When I finally arrive at San Diego – 22 hours later – I discover Oceanview is not a suburb of San Diego, it’s the suburbs, and more than an hour past the San Diego city limits, in and up a valley and off a couple of freeways, with no ocean in view. Not to worry however, because tomorrow Anna and the rest of the T.V production crew she is working with are moving into a McMansion in a suburban estate, located off a couple of freeways and far away from anything good, or anything bad for that matter.
Waiting for the delivery men to bring furniture and whitegoods to the empty McMansion the following morning, a glimpse of another life – if I made a few wrong turns – passes by; that I’m a suburban house mom relocating because my husband moved out here to invest in an internet start up business, with my kids at school or outside playing with rattlesnakes.
Who. The fuck. Would want to live here?
The walls are hollow and plastic, made from boat hull material, there is a maroon and grey feature wall in the living room and the master bedroom’s walk-in-wardrobe is so big you could fit a bunk bed in there. It’s a forty-minute walk to the nearest shops where you can eat a fried burrito and watch the cars zoom by or take a zumba class. The estate has a Tim Burton feel to it, as if behind the identical facades are only exposed beams and support structures, components of a larger set. Houses are decorated with smiling ceramic suns, American flags and signs that state: Bless this house and everyone in it. Bumper stickers on meaty trucks and 4WDs read Bless our troops, In God We Trust and I’m a Marine Monster.
This idea of the suburban dream is a personal hell and to not end up in one is one of the few guiding principles I follow in life. That and don’t be a dick. Invested in what is theirs, people live an insular lifestyle which undermines the importance of shared space and community. On top of this you are car dependent and will probably spend your weekends cleaning your fibreglass kingdom and buying garden gnomes. Besides this, I find that many suburbs have a creepy vibe to them, that living space is close enough that sunbaking with your boobs out in the backyard is problematic but segregated enough so that no one is around to hear you scream when your body is hacked into little pieces and disposed of in oil vats or that no one will notice your absence when your father locks you and your children who also happen to be your siblings in a basement dungeon for twelve or so years. Joseph Fritz, after all, didn’t live in Manhattan.
We go out one Friday night. The taxi to the venue costs $70. It is shock waves amazing. Bumping, grinding, bumping and grinding, body rubbing, incorporating clothing as props and explosive dance moves, the patrons are going off and my group of four stand around in gobsmacked awe.
Darren comes back from the bathroom regaling that some one has sprayed the walls with chunder and is lurching around the men’s toilet as if they are the living dead. Anna captures the eye of a man from the Congo who decides he wants to take her to Vegas, but not on a Sunday as he is busy with church. I get into a conversation with a man who tries to tell Anna that convicts weren’t sent over to Australia, but the mentally ill were, that’s why there is so much Schizophrenia Down Under which some how escalates into me slapping him in the face multiple times, and him enjoying it. I should have been deterred by his pleasure, but it feels good to slap someone hard in the face, especially if they are a fuckwit.
From there it’s another $70 ride home, where we test out the taste of raw eggplant because we are drunk and hyper and in living the suburban dream, there is little else for us to do.
