Small Town Blues

300,000. That’s approximately the number of people living in my town. They didn’t even ask if that was okay with me.

13. That’s the number of people I approve of living here. Give or take a dozen, depending on my mood.

I’m so sick of living here. I throw a fit whenever I hear someone bitch about the nuisances of living in big cities. “It is impersonal” or some shit like that. I’d love to live somewhere where nobody knows me and gets on my nerves in the street. Even going grocery shopping becomes an adventure in this shithole of a town.

Here’s a first-hand account of a typical trip to the store:

Open the door to listen if anyone’s around. Steps on the stairway are a definite sign you should slam the door shut with maximum speed and huddle in the safety of your apartment some more. You really don’t want to start your journey by having to answer stupid questions about a lost newspaper, a fucked-up cellar door, broken down elevators, or Miss Idontgiveashitabouthername’s diarrhea blocking the toilets in the house. There’s a janitor for all that crap. Well, actually there isn’t, but I sure as hell try to avoid hearing about any little problem some old fuck living here could possibly have. Even saying hello is too much for me.

Once outside you have to adhere to some basic rules:

- Walk fast (someone who’s in a hurry might not want to be bothered).

- Never look up or turn your head (or someone might get the crazy idea you care about your surroundings). Better wear sunglasses too, even if it’s raining. The extra weirdness factor could help to scare off even more potential conversationalists.

- Take the smallest streets you know, or even small streets you don’t know (small street - few people).

- Smell bad (this might seem a little radical but why not? Nothing’s too extreme in the name of being left the fuck alone).

With that in mind you finally make it to the supermarket. Great. The crazy hippie bum who loves you, because you once gave him a beer, is sitting in front of your shop of choice. He might not know what day it is, but you’d better believe he’ll never forget your poor face. He’s basically lurking for you to start a “conversation”. I walked around the whole block more than once just to escape him.

Once inside things only get worse. There’s always someone who knows someone whose aunt knows someone who once was your neighbor’s son’s piano teacher’s friend. Who would want to miss out on talking to someone that close? Not them, that’s for sure. People in my neck of the woods seem to remember everyone they ever met. They have words for family relations I don’t even understand. Trust me, avoiding them is well worth a dive into a display of half-rotten tomatoes, whenever you see someone coming into your aisle. Furthermore, it keeps you fit. One of the few disciplines the jocks didn’t invade yet.

Unfortunately you always get to that point when it’s time to get out and pay for the shit you got, although, at times, I actually do consider shoplifting everything just to avoid the horrible gathering at the check-outs. There’s just no escape if you’re trapped between shopping carts of fat old housewives. I’m always really really interested in the displayed goods towards the cash registers. Hard to choose when you’re confronted with 50 packs of smokes that all look exactly the same. I know, technically it’s the same brand, but take your time while wading through nevertheless. Touch everything at least once, just to make sure you look extremely busy and unapproachable.

Then, by the time you think you’ve made it through without any unwanted incidents, there’s some chick you barely remember seeing with someone your buddy brought along one day, yelling your name. Fuck! Busted. “How are you, Baz? I’m working here now!” “Uh, not so good, to be honest. I just heard I have to change my grocery store once again, you know. It kinda sucks. See ya. Or better yet, not.”

Okay, now after covering the pain in the ass that buying food can be, onto the more essential things you have to take care of in your area: night life, for instance.

If you’re at a bar, and some asshole’s grabbing your girlfriend’s ass, you’d better double-check who it is before you kick his ass, and ask him about his field of work, to make sure you don’t have to rely on his assistance in the future. You’ll never know nepotism until you’ve lived here. What good is collecting stellar master’s degrees in computers for decades, compared to having an uncle who once repaired your neighbor’s car, if that neighbor happens to own a fancy enterprise offering “advanced e-learning solutions” for huge national companies anyway? That’s right, nothing. Doesn’t matter if you spent your life sitting on your fat ass at home skipping school. “Fuck that college fag, when can you start, son? Your uncle is a swell guy after all, I’m sure it will work out, I’ll show you everything you need to know in one week!”

And then there are the hundreds of people “knowing” you after yelling their insignificant names into your ear once around 4AM at some club, because… well, fucked if I know. What’s up with that shit anyway? Doesn’t anybody know the unspoken rules during a drunken night out anymore? I might act like your best friend that night. I might even believe you are my best friend that night. I’ll probably even tell you that we are best friends that night. Notice a pattern? That night, you fucking dolt! Even if I started carving “Best Friends 4Eva!!1” into both our forearms; I’m only your fucking best friend until I wake up with a swollen head some hours later. And if more people would understand that simple concept, small towns would be much better places to live in. Not only could we both just ignore each other in mutual consent, should we ever meet during the day (and it will happen, it always does in Lil’ Ole’ Blues-Town), no, we could even repeat that shit over and over again!  Think of the possibilities! It will be like the movie “Groundhog Day”, but funny.

Then there are those retarded local “party-communities”. That word alone makes me want to nuke the planet. Anyway, lately it has become a matter of course that there are photographers from gay internet sites running around anywhere you go at night, and if you look just a little exceptional, or they “know” you (which is basically the same thing), they’re dying to get your picture.

As a kid I might have liked the idea of getting my picture taken everywhere I go, but in reality it fucking sucks. I can’t even go out without finding my picture on the internet the next day. You know, it wouldn’t even be so bad if I actually did something cool to arouse public interest, besides cowering at the bar with an inane grin on my face, barely able to keep my eyes open. Like, being a right wing extremist party-executive, or the top-scorer in the local football team. Okay, bad example. I haven’t touched a football in at least ten years, and I could probably still be the top scorer of the local football team since they suck so bad they are last in the country’s shitty second league. Hell, the fact I even know dumb shit like that should tell you this town is a waste, since I could give a fuck about sports. There’s so little going on that their failure actually bothers me.

But don’t think it is just the usual dilemma of living in small towns that is giving me the blues. No, this particular region is especially vomit-inducing. If I had written this about 80 years ago, the town I live in would have been French. Okay, I couldn’t really write back then, but I would have been in France. And despite the fact that most people here are some of the dumbest rural scumbags you could possibly find in the whole country, they go out of their way to maintain an image of French-German camaraderie and country-spanning culture. And that results in greeting each other with kisses on the cheeks and saying “salut” (which no actual French would even understand, the way these cultural giants pronounce it). Impressive, isn’t it? Everyone knows that taking your bike to buy baguettes in France, makes you a cosmopolitan. Never mind that they’re exactly the same as the regular buns you can buy everywhere else, just long and unhandy. You know what? Fuck France. I could walk there in less than half an hour. And in all the years I’ve lived in this town I did it exactly how many times? Never. Why is that? Because the other side of the border is even worse. Even smaller towns and even dumber people.

I have nothing against the French. I just hate people who like them. For the sake of liking them, that is. You’re not complete here if you don’t fake some imaginary bonds with the neighbor. Why only here? I’ve never heard from Germans in other regions of the country wanting anything to do with Poland, Switzerland or Belgium. Okay, maybe Holland, but that’s another thing altogether, nobody’s interested in the people there, trust me. Just smoking their weed and then bashing their heads in at the next football game.

The French should get a grip and think for a second about why we voted on becoming part of Germany again all those years ago.

Fuck, did I just say “we”?

- Patriotism alert, change subject quick! –

Err… well, you’re probably wondering what I’m still doing here if I think it’s that bad. I’ll tell you. I know some of the bigger cities here and they’re basically the same, just bigger. Berlin: a huge village. Munich: half-decent town surrounded by hundreds of miles of nothing but cows and mountains. Hamburg: one cool street with mostly crap around it.

It’s fun for a while, and most likely for yet another while, and even if you enjoy it for a third while - you’ll get to the point when the blues gets you. I could imagine no matter where you live, it will only take a little longer until the same old shit gets on your nerves, although maybe on a much bigger scale.

That’s why I prefer to live part of my life in the only city that guarantees anonymity for as long and as absolute as you want – the internet. And you’d really be a dumbass to try to be the king of all cosmopolitans instead, canvassing every metropolis on the planet and then start all over again, eternally trying to escape the blues.

I mean, who wants to be Phileas Fogg when you can be a ghost in the machine?


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