year-old daughter entering what I can only describe as her Headphone Phase.
    Once she slipped on her wireless headphones, she ceased to be a participant in family life and transformed into a sealed capsule of teenage autonomy.

    The headphones weren’t just streaming music — they were constructing a perimeter, a force field against the chaos of the outside world and the more treacherous chaos within.
    Wearing them allowed her to filter reality through a private soundtrack, to shrink the overwhelming noise of adolescence into something manageable and rhythmic.
    For those six months, she was rarely spotted without them, a small island of basslines and daydreams moving among us.

    By fifteen, she abandoned the habit. Now the headphones make rare appearances, the way childhood toys do after the magic has leaked out of them.
    But that long season of constant headphone use stuck with me — especially yesterday, when I slipped on my own new pair of Sony noise-canceling headphones for a nap.
    The experience was ridiculous: pure luxury, pure oblivion. I was catapulted into a faraway world of softness and distance, so relaxed I half-expected to wake up with a boarding pass to another galaxy.
    I understood at last how Headphone Mode could become addictive — not just helpful, but a crutch, or worse, a replacement for unmediated existence.

    This thought kept circling as I recently lost hours reading headphone reviews online.
    At first, I encountered the usual suspects — audiophiles earnestly parsing treble decay, bass extension, and soundstage geometry.
    But then I fell into a stranger subculture: headphone reviews written not as technical evaluations, but as love letters to support animals.
    Some reviewers described wearing their headphones all day, every day, as if they had permanently grafted the devices to their skulls, forming a new biological organ.
    These weren’t mere tech accessories anymore — they were portable cocoons.

    The reviews lavished obsessive praise on tactile details: the pillowy yield of the earcups, the tension of the headband, the specific heat footprint generated after six hours of wear.
    Weight, texture, elasticity — it read less like consumer advice and more like audition notes for adopting a service animal that hums quietly in your ear while you disappear from the world.

    It made me think of my old satin blanket from toddlerhood, a filthy, beloved scrap of fabric I once clung to so fiercely my father eventually hurled it out the car window during a drive past the Florida swamps.
    He didn’t consult me. He simply decided: enough.
    I wonder if some of these headphone obsessives are at the same crossroads — but with no father figure brave enough to wrest their adult security blanket away.
    They may have crossed a threshold where life without permanent auditory sedation has become not merely unpleasant, but unthinkable.

  • Confessions of a Neurotic Audiophile: Bargain Hunting My Way to $89 Sony Headphone Bliss

    Confessions of a Neurotic Audiophile: Bargain Hunting My Way to $89 Sony Headphone Bliss

    Three weeks ago, crammed into a flying aluminum sausage between Los Angeles and Miami, I found myself envying the travelers swanning around with $500 AirPods Max clamped over their smug skulls.
    Meanwhile, I was roughing it with a $10 pair of gas station earbuds, gamely trying to absorb Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty on Audible — Charles Leerhsen’s excellent biography about the famously complicated, mercurial baseball legend.

    It wasn’t just the status parade that triggered me. It was the simple, physical longing for some real insulation from the shrieking toddler in 34B and the endless snack cart rattle. Add to that my growing irritation with my usual setup: cheap wireless earpods for napping, which jam into my ears like corks in a wine bottle, utterly ruining my quest for a gentle, dignified snooze while listening to my favorite podcasters.

    When I got back to Los Angeles, I plunged headfirst into the shimmering, self-defeating abyss of headphone reviews.
    After hours of caffeinated obsession, I settled on the Soundcore Q85s — on sale for $99, and allegedly a bargain.
    They arrived dead on arrival. Not just sleepy-dead. Full weekend-at-Bernie’s dead.
    After 24 hours of desperate charging attempts, I admitted defeat, boxed the corpse, and sent it back.

    Then I struck gold — a sale on the Sony WH-CH720N noise-canceling headphones for a criminally low $89.
    I ordered them, and then — naturally — descended into the familiar buyer’s spiral:
    Had I gone too cheap? Should I have splurged on Sony’s crown jewel, the WH-1000XM4s, on sale for $248?
    Was I an idiot forever exiling myself from sonic paradise for a lousy $159 savings?

    Before I could drown in regret, the WH-CH720Ns arrived. I checked the fit–very comfortable for my big head. Then I downloaded the Sony app, dialed in noise-canceling, jacked the equalizer to “Bright,” and hit play.

    First test: Josh Szeps interviewing Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen on Uncomfortable Conversations.
    I was so blissfully submerged in the sound that 72 minutes evaporated — I barely surfaced in time to stagger into my office hour Zoom call, looking freshly abducted.

    Later, drunk on my own tech triumph, I sampled music on Spotify:
    SZA’s “Good Days,” MorMor’s “Whatever Comes to Mind,” LoMoon’s “Loveless,” Nao’s “Orbit,” and Stephen Sanchez’s “Evangeline.”
    The music sparkled. The instruments had space to breathe.
    The sound was bright, crisp, separate — not the muddy sonic stew I’d suffered through before.

    Which left me wondering: What black magic could the Sony XM4s possibly possess to be worth more than double the price?
    Because right now, $89 felt like grand larceny — I didn’t buy these headphones, I stole them.
    And considering how easy it is to lose or destroy a pair of headphones in an airport stampede, maybe it’s time to quit while I’m ahead and leave the luxury models to the Instagram aristocracy.

  • The Long and Winding Decline of a Paul McCartney Impersonator

    The Long and Winding Decline of a Paul McCartney Impersonator

    My third pool acquaintance was Julian French, a man whose very existence seemed to be a tribute act to Paul McCartney. He was one of those poolside characters you couldn’t make up if you tried. In his late thirties, Julian’s resemblance to the legendary Beatle was so uncanny that you’d swear he moonlighted as a Paul McCartney impersonator in some dingy Las Vegas lounge, crooning “Hey Jude” to half-asleep tourists. He had it all: the same nose, mouth, chin, and those forlorn, droopy eyes that looked like they’d seen every heartbreak in the world. He even rocked the signature McCartney hair—a feathered mullet straight out of 1978, perfectly coifed and well-maintained, despite the sweltering desert heat.

    However, Julian was no rock god. No, he was a tad shorter, pudgier, and carried a complexion that looked like a battlefield of acne scars. Despite his flaws, Julian clung to his resemblance to McCartney like a man hanging off a cliff by his fingernails. His routine was as stale as a week-old scone: he’d slink into clubs in his black “Beatles jacket,” leaning against the bar with a half-grin that screamed, Yes, I know I look like Paul McCartney—please, someone, state the obvious. And sure enough, some tipsy woman would eventually stumble over, eyes wide with wonder, to ask, “Has anyone ever told you…?”

    For Julian, the club scene was nothing more than a factory line. The pick-up process was practically automated. His biggest challenge was pretending that he wasn’t bored out of his skull by the whole charade. He had to feign surprise when the 397th woman in the last year commented on his uncanny resemblance, as if she were the first brilliant soul to make this connection. In truth, Julian’s brain had checked out a long time ago, letting his face and “brand” do all the heavy lifting.

    As I got to know him better at the pool, Julian dropped a bombshell that was as ridiculous as it was tragic. His real name was Michael Barley. That’s right—he wasn’t born with the suave moniker of “Julian French.” Nope, that name was the result of a paid rebranding, like he was a faded lounge act looking to stage a comeback. And, of course, this wasn’t enough for our wannabe rock star. With his newly minted name and delusional dreams of fame, he’d taken off for London, where he could really “sell” his phony British accent and Paul McCartney shtick. Unfortunately, London wasn’t buying what he was selling, and after job rejections galore, he skulked back to Bakersfield, tail between his legs.

    But Julian didn’t land in any old city—he ended up in a trailer home in Bakersfield. Yes, you read that right: a trailer home connected to an elementary school, where his father was the janitor by day and a roving locksmith by night. Understandably ashamed, Julian decided he needed to put some distance between himself and his parents’ modest living conditions. But what really terrified him wasn’t the trailer—it was the slow, creeping realization that time was catching up with him. As his face got puffier and rounder, the once-proud resemblance to Paul McCartney was fading fast. Panic-stricken, Julian moved out, took a job at a local car dealership, and tried desperately to cling to the last remnants of his “Beatles glory.”

    When I met him, “Julian French” was an aging caricature, still clinging to his faux-British accent, still hoping that someone, anyone, would recognize the rock star lurking beneath his diminishing resemblance. But deep down, he knew the truth: every year, he looked less and less like McCartney and more like a guy who spends his days bumming around a used car lot and his nights reminiscing about the days when he could walk into a club and have women flock to him. Time, like the receding hairline of a rock legend, is a cruel thief.

  • From Sunbathing to Suffering: Surviving Roland Beavers

    From Sunbathing to Suffering: Surviving Roland Beavers

    A poolside pestilence was Roland Beavers. He was the type of poolside companion that nightmares are made of. Imagine, if you will, a pudgy man in his early thirties with dishwasher-blond hair clinging lifelessly to a scalp that seemed perpetually annoyed at its presence. His physique was more doughy than daring, his chin seemingly having taken an early retirement. And yet, this fine specimen insisted on strutting around the pool in a pair of lava-red terry cloth trunks so undersized that they clung to his hips for dear life, revealing a set of stretchmarks that looked like they’d been painted on by a vengeful graffiti artist. Roland, of course, had an explanation ready for anyone who dared make eye contact long enough to hear it. Those stretch marks? Oh, they weren’t the result of his love affair with powdered donuts. They were the battle scars from his days as a world-class daredevil, hurling himself off the cliffs of Acapulco. You could practically hear the collective eye-roll from the pool regulars every time he regaled them with his tales of high-flying heroics. But Roland’s true calling wasn’t acrobatics; it was unsolicited public broadcasting. Armed with a crumpled newspaper, he’d park himself by the pool and provide live commentary on every “news bit” that caught his eye, apparently under the delusion that everyone within a 20-foot radius was breathlessly awaiting his next headline. His audience, meanwhile, mumbled curses under their breath, desperately wishing he’d take up a hobby that didn’t involve public speaking. Maybe knitting—somewhere indoors. Roland’s social cluelessness reached its peak when playful couples would toss a football or frisbee in the water. For Roland, this wasn’t a game he could just watch; it was an invitation. He’d leap into the pool with all the grace of a boulder, wading into their game like an uninvited ghost at a family reunion. The couples, now robbed of their carefree fun, would give him the kind of look reserved for people who talk during movies before stomping off in search of a Roland-free zone. 

    And heaven help the women trying to sunbathe in peace. Roland, ever the gentleman, took it upon himself to offer his “services” to any woman within spraying distance. Whether it was spritzing their backs with a pump bottle of water or offering to rub sunscreen on their shoulders, Roland never missed an opportunity to “help,” oblivious to the fact that his mere presence was enough to ruin their entire tanning experience.

    Of course, these endless days at the pool weren’t just for Roland’s entertainment; they were an extension of his bizarre domestic life. His mother, Nadine, a woman who looked like she could bench-press a Buick, frequently leaned over the balcony of their apartment—muu-muu billowing in the desert wind—barking orders at Roland to “slather on more sunscreen.” With her hair twisted into tight curls that looked like they might pop loose at any moment and neck veins throbbing like they were signaling an SOS, Nadine’s concern for her son was a constant, vocal presence. “Get inside and eat something, Roland! You’re wasting away!” she’d holler, seemingly unaware that Roland had about 40 extra pounds he could “waste away” without anyone noticing.

    You’d think with all this doting and nagging, Roland might be motivated to get a job, maybe contribute something to society—anything to give the rest of us a break. But alas, Roland and Nadine were comfortably cushioned by the settlement from a lawsuit stemming from Roland’s failed attempt at flight school in San Diego. Apparently, the other students in the dorm took one look at Roland’s face and decided it needed to be rearranged, leaving him with a fractured skull and a big fat check to sit around and bother the rest of us for the rest of his natural life.

    And so there he was—our unwanted poolside companion—who, thanks to his mother’s coddling and that lawsuit cash, was free to spend his days lounging in his ridiculous red trunks, delivering headlines no one asked for, and making our lives just a little more unbearable, one stretch mark at a time.

  • Bachelor of Denial: The Speedo Messiah of Bakersfield

    Bachelor of Denial: The Speedo Messiah of Bakersfield

    Chief among my apartment acquaintances was Leonard Skeazy, an attorney from Santa Monica who was lured to the Bakersfield desert by a fat signing bonus and a monogrammed office, yet couldn’t shake the resentment of having been exiled to this cultural wasteland. He was the sort of guy who treated “style” like a religion. He sported custom-made Speedos that were purchased at a specialty boutique in Santa Monica—yes, he would actually drive back to the city to replace them whenever the chlorinated pool water faded the jewel tones of his spandex. His long, curly hair and eerie blue eyes made him look like a lounge singer who never quite made it out of the Holiday Inn circuit.

    Leonard was a man of eccentric habits and questionable hygiene. Despite being well into his 30s, he clung to the bachelor dream of finding “the right girl,” although his standards seemed laughably out of place in a town where having a high school diploma was considered highbrow. This was a guy who’d lounge poolside for hours, skin glistening like a buttered croissant, all while blasting Kenny G from his boombox as if smooth jazz were somehow his secret weapon. His breath, tinged with the distinct aroma of last night’s Chardonnay, matched his penchant for sneaking sips from boxes of white wine he kept stashed in his fridge.

    Curiosity (and a lack of better options) led me to visit Leonard at his apartment one day. It was a bachelor pad in the most tragic sense. Despite the fact that he was swimming in cash, his apartment was as bare as a prison cell. The living room housed only a lone couch, a TV balanced on cinder blocks, and—wait for it—an ironing board. Apparently, ironing his endless supply of gaudy silk ties was the only domestic task he took seriously. The walls were completely devoid of art or decor, just barren expanses of beige that made the flickering TV light cast ghostly shadows over the snake-like drape of his ties.

    His bedroom was even more pitiful: no dresser, no closet system—just three open suitcases serving as makeshift storage. It was as if he refused to fully unpack, a subconscious protest against ever settling into this armpit of a town. The fridge, naturally, was a barren tundra except for—what else—more boxes of white wine. Here was a man who had chased the scent of money into the middle of nowhere, only to refuse to acknowledge he’d actually arrived. Leonard was a ghost of himself, haunting his own life, clinging to the notion that he was just “visiting” until he could escape back to the big city. 

    What kind of man, I wondered, gets seduced by a fat paycheck only to spend his days living in a self-imposed purgatory, where the only things thriving are his excuses and his growing collection of faded Speedos? I suppose it was easier for Leonard to pretend he was just passing through than to face the fact that he’d become a permanent fixture in this desolate corner of nowhere, a relic clinging to the fading glamour of a life he never truly had.

  • Luxury Is Relative: Tales from the Desert of Almost

    Luxury Is Relative: Tales from the Desert of Almost

    Fresh off the bus from the bustling Bay Area, I found myself marooned in Bakersfield, a sun-bleached corner of California that could only generously be described as a town. With zero friends and even fewer social obligations, I embraced my solitude like a monk embracing a vow of silence. My one-bedroom apartment became my sanctuary—no roommates, no forced small talk, just me and the sweet luxury of never having to negotiate over chores or TV channels.

    My companions? A stack of CDs featuring Morrissey, The Smiths, and other bands that sounded like a group therapy session set to a minor key. I was working on a novel Herculodge, my dystopian magnum opus in which society punishes the overweight with Orwellian fervor for failing to meet state-mandated body standards.

    When I wasn’t writing, I’d plink away on my Yamaha ebony upright, conjuring up self-indulgent sonatas that only the most pretentious of muses could appreciate. I didn’t read music so much as let it ooze out of me—luscious chords here, shameless glissandos there—while imagining some ethereal goddess materializing in my living room to stroke my ego as I struck a soulful pose.

    Compared to the misery of my college days in the Bay Area, my Bakersfield digs were practically a five-star resort. Back then, I wasn’t so much living as squatting in a hovel that had the audacity to pretend it was a room. The place featured a gaping hole in the wall strategically located at bed level, inviting in gusts of cold air so fierce they felt like the Bay’s fog had developed a personal vendetta against me. Sleeping wasn’t just uncomfortable; it was a survival sport. I’d huddle under layers like I was gearing up for an Everest expedition—jacket, hat, and sometimes gloves if the wind got particularly sassy.

    My diet was a tragicomedy in three acts: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cheerios were the headliner, while bean-and-cheese burritos played the understudy whenever I was feeling particularly adventurous. These “burritos” were nothing more than refried sludge wrapped in a tortilla that had all the elasticity of cardboard. The cheese? It was the kind that refused to melt out of sheer spite, clinging to the tortilla like it was serving a life sentence. Each bite was a bleak reminder that I wasn’t starving, but I wasn’t thriving either.

    Transportation was another chapter in my tale of woe. My chariot was a ten-year-old Toyota Tercel that was less a car and more a mobile disaster waiting to happen. It rattled like a haunted maraca, and driving it felt like piloting a coffin with wheels. The brakes let out a tortured groan every time I approached a stop sign, as if they were begging me to put the poor thing out of its misery. On the infamous Bay Area hills, I clung to the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip, praying the Tercel wouldn’t decide to pack it in and roll backward into oblivion, taking out a few unsuspecting cyclists along the way. Fixing it was a twisted game of financial Russian roulette: repair the brakes or eat for a week—one of us had to suffer.

    Money was as scarce as warmth in that drafty hole I called a room. Every broken item (and there were many) required a DIY fix involving duct tape, a prayer, and whatever scraps I could scavenge. Even gathering enough change for a trip to the laundromat felt like winning the lottery. “Luxury” back then meant adding an extra spoonful of salsa to my sad burritos—living on the edge by upping the spice in a meal that was otherwise flavorless and depressing.

    Looking back, it’s a miracle I escaped that purgatory with my sanity—or whatever passed for sanity. That cold, drafty hole taught me resilience, but more than anything, it taught me how to laugh at the sheer absurdity of trying to survive in a city that demands gold while you’re barely scraping together tin.

    So here I was, newly settled in this desert hideaway, craving a hint of the luxury I’d been denied. On weekends, I tanned my lean, 195-pound frame by The Springs’ apartment pool—a so-called “luxury” pool that only deserved the title because the sign said so. No real friendships blossomed at that pool—friendships are messy and overrated—but I did collect some “acquaintances,” a bizarre cast of characters who could only exist in this sun-scorched limbo.

    I wasn’t thriving, but at least I wasn’t freezing or eating cardboard masquerading as food. And in a place like Bakersfield, that was about as close to paradise as you could hope for.