My home.
I wanted to remain anonymous with this blog; I don't know why. I have no job that's threatened by what I write anymore. I won't embarrass anyone, as there isn't anyone to embarrass. I live in a pickup truck's bed, kitted out with a comfortable cap, liner, and mattress. There is a small bookshelf I fashioned behind the cab. I have two surfboards locked on the roof, a knapsack with a collection of worn khakis, t-shirts, and sweatshirts from the university that employed me. Some rain gear, too.
Often I park in a hotel parking lot near the beach, a side street, or in the driveway of a vacant condo. Restaurants are good, too. When I really need some sleep and some long, hot showers, which is about every three days or so, I check into a clean, cheap place. I have picked up some favorite motels over the years where I'm now recognized and welcome. It can be cold at night, or brutally humid, but I've found ways to be comfortable.
In the late spring, summer, and early fall I roam from Cape Cod to south Jersey. I know the swells and the tides; where to find the good waves early in the morning and late until just before sunset. In October, I travel to Orange County, California and hang out mostly between Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. I have to be careful of the police in these areas, and of the drug-addled street meat. I spend more time in motels there and, when winter comes, at a couple of different RV parks.
It wasn't always this way. I once had a respectable job, a small, pleasant house, a yard I mowed, a wife who tended her lush and wonderful garden, and a golden retriever with whom I walked and played Frisbee. In the space of thirty months, I lost the dog to old age and then my beloved wife to a brain aneurysm. As we were childless, and I an orphan with no siblings, my life, which was once quite full, emptied with a dramatic suddenness.
My job didn't matter much, anymore. I didn't mow my lawn. The people at the university were kind, but always seemed to see my emptiness as an opportunity to explain to me how God didn't exist. I really didn't care one way or another at that point, I just know I wasn't all that interested in their world view.
The other problem was with my students. They were nice enough, and patient with me after my return to the classroom when I would either be overly enthusiastic about the subject matter or dourly staring out the window while they discussed a point with one another, but they were becoming more and more bland to me, though. It was the biggest change that I'd noticed with my students and with myself over the two decades of teaching. It wasn't their fault and I couldn't get frustrated with them. Their background preparation and expectation for the university experience were different now, and becoming further removed from what I knew.
Then I started to fall apart. I drank myself to sleep each night, moped my way through the day, and produced nothing. In what was my penultimate yearbook photo, I didn't recognize myself. I had become such a physical wreck in recent years that I was carrying too much weight, not exercising at all, eating dinner out of cans over the sink, and had abandoned surfing, the source of much of my happiness when I was younger. I was too much of a load to get on a surfboard. I finally got tired of it and decided it was time for a radical change of everything.
So, I used the free gym access on campus and lost 40 pounds, ran a half marathon, grew a beard, and now look like a slimmer Hemingway. Then, I retired early, taking what I could from TIAA/CREF. I sold the house, at a loss, along with my late wife's car. Those things together would enable me to live simply for the next few years, although I may have to work as a greeter at a Wal-Mart soon.
Now I live nowhere and own almost nothing save for an old Ford, the boards, and the odds and ends I mentioned; plus a newish computer that was a gift from the uni, which is how I can write this drivel. I use a pre-paid phone I bought at a drugstore.
This blog is my therapy and an odd sort of chart of my recovery, or re-birth, or whatever label I'll adhese to it later. My politics were suppressed for a long time and I was too much of an introvert in too many ways to have expressed them. Also, I was never religious, but some interesting things happened in the wake of my wife's death and that will be worth talking about at some time, too.
Well, it shrivels my bowels to talk about myself, but this, I hope, answers some questions. If not, what the hell do I care?
