Chapter 1 - The Valley, California

Our drifter graduated high school in 2004. Too fat for military, too cool for college. His friends were gone. He saw images of them carousing around faraway college towns on Facebook and Myspace. He still logged in everyday. They wanted to study abroad, get high and ‘chill’ on weekdays. They wanted ‘random play’ – and they got it. He needed new pictures on his Facebook. He needed to 'join a network'. School had never been his 'thing’, though. He wasn't a bully, or a class clown. His Facebook ‘favorite books’ said ‘don’t read much’. His favorite show was ‘UFC’. By the end of the summer after high school he had mastered Gran Turismo 3. He had numerous thousand horsepower cars ‘in his garage’. But he had no one to play with, and his Mom hadn't bought a Costco Frito-Lay sampler box in weeks. Only corn chips were left. No more Barbecue Lays. No more Cheetos. Not three months into the real world our drifter saw rock bottom rising towards him fast.

He had been job hunting for months, skimming Craigslist. Recently he found himself browsing the ‘general labor’ section more and more often. Maybe he would find some diamond in the rough ‘office job’. He daydreamed about going to Subway on his lunch break. Shirt tucked in. Synthetic Rockports stiff on the pedals. ‘Ryan from The Office’, he thought. He would see some 05 girl who would half recognize him. He would buy a ‘footlong meatball marinara’ - pre-$5 footlong. She would watch him intently. He was mature now - extra pepperincinis. He paid cash, wallet fat from twenty-four $9.50 hours the week before. They would talk. It didn't start, it was just happening. She knew his name, he knew hers, but he played cool, indifferent. In his Honda Accord coupe in the parking lot they would have sex, their faces pasted on a 30 second video he had watched that morning. But it was a dream. The jobs never called back and he fell deeper into suburban boredom.