Pearl Snaps Revisited

I went to the local Bass Pro Shop in the shadow of Gilette stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts a few weeks back. I didn’t want to. I didn’t need anything. But I’d been sitting in the house alone for weeks and my one native Masshole friend called and asked if I wanted to take a ride with him, so I did. I wandered the aisles and chatted while he sought out flashlight batteries and handgun ammunition and at one point we strolled past the gun counter.

My buddy is a sweet guy, shirt off his back kinda dude, a rare thing for someone born and raised and still living in his childhood home in Plymouth County Massachusetts but he’s not much of a conversationalist. He talks about guns. Even when you don’t want to talk about guns. As we were walking past the Smith and Wesson revolvers he asked if I still had one and I told him I’d never sell the S&W 442 that I’d carried on my ankle for a decade as a Sheriff’s Deputy in Louisiana and Texas.

The clerk overheard us and an old familiar conversation began.

“You were a cop?”

Yes sir.

“Where.”

Louisiana, and then Texas.

“I was a cop too.”

Which I guess explained the large thin blue line tattoo on his forearm. A tattoo that told me no matter how I wanted this conversation to go, no matter how I tried to steer it to avoid the subject, it would end with a choice: do I ignore whatever bigoted shit comes out of this stranger’s mouth or do I plant my feet and make a stand? After almost a decade now I can tell when that moment is approaching.

The stranger asked, “Why did you move here?” in that disgusted tone the average white Masshole uses when questioning a transplant, that incredulous tone that suggests moving to Massachusetts was the equivalent of sticking your dick in a pencil sharpener, the tone that suggests moving to Massachusetts was an irrational and dumb decision no right thinking person would make. I always answer honestly, there’s no money back home. I moved here so my spouse could have a job in their field and I stay so my kid can have a good education.

What follows that well rehearsed answer is always different and yet somehow always the same.

“What about taxes?” I paid roughly the same in Louisiana and Texas.

“What about housing costs?” Have y’all seen the price of New Orleans real estate? In a state who’s median income is under HALF of Massachusetts?

“What about freedom?” Other than the never ending traffic and the unwelcoming attitude of my quote neighbors end quote I don’t feel particularly constrained.

“What about all these liberals?”

That’s where it always ends.

“What about all these libtards? These socialists? ‘THOSE PEOPLE?’”

And it’s in that moment where I’m forced to decide between making a public stand or if just letting it go and walking away. It’s that moment that encouraged me to put a rainbow pro-noun pin on my ball cap, hoping against hope that they’d notice and see and keep their fucking mouth shut but people just aren’t that observant, so I’m forced into the choice. I’m forced into fight or flight.

At the Bass Pro Shop gun counter the ex-cop asked “Why don’t you get on the job here?”

I’ve got a LOT of answers to that question, but they’re not for strangers, they’re not even for acquaintances. If we’ve never been fishing together, if I’ve never drunk your beer, if I don’t know your mama, the answers to that question isn't for you. Instead I joke. I’d love to spend a week writing traffic tickets because I think it’s be hilarious with this accent. “Y’all know how fast y’all were goin’?”

The line gets a laugh, but it doesn’t stop what I know is coming.

“Job sucks here anyway.” He said. “Too many fucking liberals.”

It was inevitable.

Like the steroid dealing meathead at my gym who heard my accent and asked “You like guns right?” and then showed me photographs of his illegal (in Massachusetts) AR15s and explained in detail how he commits a felony by having his uncle buy them in North Carolina. Like the yacht owner in Scituate who heard my accent and decided to start a conversation about how Boston (statistically one of the safest places in this country) is overrun with “inner city crime.” Like the guy from New Hampshire wearing a confederate flag patch who wanted to have a conversation about “your heritage.” Like the old guy in the gym who told me John McCain started the Forrestal fire. Or the other old guy in the gym who won’t stop asking who I’m voting for. He’ll never say he’s MAGA but he’s always got a reason why the Democrat is worse. Like the VA therapist who listened to me complain that when someone looks at me and hears my voice they assume I’m MAGA and then launched into an explanation of why she was voting for Trump.

Each of these conversations resulted in a choice, fight or flight. My response has been mixed. I didn’t rat out the meat head. I walked away from the old MAGA man who hated John McCain and thought Trump was better for the economy. I walked out of the therapy appointment at the VA affiliated vet center. I argued, long and loud, with the Scituate yacht owner and almost lost my job. I argued long and loud with the New Hampshire Confederate, told him to take the fucking patch off, and only a friend’s intervention prevented it from becoming a fist fight. In every case I walked away feeling like shit. I walked away feeling like a failure. Fight or flight I left the encounter feeling like a coward and a fool. I left feeling unwanted and unwelcome.

I told the former cop working behind the Bass Pro gun counter that “liberals” weren’t my problem. I’m kind of a liberal guy myself, I said, I just can’t handle all the assholes. Then I walked away.

My rainbow pronoun pin wasn’t enough to stop this conversation. It doesn’t prevent the inevitable. I have t-shirts with rainbow flags. I have t-shirts with sparkling pink unicorns. I have t-shirts that expressly spell out “Don’t mess with trans kids.” I have a fucking t-shirt from the Texas Democrats that reads “Taco trucks on every corner” and none of them prevent these conversations. It seems there’s nothing I can do. My boots. My jeans. My pearl snap shirts. My accent. All are more powerful than any rainbow pin or “woke” t-shirt. When people in New England look at me they see a racist and a bigot and I can't change that.

Between this constant problem and Covid and the solitary nature of being a stay at home parent I retreated to digital spaces. In March of 2020 what else could I do? I was 2000 miles away from home and locked in the living room with a pre-schooler and God there’s only so much Daniel Tiger a grown man can watch. Since 2016 my Facebook had been dedicated almost exclusively to baby updates for the grandmothers and finding out which of my friends and family had turned rabidly MAGA. I never got into Instagram or TikTok and in theory my Twitter at the time was just to keep an eye on what the right wing was saying. Over time I began posting, but I never grew much of a following for good or bad. I was too small to catch much heat. A minnow in a large reservoir, escaping notice because the predators preferred bigger forage.

I know now that I was addicted even then. Looking back I can’t quite pinpoint when the change took hold, but I know there was a time when I didn’t have my phone in my hand. There was a time when I wasn’t looking at a screen all day, and now…God now I hate myself for how often I stare at this stupid fucking device. I KNOW it’s no good for me. I KNOW it makes me angry. I KNOW it skews my perspective. And yet I can’t stop. I log on every day.

And more and more I stumble upon a growing narrative in online spaces. “The South is uniquely racist.” “The South deserves what it gets because The South voted for Trump.” “Rural people don’t deserve hospitals because they vote against their own interests.” Over a year ago I wrote a piece in response to a narrative I’d seen claiming school children, fucking babies, deserved to die in a flash flood because a large majority of their county voted for President Trump. Over a year ago I wrote a piece in response to people who said teenagers deserved to watch their friends die in dark, roaring, waters, because the grown ups in their county turned down Biden admin money for an improved flood warning system. People I “knew” as well as you can “know” anyone in the digital realm argued angrily that the dead deserved it because of a vote tally. Because of a color on a map.

It was horrifying then. It’s gotten worse since. Even if you’re not looking you’ll stumble on long threads about which counties, usually poor, usually southern, don’t deserve federal aid. Food aid? Welfare of any type? Infrastructure? Even hospitals, all must be withheld because “The South” is uniquely bad. People say it with their whole chest now, proudly and publicly. “The South” must be punished because “Southerners” are ignorant and racist and the cause of our current political woes.

(“Oh but not YOU! Why would you ever think we mean YOU’RE uniquely racist and evil?! That’s silly. We just mean your mom and your brother and your cousins and their kids and your Memaw and your neighbors. We don’t think YOU need to suffer.”)

Never mind Massachusetts' long history of racism and my own lived experience with gleefully racist white Bay Staters. Never mind that you’ll find both MAGA and Confederate flags flapping in my Massachusetts neighborhood. Never mind that 48% of my Massachusetts county voted for President Trump in 2024. AFTER the chaos of the first admin. AFTER he withheld aid and supplies from Massachusetts during Covid. AFTER January 6, President Trump GAINED voters in Massachusetts.

More people voted MAGA in Massachusetts than Louisiana and yet a fluke of demographics and the way we count votes allows this state to remain a liberal bastion, a progressive utopia, unlike “Those people” in “The South.” My mother, who never once voted for President Trump, deserves to be punished but 48% of Bristol county, 134,196 Massachusetts residents in my county alone get a pass because they barely lost an election. So when a Hurricane once again tears through my Mother in Law's impoverished Louisiana town, it’s deserved comeuppance, but if one were to impact the unprotected, multi-million dollar, beach homes that line Massachusetts south coast, a region with far more Trump supporters than Louisiana, well that would be a tragedy.

Because Massachusetts is progressive thus good and deserving and “The South” is uniquely racist.

Never mind that old boy at the Bass Pro Shop gun counter. Never mind that Scituate yacht owner. Never mind the Confederate flag flapping proudly in Taunton, Massachusetts. Never mind my neighbors “Make America Great Again” sign. Never mind the “Fuck Joe Biden” badge on the pickup that cut me off in I-95 traffic.

Never mind the fact that Donald J. Trump himself is from New York City.

Never mind that five of the seven 2024 battleground states weren’t in The South, never fought for the Confederacy, and yet every one of them voted Trump.

I’ll admit that I’ve gone too far in my hatred and distrust of Massachusetts. I’ll concede that I live in a glass house and that I’ve been known to throw stones. Shit, I fling fucking boulders. I’m not proud of it, but I can’t deny that the longer I stay here the more genocidal my internal thoughts become. I try not to, but I inevitably think in terms of “them” and “they”. A faceless mass of sneering white Yankees.

You can see the battle right there in that word, Yankee, a slur back home that I rarely if ever used out loud and never in earnest until I found myself living in the Northeast. Seemed harmless at first. After all they use it in their business names like we used Dixie. But I recognize the anger attached to it in my mind now. I see what that word has become for me. Maybe I see what it’s always been, a slur.

How can that be true? My best friend in Massachusetts is a gay Jew from Long Island. My hunting buddy has lived his entire life in the same house in Plymouth county. One of my favorite people on the planet is a Jewish convert from Connecticut. I genuinely like three of our four neighbors and the fourth was fine until we put up a “Veterans for Harris” sign in 2020. That’s when their MAGA flags came out and we haven’t spoken since. How can I hate Yankees when my kid’s teachers have been so supportive and helpful? How can I hate Yankees when the people at the Foxboro performing arts center have been so gracious and rewarded my stories so handsomely? How can I hate Yankees and go out every day and smile and try and be polite?

Unfortunately I know the answer.

See my Pawpaw was a racist, but he loved Redd Foxx. My Granny was a bigot but she loved Charley Pride. My Memaw had the soft, paternalistic racism of a white citizens council always gathering food and hand me down clothes for “those poor babies” who’s parents didn’t “know any better.” My dad was prejudiced, but his mentor, one of his closest friends, was a black man and I know for a fact he treated his soldiers as if race didn’t exist in uniform. They were all “green.” Each of them, in their own way, built a wall in their mind separating the “good ones” beloved celebrities, coworkers, and neighbors from “them” the faceless hoard of evil bent to do them harm. I’ve fallen into the same trap, but instead of focusing on skin color I’ve focused on a zip code.

(Actually…that’s not quite honest. I focus a lot on skin color. I reserve my worst vitriol for the wealthy white folks that surround me each day. I’ve got little bad to say about the Haitian and Cape Verdean folks who live nearby. I even give some of the Portuguese a pass. But that’s something to explore later.)

I’ve fallen into the trap of bigotry. I justify it by the shocking racism I’ve witnessed in this past decade living in New England. I justify it by pointing to the never ending stream of online posts proclaiming southerners as ignorant, backwards, bigots deserving of violent comeuppance. I justify it by pointing at the growing number of posts insulting country music as a lesser art form, music for cretins and racists. I justify my hatred of white New Englanders in the same way my racist grandparents justified their hatred. “They” the faceless evil mass, hate me and want to destroy my way of life, see, they say it all the time, proudly and publicly.

It’s wrong. I’m wrong.

Being this angry is no way to live.

It’s exhausting.

The first piece I wrote for this blog was about feeling out of place in a world that viewed me as a fascist and here we are again. Still dealing with the same problems. At the end of that piece I joked that I might start wearing a Stetson because “fuck em” I can only be what I am. But that doesn’t work. I’ve added a half dozen new pearl snap shirts and a new pair of cowboy boots to my wardrobe and I’m as miserable, and angry tonight as I was eighteen months ago. Worse. I can feel myself growing more hateful and I don’t want to be that guy. I’m tired of it. I’ve got to find a way to extend grace to people even when they refuse the same for me and mine.

Couldn't sleep last night and in the darkness I began worrying if this song is too upbeat and cliche for this piece. I love the line, "One thing in common is we all are different, we're supposed to be that way Live and let live is such a good reminder, you'd do well to be that way" but is it too Sesame Street for something like this? Does it sound like I'm saying to live and let live with racist pricks? I should just delete the song. But I ALWAYS have a song...

Then I realized the songs are for me. No one cares and while this one may be cliche and a little silly it's also a banger so...