Dare I Eat a Mango?

If the Silicon Valley is populated by the creme de la creme of western progressive social society, I am blending in about as well as a cheese curd in a bowl of whipped cream.  Out at the bars, the standard "resume" around town is a mile long on average and generally includes two to five fluent languages, musical or artistic talent, athleticism, involvement in some sort of social or environmental cause, biracial or otherwise interesting family background and a few other quirky hobbies on the side like tap dancing or fire fighting or vintage camera repairing (and that's just the 26 and under crowd).

If you're a white kid making less than $60k who enjoys watching movies and going to the gym, you might consider chopping off your thumbs to beef up your bar talk content material.  It's that or face a sea of uninterested heads nodding at you with their lips sipping from cocktail straws and their eyes darting around the room searching for someone to talk to about underwater photography or 17th century African transgender literature. 

I mean, I studied abroad!  I have an obscure major!  My brother is an athlete and I took piano lessons as a kid so… I've always considered myself a fairly well-rounded person.  But it turns out that blonde liberal arts girls who are into jogging and saying "Gracias" to waiters at Mexican restaurants went out of style in 2009.   I'm thinking about wearing an eye patch out next weekend…

Last Friday, I stole a knife from the office kitchen, memorized Google bike directions to the nearest green spot on the map and walked out the door at 6:00pm sharp.  All of my two friends were busy so I made a date with myself for the evening.  The first stop was a wardrobe makeover at Goodwill.  Knit grandma sweater, wire rim glasses, floral collared blouse: $4.  Taking a vacation from your identity: priceless.  The second stop was Chase Bank.  Turns out the green spot on the map wasn't a "park" per se, but a crab grass lawn between the bank and the parking lot.  Good enough.

I set up camp a safe distance from the dried dog turds and had myself a party-of-one picnic using the office knife to peel and slice a mango I had bought that morning.  (I always have fruit on hand these days now that I go to the supermercado every morning in hopes of making friends with the Guatemalan cashiers.)  I was ensconced in peace, using the crab grass to clean my sticky hands.  I always thought that Prufrock should have asked "Dare I eat a Mango?" because in my opinion, the juice combined with the fibers and the impossibly-shaped seed make it a much more awkward fruit than a peach. 

If the passerbys were staring at me I couldn't tell because the +1.25 glasses slightly inhibited my far vision.  The faulty street lamp hummed behind me in the parking lot like a buzzing locust, the crosswalk chirped like a morning bird signing to a metronome.  The dog poop didn't smell and neither did the exhaust from the cars--just crab grass and mango juice and suburban sterility.  No one but myself to impress and if I were me, I would totally be into the girl sitting on the side of the road with sticky orange strings dripping from her ear lobes.  Oh yeah. 

The Land of Milk and Money

There is no amount of free Costco snacks that could make this OK.  I never thought I'd say this but I don't care about dried blueberries, cashew almond trail mix, peanut butter stuffed pretzels, Nutella, organic breakfast bars, juice in glass bottles and Red Bull.   Don't get me wrong, I love free breakfast bars.  I've run 15k's just for the free breakfast bars at the end.  But a mountain of Sweet n' Salties does not make up for the fact that we are living in one of the most ideal climates in North America and spending over 80% of the daylight hours between Monday and Friday with our eyeballs glued to LCD screens.

I guess you could say that I'm still adjusting to office life.  

It's strange…. Throw me into any foreign isolated tribal community mud hut village, and I will change colors faster than a chameleon on a snake-skin rug and smile about it.  But stick me in a temperature-controlled, warmly-lit, high-ceilinged Silicon Valley office and suddenly I'm frantically searching for a brown paper bag to breath into. The 'Desk Job' has been so deeply stigmatized in my mind that I can't help but see every perk of my new job as tiny crumbs of organic breakfast bars desperately trying to fill the void in our stomachs where our souls have been sucked out by computers. 

We sit in lumbar-supported swivel desk chairs or bounce with good posture on colorful fitness balls behind computer monitors the size of window panes.  In between the clickity-click-click of our multi-tasking fingers on keyboards, we chat about the latest articles we've read on thenewyorker.com and crack racist jokes (not jokes about any particular race, literally jokes about racists).  Every day there is an Android v. iPhone debate at lunch which is generally at some trendy fast-casual health food restaurant.  On Friday, my ears perked up when I overheard someone mention Asian street food.  Finally!  I'd been dying for something cheap and greasy that I could eat standing up on the sidewalk.  I invited myself along but my enthusiasm curbed when we walked through glass doors into a wood-floored dining room and I saw the artsy backlit sign above the register: "Asian Street Food."  

The skinny girl ordered a huge rice bowl, took a few bites, declared it to be delicious, took a few more bites, then threw the rest away.   If I had a dime for every time I saw a perfectly edible piece of food in the trashcan, I could buy myself Starbucks on a daily basis (which is the equivalent of feeding a family of seven in many parts of the world).  If I had a penny for every time I heard a random person on the street use

 the words "market test", "angel investor", "online community", or "Is it native on the iPad?"  I could buy an iPad (without the plan).  If I had 1/3 of the cars my roommate has, I would have a really nice Mercedes motorcycle.  

I haven't figured out how to handle this lifestyle.  So I crouch behind the bushes with my anthropologist's notepad and observe this strange people.  How do they all have bodies of Nike Store mannequins when they spend all day emailing and sipping macchiatos?  Where are all the children and the elderly?  So much to learn...   

Hello Dream, Meet Reality

I packed up the car with a suitcase of clothes, a box of books, some snacks and two mormon boys going out to visit their mom in California. We all fit comfortably enough in the sedan until my iPod decided to turn the Shuffle setting into a playlist themed “Songs for Sinners” including hits like “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground, “Get it on Tonight” by L.L. Cool J and “Cocaine” by Eric Clapton (none of which, for the record, have played on my shuffle since 1999).  As Cee Lo Green belted “F**k you!” over the suddenly too-quiet air conditioner, it started to feel a little cramped in the car.  I was trapped in the backseat unable to reach the Skip button so I took a fake nap to avoid the awkwardness and prayed a silent prayer to Jesus/Brigham Young to forgive me for leading his flock astray. 

Once I had dropped them off in Sacramento, I was free at last to shamelessly sing along to the music which, of course by that point had lost its mojo and was only in the mood for the Juno album and Carla Bruni (which I sang along to using a combination of mumbled French words I learned from Beauty and the Beast).  Then I came around a curve and I saw it.  The Golden Gate Bridge.  I had made it.  Hello dream, meet reality. 

This was a moment fit for a proper soundtrack.  Windows down, sunglasses on (upside-down because the curvy part was hurting the bones behind my ears), “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangster”: play.  On repeat. 

The city!  Celestial in its splendor!  White sails dotted the sparkling water below and golden buildings gleamed in the setting California sun like the shiny new toy they were to me.  The hazy sky was cloudless and rose-tinted like an Instagram photo in real life.  The palm trees and stucco houses were so classically picturesque, my vision seemed to be bordered by a vignette and I saw the world through the lens of an antique video camera. I held it all--the skyline, the bay, the sailboats--in the palm of my hand.  Mine, all mine!  My fists on my wrists, my cape flapping in the wind, my shadow cast long and wide across the entirety of my kingdom. 

Blink, head shake.  Shoot, where am I going?  Missed the exit.  No worries, I’ll just take the next exit… nope.  This is a bridge, I am confused, especially when I see a sign that says, “Exit towards Golden Gate Bridge.”  (At that point I didn’t know that I was not, in fact on the Golden Gate but on the Bay Bridge.  It did seem strange that it wasn’t red like I had always imagined…)  

My GPS told me to “Turn right and then left then take the onramp onto I-80 West” which took me off the bridge and then put me back on it going the opposite direction.  I then spent the next two hours making U-turns, paying tolls, getting stuck in the middle of intersections, nearly rear-ending four different cars and one pedestrian and feeling an Alice-in-Wonderlandish sensation of shrinking to the size of a pea while the world I had stepped over just a moment ago rose mighty and ominous around me.  I was suddenly swallowed by a labyrinth of six-lane highways, overpasses and one-way roads all conspiring to trap me inside their bowels and poop me out in a sewer underground.

I eventually made it out.  I was not in the sewer, but in East Palo Alto (which Palo Alto yuppies don’t distinguish between).  I pulled into the driveway at my new house--well, the room that is new to me in someone else’s house--and took a breath of fresh California air.  

I’ve arrived.  And by “arrived” I mean just beginning.