California

 

I was not sufficiently prepared for California. My impression of this state was based on Beach Boys songs and hippie videos from “the summer of love”. In reality, it is far from that. It is prison politics on a societal level. And all those stories you hear about nutty people? There’s a reason for that. We have a rather large population of toxic, gaslighting assholes out here. Wealth and fame seem to attract people like that.

There are people here that have been getting away with murder, (in some cases literally), for so long that they often no longer even attempt to hide it and are actually arrogant about it. They throw it in your face. Hey, I’m breaking the law and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. I’m sure you’ve seen numerous stories in the media. Those are biased and don’t even begin to tell a true tale. This is Hollywoodland. You can’t really expect the mainstream media to accurately report on problems that they themselves have created. The film Network does have some basis in reality.

The Spanish, then the Mexicans, have controlled the infrastructure of the state for a long time. The film making industry has been here for over a century. That business has always been black in sentiment. Between those two groups of people and a couple more that have been taught to hate by the media, the average white person in California is being gaslighted in some way. It’s a fuckin’ mess. Well, when I first came here I did not know this. I was still in my Pollyanna phase.

There’s a lot of obvious hate in California, but some of it is well hidden. Some of the best actors here don’t even work in Hollywood. The “limousine liberals” really have no clue as to what the hell is going on. They are so insulated by their wealth that they don’t see, on a street level, what their political actions are causing. Everyone is on their best behavior around them, so they usually have a distorted view of reality. Even some of the law enforcement personnel are haters. Not so much here in Santa Barbara, (we live in kinda a bubble), but I’ve seen it quite often in other places. I’ve seen black police officers let black perpetrators go after they committed crimes. While I lived in Chicago, a number of Cook County custodial deputies were indicted for being gang members and supplying drugs to inmates. You think these were unique situations?

I have to go on a slight tangent here and give you a quick civics lesson. I had a fake ID at the age of fourteen. It wasn’t difficult to get. Guys, this country use to be kinda a joke. As late as my high school years, many State IDs didn’t even have a picture on them. Before I986, when the I9 form was implemented, an ID and a SSN card were not even required for employment. California in 1985 was the wildest west of finance and had been that way for a long, long time.

It’s 1985. It’s Southern California. Some of these people are not only the biggest crooks in America; they are the biggest crooks in the world. They are the “Big Dogs”. Smart people, good attorneys, certain loopholes in the way things were done, and an elastic morality made for some interesting consequences. I’m sure there are several Scarface type scenarios that have played out throughout the years.

I was once a licensed private investigator. (That is easily verifiable.) It’s not nearly as glamorous as The Industry makes it out to be. I sat in a cubicle, read and starred at a computer screen. I did no fieldwork. That job taught me some skills.

I worked in the finance industry. The mid-eighties in that business, at least in California, were kinda like The Wolf of Wall Street. There was a bar downstairs in one of the places I worked. Many of us would end up there at the end of the day. Girls in that office would go down to the parking structure on breaks and lunch. They would snort coke using the doors of the glove compartments. That job taught me some more skills.

The things I learned on those two jobs, and the things I observed around me, finally woke me up to realty. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. During this time, I’m also starting to figure out some really sketchy shit at work, talking with my wife about a reunion, and living in a nice apartment with two friends. One day, she shows up.

I married a cowgirl; now a horse woman. She has the accompanying spirit. She drove all by herself, pulling a trailer of our belongings, from Illinois. I wasn’t exactly prepared to see her, but I loved her.

She gets a job with this very cool English couple that own a business and we soon bring our child out from Illinois. Things are alright for a minute. Then, the crash and burn.

I’m attending AA at the suggestion of a vice-president of a financial institution I was working at. These fuckin’ people are gaslighting the shit out of me and I’m thinking it has something to do with the stuff I’m finding out at work. (They do that shit here. Rich people=Weirdos.) Though I did very little previous fieldwork, I did some on what I was working on at the time. I was starting to find out things that were a little overwhelming and a little scary.

My marriage finally destructs and when it rains, it pours. It wasn’t very long after our divorce that I found myself homeless. It was literally one thing after another in a very short period of time. Individually, each problem was doable, but…

I will try to explain homelessness in my next chapter.

© John Bielecki 2024

John Bielecki

Author John Bielecki

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