Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Generally, people in Tennessee are quite polite, friendly, but there’s also a subset of folks who are very racist, bigoted toward not just other races but also harbor antipathy towards people from outside the “South,” and even towards people from south Florida, anywhere below West Palm Beach. (Florida being the only state in Ole’ Dixie that becomes more “Northern” the farther south one ventures…)
These bitter Southern folks are generally the sorts who fly confederate flags.
They’re often people who call Blacks “niggers” and label anyone from outside the South as “yankees.”
Before going to Tennessee, I’d spent little time in the South, aside from upper Florida, and Georgia, and I hadn’t experienced any hostility, aside from the ginger waiter when I was a kid who’d ignored my parents and me. Other than that waiter, people I’d come across there, or people I met from there, were usually welcoming and outgoing. Sometimes surprisingly so, their smiling and small talk off-putting. Especially to me, coming from Miami, where folks can often be gruff.
I honestly had no idea how pissed off many in the South were, still, about the Civil War.
To someone from most anywhere else in America, the Civil War was an event we learned about in history class. History buffs could, I’m sure, be enthusiastic about it. But for most regular people, it’s simply an event in the far past, and we’re generally happy the South lost and that slavery ended as a result.
However, that’s not the attitude many in the South had. Upon simply opening my mouth and talking to people, I’d instantly see their demeanor shift from one of friendliness to one of coldness. All because of my accent, which is a bland American accent, with a slight tinge of New York.
(The hatred in the South of “yankees” and Northerners, to me, rendered Trump’s sweeping of the Red States wholly perplexing. For them to embrace a “damn yankee” wasn’t an event I could have envisioned.) ((It surprised me then, and still does now, that people in the South had such strong emotions, hatred of “yankees.” I wasn’t expecting that. But I must say that I have mixed feelings about the Civil War. Though it’s virtually impossible to separate it from slavery, because the South’s economy was based around it, to a
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent large extent, plus there was racist dialogue written in their constitution. But what if you look at it from the angle of a group of people, the Southern States, voting democratically, to leave, form their own union? What is wrong with that? Isn’t that democracy? Shouldn’t they have the right to leave? Lincoln was ready to allow them to maintain slavery if they didn’t secede. Many forget that. How different would history have been if that compromise had been reached? Maybe America wouldn’t have outlawed slavery until the 1960s, like Saudi Arabia!)) I had a tough time making friends there, in Tennessee. Not only because of my own weirdness and issues, but largely because I wasn’t able to fit in anywhere, being labeled a “yankee,” even though I was technically from the South. A part of that, I think, too, me not belonging, or feeling as if I didn’t belong, was because I’m Jewish.
There weren’t many Jews down there. Most people, upon meeting me, wouldn’t know what I was, and I’d be asked “Where are you from?” quite often. I was commonly mistaken for Italian, possibly due to my accent and hook nose. But once I’d share that I was Jewish, I’d often be invited to church services.
Sometimes random people, young and old, would approach me in public places, like school, a grocery store, a gas station, wherever, and invite me to church or a Christian rock show or a prayer meeting or spiritual gathering. I’d always politely decline.
Every once in a while, if I didn’t feel like talking to them, I’d pretend I didn’t speak English, say “Yo no hablo…” and walk away. Or, just for fun, I’d tell them, in a plainspoken, casual tone, that I worship Satan. Just to see their reaction. Most such reactions were a sudden look of bewilderment, raised eyebrows, or an awkward smirk followed by their quick departure…
Not long after I’d arrived, a worker at a BBQ joint, a tall, stocky, pot-bellied 50 or 60ish good ole’ boy with a crewcut and bushy eyebrows, told me, in an assuring voice, like he was trying to sell me a car, that “You know, Jesus Christ was the best friend we ever had.” He’d said this to me as he’d handed me my order of ribs, coleslaw, and cornbread.
I’m guessing he’d said this, thinking I was Jewish or Muslim or possibly gauging what spiritual beliefs I held. I’m unsure if he knew most Jews don’t eat pork or how he’d feel if he knew I was a Jew who ate pork.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent The BBQ there was so tasty that I didn’t want to risk being tossed from the store, so I wasn’t going to claim to be a Satan worshipper or disclose my true status as an agnostic. Though I wonder what he’d have said if I’d shared my opinion of Jesus being a totally rad hippie... Which I do think, for real…
Actually, I was stunned he’d even bring up dogma over spareribs. I simply smiled at him, nodded and walked to my table to chow down. I’d still go to that place, but felt slightly uncomfortable anytime I did, worried they’d try to kidnap me, throw me in a lake to Baptize me or force me into a shotgun church service…
People there, I discovered fast, were touchy about the Civil War, right wing politics, and Jesus. I learned to avoid those topics as much as possible.
Though once in one of my required English classes, we’d read a story with a spiritual theme, and I raised my hand during a class discussion. Not sure why I blurted this out, but, in an inquisitive tone, I asked the teacher: “Why is it that God is always referred to as ‘He?’ If there’s a God, couldn’t it be a woman, a
‘She?’”
The teacher, a bookish, elderly Southern gentleman, in his Colonel Sanders suit, who’d begin every class the same way, simply calling roll, in his monotone Southern drawl… “Miss Ball?” “Miss Ball?” … That old Southern gentleman stared at me like he’d seen an alien land from outer space. The room silenced.
Completely, save for a couple gasps. No one spoke for about 30 seconds. Then the teacher acted as if he hadn’t heard the question, moved on and read from the story’s next passage.
The rest of that term, the teacher and other students in the class did their damnedest to avoid eye contact with me. Needless to say I didn’t make any friends in that class. I found similarly cold shoulders, sneers, and averted eyes in most of my classes. Most of my classmates, and teachers, wanted nothing to do with me. Either ignoring me or looking at me like I was a pedophile.
I’d meet a couple cool folks, though, here and there. Eventually I fell in with a crew of hippies, who smoked weed, like me, and were chill and friendly. At first, at least.
A cute hippy chick, Amy, a saucy little brunette, with waist-length spirally hair and deep-set brown eyes, who I’d met at a bonfire near campus (where I went to find
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent drugs), needed a roommate for the house that she and another girl, plus a couple chubby hairy hippy guys were sharing.
I agreed to move in because the dorms at the school sucked. They were small, loud, and dirty cinderblock cells and I had to share a bathroom with ten dudes.
Ten young dudes sharing a bathroom. Picture that. The stink. The horror. One can only imagine the filth, bacteria, and fungi a black light could detect.
The day I went to move in, Amy’s ex-boyfriend, this skinny ponytail fuck, was to help me carry a few things, and the guy refused to speak with me, or even shake my hand.
I should have broken it off then, gone back to the dorms, I guess, but I’d already signed the lease.
It wasn’t an auspicious start.
At first the house was okay. It was a rundown, aging two-storey structure. But it sat directly across the street from campus and was big, had five bedrooms, a kitchen and spacious living room. The other girl living there, Samantha, and I got along well, with her being from upstate New York. She’d come for the same program as me but had dropped out, was working nights at a Nissan factory. She was cool and easygoing. I liked her.
But the guys upstairs I didn’t like. At all. They were these creepy, hairy fucks, with long beards, Viking-looking motherfuckers, and they were dirty as shit.
We started having cockroaches in the house (me and the two girls on the first floor finding them), and the roaches turned out to be crawling down from upstairs.
It got so bad we hired an exterminator and the landlord had me meet and escort the exterminator upstairs because the Vikings were out of town.
What we found upstairs was appalling. Absolute, utter slobbery, filth like I’d never seen. I don’t think they’d cleaned. Ever.
There was an ocean of garbage- mostly empty bottles, burger wrappers, plastic bags, and soiled tissues- the waves of garbage carpeting the floors. It looked like a landfill. And there was half-eaten food, dirty dishes on every table and counter.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent And there were bugs, tons and tons of bugs, mostly roaches, fucking colonies, fucking entire species of them, on the walls, crawling about on the floors, the roaches feeding and breeding in the omnipotent filth.
The exterminator was an old redneck with a scraggly gray goatee and mullet. He said he’d worked in the bug business for decades and grumbled the Vikings’ place was about the worst infestation he’d ever witnessed, about as bad as the worst government projects in the ghetto. (He’d used a certain epithet in describing the projects, too, which I won’t repeat.)
The landlord was so pissed, he evicted the Vikings. But the carnage they inflicted on that house didn’t end there.
We’d been supposed to share a gas bill. The gas was what heated our house, our water tank, fired up our stove, so without the gas, we not only had no heating, but no hot water or stove, either.
Well, we soon had no gas, no stove, no hot water, and it was all because the Vikings never bothered to pay any of the bills or bring them to us to split. Worse yet, they’d been leaving the windows open upstairs, which made the heating system pump more gas, driving up the bill further.
After they moved out, my landlord discovered the bill. He refused to pay it, saying it was both the Vikings’ fault and ours, and that we needed to pay it. Problem was, it was in the Vikings’ names, and they’d skipped town.
The bill was in the thousands, too, and we couldn’t afford to pay it...
Soon enough, the gas company shut us off. We offered to start a new account, but they wouldn’t let us. Their collection assholes claimed that as long as an outstanding bill that high remained at the address, the company wouldn’t provide service.
So, we were fucked. No heating. No ability to cook. No hot water. I resorted to taking showers at the school gym. My roommates were taking bucket showers (heating water in the microwave and washing themselves with it).
Already a difficult situation, we had to pay additional rental fees for the house.
(To make up for the Vikings’ absence. Since, as could be expected, it was difficult
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent to find anyone who’d move into a place without hot water, heating, and a functional kitchen.)
And with things being ugly as they were, we soon turned on each other.
Amy had trouble making her part of the rent. She, like Samantha, had failed out, dropped out of college and was working.
I’d been doing okay, financially, thanks to my newfound interest in computers and coding, which had led me to start an online business designing and promoting webpages. I’d worked with a couple local artists in the Nashville area, a couple rappers and a rock band, too, designing and maintaining webpages for them, helping sell their merch and promote shows.
Plus, I was doing my own tunes and selling my music online, mostly the experimental electronic noise and comedy rap I’d been dabbling with, in my bedroom, on my keyboard and computer. But it was lucrative. I’d cashed in on mp3.com in its heyday and earned thousands.
(Crack Whore Lewinsky. That was me!)
((Of course, in hindsight, I wish I’d spent that time building a webpage like YouTube or Facebook, which were both in development at the time. Instead, I was writing raps like “Flowin’ on the Mic like Vaginal Discharge”; “OJ with a Knife”; “I Fuck Dead People” and “Give You Fire Hose Enema.” Zuckerberg might be a billionaire, but he never busted such ill bars. Though I wonder what he’d sound like rapping… And I’d challenge him to a gangsta rap duel. EVEN TODAY…)) Back to Amy. While Amy wasn’t my girlfriend, she did show me her tits once, and I made out with her, but she wouldn’t let me fuck. And after we fooled around, she started mooching cash off me, expected me to pay her bills.
All the while she was still with her lame on/off again boyfriend who wouldn’t shake my hand. Plus seeing this other ponytail fuck, who looked like an older version of her boyfriend, and who, she told me, had such a big dick that she wouldn’t let him fuck her and so she would only blow him. The dude must have been around twenty years older than her too. I don’t know. He looked like a meth addict, had this dried up, scrunched up muppet face that was rather haggardly.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent I was really tiring of Amy bumming cash. She’d also be dirty around the house, too, and was bumming weed, bumming food. Generally being a mooch. She’d have large parties with tons of her dirty hippy friends, on nights when Samantha and me were working or when I’d have class and need to study.
Her friends, a few were nice, but most were weird, hostile towards me, because I was a “yankee” and all that. I always had a chilly vibe from most of them.
Samantha and I tired of Amy’s shit, her parties and parasitic ways, so we decided to kick her out.
(If only she’d been blowing me, Amy, like she said she had a fetish for, I might have been more tolerant. But having a girl juicing you for cash and her not even being your fuck buddy or girlfriend, that wasn’t acceptable, and believe me, I could understand if the situation was reversed, a girl not wanting to put up with a deadbeat loser dude, living on her couch. Especially one not even her boyfriend…) Samantha and I confronted Amy and she denied doing anything wrong, said that we had money, Samantha and me with good jobs, so we should “just pay for things.”
It was absurd she’d think that. And it certainly was unfair to us.
It pissed me off that she felt I should “just pay for things” when she wasn’t my relative, my girlfriend, or even a good friend. If anything, she was a shitty friend, mooching stuff, never doing much of anything for Samantha and me, never cooked, cleaned, never helped us to do shit.
So we told her she had to leave the house. She was kicked out. Samantha and I had discussed it. Agreed on it.
After we told her she had two weeks to go, she’d broken down crying, bitched us out in a quavering squawk and stormed off, probably to her ex-boyfriend’s trailer.
After her hissy fit, sitting there in that freezing cold house, with no hot water, I was pissed off, and my temper got the better of me. I made a mistake. I wrote her an angry letter, not insulting her, but simply stating what she’d done wrong, why she was kicked out, and wishing the best to her, though the tone was far from cordial.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent That didn’t go over well with her boyfriend, ponytail fuck one, the non-handshaker. After she’d plucked the letter from off her bedroom door, she’d driven over to the mobile home he shared with two other hicks and hand delivered it right to his ponytail ass, laid it bare in the hands that’d once refused my initial shake…
The next night, conveniently enough after I’d contracted a miserable case of the flu, and had a temperature of 102, the ponytail fuck came by the house, banging on my window, demanding to speak with me.
I wasn’t up for any fistfights, in my weakened state, and told him so, telling him, through my window, my voice hoarse, that I was ill, not looking to fight- at least right now.
In his slack-jawed Southern whine, he said he didn’t want to fight, only wanted to have a word with me, “as a man.”
I went out to the veranda to meet him, and he proceeded to accost me, accusing me of being a rich kid, whose parents are millionaires. Which, first of all, was not true. They weren’t. And second, I was paying my own way through college by working. (Not that any of that was his concern or had anything to do with his dirty iniquitous mooch of a girlfriend, either.) He himself had flunked out of college and was working a crappy factory job, living, with roommates, in a mobile home, so I can understand his jealousy, antipathy.
Here I was, having a touch of success with my music online, starting a mildly profitable business, and on the honor roll, too, rocking a near 4.0 GPA.
None of this made a failure like him any warmer to me. I’d made out, seen and fondled his girlfriend’s tits too. Which I suspect she told him, since she’d told him of the other ponytail fuck, the one with a bigger dick than him. (He wasn’t happy about that, either, and they’d had a horrible fight over it. Not sure if she went into details regarding the penis size issue...) On and on the ponytail went, on the front porch, screaming, pitching a fit, saying how he’d kill me, or the girl’s father, who, coincidentally, was also a ponytail fuck, would kill me. I told him I wasn’t afraid of him, and I wasn’t, and I wasn’t afraid of her redneck ponytail fuck dad, either, and the next day, her dad called me and threatened to kill me, though apologized later, once I explained the situation and
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent assured him I wished no harm to her, only wanted her out of the house, which was true.
The non-handshaker ponytail wasn’t quite as reasonable, though, and, as he took his leave, after his bitch fit, the fuck flicked a cigarette at me.
It didn’t hit me, only landed near me, but it was crossing the line. At that point, even in a febrile state, I was ready to start swinging on him. Fortunately, his friend, a redneck who’d always worn low hanging, ass crack showing pants, and no shirt, even in winter, broke it up, got between us.
I thought he’d be a kind peacemaker, but he too was hostile and said that if I talked back, it would only make things worse and that Amy, in his words, was stupid, so I should give her time to leave.
It took me aback that he’d describe his friend as stupid, but he’d previously shared a house with her, from which I found out later they’d been evicted from, for similar, not paying bill type shenanigans, so he probably knew her better than me.
He did say one thing that made sense. He said that if you write angry letters like that, you’ll get irate motherfuckers coming to your house freaking out. True redneck wisdom.
He was right about that.
I shouldn’t have written that letter. Kicking her out was enough. Her ponytail fuck boyfriend might have done the same thing, regardless, though, and kicking her out was certainly the right course of action, that was for sure...
It sort of made me happy too, to piss them off so much that he came and told me to my face how he felt about me. How he hated my music. The stuff he called
“the bullshit I did on my keyboard.” The music that his girlfriend liked and kept in her car, shared with her friends. (Although after I kicked her out, she probably threw away my CD!)
I aver that anger, like alcohol, is a tremendous truth serum. Maybe the most effective of all. If you really want to know how someone feels about you, anger them, then see what he/she says.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent It was fortuitous in more ways than one that Amy went on her merry way. I discovered later, from a mutual friend, that she’d contracted lice, given it to everyone, the whole redneck mafia, at her previous house.
Whereas the guys shaved their heads, and the ladies used lice-killing shampoo, Amy had to be forced into using the lice-killing shampoo, because she didn’t want to “kill” the lice. She believed that they, the lice, had a right to live too. It wasn’t until her roommates threatened to kick her out that she begrudgingly used the shampoo.
I shaved my head after hearing that, just in case.
That caused me to flashback and be glad I never fucked her, considering my problems with impulsivity, and fucking without condoms. Like, what if I’d fucked her that night we fooled around? How if I came inside her, like I did Jessica, and got her pregnant, I’d be a father, with a little curly-haired hippy or two running around… If she’d be so adamant about her lice’s lives, imagine how she’d feel about a pregnancy…
I had a “friend suggestion” for her on Facebook, many years later, and saw she’d blown up in size, looked like a water buffalo, probably weighed twice what she did in college. Her preferred diet of BBQ and deep-fried Southern food not meshing well with an inevitable age-related decline in metabolism.
Like others I had unfortunate endings with, I don’t hold ill will towards her. I definitely learned from that shitty experience, and I hope she did too. We were both young and stupid. And when you’re young and stupid, you’re young and stupid…
I was elated after she finally left, though. I wouldn’t have to worry about her lice or her bullshit or her crazy, violent redneck hippy mafia. The slovenly Vikings and their cockroaches were gone too. But we still didn’t have hot water or heating or a working stove. That certainly sucked.
Not long after Amy’s departure the house was sold at auction after our landlord had a heart attack, died, and his widow decided to liquidate his properties.
The auction for the house was held in our backyard, on a sunny, crisp and cool Saturday morning. An authentic American style auction judge, a septuagenarian
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent auctioneer in a cowboy hat, boots with spurs, and a leather vest stood behind a wooden podium, speaking lightning fast, doing the auction chant, cattle rattle, cry of “buh-dee-buh-dee-ahh-one-fifty-buh-dee-buh-dee-ahh-,“ eliciting bids from a crowd of a dozen or so genteel, old Southa’nah one percenters who stood placidly in a semi-circle around him.
(I bet probably every single person there had a grandfather who’d owned slaves…)
The place got sold, and the new management jacked the rent up, through the roof. It’d already been difficult enough for Samantha and me to handle, so I found an apartment nearby and split.
(The plus side of my landlord’s dying and the place’s ensuing sale was that our existing lease was terminated. The new ownership group had demanded we either sign a new lease or leave. I left.) Samantha stayed slightly longer, having trouble finding a new place. She signed a short-term lease and was forced by the new management to pay for damages that the Vikings, me, and Amy and her hippy friends caused. It was usual wear and tear, but the new management was eager to burden costs on someone else.
She’d not even told me about it. I’d found out by chance when I’d bumped into her at the grocery store near campus, and, staring at the white floor in the produce section, she’d looked and sounded pissed off, didn’t make any eye contact as she meekly informed me of the bill, which was for three hundred bucks or so, I think.
I offered to help cover part of the bill, to Samantha, because I didn’t think it was fair that she pay it all. I told her to give me a call or email. I take a look at it. We’d work it out. But she never did cal. Or email. I guess she was too nice. But it was probably that she was too non-confrontational.
I was walking by the house, a week or two later, and saw her with one of her boyfriends, stepping into her car. I stopped and said hello, asked her about the bill. Her boyfriend, a tall lanky dark-skinned black dude with a shaved head, baggy clothes, and gold hoop earrings, was looking at me, fucking pissed off, like he wanted to kill me.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Looking at Samantha’s rosy cheeks, her wavy blond hair and blue eyes, her frumpy figure, it dawned on me that she looked similar to Jessica. At least in that lighting. At least in my eyes, then, to me, her angry face was similar to that of Jessica’s.
I’d always thought Samantha was sort of cute, but she’d had a set of boyfriends, had never been single, and nothing ever transpired between us like things did with Amy. Samantha had never been around the house much at all, really, since she worked long hours. So I didn’t know her well. I hadn’t talked too much with her. She was shy, quiet, and private.
The only thing memorable I recall her saying was once we’d gone to Walmart together and the topic of Jesus freaks arose and she’d told me, in the car, in a hushed voice, like she was confessing to a crime, that she didn’t believe in God and that she was afraid to talk about that in Tennessee because people got aggravated so easily at atheists.
Other than that, she was an enigma. Spent most of her time sleeping in her room or out with boyfriends when she wasn’t working. I’m not sure why she’d stayed in Tennessee and never asked…
Back to when I’d run into Samantha by the house. I asked Samantha about the bill and she hung her head to the ground and mumbled that she’d paid it. I asked why she’d not gotten in touch with me. She didn’t respond. Kept her blue eyes fixed to the less conversational ground. She was grumpy, obviously upset. I was on my way to a class, in a rush, but I told her to call me, that I’d help her. And I meant it.
But again, she never called, and she didn’t answer a couple of my calls or reply to my emails.
After not hearing from her, I went by the house, a couple weeks later, but she’d moved out. I never saw her again. I think she did leave Tennessee, or at least left the area, because I tried to phone her one last time and found that her number was disconnected.