3/365
Went for a walk with my rolling suitcase and backpack to meet my ride (to my next gig) at a Starbucks.
Just minding my own business, listening to a bit of Mike Doughty and a bit of The Roots (the greatest hip hop group ever to make music), walking through a residential neighborhood in my search for coffee.
It’s a mile or so away. I am ready to walk. Been looking forward to it since I went to bed last night (which was an awesome night.)
My ride, a fellow poet and USU alum named Darren, was to pick me up where I stayed last night. I knew I’d want to walk to coffee, so I got directions and planned to meet Darren there instead. What’s easier to find than Starbucks.
I had to bring all my stuff with me since I wouldn’t return to the house. I set the alarm on the house as instructed and ventured out an hour before Darren was to arrive.
I initially made a wrong turn out of the house: the road I hit was the LONG way, so I turned around and went to the next road. I heard a rider mower as I walked on. As it got louder, I saw a massive house with a ginormous backyard. A man in a white polo shirt was mowing this mega-yard beyond a huge gate. Parked in front of it was a yard crew truck. Professional.
I kept on down the street, marveling at the unused sidewalks, worn only by weather and the occasional walked dog. Turns out that it leads directly to a private street. That’s it. Signs posted at the entrance warning people and cars not to tresspass. Big fat faux stop sign decreeing it a private driveway. I have no idea what’s down the street or if Utah residents own shotguns, so I turned around, furious, as this is the only other way out to the main road. It seems one MUST take the LONG way to get anywhere.
Google Maps’s walking directions didn’t mention this… Fuck!
So as I head back to the house to sit out front and wait for Darren, I walk past the big house again, across the street from me. The house directly next to me on this sidewalk is just as big, with an equally gargantuan backyard. Only as I pass its long white fence, I can see the back porch and I hear a small, furry, yappy dog, staying a good distance from me but warning me that if I tresspass, it will annoy me to death.
NOTE: Another fucking yappy dog is barking at me just sitting out in front of the house.
As I nearly clear the Yappy House to my right, I see a woman step out and stand behind her stupid dog of which I could easily punt halfway across her yard.
Now, I know very well that I am not the most stylish dude. I wear hoodies and old tees and Vans and a wily beard. Sometime I feel as though I look like a fat-sensitive-trucker-lumberjack-Buddy-Holly-hobbit. The woman on her porch is out to see what the her dog’s fussing about, because she’ll be damned if someone would dare use an actual sidewalk to get somewhere. She must know everyone in town, and no one she knows walks on anything but maybe a treadmill or a vacation spot.
She watches me the whole way down the sidewalk, probably wondering what the hell I’m doing in her neighborhood. I can feel the souls of young skateboarders who used to call these people mom and dad, but had the unfortunate desire to move fast on wheels, making a racket on the street. That woman gave me a look that said she would leave me bleeding and dying on that sidewalk were it to ensure her mutt would live. She has no idea what it means to be free anymore. Maybe she did. Maybe she enjoyed sex and socializing and love, but her overly manicured lifestyle tells me that so many natural things have been sacrificed for her comfort. She is fenced in with her possessions. She won’t use that sidewalk. She has a yard for that, but just doesn’t have the time. Now her yappy canine squirrel has a place to run around so she doen’t have to.
I know I am readin into a lot of this, but it’s what my gut told me, so I am fine with it. I have gone from complete and utter frustration to sadness. Maybe she feels sad for me, or fear that I am going to rob them. Either way, she’s wrong about me. I wanted to smile at and for her, but her stance told me I was wrong to be on that sidewalk. I was wrong to dress so inappropriately. Her dog tells me I am a foreigner. She is wrong about me. That look on her face tells me so. The Roots tell me so. Mike Doughty tells me so.
———
Word to the nerd.
Originally published at Mike McGee Town. You can comment here or there.
This entry was written by , posted on 10 March, 2010 at 10:15 AM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged Travel & Touring, utah sucks. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
Did you accidentally walk all the way to my street?
Since you’re in Utah, I’ll assume your lady there is white. She is why people don’t like me!
Re: Did you accidentally walk all the way to my street?
That is, people who don’t know me. People who know me have their own reasons.
Well. you are in the home of the mor(m)ons. A beard, hoodies, being a stranger to the area, all that makes you “dangerous.” I grew up in SLC and was very glad to get out from behind the Zion Curtain. I don’t don’t about Google maps, but Yahoo maps give good directions until you are near your destination. Then they go crazy and send you off on a wild goose chase. So maybe it is the same with Google.
I do my darnedest not to make assumptions about people, because I really fucking hate how it feels when someone is assuming something about me.
This same thing (conceptually) has happened to me plenty of times in my home and abroad and it always drives me nuts.
I remember this one woman in a hat shop I visited in the UK who just peered at me and would only answer me in a tone of cold, sharp, snobby disinterest. I went in her *millinery* because I freaking love hats and there were some freaking amazing hats I could see through the shop window. With the most pleasant and polite demeanor I could muster up, I even attempted to make conversation, informing her of the fact that I used to work in a millinery. But without saying anything she made me feel like the place wasn’t the sort ‘tourists’ were supposed to walk right into.
Perhaps my mistake was taking a few cell phone pictures of the hats because they were so incredibly gorgeous in all different colors. When I realized the impression she was forming of me as a result, it made me feel shitty and depressed and I wanted her to understand I wasn’t just some dumb American who thinks I’m entitled or whatever.
I know I shouldn’t care about what some random snobby milliner I met in Bath thinks of me, but it gets to me.
There is a repressed, paranoid, terrified streak to much of the mainstream culture in Utah. It’s part of why I got out, and part of what I think Bradley refers to (above) as “the Zion Curtain”.
The good side of that, in my experience, was that a repressive culture spawns a hugely creative alternative arts community, that truly bonds as a survival response to the dominant culture. Some of the most powerful arts experiences I had was as a theater student at the University of Utah in the 80′s…