Box Social

Yesterday morning whilst I was housekeeping and I put my hand in some filthy bastards jizz. That is about as low as I can imagine sinking. I instantly spewed so hard that I almost shat myself. That was my Tuesday, basically. Well, it got a bit creepier, but I'll save that. In-terms of the jizz hand, I won't go into unnecessary detail, that would not be like me at all; each bunk bed has a little shelf which we have to clean when people move out. I blindly swept the top bunk shelf with my hand as they are almost always empty. This one was not. Triffic. Animals.

So what has been going on? Not much I suppose. The last week has just been a series of incidents. I am pretty much living the same routine as I would at home. I spend most of my time at work developing new shortcuts to allow me to clean twice as badly in half the time. I am now reaping the dividends and spend more time pursuing other favourite pastimes such as leaning. A wise man (who saw me as something of a prodigy) once told me 'that if it is time to lean then it is time to clean'. It has taken me longer than originally anticipated but I have finally managed to disprove his theory. Since I have started working I have felt myself become considerably less social. Instead of getting drunk every night I am four metres up reading, writing or watching films. Whilst the netbook has proven very handy for my writing it has also given me a ready made excuse not to socialise. Don't get me wrong, I have friends here, but they are the other members of staff as opposed to guests. I now see guests as I would have previously seen clients. Work.

I have no plans to move on so I am not really bothering to assess if the guests are worth getting to know (i.e to travel on with). I have mates here already and I can't really be fucked forging continuous short term friendships. Sounds miserable and, whilst not strictly applicable, it is basically like being back in the UK on the lifestyle front. It is strangely welcomed to be honest. I am getting a lot of work done and I am living for free pretty much. I can still sunbathe up on the roof in mid November and I sleep on the mother of all captain's bunk beds. When I want to be sociable there are always people around and when I don't it is easy enough to get some peace. I am lacking in sleep and nutrition but I could genuinely get used to this. One guy who had his last day of work here yesterday came for a week and ended up staying for two years.

You certainly get to meet some characters working here. I can be unsociable to an extent but I am also required to be friendly to all guests when off duty. I cannot just duck people so I am having several unwelcomed conversations a day. It is not that I am being selective when being offered an olive branch, I just don't want to encourage further hallway chatter with the annoying ones who are constantly chirping around the place trying to befriend people. I honestly spend most of these conversations trying to remember what their name is, then the rest trying to edge subtly away from them until I'm far enough down the corridor that they have to shout goodbye.

There are some people that are worth meeting though. I hear some pretty amazing stories from the people passing through. I met an American guy earlier in the week who is thirty four and arrived on a motorbike. We got chatting about the bike as I had toyed with the idea, and he told me that he is recently divorced and that tomorrow he was leaving the states via Mexico with the intention of never returning to America. He probably sounds like a spectacularly bitter individual, but he is actually an incredibly cool guy who just happens to be a bit spectacularly bitter.

On Friday after work I went for lunch with the boys. That day felt a bit more like travelling. I got chatting to a lad and girl after asking the lad about his “soccer” shirt. I started chatting with them thinking that they were a couple from Utah, but after a while they told me that they were actually brother and sister – so this was my queue to start drinking. Seven hours later (circa 9pm) I am on the roof of the hostel with them (not supposed to take guests up there – not that they were even guests of the hostel) and the last thing that I remember is the guy turning to me looking disgusted and saying “Dude, have you got your hand on my sisters ass?”. My memory after that is completely blank. We had started drinking double jaegermeisters (which would be quadruple in english measurements) at 4pm and the joint broke me. I woke up the next morning at 9am and I did not have a fucking clue where I was. I was fully clothed and my face was half a meter from the ceiling, pretty freaky. I couldn't piece together the evening and when I got up for work and hour later random guests were laughing at me and asking how I was this morning. I started to get a bad feeling. I did not even recognise any of these people. Some German girl came up to me and told me that she really enjoyed my beatboxing last night. The manager of the place then came up to me and laughed in my face. They have not really seen me that drunk and as I am not going out that much they probably assume that it is hugely out of character. Apparently I was under the impression that it was 3am when it was actually 10pm and people were all pretty much sober. Ho tidy. Everyone who was working was still leathered so we started getting on the vodka again. By the end of the shift everyone was absolutely wasted. This brings me on to saturday night...

One of my favourite members of staff is the guy who works the midnight – 6AM shift. He is a world class stoner who does not officially live at the hostel but is consistently asleep on our sofa in the jungle. He is perhaps not the most professional, but he sort of gets the job done. His job involves trying to force a hostel full of drunkards to bed at 3am. He is impossibly abusive to some of the guests, which I could watch all night long. On Saturday night we all went out with the guests. At midnight he had to go back to man the reception (drunk). I came stumbling up the stairs about 1am after drinking really quite a lot that day - and Carlos begged me to man reception for a while so that he could go back to the club and hook up with some girl. I have never worked on reception before and there is no intention for me to be trained (it is a job for longer term staff). Under no circumstances should I have been behind the desk - but on the other hand I was drunk, so naturally I accepted. I have seen what he does and it does not look complex; as far as I could gather he just sits in the counter and asks to see peoples security cards as they come up the stairs (you need a key card to get into the building then up a flight of stairs to the reception area). I had been sat there for around ten minutes before I heard a shout from the bottom of the stairs “help, you gotta stop this guy, he followed us in.” Oh tidy I thinks to myself. I peer over the counter and some guy comes walking past me calmly saying “where is she?”. He was some long haired psycho type but he had a look of pure terror in his eyes. I literally did not have a clue what to do at this point, then he suddenly legs it up the next flight of stairs and begins screaming “where is she?” There is a gallery layout upstairs with rooms around a central staircase and I was worried that he would wake everyone up, and that Carlos was going to get into shit for leaving me behind reception. Without really thinking I run after him, grab him by his hair and literally drag him screaming down two flights of stairs before I throw him on to the street.

It was only the next day that I realised that this was perhaps not cool. Whilst he was clearly some dodgy crackhead I should perhaps have been a little bit more reasonable. He could have been a bit stabby. Then one of the guests told the manager that I was a bit of a hero last night, and suddenly it became cool again. Instead of being told off for being on reception I was treated like a hero for dragging some bloke down the stairs by his hair. Within an hour everyone was watching it on cctv completely unified in their admiration. Be clear on this, sometimes it does pay off to behave like a total dick. Bouncers, I finally get it.

Sleep up here and tell me that you are not afraid of death

Then I move on to the less favourable members of staff. There was one german girl who could not sound less german. She walks round coughing the entire time. I'm not convinced she is ill, she has been coughing consistently for three weeks. I think it must just be the worlds most annoying tick. I cannot work out if I like the new Turkish lad who joined the staff last week. He looks like a cross between David Villa and Whirly. He feels a little more inclined to talk about his ambitions than I am willing to hear. His nickname is CEO as one day he believes that he will be CEO of a large company. In his first conversation he told me that he is not afraid of death, which is quite heavy for a meet and greet. Whenever he speaks to me I get the feeling that he is trying to sell me something. He is greasy and extremely sexually aggressive around women. He creeps up beside me and looks at the screen of my phone and what I am writing, which would be very annoying in solitary, but he also has horrendous body odour. As I am writing this he is sat on the table behind me and I'm pretty sure he is reading the screen. If you are, EVER HEARD OF DEODRANT? He follows me outside every time I go for a smoke and then just stands there. He does not drink but constantly wants to go to nightclubs. I have had some of the worst nights of my life being sober in a nightclub but he seems to love it. He says some pretty weird things, last night he turned to me and said “Simon, I am feeling strong, strong enough to lift three women”. Every time he sees me he shouts “Hi honey I am home”, what the fuck am I supposed to say to that after the twenty fifth time? Despite all of this there is something almost likeable about him. He is a trier if nothing else. Also he cannot speak much english. If he becomes capable of more detailed conversation then I will have to review the situation.

Unfortunately James and Tom (the two english guys in the jungle) leave on sunday. They are good lads and remind me a lot of myself at their age. I found it difficult to click with them when I first moved into the jungle – they made me feel kind of old. They basically spend eighteen hours a day thinking about and pursuing sex, a couple of hours having sex, and then whatever is left over to sleep (probably dreaming about sex). Being eleven years outside of my prime I have some different priorities. To begin with they did not really seem to get why I would want to read and write in my spare time. I am spending about six to eight hours a day writing, which I guess contributes greatly to the whole unsociable thing. Sorry for the continual drug talk family, but you can get a kind of weed here that literally puts me in the zone for writing. I am churning out all kinds of shit that will probably read like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I am done. I find myself cringing when I read some of it the next day, but there is some pretty good stuff too. So I am trading off fun and spending money for weed and productivity. After living with James and Tom for a few weeks we all now get each other, they are a cracking pair of lads and the place will not be the same without them.

Their exit will leave a void in the jungle and the creepy aspect from the first paragraph can be seamlessly resumed here. There has been this guy staying at the hostel for the last few days who creeps me out. Description wise – for anyone who is familiar with Richard 'Joner Engine Room' Jones - then picture Joner but at around five feet tall with a cropped eastern european haircut and an earring. Anyone unfamiliar with Joner then imagine a thinner version of 1991 FA Cup Paul Gascoigne with aids. I have no issue with gay people but I find it very difficult to deal with when they hit on me, which seems to be happening with regularity here (as I said, California is very liberal). I'm not really accustomed to dealing with this. The most civil way to handle it is to try and subtly indicate that I am not that way inclined. This can be straightforward if the opportunity arises to mention the word “girlfriend” in a sentence. It is not always that easy. I find myself self-conscious that I am throwing the word “girlfriend” into a conversation when it is glaringly out of context or premature at best. I don't want to appear to be some backward bumpkin who is scared that every bumder is going to try and bumd me. I suppose more accurately is that I do not want the girls that I am out with to think that I am not cool with gay people. I am cool with it, but at the same time I do not want to be hit on. Conundrum; I usually just end up spitting in their face and wedgying their hotpants. Anyway, I digress, although whilst on the subject of hotpants. The guy who creeps me out in the hostel looks like his entire suitcase will be full of striped vests, hotpants and dildo's, and the way he looks at me and sidles up wherever I am makes my stomach turn. Yesterday he asked me what it is like to work at the hostel, as he is thinking of trying it out. My heart sank, the prospect of him living in the jungle is not one that I would relish. This is not being homophobic – if a girl was behaving in this way who I was in no way attracted to then I would be saying the same. My tactics were the same as if it were a girl who I did not want to work and live with, I just told him how bad the job is (which was a lie, I genuinely love it). So I told him straight – I spend most of my day knuckle deep in shit and this morning I put my hand in some blokes jizz. He starts on Sunday.

Humiliation Constipation Titillation

oops

I'll start with a quick picture of the now closed fire escape that I set on fire. It is a post that is crucial to the structure and no longer secures the two cross beams - so it is too dangerous to use. Whoops.

 

Everything gets lost in the jungle. Clothes, dignity and souls. My paranoia led me to the conclusion that someone has been stealing from me. I was sure that twenty bucks had disappeared from my bed (aka my wallet, wardrobe, personal space and living quarters), then my sleeping mask went missing (my bed is so high that it is handily aligned with the fluorescent neon strip lighting on the roof) and then my entire washbag disappeared.

The first question that I asked myself was “who steals a washbag?” My second, third and forth questions revolved exclusively around the hunt for a new toothbrush. I started work at ten so I set my alarm for 9.45. It took me twelve minutes to realise that the washbag was nowhere to be seen, leaving me just three minutes to try and source replacement toiletries before my shift began. It tasted like someone had crept into my bed during the night and shat into my mouth, and the poo was now nestled comfortably in my windpipe. For the next four hours I had to make do with a six pack of chewing gum and my rage with jungle life crept higher as I was forced to acknowledge that my breath smelt worse than the toilet that I was cleaning.

After my shift I sort of took a shower and then walked two blocks to the pharmacy to spend $30 replacing the items in my washbag, in addition to an actual washbag itself. When I got back and gleefully washed the anus from my mouth I discovered my washbag was actually on the bathroom shelf. My rage for the motherfucker who had stolen my little burberry washbag had led me on a rampage around the local pharmacy and just when I felt like I was teetering on the brink of a breakdown I realised that I was merely just once again a victim of my short term memory.

This type of paranoia is probably largely due to weed cookies, but I always seem to err on the side of suspicion in preference to the obvious alternative that I am just a disorganised cunt. It also says something about the society that I live in that leads to a constant fear of people stealing my shit. I remember my first night in south east asia when I arrived in Singapore. I used three padlocks to secure every single zip on the bag, and then I used a 1.5m steel cable to lock the motherfucker to the bed – meaning that someone would have to steal an entire bunk bed to remove my bag (or merely cut the pretty flimsy fabric around the locks). A few days later in Thailand I had to put my rucksack on the roof of the van type things, and I was genuinely concerned that some craic team of thai trapeze thieves were going to swing down and nab it. Thankfully I no longer think like that, but my suspicions still remain prominent in my thought process. When I lose something, which is often, my initial thoughts are spent compiling a mental list of suspects before ruling them out or marking them down for further investigation. A few moments later I will usually realise that I can't even remember what it is that I was looking for in the first place. Then an hour or so later I will go and look for the same item and the process will begin over again. Needless to say no one is stealing from me here; I am just the victim of an environment that offers a ready supply of paranoia within a highly dysfunctional living space.

Work-wise it's a mixed bag. I favour the evening shift, but it feels kind of degrading cleaning the toilets whilst people all around me are getting ready to go out. The bathrooms are co-ed, so whilst i'm on my knees cleaning away skidders there are hot women milling around prepping themselves. I try to make a joke about the job but there is no hiding the fact that I am scrubbing a bog. But on the plus side there is a good chance to getting chatting to people, and by people I obviously mean birds. This has borne results in the shape of a hot aussie chick, but on the whole I am left feeling a new type of humiliation.

The second facet of co-ed toilet based humiliation is one that I am much more accustomed to. Call me old fashioned but I am somewhat uncomfortable with the prospect of having a dump in the knowledge that there is at least a small chance that a bird will be waiting to use the can after me. To begin with, as in normal life, I found myself going to a bar and buying a pint just so that I can drop the kids off at the pool. Five bucks a day and mild alcoholism is a small price to pay for peace of mind that I am not about to offend a seven or above. After spending a week of cleaning up after these animals I have almost entirely alleviated this hang up: a) if I'm going to clean up their filth then I can at least gain some revenge by making their lives a bit more uncomfortable for five minutes or so; and b) I have found a coping technique. The saving grace is that the hostel pumps music into the bathrooms - so the embarrassment of a big splashdown is mitigated. I have managed to get my poo cycle down to about twenty five seconds, so if I lift the toilet seat back up before exit then I create the illusion that I have only taken a leak. The smell of rotting animal carcass was so obviously left by the person before me.

It is actually quite funny working in the bathrooms. You can see the raw shame on the faces of the guilty as they leave the bog. This is sometimes followed by relief and pure elation if there is no one waiting to go in there after them, or an apologetic smile if their worst fears are confirmed and there is a queue. So overall there are mixed emotions on the shared bathrooms front. I have handled more bodily fluid than I am perhaps comfortable with, but on the other hand fit australian...

Anyway, sorry. In San Diego life is slow paced and enjoyable. We have a contact with a condo which has a tenth storey pool and jacuzzi overlooking the harbour, and I'm now familiar with how to use bathroom products and produce pancake batter. Happy days. The beaches are pretty nice and the weather is sweet (although yesterday was one of circa 5 days a year that it rains). There is an awesome park called Balboa Park, non Rocky related, but awesome all the same. It is modelled on the Central Park approach, and you can spend a day looking around museums, galleries and the zoo (obviously none of which I have done, I just go there to play the bumbling Hugh Grant role with the locals). It is right over the flightpath of San Diego airport where planes land impossibly close to the city. I lay right underneath the path and Wayne's World'ed it for a few hours and got some pretty cool photos.

USA USA USA

One thing that is bugging me, which was never an issue in SE Asia, is the clothes situation. The vast majority of guests in this hostel (and the USA in general) are what are known in the industry as wheel baggers. They are almost exclusively people arriving with suitcases on wheels as opposed to backpackers. Since the start of the recession the Americans are beginning to take notice of the whole hostel thing. This is an upmarket hostel that attracts wheel baggers and the more upmarket traveller (who is just spending two weeks – three months in the US). So whilst i'm walking around in a range of clothes suited for travel everyone else (guests, staff and locals) are walking around in their best clobber. Around fifty percent of my backpack was consumed by an unused and utterly redundant tent. The residual space consists of practical clothing suited for multiple seasons as opposed to nightclubs. Whilst hip clothing has never been a great priority, I am left feeling a bit of a pikey walking around in a pair of multi-functional trousers with removable legs. This also extends to the budget situation. I'm currently trying to live on about $10 a day all in. None of the other members of staff are backpackers and have far bigger budgets. The two english lads have budgets of about £10k for three months. I have less than half of that for nine months. I didn't have room in my rucksack for more than one pair of jeans, they have each brought their own hair straighteners.

Now that my farming dream has cruelly slipped through my grasp I can send the tent and sleeping bag home. With the cost of postage factored in both items proved to be another shrewd investment. I have contemplated hitch hiking cross country to get to Miami and camping along the way. The only thing stopping me doing this is a fear of getting kidnapped and bummed by some toothless hill-billy. I shall be passing through the deep south, well within 'Deliverance' territory (squeal piggy). Alternative to the rape option is bringing my flights forward into South America, or stay put and continue to trade off my dignity for a bed. I think I may well stick around. I like it here, I can keep it cheap, the people are interesting and there is a fair bit of minge. The only thing that I'm not sure if I can cope with is the sleeping situation. Not only am I about 4m in the air but if I manage to get in excess of five hours sleep then it is nothing short of a miracle. If you are starting late then you are awoken by those working morning. If you stay in at night then you are awoken by people coming in. My bed is adjoining one of the english lads, who is nailing the french girl who lives here. They are constantly at it and we are basically toe to toe seperated only by a shelf. It's fucking awkward and uncomfortable but I don't want to be a miserable cunt and complain - so i'm kind of stuck with it. Fun.

Plenty'O privacy

Most of the staff have a story to tell. The chief housekeeper is a 48 year old japanese guy who has been here for ten years. He was on the verge of becoming a professional baseball player in japan when he was younger, but traded it in to try and become a rockstar (as he thought it would get him more chicks). He has become more almighty than he could ever have imagined. Whilst housekeeping was perhaps not the dream, it turns out that he is actually a journalist with his own business in Japan. He runs it from here for six months of the year and from back home the rest. I have no idea what motivates a 49 year old japanese man to live and work in a hostel in San Diego for six months of the year, but I suspect it has something to do with the women – great bloke but he's a seedy fuck. Another guy here went and bought me my first ever medical marijuana. It came in a prescription bag with a medical tub of bud and also a little pre rolled blunt and blunt holder.

Californian medication

He was telling me that they have the choice from around forty different types of weed for what we in the UK would call 'skunk'. They can tell you all of the effects of the different types, and you can buy them in the form of cookies, beers and even lollipops. This place is just so liberal it's untrue. I spend much of my time after work sat up on the roof of the hostel, which is massive and sits in the sun all day long. There is a mattress up there which is usually surrounded by used condoms. Two girls made a complaint against the male staff the other day, submitting allegations that they were ostracised after one of them had been taken up to the mattress but had not put out. Counter claims of 'frigid bitch' were made in defence and the case was closed.

The mattress

In summary pooing, budget and wardrobe issues have revealed a couple of minor chinks in an otherwise solid piece of Californian armour.