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BACK HOME

I hate going back home, man. It's like rolling back in time to 1954 or something, some shit like that. I'm glad it's just for weddings, or funerals, or sometimes holidays. I wouldn't go back there unless I really had to.

Going to college was me breaking out of that shell, and once you're out the shell is never gonna be put back together again in one piece. Everybody knows it and sees it, "Hey, that egg is all fucked up," but nobody says a damn word about it. I'll never be able to fit in there again. Not like I ever did, really.

But that's where I'm from. So why am I so different? What made me want to go away, never be on the wrestling team or go bowling, smoke on the bleachers at 11 at night, play that one arcade game at Scaffidi's Corner Store, trading dirty jokes with that trailer mom behind the counter, overhearing her phone conversations with her drunk old man: some Vietnam Vet with one real leg and one metal one - well, they're both real but you know what I mean. And perched up on those stilts was a round, bitter, racist, angry son of a bitch.

That whole town seemed like that. Rhonda and her old man were like a snapshot of that entire town. One half was shitty, abusive, angry, and invalid. But also in charge, living in the past. Mostly guys. Almost completely guys. Maybe there were a few teachers, or I knew of maybe two ladies who worked in the prisons. They were hard.

The other half was scared to death of what they other might do, so they kept their mouth shut and did what they were told. If they had a backbone, it was usually beaten out of them. They had an outlet in the weekly get-togethers at church, the look behind their eyes saying, "Yeah, I'm scared as hell too. We're gonna be here for the rest of our lives. Or until that bastard is dead. But you're not alone."

So I had to choose sides, and I couldn't face either one. So was running away a choice? Or just a way out?