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uschi-the-listener · 5 years

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Why I Live in the Desert

...or, And So, It's Come to This...

I live in the Desert not far from Palm Springs. Parts of it are very pretty, and in winter, it's almost bearable. Most of the year, though, the water coming from the cold water tap is hotter than what comes from the hot water tap. People wear hats from necessity. A broken air conditioner is considered an emergency and landlords can be fined and/or jailed for not having it fixed or replaced within a very short time. The sun is a blistering presence. People run outside and dance if it rains, and it goes for many months, sometimes years, without raining. Dogs can't walk on the sidewalk and you can get serious burns if you bump up against a black vehicle with your bare skin. Rubber-soled shoes and bicycle tires can melt. Water is rationed. Lawns are brown and prickly. The local wildlife is scowling, aggressive, often venomous, and will eat your cat if you leave it outside at night. People born here are insular, leathery, and terse.

Why on earth anyone else lives here is a mystery to me. I know why I'm here and it's a long story. Not a shaggy-dog one, however, because a shaggy dog would die of heat stroke. It starts with a very bad job.

I was working the night shift for a televangelist, reading Prayer Requests and helping bilk the poor and stupid. I couldn't take much more and some of my comments and attitudes were making me unpopular with the boss, a millionaire, but a very small fish in the pond of TV preachers. I was newly married and my husband's business was starting to pay us a living wage, so he suggested I quit and take some time off. Before this, I had been supporting us with a series of bad jobs. My first degree was a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, which does not come with a line of employers waiting to hire the newly graduated. So working at the televangelist's night after night was at least sitting down. But otherwise repulsive.

So I quit. There still weren't many jobs in the area for English majors; we are educated and know how to read and write, do research and punctuate, but that's a rarefied atmosphere in today's job market, and apparently you have to know somebody to scale those heights. I didn't. I still don't.

After playing around, developing social media accounts and wasting a considerable amount of time, and helping with my husband's paperwork, I was ready for something else. He suggested I go back to school. There were a few things I'd always wanted to do, and they required advanced degrees. I knew I couldn't go on doing a very busy but somewhat unsatisfying version of Nothing Much, so I did. I went back for my master's degree. I achieved it, and started looking around.

I had been out of school for a little while, not finding work for interns in my field, but having a lot of enthusiasm for it. It was beginning to look like I'd be back to helping with paperwork and playing around online when my husband started experiencing terrible indigestion. He still loved food and ate well at every meal but his stomach felt bad and looked bad and all the Alka-Seltzer in the world was beginning to not make any difference. So, being a Veteran, he booked a quick appointment at the VA hospital for a check-up. He had been going regularly for blood pressure issues, but as nothing had ever seemed out of place, he was left to wonder about his stomach.

We went together. It was the Friday before Thanksgiving in 2014. The doctor asked him some questions, did a CAT scan, and scheduled an MRI immediately after seeing the results. The diagnosis was pancreatic cancer, Stage 4, that had begun to metastasize into his liver, his stomach, his bones, and a few other places. There had been no indication of any kind until he stopped being able to digest his food. It was inoperable. They were going to treat it with chemotherapy and get him hooked up to a feeding tube that bypassed his stomach. We held each other and cried.

I learned how to take care of him, but more was necessary. It was urgent, now that the main breadwinner in the family was no longer able to either win bread or eat it. He was able to get some social security disability money, but it was barely even enough to cover our rent, so it was imperative that I find something. Something that could support us both, as an intern.

He was a piano tuner/technician and covered the counties of Riverside, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, a little San Diego, and Ventura now and then. He had loyal clients all over Southern California. He was very good at his job, with over 40 years of experience, a sunny disposition, and realistic rates. He tuned for individuals as well as institutions and was friendly with all his customers. If he didn't like somebody, he passed them on to another tuner. There aren't enough tuners for the number of pianos in the country, so it's easy enough to pick and choose among customers. So he called in favors with people he knew who were even remotely related to my field.

He only found one job opening, which was in the desert, not far from where I'm living now. We lived two hours away at that time, but we had a reasonably good car and I was eager to work at what I'd been learning. So I interviewed and took it. It was a pretty good job; I was eventually promoted, and survived the commute, the invalid care when I came home, and was grateful.

And then he died.

He died at the very end of the month. He had been diagnosed at the end of November and by the end of August, he was dead. The check we had been counting on for the rent from SSDI was taken back and I was left with nothing. Devastated. At one swoop, I had lost my best friend and all my security. Credit was already all maxed out. I appealed to friends for loans of rent money, and my employer, a saint, asked people to pool their earned days off so I would have paid time to complete a move.

It took a little while, but eventually somebody at work found an apartment that needed to be sub-let as the current resident had to leave the country. I suspected some kind of shady dealings, because I was left with a couple of shabby recliners, a very nice queen-size bed, and 5 huge old-style television sets. I asked no questions, was told no lies, and signed the lease. My son helped me move over the course of a weekend. It was not fun or good and my pets were pretty unhappy about it as well. I was grieving and barely able to function, though I went right back to work almost immediately.

This was in Autumn, shortly after the Hot Season, heading into the Not As Hot Season. It's been nearly 4 years since the move. I've weathered 130 degrees Fahrenheit and scorpions, vinegaroons, coyotes, and snakes. Lost jobs, lost friends, and loneliness. I've lived alone all this time, with only my little dog for company. I've worked at several jobs here in my chosen field in various capacities. Currently, I'm out of work, applying for jobs, not finding anything suitable, as the economy, at least for poor and middle class people, gradually sinks deeper into the toilet. So I'm back to playing around with my online friends and writing.

That's how it happened. Feel free to comment or just hit the Like button. I'm easily pleased. Send Nudes. I like dick pics. And Asks.

#California desert

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