Going Back

I walk across the base. All my money is being sucked down a drain in Stockton, so I can't drive. I want to spend more time at home, so I don't ride my bike. 20,000+ people live and/ or work on this base everyday, but I am the only one who walks out the gate. I am the only one without a car or a boyfriend.



After several miles I am out. Walking into a rich neighborhood. I walk the busy road, alone. The cars tearing past don't know this neighborhood. I know this neighborhood, its past, its present, and its lives. I have walked every street. I have been to museum, the library, and the parks. I have read books; I have drunk with the locals. I have eaten all they offered. I have lain on their beach. I have been in the hotels and motels and dreamed of living out my days there. I walk this familiar neighborhood alone. I have corrected a taxi driver who thought the land owned by the Spanish decedents, because those were his primary customers. I explained to him that Coronado was built by 2 Americans. The Spanish and Mexicans had never used the land but for hunting jack rabbits. Jack rabbits that still control the night in North Island Jack rabbits that only I ever see. I the only one of 20,000 to walk the fields in the dark of the morning hours returning from ever fruitless efforts to obtain even the remotest human contacts, failing even the remotest rudimentary means of pleasure and satisfaction. I explained to the cabbie that those with money, do not ride cabs. I ride cabs, the Mexican servants he drives around may be dressed sharply, but only as a living. I walk the road until I come to the bus stop.



It has now been over an hour since I got off work. The sun is setting. It is past 7. I sit on the bench waiting to pay $2.25. The cheapest I can pay without going it on my own. The cheapest I can pay and return home before late night. I once rode the distance. The ferry that ever eludes teased me and I sought vengeance. I kept riding. I rode off the base. I rode the peninsula. Cars screamed past me at 70 miles and hour, and I rode in the dirt next to restricted areas for miles with no place to stop. One long strip of dirt and cars. I kept riding. Until the bay turned to piles of salt, salt several feet deep as far as I could see in that direction. In another, Mexico; if not by name than by all other means. I kept riding past the highways up the hill and down again, for miles through cities I had never seen before. I moved until in the depths of the barrio I could see tall buildings on the horizon. I rode until I was home. But I have no bike now. I could try to take the ferry. It is about a dollar more, but it is more consistent. The bus comes rarely.

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I sit and wait for the bus. On the bench I see the same faces. I see them everyday, and they see me. They look at me, knowingly. They know I do not belong. I listen to my iPod. I play games on my phone. Music that helps me avoid the silence of loneliness. Terrible overpriced under-programmed games on a phone just to look like I have something to do with a phone.

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Sometime in the evening a bus arrives. I get on and hope to have a seat. I have been awake for about 16 hours now, and 12 of them I was on watch wearing a gun and a bullet proof vest. The people on this bus are always different and new. I find I hear a new language being spoken each time. Korean, Japanese, German, Spanish, some kind of north European language I couldn't identify. I don't know why these people are on this bus. I don't know where they spent their day. I ride it over the bridge and into the city. It takes the barrio path to 12th. I get off surrounded by bums and tourists and cops. I am across the street from the ball park. I am a block from the convention center. I walk away from that and up the street. There are homeless masses in the streets and on the grass and in the alleys. Every time I wonder my fate, but only in passing. Up I walk past the half way homes and low cost housing and retirement home. At Albertsons I stop and purchase alcohol. I purchase food, and drink. Usually a jar of that Pom tea, usually a pizza, usually some meat and various TV dinners. I ride the elevator up to my room. The weight of my purchases tearing into my hands. I quickly enter my apartment. It is now around 8pm. I put on the TV, I turn up the AC, I make up some food and I drink. I drink. I drink until I am no longer coherent. Then I get in bed and sleep for a long time. Eventually I wake. Eventually I move around, eat, go out, drink, and make the day. Eventually. But soon that is over and I must return to work. I want to spend as much time as I can at home, so I don't ride my bike. I wait until it is 7 or 8 I start chugging whiskey straight out of the bottle for awhile, and then I walk to 5th avenue I live on 14th so this isn't too far. Eventually there is a taxi. I pay to have them drop me off at the gate, and I walk across the base.

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This was 8 months of my life. Save the girl, I did not.