Friday I met with my biggest client here in Bako. I've done a ton of work for them over the past few months, but we hadn't actually met in quite awhile. I chalked it up to my sociopathic personality profile. Not that it mattered; my direction is usually handled over the phone or in e-mail and everything is up and downloaded online.
I met with Melissa, the president of the company, for almost an hour. Going over current projects and generally just chatting about life. Surprisingly, she didn't seem scared of me. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, she threw me a curveball...
"So what do you like most about Bakersfield?"
What was this? A trick question?
The honest answer is "nothing", but the one that popped first into my head was "leaving".
Neither seemed to be the smart thing to say. Not when she was paying most of my bills.
There followed a moment of awkward silence. I feared she could literally see the gears in my head move as I tried to formulate a proper response. And then, without even thinking, I blurted out... "The people."
Huh? Where the fuck did that come from?
But it didn't stop there. She smiled as I said it and leaned back in her chair, and something came over me and I just. kept. talking.
Babbling on about the kindness of the locals and their generosity and yadda, yadda yadda. It was like I was speaking in tongues and had no control over it. It was an out of body experience and it just kept going. I kept thinking of those Miss America contestants and their tightly rehearsed answers to random questions that always get twisted into a plea for world peace. It was verging on gibberish and I heard the voice in my head saying "Mommy, mommy, make it stop" and "quit while you're fucking ahead" and finally, mercifully, I did.
I really can't explain it. Must have been some "fight or flight" defense mechanism. Whatever the case, it worked. I left the office with enough work to last me the summer.
As I was driving home, I started experiencing some pangs of guilt. Not for lying; professionally I lie all the time. That's all advertising is, lying. No, I was feeling guilty for putting on a show for the locals and then coming on the blog to slag them off. As more and more of my livelihood becomes dependent on this city, there's something slightly unseemly about biting the hand that feeds me. It occurred to me that there will probably come a day when the only decent thing to do is abandon the blog.
Luckily, today is not that day.
