Chapter 24: Crack Whore Lewinsky

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 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.

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 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. 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 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.