I must preface this by saying that i love the people i'm working with. That being said...
I lie awake on the couch, watching turner classic movies while the rest of the world sleeps – 2:15, 3:15, 5:15am – they all blend together in a haze – there’s a rotten taste in my mouth… not as bad as raw sewage, but it tastes like the worst place in the world. I know what you’re thinking, no it’s not Jersey, not a Chinese sweatshop, no not even Wisconsin – it tastes like Binghamton.
Binghamton, NY and it’s surrounding areas seemed to me just an awful smelling vile putrid industrial wasteland of underachieving would be hobos if they weren’t employed at button factories or Wal-Marts. Mullet-wearing wackos walk the streets, while pregnant mothers share cigarettes with their twelve-year old children. By my estimation, this is the hind end of civilization.
I walked in to this bar one night to get a drink. The second I walk in the door everyone turns and stares at me like I’m some pinko, commy, flag burning terrorist. Maybe it was me; or maybe it was just the 800-pound gorilla that walked in behind me, but I felt out of place. I’m surrounded by mullets and moustaches, overweight girls with too much make-up on and cheap plastic hoop earrings, guys wearing t-shirts with the names ‘Chet’ and ‘Clem’ printed on the front in bold. I must be in the South, because I hear a couple of men talking about catching a ‘negro’ and taking him outback for a “beatin’.” I pass a guy wearing a plaid shirt and trucker cap rifling through selections on the touch-screen jukebox… several seconds later I hear some Trisha Yearwood song blasting through the speakers, followed by Styx’s Sail Away twice in a row and a string of Lynyrd Skynyrd songs that just don’t seem to end.
I wish this white trash girl behind the counter would hurry up with my goddamn burger. That’s the only reason I came in here anyway. There’s no where else that’s open past 10:30 that’s not a gas station… All I want is my cheeseburger (which shouldn’t take 25 minutes to cook) and then I’ll go back to my planet and leave the heathens in peace. I make out the girl behind the counter’s name tag and yell for her; ‘Nicole!’ Either she ignores me or doesn’t hear me. Fed up, I step outside for some air. As I ponder how I got here in the first place, I see a couple in their late-twenties arguing in the parking lot. This guy is obviously drunk. I say drunk, but that doesn’t really do him justice. He was dribbling saliva from all orifices while his face grew redder and redder as he yells about the car being low on gas. The girl is in pain and in tears. It must be nothing new because he belts her across the face, knocking her in to the pavement. I feel like this happens a lot here. As he walks off, she follows him screaming for forgiveness saying she’s sorry. The only thing she’s got be sorry for is herself, for not getting out of this faded blue-collar town where the local carousel stands as the premium attraction, second only of course to the Cider-Mill which doubles as a playhouse Thursday thru Saturday. I feel for this poor girl. She looks just like the ones inside; K-Mart cardigan, broken heels, lots of blush and far too much blue eye shadow for anyone who isn’t Edna Turnblatt. These poor women with their abusive, alcoholic husbands and boyfriends, weathered by life at the age of thirty-five; they looked beat-up. No, that’s an understatement. They looked like they’d gotten the shit kicked out of them on more than one occasion.
I think to myself ‘is it their fault that they’re underachieving?’ I try and rationalize their existences for them by saying to myself that this is all they know, never having been exposed to the concept of opportunity, personal advancement or the chance for something better; something better than a small-town depressed life, walking down to the diner with Becky-Sue on a Saturday night then over to the Cineplex to buy some popcorn in a brown paper-bag and catch the new movie in town. I ran in to one group outside the movie theatre. I asked them for directions and we got to talking about this and that and wouldn’t you know it; they knew a movie star! I asked them who they were talking about. Then I tried to explain to them that Forrest Gump was actually played by Tom Hanks and not by Jim-Bob Harper; their local mechanic who had mysteriously ‘up and vanished’ to go to Hollywood in search of stardom about ten years ago. I later found out that this Jim-Bob character had done gone and changed his name to Scott Peterson…
Back inside the bar and I’m still waiting for my goddamn cheeseburger. It’s been a half an hour and when I ask my lovely bartender Nicole (whose fall from the ugly tree had to have been a long and painful one) where my food was, I got one of those ‘who the fuck do you think you are, you dirty big-city Yankee’ kind of looks. She had forgotten about the burger all-together and said it would be a few more minutes. By now the bar was thinning out a bit and the string of bad metal songs and white power ballads had ended. Tired and hungry I walked to the jukebox in search of something soothing and calm. Johnny Cash probably wouldn’t offend these people, but putting on the man in black wouldn’t have changed my state of mind one bit. I settled on a Sinatra recording of I Got The World On A String… baaaad call. The second the big band violins and horns came in the place went silent… like nails on a chalkboard I could see their country-bumpkin ears pop… not with disgust, but with utter confusion. For the next three-and-a-half minutes as the chairman of the board crooned, I got booed; loud and often, like a Red Sock in the Bronx. I ordered a scotch and raised a glass to Frank. ‘You’re in a better place than I am right now baby.’ As I slugged down my drink, somewhere up there I think Sinatra might of heard me. Maybe it was Dean or Sammy or even Joey Bishop who heard me… whoever it was, someone in the Rat Pack heard my plea, cause right then and there a miracle happened; Nicole finally came out with my Cheeseburger! It was burnt to a crisp, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. ‘Thank You’ I said, as I walked out the door. I thought to myself, ‘maybe I’m over-reacting to this whole place and their society isn’t as backwards as I’m making it out to be. Maybe I’ve become so provincial that anything other than bright lights and loud taxis at four in the morning on a busy street lined with restaurants serving ethnic food seems strange. Maybe this place isn’t as bad as I thought and my instinct was wrong.’ As I passed the Garth Brooks poster on the way out the door I realized: No, my instincts were not wrong.
I arrive back at my home for the duration of my stay, a two story two-bedroom house that I had to myself for the next two months. Sounds sweet right? Not so much. The carpet has burns and stains older than I am. A smell that can only be described as wrong constantly fills the place. The couches are straight out of a back alley somewhere and water pressure remains either far too intense or far too weak. Upstairs there are three bedrooms; two queen size beds and a mammoth king size. Sounds nice, right? Well they would be, if I got to sleep on a mattress as opposed to what feels like a large cinderblock from hell. I’ve taken to falling asleep on the couch at night.
I had left the television on before I left to get food and as I walked in I thanked God for Turner Classic Movies. I don’t know what I would do without these old late-night films from decades ago. God bless you Shelly Winters. God bless you and your awkward looking face. And God bless the fact that Casablanca comes on in five minutes. Something familiar to take me away from this strange land where I am the stranger, and the only things sacred are Jesus, cheap beer and saturated fats.
