Unemployed

In 1993 my youngest son Benjamin graduated from high school.  For twenty years I'd been dreaming of quitting my job when I didn't need to earn good money.  I wasn't quite ready, I needed a little more time to think about it but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.  There were parts of banking I enjoyed and a lot I didn't.  I liked working with the customers, doing a service, I liked analysis, but the most of it was a pain.  It's what I did to make a living.  It was how I payed the bills.  

About this time I was learning to speak Spanish. I was speaking Spanish in LA, listening to tapes, and doing weekends once a month in Tijuana and then I did a two week immersion in Cuernavaca. I returned with a head full of Spanish dreaming of speaking it one day. Back at work I got a call from an attorney. I was reputed to be a CRA expert, a Federal regulation called the Community Reinvestment Act. There was a bank in CRA trouble. Could I recommend somebody? Everyone knew BanaMex, the big Mexican bank, and their California subsidiary California Commerce Bank were having a hard time with the Feds over CRA.

I recommended me. I met with the President of the bank, Salvador Villar, and we argued for an hour. After that personnel called, could I come to work for them? I figured if I stayed at Dai Ichi Kangyo Bank I’d have a bad year trying to appear enthusiastic but at BanaMex I might have a bad year and learn to speak Spanish. I started there January, 1994. One great advantage of a Mexican Bank, during the World Cup, that summer we had extended management meetings in the conference room with a wide screen TV.

I met Suzanne in August of 1994, 8 months after going to work for CCB. In that short period CCB’s CRA problem had been mostly solved. In February I was going to move to the Bay Area. I told Salvador I was quitting. He said, “You can’t quit. Work up there or something, go to the San Jose Office. But you can’t quit.”

So I moved up there and made do. At first I went to the office in San Jose, three days a week, a two hour commute, but that didn’t work very well. Then the San Jose office was closed. I worked at home in Mill Valley. I went down to LA when I needed to. I took care of CRA. I did the job. That did not require 40 hours a week and I didn’t work 40 hours. In Marin I became a regular kayaker. I enjoyed life.

The Mexican nationals at California Commerce Bank were all bilingual and the gringo credit officers were fluent in Spanish. The rest of us, mostly admin, wanted to learn to speak Spanish and two of us were serious, Tom, the bank’s in-house attorney and myself. Salvador hired a private teacher, who came in once a week and tutored us, mostly Tom and me, in Spanish for a couple of hours. 

Eventually at California Commerce Bank I felt I’d worn out my welcome. I had been good insurance for five years, but they didn’t need me after the first couple of years. They were doing just fine. It had been good for them and good for me but it was time to go.

So in October, 1999 I quit. Ironically five years later Suzanne, my wife, got a job with Citibank doing PR and CRA in Southern California. Citibank bought BanaMex and CCB’s CRA officer worked for Susan. Not too long after that Citibank shut CCB down, they didn’t need an in-house competitor for offshore Mexican dollars in the US . In the process they slandered Salvador and the Mexicans for questionable banking practices. Citibank should ever be as professional as CCB was.

In November I started “my year off.” I packed my Honda CRV with supplies, a laptop computer and a bicycle and started a road trip. I would have liked a year to wander but I had a new wife and a month would have to be enough. I got on Interstate 80 and headed East.

My first night camping was at Pollock Pines in the Sierras. I camped on a dirt road deep in the woods well away from the highway. The next morning I started writing. I had recently started working with the book, The Artist’s Way. It was an enhancement of my journaling practice. I can’t remember what I was writing but I do remember from that day on I began to think of myself as a writer. It wasn’t planned or anticipated, I just began to relax and let it be.

In Reno the newspaper had a short article about Shoshone Mike and the Last Indian Massacre near Winnemucca in 1911.  The story seemed incomplete and it started me d reading old newspaper accounts at the Winnemucca library.  Camping near Great Basin National Park I had this daydream, the full moon, the desert, the mountains and Shoshone Mike and his renegade band.  I began writing a story. I don’t think I had written any real short stories since my college days and certainly never finished anything.

The rest of the trip was dreamlike. Years before I had met someone from Nebraska, a place I had never been so that became more or less my destination.  What's Nebraska like?  I spent a week or more in Nevada and then continued East. I passed through Nicodemus Kansas, a Black pre-Civil War farming settlement, where Suzanne’s mother was from and eventually Lincoln, Nebraska. The West ends at the 100^th parallel and as I traveled further East I felt out of place. There were fewer open spaces. At Lincoln I turned around.

I stopped for a few days at a cheap no name motel and spent my days writing. I had begun the writer’s life and I enjoyed it.

North of Scott’s Bluff I detoured to Agate Fossil Beds National Monument. Now that I think of it the whole trip was detour. At the National Monument I saw a painted deerskin, the History of the World by the rangers and local Lakota artists.  It began at creation and spiraled through time to the present, battles, births, horse raids, barn burnings, the Dawes Act, World War I; it was personal and rooted where it was and universal at the same time.

Later I had the same experience reading Norman Davies Europe, A History. No matter how objective the historian tries to be, it always is like the Agate Fossil Beds history, told from the place where the historian is. For Davies it was the edge of Europe. For the Lakota it was Nebraska. 

I finally made it home after a very magical journey and continued to write. I wrote a Shoshone Mike Story. I joined Zoetrope, a writers’ workshop online. Zoetrope is this wonderful mix of new and experienced writers. My first attempt, which I published on Zoetrope was a real lesson for me. Voice, tenses and point of view as badly set as jello, wiggly and all over the place.  I kept writing and workshopping. I did it for a year and the stories got better, much better.

I had a regular routine and I worked every day. I was a writer. Like all of my writing, when I’m good I’m pretty good, but never quite good enough. I have these flashes. My last short story on Zoetrope I really liked. I had learned some things.  I told myself, this life I'm learning, if I keep at it in my next life I might be a Nobel Laureate.  

At 54 people would say to me, “Oh, you’re retired.”  My answer was “No, I’m unemployed.”  I didn’t feel like I retired, I had just quit banking and was clearing my palate before I looked for work again. I didn’t want to be a banker anymore or anything like it.

Who knew about age discrimination?  In Los Angeles I had a reputation and credibility.  In the Bay Area I had none.  What I thought would be an easy task turned out to be damned hard. I started working temp jobs just to get back into the swing of it. They were interesting, sometimes very hard work. My idea was to get into fund raising. I wanted to start at a low level job working with an experienced fundraiser. Learning the trade did not fit anyone else’s idea of what a man my age should be doing. What was wrong with me? To myself it felt like I was disabled. I had a serious lack of ambition and they knew it. I just wanted a decent job.

After a year and a half I needed to earn money with benefits. I got a job at Consumer Credit Counselors of San Francisco. Back in LA in the 70s I had met CCC and admired the manager and the work he did. CCCSF was an affiliate. It was banking related but god’s work and I needed the paycheck. We did a lot of phone appointments. I hate talking on the phone. The salary was half of what I had been making as a banker. Less was OK, half was not good. At the same time I had applied to CCCSF I started the paperwork for San Francisco Juvenile Hall.  Six months after I started at Consumer Credit Counselors I got a call to be a substitute or on call at San Francisco Juvenile Hall .

I worked weekends at Juvy, weekdays at Consumer Credit Counselors. And when I was sure I liked Juvy and might last I quit CCCSF.

I did the on call with San Francisco Juvenile Hall and then went full time in December, 2002, three years after I left banking. A year of wandering, a year of looking for work, and then a year of getting work. It was a long time. The pay at Juvy was not great but it was OK, a good job, and I enjoyed it. Now I wasn’t unemployed I’m a juvenile hall counselor.

Moving to the Bay Area

I  enjoyed my time of being single.  I enjoyed dating.  I enjoyed relationships when they were good and I struggled through them when they weren’t.  A couple of times I thought I might get married, but it didn't work out.  By the time I was in my late 40’s I was really tired of being single and ready to settle down.  Judith and I had nearly married.  After Judith I was still looking to get married.     

A friend of mine in San Francisco set me up on a blind date, dinner at her home with a few other people, and I met Susan Robinson.  Susan was fascinating, African American, a Cal grad, she was very successful in her career, and doing well at Pacific Bell.  Her mother was Roberta Robinson, a very well known city councilmember in Los Angeles, and Susan was well connected politically.  She had worked for Willie Brown, knew Jerry Brown, Nancy Pelosi and just about everyone in California politics, north and south. 

A couple of months later we had our first date in Los Angeles and then a reciprocal date in the Bay Area.  Susan considered herself a libertine.  She certainly tried to be, at least at first, but for whatever reasons Susan and I couldn’t seem to find a rhythm between us.   We had a lot of other things in common and we both sincerely appreciated each other. 

I had reservations.  I don’t think my love for Susan was ever overwhelming or profound, but the situation was good.  She introduced me to a new world that was interesting and exciting and we had a stable middle class existence.  Our physical relationship was like the overall relationship, good sometimes and tolerable most of the time.  Susan proved to be unsatisfied with her own accomplishments and driven to work harder and harder.  She is a good person but sometimes she could be very difficult.  After seven years of marriage we were pretty estranged from each.  We found ways to keep it working.  We made it another four years.  After eleven years together Suzette came into the picture and the excitement and desire of pursuing Suzette pushed me into ending what had become a very uncomfortable relationship with Susan.    

But in 1995 I moved up to Mill Valley to live with Susan.  I had lived my whole life in LA except for the four years in the Air Force.  I used to tell people I had lived all over, North Hollywood, Atwater, Glassell Park, Highland Park and La Crescenta.  I told them, one time, I had even lived 11 miles away from where I was born.  Now I moved 400 miles north.     I loved LA but I wanted to see what life was like elsewhere. 

I moved in with Susan in Marin County just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.  I continued to work for California Commerce Bank in Los Angeles.  The President of the bank kept me around as an insurance policy against the problems the bank had had before I came.  I supposedly worked in San Jose but that office closed.  After that I worked at home and went to LA when I needed to.  Two years after the first satisfactory examination, I got us a second satisfactory CRA exam.  I put real effort into the job.  It wasn't easy but it didn't require a lot of time.  Salvador, the President of the bank, was satisfied with that.  I worked half time and got paid full time.

I enjoyed kayaking, cycling, hiking and just leading a life of leisure.  Susan went from the Phone Company to Odwalla, the juice company. After 6 months she was fired.  They didn’t really want to run a decent company, they just wanted window dressing.  A few months after she left Odwalla had an outbreak of E. coli from their juice.  One child died, many were sickened and they were found guilty of criminal negligence.  After Odwalla Susan worked as a consultant and finally went to work for Citibank as their CRA manager for California.  After I left California Commerce, a subsidiary of Banamex, Citibank bought Banamex and my successor at California Commerce Bank worked for Susan. 

At first I felt very unrooted living in the Bay Area.  Professionally no one knew who I was and San Francisco is very different from LA.  It seemed in non-profits and economic development that people of color still naturally had the advantage but in San Francisco the gay community added an extra twist and being a straight white male was no advantage in non-profits.  In Los Angeles I had been well known and respected.  In San Francisco I felt discounted as a white middle aged male from the suburbs.    

I never became an ex-Angeleno, one of those people who denounces LA.  I described myself as an unrepentant Angeleno or an Angeleno in exile.  I did come to appreciate the Bay Area where it’s OK and even common to be literate and where their universities are better known for academics than for their football teams.  In LA, unfortunately it's true, people seem much more ready to discuss the movie than the book.  The neighborhoods in San Francisco and the East Bay are fabulous, unlike anything in LA.  And I’ve even become a foodie.  For the first few years I had a foot in both worlds, but when I quit banking and started working for the City of San Francisco I had to admit I had become a Bay Area person. 

We lived in Mill Valley for awhile, in a beautiful home Susan owned on the hillside above Boyle Park.  Then we moved to Half Moon Bay where she worked for Odwalla.  Half Moon Bay was interesting for being so close to San Francisco but so far away at the same time, isolated by roads that closed in winter storms and otherwise frequently jammed with traffic. We got married in April of 1996 when we lived in Half Moon Bay.  After Odwalla let Susan go we moved back to Mill Valley

In 1999 I quit California Commerce and stopped commuting.  Staying in the Bay Area helped me to begin to put down roots. 

Once when I was counseling at Consumer Credit Counselors I asked my usual question, “Are you a native San Franciscan.” 

The woman answered, “No, but I’ve lived here so long, I think of myself as a native.”

“How long have you lived here?” I asked. 

“Seven years,” she said.   

By then I had been in the Bay Area for almost seven years myself and I didn’t feel almost native at all, but it did make me think I should start accepting the Bay Area as home.  Seven years is a long time.   

In 2001 I went to work for the City of San Francisco in their Juvenile Hall.  Juvenile Hall and Parks would never have happened for me if I hadn’t moved up to the Bay Area.  For that alone I always counted myself lucky to have moved. 

Between Susan and me, the crisis in our marriage came when Susan lost her cleaning lady and I did laundry for both of us.  I drew the line at folding her clothes.  It was a small thing but it reminded me of the Paul Simon song, “she liked to sleep with the window open.  I liked to sleep with it closed.”  Susan wasn’t having it and we had to go to counseling.  Susan was a dominant personality and I am an independent person.  Our marriage survived when she got a job in LA and I stayed in Oakland.  We were good at a part time marriage.  Our marriage became untenable when she moved back to the Bay Area and we began living together again.

After ten years or so it was hard to deny that I wasn’t at home in the Bay Area.  Now with 18 years in the Bay Area, I don't even try.  I am a Bay Area person. 

I love the beauty of it, I love the culture, I love the diversity, and I love the Bay Area.  I also love LA but I have to admit every time I go down there I notice the traffic, the rushing everywhere, the prominence of the Hollywood culture, and the incredible distances in Los Angeles.  LA is like a city in a centrifuge; flying away from its own center.  And the air is bad. When I visit LA I try to keep my complaints to myself, but sometimes they slip out.

I miss the mountains, the wilderness, the desert, LA’s Mexican heart, the vitality of it all, LA’s lack of self consciousness and smugness and the way LA is always changing.  I miss the vibrant arts and the museums in LA.  I miss a town that has a nickname for itself.  I miss mild winter days in LA.        

Paloma and Suzette think the Bay Area is home.  I have friends here and a working of knowledge of the local history and geography.  I am a Bay Area person with strong LA ties.