Sweet Home... Minnesota?

Mikey wakes me up as he’d promised and forces me downstairs. Pete is standing next to the door and waves at me when I get down.

I’m pushed into the backseat of their car which is not at all belittling, and I groan as the car moves away from the house.

“Any gossip around town that I should know about?” I ask before we get there. Pete grins and looks at me from the passenger’s seat.

“Well Margaret and Danny got married. That was big,” Pete says, and I vaguely picture the two faces, “and Grandma Joannie got a hip replacement.”

“Oh exciting,” I say with sarcasm. I can’t believe Grandma Joannie is still alive. No offense to her but she was like 94 when I left town. I don’t actually know why everyone calls her ‘Grandma’ but that’s just who she’s always been.

“Yeah, and let’s see...” Pete goes on to tell me about who’s had kids and who’s dating who, what stores have popped up around town, and a lot of stuff I really don’t care about, but I’m surprised by the news of someone new coming to town.

“Wait what? Someone moved here? Here? Seriously?” I ask, and we’re almost there. I see a tree pass by, and remember learning to ride a bike for the first time and crashing into that tree. It’s distant to me now, but I still remember the bitch of a bloody nose that sucker gave me.

“Yeah, and he’s super cool too! He’s a little younger than you, but he’s really smart. He and I work together at the school,” Pete says, “He became the new English teacher after Mr. Lawrence retired. You’ll like him, he’s into the same music as you. His name is Frank.”

“Why would anyone move here, especially if they’ve got a whole life ahead of them?” I ask exasperatedly.

“Not everyone thinks so little about this town as you Gee,” Mikey says and he pulls up into the curb and parks. I see my childhood home from the car window, and it hasn’t changed even the tiniest bit. There are a few cars parked outside, but I assume most people just walked. We have a radius of under fifteen or so miles in this town so it’s not a far walk from anywhere.

Reluctantly, I open the car door and step outside. The air is temperate and comfortable, but I’m really not happy about the fact that I’m in this damn town so the nature of the weather is lost on me. The sky is bright blue, and there are few clouds, but it’s incredibly bright. They’re the kind of clouds that look strung out and wispy, against a steely blue backdrop filled with chirping birds.

There are the typical birds out and about today. The blackbirds, and the ones I like to call the seesaw birds. I don’t know what they’re actually called but they used to wake me up in the early morning, and chirp at me on my way home from school and their squeak sounds an awful lot like someone saying the word “seesaw” over and over again.

I walk behind my brother and he leads me around the all too familiar house. The side of the house is bordered by a thin sidewalk but the rest is grass, well-mended because of the obsessive need for chic appearances that my mother has. There’s a large tree, older then the town itself, right there on the side of the beige house, with fallen leaves cluttering its base. The next house is a little ways away, about twenty feet from mine, because of the small incline at the base of the tree. It’s just a little hill, but inconvenient to have built anything on.

I look at the siding of the house, pristine and formal. I fell out of the second floor window on the side when I was nine. Long story, but basically I thought it would be easier to climb the tree if I started up high. Didn’t work, if that wasn’t made clear.

Mikey broke his wrist when he tripped on that little pothole in the sidewalk, which has since been filled but you can still see the discoloration in the concrete where the new cement meets the old. My shoes don’t leave imprints in the grass as we walk to the back of the house where several dozen people are gathered.

There’s a wooden deck that elevates a small portion of the sizeable lawn, and a sliding door leading into the house. There are no fences or anything so the large wide layout extends all across the landscape in front of me for several yards until another, much steeper hill descends into a clearing on the edge of a small woods. Mikey and I would sled on that hill with neighbor kids almost every day during the winter months. Of course, being Minnesota, that means roughly five months out of twelve so I’ve been up and down that hill more times than I can count.

The people in the clearing all have the generic smiles plastered on their faces. I’ve always seen the residents of this town as zombies for the most part. Sure there are some zombies who have hearts and interesting stories to tell, much like the characters of the book Warm Bodies, but they are still just defaulted human beings. It would be untrue to say that city dwellers are any different, but they, at least, don’t try to keep up appearances. People in the city know they’re all generic models of the same doll, but people in small towns haven’t figured out that concept quite yet. Maybe someday it’ll drill into their below average minds that they’re unoriginal, but until then they can have their little barbecue’s and their little book clubs or host their little tea parties with all their little old neighbors. At least I have the courtesy to be blunt with my insignificance, and don’t disguise it with that embrace of a smile as hollow as their galvanized souls.

I guess I’ve always related to T.S Eliot, not that I’ve ever cited him as a cause for my unnerving grasp of acrimony, but it is no fault of mine that I have an above-average rate of observance. My connection with Mr. Eliot on the heart of these flat people, can be found in one of his most notable works.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

People make it out to be depressing when you have such a distaste for the mundane normalcy of it all, but I feel it as a sort of melancholy that I’m able to see such routines as what they are. It’s bouts of weltschmerz like this that caused me to leave this town. I’m constantly haunted by the strangulation of these surroundings.

I’m brought out of my reverie by a thunderous session of simultaneous chants, applause and all around amazement at my appearance. They looks almost as if they’re surprised to see me, like they didn’t all gather here for that specific purpose.

Most of them I want to usher away from myself in disdain, but I try to keep a cordial tone when conversing with them, though I’m a tad rigid and I think I might give off the impression of hostility. They just assume it’s a trait learned from city life, but this doesn’t stop me from getting a few hurt stares.

My parents greet me with far too enthusiastic words that I pay little attention to, and they try to strike up a conversation with me about my reason for returning home, but I’m not really in the mood to talk about her. They drift off eventually because their son is so derisive, and Mikey walks over to me to torment me about the guy who’s apparently just arrived to the ‘party.’

Mikey points to a guy on the other side of the yard conversing with Pete casually and I almost do a double take. Okay, I may not be gay but I am not blind. That guy is hot. That guy can probably cook eggs on the side of his face, because he’s smoking. Then again, most of us out here probably can because the heat has started to taper down on our group with the passing time. I feel like an ant under a magnifying glass, not only with the attention I’m getting from the sun but also my old acquaintances.

“Okay so his name is Frank and I thought you two could talk because he’s got a similar way of thinking as you, though he’s heaps more polite then you and...” blah blah blah, something about New Jersey, blah blah blah, only child, blah blah blah something about the power puff girls, wait hold on that doesn’t seem right.

“What was that?” I ask Mikey.

“Oh so you were listening,” he says sarcastically. Typical Mikey, calling me out on my musing.

The guy, or Frank I guess, has dark brown, almost black hair, and a tattoo on the side of his neck that I would normally find unattractive, but damn does it suit him. I like to consider myself straight, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the aesthetic beauty of guys, and this Frank guy has a face and body worth appreciating.

“Come on I’m going to go steal Pete from him,” Mikey says and he grabs my hand then pulls me forward.

“Pete!” Mikey says as we step right into the two guys’ conversation. He puts his arm around Pete and then turns to look at me like he forgot my existence.

“Oh right,” he says obviously caring little about the two of us while he’s with Pete, “Frank this is my brother Gerard, and Gerard this is Frank.”

“Where are you two going?” I ask him as he tries to drag Pete away.

“The answer to that is not for your ears, bro,” Mikey says, and I make a face as they walk away. I completely forget that the Frank guy is standing right next to me.

“And you grew up with that?” Frank says, and I turn back to look at him. I feel a little guilty for looking at him up close now because he’s even prettier in close proximity. I usually don’t get stunned into silence by people, but for a second I forget how to speak. Frank is definitely not a Monet.

“Well he’s in love,” I say solemnly and shrug, “What can you do?”

“That didn’t sound bitter at all,” Frank laughs and he looks at me. Wow he has beautiful eyes. Deep brown and warm, like he’s got a working hearth in the iris. They’re too warm for a day like this, but I can’t help but look into them as if he’s hypnotizing me.

“What’s the matter, don’t you like love?” He asks me.

“I like being in love, but I don’t like when it’s not reciprocated because it feels like shit,” I reply.

“Speaking from recent experience?” Frank asks looking at me. He has to look up at me because he’s kind of a short little guy.

“Why do you think I decided to uproot my entire life and move back to this hellhole?” I answer sadly, “Not by choice, I might add.”

“Hellhole? I like it here,” Frank says and he’s smiling brightly.

I shiver at the idea of anyone liking it here, “this place feels like a vacuum to me. It sucks your life away and then stores it in a cramped and poisonous enclosure full of dirt.”

“I’m glad to see you’re an optimist.”

I snort, breathily at him, “You have no idea.”