Living in L.A. is different than living in most of the rest of the country. A shitty little two bedroom house that would sell for a million flat, is like five hundred a month in rent anywhere else. It's a sham to keep the undesirables from living in the land of milk and honey. But that's the way the game is played, so unless your family had a place early on you play the game by the rigged rules that were never meant to help you win in the first place.
Now, I wasn't rich by California standards at all. But I found out that in Indiana, I was kind of in an area where I didn't need to worry about my finances for a while. I suddenly found out I had not only the place to decompress but also the time to do it slowly. The city of Indianapolis was just really starting to go through a grow spurt, where at least for a while, it was the fastest growing city in the nation even beating out Seattle.
The sports teams were doing well, sorta. Peyron Manning's first couple of years were a little rough, but Reggie Miller and the boys were knocking on the door of the promised land over at the new Conseco Fieldhouse that replaced Market Square Arena. Even the minor league baseball team, the Indians, had a shiney stadium downtown by the canal walk.
The arts were there, the museums and whatnot. They even had their own swingers club going on downtown. I didn't get the chance to check it out before the guy running the place had a massive heart attack and they auctioned off everything down to the mattresses. It was funny to see people taking pictures of the place.
My cousin has always been more of an older, brooding hen, kind of sibling to me rather then anything else. He told me one night to go check out Broad Ripple and the scene out there. It was amazing to see the different crowds, the Russians, the Ukrainians, all of it really. It just wasn't my scene anymore. Don't get me wrong, there was still a one night stand every so often, but I was just over the party scene and blacking out to numb the pain. I was pretty much over spending two to three hundred a weekend on the little blue pill too. When your unit develops a six-pack, you might be using it too much.