While I am in theory a big fan of diversity, I have to say that one of the many charms of the community in which I now live is its remarkable homogeneity. It's liberal, laid-back, and locavore. OK, smug. Creed, color, and income level are unimportant; attitude is everything, and kindness counts. I very much appreciate the privilege of living here, because when removed from my narrow protected habitat and placed in an environment in which people do not recycle, restaurants suck, and bumper stickers are considered appropriate venues for declarations of religious fervor, I turn into a seething, insufferable bitch.
There was plenty of time to refine these qualities during our two-and-a-half-year exile in the parched Sierra foothills. Incredibly, I did make a few friends. Even more incredibly, considering that we do not attend any church, our neighbors would occasionally invite us to social events. These cross-cultural outings only reinforced my urban prejudices and once scared the bejesus out of me.
We lived in a crappy rented house in a development of 1-acre lots ringed by a busy log-and-gravel truck route. It was noisier than any place I ever lived in any city, including an apartment in New York that shared a wall with a flamenco nightclub. Our nearest neighbor in the development was a sweet old guy who had a geriatric doggie and a rapacious wife who would try to shake me down for nuggets of local gossip she was sure Answerjack must've accumulated in the course of his professional duties (he's a doc.) "It's OK, you can trust me," she'd say, eyes glittering. "I'm a good Christian woman."
Her husband really was a sweetheart who had gone out of his way to help us when our water pipes burst while we were on vacation, so when she invited us to his 75th birthday party held a week or so before Christmas, I gladly accepted. I knew that the hostess was really hoping for better luck mining data from the original source, but Answer had left the area to start consulting in Memphis, were he was already ensconced in a loft, surrounded by art galleries and quite good restaurants, while I was marooned in the meth-head-and-deer-infested hinterlands until after the holidays, when I could start looking for a home base for us in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The neighbor's acre was lit up like a nuclear reactor in honor of Jesus' birthday, and ringing their doorbell activated a heavily-amped carillon version of "The First Noel." Fewer than 10 people were in the living room—other neighbors, some relatives. A choice of beverages was recited by the host, and when I chose one of the options—wine—a hush descended on the little gathering. "Let's see if I can find some," the hostess said tightly, while the others politely averted their eyes, looking deep into their cups of Swiss Miss cocoa (the packets were arrayed in a basket on the table, along with thermal carafes of milk and hot water, and a bowl of extra marshmallows.) I had fallen into a nest of sweet-toothed teetotalers, and it looked like it was going to be a long night.
A bottle of merlot, apparently uncorked around the millenium, was extracted from the bowels of the back-up fridge on the deck and a frosty glass was poured. Clutching it, I settled in for some chitchat with my fellow party-people and was wondering about the amount of chitchat required before leave could be taken when the carillons chimed again. The hosts were startled; apparently all invited guests had arrived. Who could it be? They opened the door, where a Tony Perkins lookalike stood twitching under the porch light. "Is this the Bible study group?" he asked.
No, it wasn't, but he was welcomed in with glad little cries and assured, "We're all good Christians here!" The story was sorted out as a packet of cocoa was re-constituted for the pious party-crasher. His name was Mike, and he had seen a notice for a Bible study group on the bulletin board of the human resources office of the state prison some 20 miles away that was—is—the county's largest employer. The notice was outdated; the Bible group had petered out the previous summer. Another neighbor's address was on the notice, but Mike had been undeterred when no one answered there: "I just kept ringing doorbells until I found this place," he informed us, blinking rapidly. "I knew the Lord wanted me to be here tonight!"
It turned out that the Lord was giving rather a lot of very specific directions to Mike. He shared his recent life story: he'd been living, with his wife, in New Jersey, but when he felt the Lord calling him to one of California's most impoverished rural counties with an astronomical unemployment rate, he drove across the country right away. It was a good thing he did, because his mother, who had recently moved to the area, seemed to be ill. Had she seen a doctor? Well, no, but he thought she seemed sick. "Is your poor mother a widow?" asked the lay minister. Oh, no, she had recently re-married. Mike felt the Lord wanted him to be with her and her new husband, because, as Mike explained, "A boy's best friend is his mother."
That immortal line from Psycho added an interesting dimension to Mike's tics of chafing his hands and scratching his head. He really did look like Tony Perkins. He was definitely twitchy, and it wasn't from meth, like most other twitchy locals; his teeth were too good. He was talkative as well as twitchy, and rapidly warming to his topic, which was speculation about what else the Lord might call him to do, which I was sincerely hoping did not include anything involving an axe or other sharp implements. "The Lord might be calling me to be a corrections officer," he said, "but I'm not hearing his voice real clear on that one."
Hearing voices? OK, that wasn't just twitchy, that was a serious psychiatric symptom. Schizophrenia scale serious. I looked around me, alarmed. Everyone was just sitting there, murmuring assent and nodding encouragement as he reported that the Lord had compelled him to leave his wife in New Jersey, drive across the United States in mid-December, crash his mother's honeymoon, and perhaps fulfill a Divine Directive to become a prison guard in Bumfuck, California.
Leaving the party, right away, sounded simply divine to me until I realized that Mike here would know where I lived because my host would gallantly insist on walking me to my door. Did I really want a God-and mother-fixated lunatic testing the non-functioning security system in the rental?
So I stayed. Mike did go on perseverating about the Lord, but no one was hewn into bits. In fact, no one except I was made uncomfortable in any way, which I thought exceedingly weird. A stranger had walked into a social gathering and recited a few code words that made everyone—well, nearly everyone—ignore the fact that he was barking mad. I would have been happy to write off this collective lapse of judgment as a function of the rural social mores that I found so alien, but really, that's pretty much the way it works in any community: a stranger walks into a party, or office, or someone's home, repeats the appropriate code words to let members of the prevailing group know she or he is just like them, and is accepted until some behavior trips a warning wire.
Talking with my hostess the next day, it turned out that Mike had tripped a wire after all—not by highjacking the party to rant about the Lord, but by leaving his wife, especially so close to the holidays: behavior unbecoming a good Christian. I never worried about tripping any wires at any time during my stay in the hinterlands because I never once recited the local code words. People expected me to be inappropriate; I was on my way out from my first day in. Just in case anyone missed the point, though, I did stuff like getting into a debate about zealotry with the dry cleaner, engaging in an ongoing struggle with the garbage collection service about the right to recycle, and attempting to introduce the local right-wing-rant radio station to the Associated Press Style Guide. As previously noted, in an alien environment, I am a bitch.
Based on what we later came to learn about the hiring standards for correctional officers in the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation (Answer did a consulting gig for the state prison medical system), Mike's obvious mental health issues were unlikely to impede the fulfillment of the employment directives issued by that voice inside his head.
