California dreaming.

California dreaming.

I just had this weird dream where I was in California visiting my parents (even though my mom lives here and my dad is dead) and I ran into an old friend of mine, Regina. Regina worked with me at Kamehachi and has since sort of disappeared -- some folks think she did indeed move back home to California, others think she still lives here but for various reasons wanted to drop off the radar of certain folks -- and every once in a while I wonder how she's doing.

This all sort of reminded me of what it was like working in bars and restaurants for so many years, and how intense interpersonal relationships became in that environment. When you're working in the service industry there is a very us vs. them attitude, and since you tend to work with a pretty tight core group of people, you tend to grow very close to each other. I think it's even fair to say that you end up falling a little bit in love with them. I imagine it's a bit like a movie set or a theater troupe in that men become brother, women become sisters, and while boys and girls don't often cross the line into physical relationships the emotional bond is often there.

A couple lines ago I was going to writer that in any job you tend to fall a little in love with your co-workers, but I thought about it and that's just not true in most office jobs. I thought about it a bit and while I certainly have a fondness for almost everyone I have worked with in the past, the feelings I had for people at all th restaurants and bars I've worked at were much stronger. That would explain why when I encounter some of these folks years later, there's almost always that weird distance that we usually attribute to ex-lovers who we've been super-intimate with and now have to find a way to navigate around that forever roped off area we used to have total access to. It makes for bittersweet encounters; we want to still be BFFs, but we just can't go back.

Sometimes I miss the intensity of the service industry, the feeling of complete and total solidarity with your adopted family; but then, sometimes, I remember the stress, and the anger e all felt, and the survivalist tendencies we displayed out of necessity, and I'm happy I sit behind a computer and get paid for writing instead of having to smile at some fake-tan trophy wife and her brutish but rich husband.

Anyway, I had a weird dream about Regina last night.