Attack of the Flakes
---- a Larchmonter confronts life
on the Left Coast, second in a series
by Eve Eisenberg
 (September
12, 2002) I have met a lot of interesting people since
moving to California. Some of them have even become
good friends. During the past few years, I’ve
known documentary film producer/directors, cinematographers
and editors who work for ten times less than they are
worth just to work on what they love; a Forest Service
park ranger who lives 9 months of every year alone in
a tiny trailer in the middle of a national park; a professional
potter who, at the age of 60, continues to hire out
as an intern on documentary film projects; the host
of a local radio talk show who is so obsessed with recycling
that she goes next door to her neighbors’ houses
and rummages through their trash to make sure they’re
in compliance; a man whose only job in life is to create
the artwork and lighting at raves all over the Bay Area;
and many more people who don’t fit into such neat,
ordinary little categories.
I have come to one conclusion about these people,
and that is that California is the only place where
they could possibly thrive and find nearly universal
acceptance. Well, all right, maybe there are small parts
of Manhattan or Mars where these people might also fit
in, but for the most part I think they are a California
phenomenon. Something about this state encourages people
to just go with the strange ideas in their heads, to
just be as they want to be, regardless of what the dominant
society might consider ‘normal.’
I have often been impressed by these unique people
who have obviously followed their hearts and done whatever
it is they most wanted to do in life, making their own
paths where there were none before. I hope that I have
absorbed some of their trailblazing spirit. But the
other side of this coin are the trailblazer groupies.
These are people who lack much of the originality and
courage of the true freaks, people who read the books
written by the actual adventurers and then attempt to
live by what are often ridiculous or even self-damaging
rules.
I want to tell you about a friend of mine—we’ll
call her Leslie. Leslie is ten years older than I am
at 35, and yet in terms of maturity I sometimes feel
like I’m her mother. Leslie has an eight-year-old
daughter she is raising by herself, though she and her
child are being supported, completely, by the father
of the child, who has not been romantically involved
with Leslie since before the baby was born. Leslie leads
a strangely charmed existence in which she receives
a new luxury car every few years, her only job is to
manage the small 8-unit apartment complex in which she
lives (owned by the parents of the father of her child),
and she can go to yoga and classes at a local community
college on a semi-regular basis. Most of Leslie’s
life revolves around strange new projects she thinks
up and her occasional dates with men she finds fascinating,
but whom I almost always find repugnant or downright
creepy.
Leslie is one of these California oddities I mentioned
before, one of these people who latches onto the latest
psychobabble manual written by a non-traditional philosopher
(such as a woman who spent a year living in a tree)
and seems to absorb only the silliest principles. Leslie
is not alone. I’m afraid I have, in my cruel New
York way, dubbed her kind The Flakes.
You might see a Flake wandering around on the street
trying to hand out angel-and-a-heart keychains to total
strangers, saying, “It’s all about love.
It really is all about love.”
You might find a Flake going to Starbucks every morning
to get a grande mocha frap with extra whip double-blended,
despite having stated the day before that she intends
to boycott Starbucks because of the whole Fair Trade
Coffee scandal.
You will definitely find a Flake in any location where
yoga classes are held. Non-Flakes also do yoga, of course,
but a California Flake is required to have studied so
much yoga that she was two classes away from being proficient
enough to teach it, and that’s when she just got
tired of it and quit, and instead went to Nepal for
three months while leaving her then-6-year-old daughter
with the child’s paternal grandparents.
A common characteristic of California Flakes is their
inability to see even the simplest of projects through
to the end. Commonly these people are high school dropouts,
and just as commonly they go back and finish their education
only much later in life. Leslie has had difficulty finishing
her work at the community college because of a string
of boyfriends, who consume so much of her time that
she barely manages to buy and cook food for herself
and her daughter.
During these tumultuous boyfriend ‘situations,’
it is I, the unfortunate friend of the Flake, who must
listen for hours on the telephone to detailed descriptions
of the boyfriend’s physical, intellectual, and
spiritual characteristics. I am then expected to deduce
whether or not this man will choose to fall in love
with the Flake, and how soon that will be happening.
Eventually, the inevitable happens. The Larchmonter,
a.k.a The Realist, a.k.a me, eventually has to confront
the Flake, if only to gain a few hours of peace and
solitude. The Realist gingerly explains to the Flake
that if he won’t accept calls at home, and if
he has a wedding-band-shaped tan on his hand, that it
doesn’t matter if he’s a police officer
or not—the guy is married, so stop dating him
already.
There is no way to win in such situations. This is because
the chief characteristic of the true California-bred
Flake is that the Flake lives in her own ‘bubble
reality.’ Within this bubble the only truth is
that which the Flake has fabricated to suit her emotional
needs. Anything that conflicts with the reality inside
the bubble is contested vehemently. You cannot win an
argument with a Flake.
The one great thing about the Flake is that, if you
are her friend, you are almost guaranteed at least one
or two adventures every few months. That’s because
the Flake will inevitably go off on some kind of new
jag, a new desire to do something outlandish or extreme,
and she needs your help to pull this off. So you might
end up driving to Berkeley in the middle of the night
to hear a new band that will only play outdoors, naked,
under a full moon. Or you end up in a bookstore, jockeying
for position to get the signature of the hottest new
Non-Traditional Philosopher on your own copy of the
newest How To Be A Flake manual. So there are some compensations.
My advice about how to deal with Flakes is just to
set limits. Don’t get pulled too deeply into their
little bubbles, because their reality cannot possibly
accommodate yours. Simply accept that you and the Flake
exist in different dimensions, and limit your FlakeWorld
exposure to occasional visits.
-- A Larchmonter confronts life on
the Left Coast, a series
Eve Eisenberg grew up in Larchmont and moved to California
after college.
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