Thoughts from Flyover Country

How droll.

           My Chicago friends are losing their shit.

            Eric Barry, a writer and comedian no one heard of before Tuesday, wrote an article on Huffington Post that has since gone viral. It’s called Goodbye, Chicago: What It’s Like To Live In A City You Tried To But Couldn’t Love. If you think the title sounds pretentious, fear not: The substance of the article is so much worse. Barry, a native Californian, is snobby and self-righteous as he tears down everything from Chicago’s sports culture to its food, “subtly” jabbing at Chicago’s issues with economical inequality and race all while proclaiming his own privilege as wealthy and white. Every back-handed compliment is followed by a loud and distinct but. Any legitimate complaints he has about the city drown in his arrogant and, dare I use a conservative buzzword here, elitist tone. It’s no wonder that my Chicago friends—and the rest of the city—have greeted Barry’s condescending farewell with a collective middle finger.

            I have never lived in Chicago, but reading that article struck a nerve in me. It’s an old nerve, one that tingles every time a friend moves to the east or west coast and acts like they’d relocated to a different planet. It tingles every time someone proclaims my area “flyover country” or asks me “why on earth” I live in Cleveland. It tingles whenever a friend on the coast tells me that I “belong in San Francisco/LA/New York City” and tries to persuade me to move there.

            I have lived in Ohio my entire life, and not entirely by choice. I attempted and failed to move to Chicago when I dropped out of college (rental agencies there all but laughed me and my shitty credit score out of the city.) Every year around February, when I’ve been snowed into house arrest, I find myself taking stupid internet quizzes like “What California City Do You Belong In?” and checking out houses on the coast on Zillow. I dream of sunny weather and a citrus garden, of places where tattoos and coloured hair and queerness are commonplace and protected (and employable.) The era of Trump has made this desire much stronger, and made Ohio much more frightening. Even though Cleveland is a blue speck in the red sea of Ohio, houses and storefronts on every block are spattered with the leering red face of Chief Wahoo, and countless idiots dress themselves as parodies of Native culture to support the racist icon. Even in Lakewood, the bluest speck of the blue speck in the red sea of Ohio, I heard an argument in my apartment parking lot that ended with a white man screaming, “Go back to your own country, n*****!” I have to endure a Don’t Tread on Me flag waving proudly in a yard on my street, and one of my neighbors’ cars sports a Paul Ryan for President bumper sticker. Paul Ryan. I shit you not.

            I’m not naïve. I know that there are idiots, racists, bigots, and far-right conservatives in every city in the country. I don’t think LA and New York City are sparkling liberal utopias free of racial slurs and backward political opinions. But it is no secret that east and west coast liberals enjoy life as the majority group of their cities, with liberal politicians pushing progressive policies. In Ohio, I’ve always been in the ideological minority, and, especially in the era of Trump, being that anomaly in a largely traditional, conservative culture is more draining than I like to admit.

            However, if I’m being honest with myself, I know that I don’t belong in a big city. Crowds (dance clubs aside) and excessive traffic frighten me. The thought of carrying groceries onto public transit fills me with dread. The fast pace and general unfriendliness of extremely urban areas stresses me out to no end. I’m a progressive little freak, but a city-dweller, not so much. Often my restless winter Google searches consist of “Liberal small towns in California” or “Liberal areas outside of LA/San Francisco/etc.” I like the amenities of cities, but I like knowing my neighbors and smiling at passersby and my barista knowing my order and my first name more. I won’t go so far as to say I’m a small town girl (shut up, Journey,) but I don’t hold any illusions that the anonymity and coldness of big cities wouldn't drain the life out of me. In theory, Lakewood is perfect for me and my husband: A progressive little city with quirky restaurants and cafes that’s a ten-minute drive to a bigger city with a thriving arts scene and countless festivals, concerts, and other activities throughout the year.

            But…

            Perhaps Eric Barry’s condescending criticism about Chicago’s culture being “too Midwest” stuck a nerve because of the truth in it. The east and west coasts are the undeniable cultural hubs of our entire country. Our music, our films and TV shows, even our generational lexicon originate from one coast or the other more often than not, and that influence bleeds into the rest of the country—with a delay. And that delay is what has always dissatisfied me about living where I do.

            I bristle a little even seeing that written down. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been slow to emotionally mature my entire life, or maybe it’s because of my ridiculous ego when it comes to my intellect, but the idea of being behind triggers in me a deep-rooted and frantic insecurity. It irks me to a pathetic degree. I remember how upset I was when I finally became aware of phrases like echo chamber and side hustle, only to find think pieces about them online that were written years ago. Despite the fact that the internet and television broadcast our culture across the nation at the same time, there is still, somehow, a 2-5 year cultural gap between the coasts and the rest of the country. And it drives me nuts.

            Ladies and gentlemen, the aesthetic paragraph break.

            It is this insecurity of falling behind that ultimately drives my desire to move to California, or sometimes Oregon or Washington. I don’t like the idea that I’m living in a cultural past; that I, my family, and my future spawn must endure prejudices, pressures, and policies that faded long ago in other parts of the nation. I don’t like how beliefs I hold are strange or radical in Ohio but damn near mundane in NYC. But honestly, what I really don’t like is the arrogance with which I and others like me are treated by those living in our country’s cultural hubs. Being talked down to by people who are no smarter than I am (better informed at best) sparks the temper I’ve spent my life trying to tamp down. In those moments I truly understand the resentment that many rural conservatives have for the “coastal elites” and I even feel a bit defensive about the state in which I was raised. Blind pride repels me—whether it’s sports, patriotism, or state/city/neighborhood “pride,” it all smacks of tribalism and a willful ignorance akin to religious faith. But when a college friend flies home from their 4k studio in San Francisco and laments Cleveland’s lack of culture, night life, or, hell, I don’t know, organic craft beers, I definitely feel the urge to squeeze my eyes shut and scream “CLEVELAND ROCKS!” like a belligerent Browns fan after yet another defeat. I feel that way because it feels like my entire lifestyle is being judged as antiquated, or lacking, or culturally bereft. And if I like this city, I like my life, then oh, sweetheart, I just don’t know because I haven’t lived in the paradise that is: The Coast. And I know that my friends mean well, but it feels all the more insulting when they try to tell me that I don’t belong in Ohio. Like I’m some sort of Midwestern Eliza Doolittle who just needs to be dressed up and shown the ways of high society to meet my True Potential.

Another aesthetic paragraph break. Mama’s on a roll.

Again, all of this stings because it jabs at more than one of my personal insecurities. The fear of being somehow behind, as mentioned, but also my restlessness. I’m one of those assholes who always has a new scheme cooking up in my head, a scheme that’s going to make me money, keep my GAD in check, improve my life, take me to the “next level.” There’s always some “next level” that I can reach, whether it’s through a nutritional shift, a new class or hobby, hyper-scheduling, whatever. There’s always something I can be doing to make me “more” than what I am now, to reach my True Potential and become the Big Important Success that everyone thought I was going to be when I was young. Obviously, none of that is true. Hyper-scheduling makes me more productive, nutritional shifts make me healthier, but they don’t end up being a “next level.” And the sad truth is that once you hit a certain age, your chances for reaching “next levels” and finding your True Potential begins to slow. And as I stand on the precipice of that time in human life when “what I will be” begins to be replaced by “where I ended up,” the idea that the gap between where I am and where I want to be is simply a matter of geography has the potential to drive someone like me completely mad.

Why? Because we can’t all move to San Francisco or New York City or Portland. Finances, family, career paths, and so much more are roadblocks that too many of us cannot overcome. In my current financial situation, I can’t even splurge on an anniversary gift for my husband, let alone pack up, put down an apartment deposit, and move across the country to a city that’s 80% more expensive to live in than where I am now. Some of us don’t have the skills to find work that pays enough for us to even live in one of those big beautiful cities (yay, crippling debt for a degree in Creative Writing.) For every “packed up everything I owned into a truck and just went” success story, there are a few hundred stories where that ended in having to return home after sleeping in their car for a few months.

All of this is at the core of my defensiveness of Cleveland and the Midwest in general. We progressives who can’t or won’t move to the all-important coasts of the country aren’t behind by choice. And many of us have fought tooth and nail to make where we live now more progressive, safer, better. And when some douche nozzle like Eric Barry flutters in from his privileged little perch and shits on our culture with zero understanding of the fact that our cities had to do double the work to get where we are, then yeah, some of us will have a hard time resisting the urge to put a boot to his ass.

So…yeah. Sorry for falling off the rails more than once here. It’s been a while since I blogged. Let me get back into the swing of things, kids.