Ground Zero

I grew up in a racist town. A racist “town/village” actually… they, for some reason, pride themselves on being one of the few communities in the union with that type of government incorporation. It takes a village… to forge you into your true self. Not surprisingly, there are many Trumpers in that town. If I didn’t take the time to check my privilege and examine the biases that were embedded in me by the very fabric of my hometown… Well, who knows?

But I was lucky. I was a tiny bit less privileged than my neighbors—not much, but just enough to see how small that town really was. We didn’t own our home. We were progeny of foster children raised by a thrifty old Italian maid who could turn a government check into a month of Sunday dinners and an endowment to leave her (biological) children. That might not sound very pleasant, and I don’t mean for it to. Nana left enough emotional trauma to work its way through a few generations… and it’s not even my DNA. I don’t want any more of her karma. I was able to live in a “nice suburban town” at a low premium, as the landlord likely viewed the government checks as a rent subsidy. It was a complicated inheritance, and the price of admission to a town where we never truly belonged.

My parents were also important. They taught me that love was more powerful than anything. I never doubted their love. Still don’t. And my sisters. They had each other. Only two years between them… and then another six until I came around. They took care of me. But I was relatively alone: the youngest of three, but an only child.

I never felt like I belonged in that town. Leaving it is one of my personal triumphs. But it still lives in my head… The bullying, the classism, the snobbery, the racism… It all formed me, for better or for worse. It gave me a conviction. Make no mistake, there were and still are good people there. Maybe that’s why I’ll never write it off.

But a while back, the house in which I spent most of my childhood was demolished to make way for a cookie-cutter box to exploit city commuters… I thought it would bother me. But I got over it much faster than I thought.

Harrison was never home. I don’t even tell people I’m from there.

It wasn’t home; it was training.

Make The Small Towns Great Again

It was training for a world molded in its image. It’s not surprising that many of the NYC power brokers live in Harrison. It’s just a 40-minute train ride down the Newhaven Line to Grand Central Station. From there, a subway, private car, or bus ride to a high-rise office. It’s easy to see why so many Harrisonites think the world is theirs and the rest are just living in it. It’s the toxicity of self-importance when you’re too high up to see the ground.

But there’s a clarity in reflection. The benefit of hindsight allows us to see how each root merges with the main trunk; we begin to see the vast sociosynaptic network that gave birth to this ever-so-malleable present.

I get discouraged that so many Americans can’t recognize a toxic bully when they see one. But then I remember how many Americans I know who are toxic bullies, or come from a town of toxic bullies. Then it makes a little more sense.

America is my old hometown: flawed, provincial… at best, misled; at worst, violently exclusive. In either case, willfully ignorant. Empathetic to “its own,” hostile to “the other.” Enamored by status, prestige, shiny objects… dazzled by title, rank, wealth. Vapid and empty. Childish and easily led, they are the types who will follow the charismatic nationalist off a cliff.

Most grown boys from my hometown hobble on wrecked knees and backs from their glory days on the fields of some regional high school battles against some regional foe, as woefully provincial as they… ground to dust under the boot of some eternally unsatisfied athletic has-been who squirts what’s left of his virility on the backs of “his players” as he rehashes Tom Hanks’s speech from A League of Their Own—that line about how “the hard is what makes it great,” some crap that probably seemed deep at the time—and you could just tell this Knute Lombardi over there thought he was Henry the goddamn Fifth.

_{Yes, this actually happened. A hunching, barely-shaved gorilla of a football coach dragged his knuckles on the ground and pleased himself with his oracular genius, spouting this nonsense to a bunch of 9th through 12th-grade boys in a gymnasium in 1993, impressed by his own profundity. If I weren’t already about to vomit from the wind sprints, I would have vomited from that. I quit shortly thereafter and vowed to remain a civilian for the rest of my life.}

But I come from the same world as they do. And while I don’t claim perfection, I try. I try not to be the toxic bully, even in the name of a cause I feel to be righteous.

We’re all just a bunch of castaways on an island worshipping the Lord of the Flies.