My New Job as a Community Advocate

Ringa Ring… Straight to voicemail.

“Son of a …”

People don’t really want to talk to you when the local news had plastered your face on their tiny paper with the headline: CULT LEADER AT IT AGAIN

Herald, the publisher, really wanted me to deliver his newspapers on my 70-miles-an-hour-adul- scooter which had been stolen by the courts. I told him NO WAY was I risking energy and possible leg cramps to throw his little rag into the yards of people and get eaten by their dogs.

For I am an environmentalist.

(Kinda)

Truth be told, the average veterinarian asks four hundred bucks to touch a dog’s junk or fleece, and my dog is so gorgeous that people would usually touch him for free. Caspian doesn’t like that I am supposed to give him dog pills to get him sedated before the visits. He’s a very old fashioned dog who loves the picture of Nancy Regan I put in his kennel.

Now this ‘Cult Leader’ status was going to severely influence my primary position as a Community Advocate for CSUMB, a fantastic school for people who need to walk more. We have single-handedly beaten the woman’s volleyball team of Hawaii every time they couldn’t afford airfare in the spring. Some call it a “bi” but we call it a win.

My primary purpose is to knock on the door of alumni and smile and say, “Your school needs you!” my uncle used to work for Harvard (as Director of Grant Writing) and he got to travel all over the world knocking on doors in the Palaces of Indonesia, bringing my cousins to Zealand for Māori Days and several other adventures. The best thing to do is to tell the Alumni that you are going to name a new building wing after them, maybe a spa for Otters in my case. Everyone still loves Otters.

In my case, most of the Alumni still live locally and only finished CSUMB because they didn't want to transfer to Santa Cruz which is forty-five minutes away. People are very skeptical about driving out of paradise and if you have to be part of the Municiple Expansion of Heaven you are going to get some resistance. Post-life sprawl is frowned upon and many people in the heavens have been asking Saint Peter to lock his gate for years. Because most dead people are actually Selfish bastards.

I get in my old Ranger. The scooter was better, and the Ranger was rescued from the car crusher for a daughter who changed her mind. In this case, I can deliver Harold’s rag if he didn’t piss me off, or I can hit speed bumps and not worry about suspension. The Ford Ranger has no suspension anymore.

The seat is one of those clam mouth jobbies with a metal hinge sticking out of the left side and so you have to really scoot the buttocks over in the seat and get centered in front of the steering wheel. It’s the type of truck which is very useful for dating in neighboring Salinas. Never bring your yellow scooter to Salinas or they will salivate too much. Most of our alumni don’t live in Salinas.

:::rappa rappa::: Knocka Knocka::::

Ouch. My knuckles hurt even with the new NumbChuck Gloves I bought from Shark Tank. These are stretchy mechanic gloves with brass armor squares over the places where fingers bend. They are not very good gloves for shaking hands and must be taken off quickly if anyone answers the door.

I leaned down into the Ring Camera to scream, “I see you Hannah Walker, Class of 2009. Get out here or we’re gonna send you some more student debt.”

It’s crazy that a Community Advocate has to resort to threats, but I cannot pretend to be very nice since the Herald described me as a Cult Leader. People still remember the last time they had to shave their heads, climb to Mount Natomas and wait for the spacecraft which never came. It was worst than chasing comets in Carmel Valley or seeing if Santa Clause would be drunk in the helicopter for another year.

:::Bap Bap Bap::: (raspy knock)::: tap tap.

It is important to have multiple knock options based on the mood of the client. For example, this house had a predilection for fresh flowers and there were ample signs of children damage. My best guess is that there could be a child who finally went to dream land after the mother spent hours to get it to be still. This is the worthy opportunity to make contact. A Community Advocate must be so loud and obnoxious that the client realizes they should just pay to an Advocate go away. This is how new laws are made in Sacramento.

:::Bam .. Bam… Bam::: ( I call that the earthquake knock).

It’s not really an earthquake, if you are new to California. Nah, don’t get fidgety until you see your neighbors run out of their house naked and get into a car. If you see naked neighbors, anytime durring the day/night… then prepare for an earthquake. In this case the client simply had flimsy walls and so the knocks echoed throughout the house, woke up the baby and would not stop until she came to the door. Is this cultish behavior? I don’t think so.

I took a step back because proxemics are important.

Usually I like to start with a small bribe, maybe a flower picked from their garden, maybe a little pen with a CSUMB logo because we serve so many people in the service industry and they are always in need of pens.

“Hello Growgeous!”

“Tommy.”

Her voice is flat like she’s not even prepared to receive a minor Cult Leader celebrity. I cannot just barge my way into the talking place past the foyer. Like a vampire, I must be invited in under section 32.01 of the local penal code. We smile at each other on the porch. Well, I do.

The baby has stopped sucking on its pacifier and looks to his mother as if to say, ‘You want me to take care of this guy?’ Kids are cute.

“Nah, really the reason I had to visit is because maybe your check bounced for that new parking lot we were talking about. I wanted to give you a chance to square it away so that your school doesn’t have to go to extremes.”

Hannah Walker is not prepared. Her baby makes a fist, and I can see that kid has a great future in mixed marital arts and possibly some cellular isolation. She licks her lips as if to moisten the tongue to do its yelling.

“Do you know how many YEARS I paid for parking at that school?? How many times I had to run to Bio 1 or lost my English papers because no one put in a wind break in front of the beach!”

(Yeah, I heard this all before). (Besides, I have a grin like Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom, not the Michael Keaton playing Ray Krock). (That was creepy).

“There.. There… “ I pat the baby’s head before it can bite and give it a moistureless cracker. That should keep the little body guard busy for a while. After that, I can see by Mrs. Hannah Walkers humongous breast that it’s gonna be slurpy time. Babies don’t typically talk smack and get all aggressive if they are feeding.

“Come on. We’re going to need you to use the cash app right now or give me your baby.” (The Grant Writing department keeps kids in a pen as collateral. Just like junked cars at your mechanic… some are never claimed.)

I point to the folding dog cage next to the ford Ranger. It can handle children up to three foot high, but the rest have to be bent. I have a Tommy Lifting Gate in the back of the ranger for those really obese children whose mommies don't kick them out to play with other children. Also, I am supposed to wear the back support before grabbing children but it’s just not sexy. I never feel sexy wearing Personal Protection devices.

That little future criminal is eye-balling me because I don’t run the Hilton Version of Child Collateral Services. I am a Community Advocate and people like to save money. It’s going to be worst for him than the time Michael Jackson put his kid in a birdcage and set it on the fifth story veranda. I give the kid a little wink. My mom was poor too.

Hannah Walker wants to cry but tears don't work in this situation, she signed over a check for better parking facilities and I was ready to take my people on vacation to Soledad (it wasn’t a very big check with a limited commission) but everything had failed when her banking institution said the check was canceled. I had screamed into the phone: “Are you saying she doesn’t have 39 F’kn dollars/???”

They were saying that she no longer wanted to pay forty dollars. My commission would have been 12 bucks, enough to visit some relatives on vacation in Soledad Prison and make it back though gas is on the high side at 6 bucks a gallon. I have a cousin who hasn’t had hope visit in years. This was a very important visit.

At that very moment, I really wanted to be a cult leader. Whisper voodoo into her unhappy eyes, lull the warrior baby into a non-combat-ready posture. We wouldn’t even cut off our hair this time, we wouldn’t move to Guyana, wouldn’t practice target practice out in southern Minnesota – Our cult would be so ancillary fantastic.

I started to dream of a day when everyone wakes up in their two-ply tents, the dew had been harnessed to supply fresh water, the Atmos Clocks still worked though we removed their jewels, and their small pendulums allowed for the water filtration process to begin. Animals came over and took a knee waiting to be peeled for the day, vegetables yawned out of the earth; carrots -- Happy fuck’n carrots. Lettuce who never bolted and could be picked whenever we were ready. Our cult would make bridges and develop creatures to suck to our face so we could ocean dive without the oxy tanks. We’d be a great cult of human possibility and brilliance. Love piles would be optional but highly encouraged. Netflix would be preprogrammed to all the para-military movies and Rom-Coms though I never seen a romantic comedy featuring two people who wanted to take over the government…

“Tommy?”

It’s true my child cage was rusty. I think the rust, coming from the ocean moisture and salt, really worried Hannah Walker about resolving the 39.99 promise to rebuild student parking. It’s little over the price of a pizza for rich folks who graduated CSUMB and became bookkeepers. Bookkeepers with babies. “You know in nature people don’t have to pay taxes. Have you ever thought of that?”

I don't know how we could use a bookkeeper in my new vision of a sustainable cult somewhere near… Greensborough? The land was cheap thanks to the active military base which had an artillary range and most of the land was situated on hillsides which had to be braced. I can’t even imagine who is going to pull a California Building Permit for land without water, next to the Boom Boom of tank commanders, absolutely no convenience stores, the ocean path being impenetrable and nearly 40 miles away as the crow flies. Practically a different climate but affordable. Greensborough…. Yum

“What?”

Hannah was cautious because my silver cult tongue had persuaded her into many things, including the writing of a check for forty dollars. She had to actually dust off her check book because everything is online these days.

I repeated, “There is no need for bookkeepers if you don’t have to pay taxes. Can you imagine? Living off the land like that?”

Truth be told, every sizable cult needs a bookkeeper, and the first ancient Sumerian cuneiform decoded was about the food required to feed scores of guests. Everyone gets pissy if they don’t have a meal.

I stared at the little barbarian.

We could just have great big bladder sacks in the compound, and everyone take a sip as they needed food energies. I mean it could ruin the sit-down-ceremony of a meal (Sack Dining), and our grandparents might have spent three or four hours each day just to bring the family together. I tried to stare at Hannah and figure out what part of the family she could be assigned…

She took the time to turn around and slam the door while I was still dreaming.

Ah. A mother.

Hanah Walker would be a great cult mother.

I was going to have to pack up the cage and make definite plans before I stopped by to see her next week.

The mother of my children always wants the government to take my earnings at the beginning of the month but as a Community Advocate, I can keep trying to sell her on options of equitability and inclusion.

Also, I am told that everyone has to love their cult leader.