Finding a Place to Live

Some disappearees are able to live like turtles, carrying their lives with them in their campers like the fly-fishing gentleman we met earlier. But if you aren't planning to live on the move like a nomad, going into the back country can be a dangerous proposition.

Small-town U.S.A. is bad news for a recent disappearee. The locals in small communities have an overwhelming interest in "outsiders" and derive their principal entertainment from speculating endlessly about everyone in sight. A stranger is something to notice in such towns. Anything foreign about you will immediately be held up to public scrutiny. This is hardly a desireable environment for a person with a young identity to age.

A fresh disappearee should probably look for a more permissive town. By that, I mean a city where the authorities are not preoccupied with enforcing a host of ridiculous nuisance laws. San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area seem to be very attractive to identity changers for precisely this reason. Not only are people less inclined to pry into your private life in such places, but it can be very enjoyable to live in a city where "anything goes."

A large city is better than a small one for a number of other reasons. A stranger won't stand out much in a city of millions. Public transportation is usually well established in large cities, which is helpful to those who have disappeared without a lot of money. There are more job opportunities of a greater variety in a large city. And there are also more resources of the type an identity changer is likely to need: mail drops, secretarial services, community colleges, etc.

Many disappearees make a checklist of the things they regard as necessary when picking a town in which to begin a new life, and this strikes me as a good idea. It would obviously be stupid for a literate man, a man who enjoys intelligent conversation and is used to elaborate library facilities, to attempt to exist in Mott, North Dakota or Mount Shasta City, California. Similarly, an individual really hooked on huntin' and fishin' and the outdoor life would be a fool to head for Washington, D.C.

Here's an interesting note about the residences that some disappearees choose. Several of my contacts specifically mentioned that they always wanted a second exit in any place they lived. One such person kept a climbing rope in his bedroom with one end tied to the bedstead. He explained this arrangement to his nosy apartment manager by telling her that he was pathologically afraid of fire because his home had burned down when he was a small child.

FINDING WORK

With five notable exceptions, nearly everyone in our society works at a job of some kind and is automatically suspected of all kinds of dark and nefarious deeds if he doesn't work. The exempt classifications: The very rich, who obviously don't need to bother working, the very poor, who also don't need to work because the Welfare State takes care of them. Then housewives, students and retirees. Everyone else in the U.S. and Canada is expected to work or at least have the appearance of working.

I say "the appearance of working" because even if a lamster doesn't need to work for wages he should cultivate regular workman-like habits. He should leave his lodgings at the same time every day, whether he spends his time at the library or at the beach, and return home at the same time each evening. The disappearee should attempt to structure his life so as to call as little attention to himself as possible. There are just too many people who make it their business to know other people's business, especially the female who is shut up in her house all day in a residential neighborhood with too much time on her hands and too little to occupy her mind.

Most disappearees will not have the option of staying unemployed, at least not for long. When their savings run out, which could be as soon as fifteen minutes after they walk into their new life, they'll need to get a job. Trying to collect welfare on a freshly manufactured identity is a big mistake because of all the government paperwork involved and the scrutiny of public servants that results. For the typical disappearee, the question is not whether to work, but what work to do and how to get it.

There are many good reasons for working besides the need for income. One is the need to establish credit. The ability to use credit is almost a requirement for membership in our society, and people who grant credit are more impressed with a job than anything else--a steady job, that is. Any job. For oddly enough, people who grant credit are much more favorably inclined toward a laborer who makes $10,000 a year than to a writer, artist or door-to-door salesman who makes four or five times that. The writer, artist, etc. doesn't fit their pattern, and doesn't march to the sound of a time clock.

Another reason for working is that it is about the best place to make personal contacts. Loneliness is a severe problem for many identity changers, and not a small number of them have crawled back to their old lives for precisely this reason. But most jobs bring with them all sorts of social activities, and a lamster who takes part in these will have no more problems with loneliness.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 811