Where sea and sand meet under the sun is a city which appears to be paradise. After spending a week in San Diego, I was almost hypnotized by its radiance. Slowly a ray of glorious California sunshine peaked through my resort hotel drapes to reveal a simple truth. The realization took considerably longer than in most cities for me to discover, but once revealed it was undeniable.
The days were filled with the typical tourist locations and experiences. I toured the newly opened Midway Museum and marveled at this retired symbol of American military might. I attended a reception on a paddlewheel cruise in Mission Bay while watching fireworks light the sky over Sea World. On Sunday, I strolled Seaport Village and watched brightly colored kites fill the crystal blue sky as beautiful young blonds in shorts whirled by on rollerblades. I dined next to a flickering fireplace in La Jolla while enjoying an incredible gourmet restaurant perched high on a cliff as the sun set over the Pacific. In the evenings I would wander along the shore passing the multitude of roaring campfires which softly illuminated the sand as the sounds of laughter floated over the water. I spent evenings sitting in Old town with friends drinking some of the more than 600 types of Tequila festooned along the walls of a cantina as the scent of jasmine caressed my face. The entire time where was something lingering in the back of my mind, a small unsettled feeling that something was not right.
While in a restaurant bar waiting for a table I was surrounded by a group of attentive beautiful young women who seemed sincerely interested in what I was talking about. Now I definitely know something is not right! It has been more than twenty years since I’ve been able to turn the head of a beautiful young woman. Finally it came to me, this place is not real. This place is too perfect. I stumbled into a Disney stage set while some sort of play was unfolding. I listened closely to the background music for a clue. You can always tell a Disney property by the signature of the subtle background music which is carefully designed to enhance the visitor’s experience. No, I was not able to identify Mickey Mouse playing the piano. I concluded it was not a Disney property, but where was I?
I began to study the crowd in detail. I was surrounded by perfectly white bleached smiles framed by full collagen lips. The enhanced breasts and contoured butts allowed the haute couture custom-fitted clothing to contrast the radiant artificially tanned skin. I studied one of the girls in her Calvin Klein silk tank dress topped by a vintage floral print opera coat trying to find her balance in platform Manolo Blahnik shoes as she clutched a vintage Dior purse. What was most disturbing was that she was perfectly color coordinated with her girl friend who was wearing a Dolce and Gabbana beaded lace slip dress with a beaded Fendi baguette. Next to them was a man posing in an Armani Charcoal Pinstriped 3-Button Suit with a black silk shirt open around the neck revealing his bare waxed chest sculpted by Bowflex. Each individual looked and acted like they had just walked off a fashion runway in Paris.
New arrivals to the restaurant drove up in a waxed and detailed midnight black Mercedes or a silver Audi sporting $500 sunglasses and jet black spiked hair as if imitating a celebrity porcupine. Each observation reinforced the concept of corporate crafted perfection embraced to a level of cult status. As I delved deeper in conversation, this commercial worship permeated every aspect of social existence; from the USC or Stanford education, to the tofu bean sprout vegetarian meals, to the save the whales fundraisers, to the personal Pilates instructor focused on improving body awareness. Even the names were revealing, like Chase, Dylan, Cadence and Paige. The only reason to provide your child such a name is to manufacturer a celebrity. All great art requires contrast or contradiction to “break the rules” and provide tension. Contradiction in art invokes the question “why”? Suddenly I realized I was the element of contradiction in this beautiful seascape. Maybe that would explain why I was so intriguing to the young beautiful social elite. Maybe they had never met a person who could care less about who your hairdresser was or what country club you belonged to. A person who would scoff at the insanity that someone would pay $1600 for a pair of shoes.
I began to wonder if I was Truman Burbank, a vaguely unhappy businessman in the perfect little seaside town of Seahaven. In the 1998 film “The Truman Show”, Truman starts to think that he is being watched. Little does he knows that his entire life is secretly filmed, his town is a gigantic sound-stage, everyone he has ever known was an actor and that his every waking and sleeping second is broadcast around the world as a top-rated docu-soap. I immediately began to scan the room for hidden cameras. Any second Allen Funt would walk out from behind the bar saying “You’re on Candid Camera”.
Standing at the bar I was transported back to my great aunt’s house where we would visit as a kid. Everything was perfectly arranged, but nothing ever moved out of place in all the years we visited. I would sit fearful about touching anything on the over stuffed baroque sofa with each cushion preserved in a clear vinyl plastic cover. My legs would stick to the vinyl making any movement an exercise in pain as you ripped the skin from the back of your legs. My aunt could tell what objects you looked at three rooms away let alone what you touched. Every visit I would sit rigid as a board mortified that I might upset the arranged perfection of the room. San Diego was just an oversized replica of my aunt’s house. This replica was expanded to include people, plants and animals, sort of the new improved next generation aunt’s house.
Despite of all of the trappings of perfection and beauty you could detect a slight emptiness while staring into those crystal blue lazik corrected eyes. Vietnam veterans would return home with what we called “the thousand yard stare”. It was subtle but each of the commercial debutants had the same thousand yards stare. I couldn’t tell if the hopelessness and disappointment was the realization that someone in the crowd was wearing a more expensive pair of shoes or if it was darker. Could it just be the Xanax-Prozaic-Vallium pharmaceutical cocktail everyone eats like M&M’s to keep them from rushing madly into a manic suicidal depression and putting a shotgun to their forehead? It must be the perfection.
Life requires balance and contrast. Evil cannot exist without good, ying without yang. The dichotomy of polar opposites provides distinction and a multitude of shades of grey. “Variety is the Spice of Life”. Maybe being forced fed a continuous diet of sunshine, flowers, expensive sports cars and trendy friends become monotonous and debilitating. When the most diverse daily experience is choosing between the pan seared Ahi tuna or the poached Chilean seabass you could develop a problem. Plus as I found out, in San Diego you have many hours each day totally isolated in your personal sports car locked in traffic gridlock to ponder relative merits of seabass vs. tuna. “Houston we have a problem!”
I was fortunate to discover this realization late in my visit to San Diego. Otherwise I would have sat around frozen, like in my aunt’s house fearful about touching anything. While approaching the plane I began to relax enough to finally scratch my ass as I watched the rest of the overweight tourists dressed in their brand new Sea World sweatshirt climb onboard. Whew! Just like leaving my aunt’s house I thought that was nice but thank God its time to leave. I swear I didn’t touch or move anything while in San Diego. At least I think I didn’t?
