How I long to move to a real city
by Phineas A. Richmond
You know something? I’m sick of living in this tiny little shit-kicker town. There’s so little for me here! How I long to go someplace like Los Angeles or New York, a REAL city.
Now, there are those of you who probably can’t understand why I’d want to move someplace large. Let me tell you something, Bubba; you live in a small town all your life, you start wondering what the grass is really like on the other side of the fence. All I want right now is to live in a sprawling metropolis, teeming with unsavory individuals. I’m tired of having to pay cheap rent; what a relief it would be to set aside two weeks’ pay just to afford a small, dingy rat-trap of a studio apartment from a fat, cranky landlady who shows up twice a month, drunk and surly, demanding roughly three times what I actually owe her. A nice, cramped hole-in-the-wall, where I could lie back at night and be lulled to sleep by the invisible skittering of cockroaches roughly the size of my head. Beautiful.
And don’t even get me started on this whole sense-of-community bullshit; nearly every face I see around here is a familiar, supportive one. These are the people I’ve grown up around, who’ve watched me grow up, who are always there to help out when I’m in a jam. Fuck ‘em! I want to be in a place where nobody would so much as bat an eye if I were to be robbed and strangled on the sidewalk, in broad daylight. Where nobody knows me, or wants to for that matter, and where people will respond to my attempts to start a conversation by calling the police.
Lord, if you really love me, you’ll deliver me from this clean, friendly paradise and lead me to a filthy, rat-infested dung-hole, where I can enjoy the fresh scent of open manholes while walking down the street on my way to work as a faceless drone in a sea of cubicles. Someplace where I can spend two hours buried in traffic while trying to get somewhere that’s roughly 10 miles away. A place, O Lord, where the homeless are numerous and unafraid to follow you for block after block, demanding your money despite your repeated insistence that you can’t help them. And where those same homeless scuttle into dark alleys in mortal terror for their lives as night falls and the true monsters, freaks and predators emerge to stalk the streets.
All I want is to be able to wake up at 3 a.m. to screams, sirens and the occasional gunshot rising up from the streets below my window, and to be able to say, “What is that man doing standing at the foot of my bed, and why does he have a knife?” Really, is that so much to ask?
I’ll take the “Green Acres” lifestyle any day.
by Ned Haversham
Day after day after fucking day, it’s the same old thing; get up and go to work in the concrete jungle. Well, I’m here to tell you that I’ve had enough of it. I’m sick and tired of living in Manhattan, and I think it’s time for a change. I’m thinking someplace small and bucolic, someplace where everybody knows your name and won’t hesitate to adjoin it to the most horrible phrases imaginable in their gossip about “that commanist hom’sexshul prevert from the city.”
To perdition with this so-called mecca of art, science and culture! I’ve had enough of nightclubs and 24-hour Chinese restaurants. I yearn for a place where nothing is open after 8 p.m. except for the Wal-Mart two towns over and a dingy bar frequented by truckers.
A place where the police protection is minimal, the local library is the size of a modest living room, and people still believe in witchcraft. A place where I can look out the window of my doublewide and witness scenes of crushing poverty straight out of a Sally Struthers commercial. Where I can have my illusions of peace and quiet shattered by the enormous, flabby child-factory next door threatening her squadron of offspring with cigarette burns if they don’t shut the hell up “so’s I kin watch Jer’ Springer on the tee-vee.”
I don’t know; maybe I sound a bit naïve to those of you who’ve had the privilege of growing up in small towns. But all I want out of life right now is to hear the sweet strains of Hank Williams, Sr. ebbing gently from the speakers of a Ford truck. A Ford truck driven by three identical brothers with names like Clem, Zeke and Burris, who have thrown me into the back and are taking me out to the woods, where they will rape me with their callused, haystack-lifting hands before beating me to a pulp and blaming the whole thing on aliens. Or Bigfoot, perhaps.
And let’s face it, my kids don’t deserve the first-rate education they’re getting at that elite private school I’ve got them enrolled in. No, I think they’d do far better at some public school where the children are either fueled by a fervent desire to someday play for the Green Bay Packers, or a seething resentment of everything possessing any number of legs. When my little Eustace comes home from school with a black eye and shattered teeth, I’ll know I made the right decision.