Why Be a Racist When You Can Just Hate Rednecks?
Physically, I haven’t been right for about two months. (Not that I was all that goddamn right to start with, but at least I’d settled into my own fat little place.) Things started getting interesting right before my birthday: Nothing I eat or drink seems to sit comfortably or digest correctly, my face and neck have broken out, I am frequently exhausted, overcome with heartburn, and here and there suffer from this light tightness in the chest.
All things I’ve written off to common annoyances that come with growing older. I convinced myself that if I changed my diet, these things would improve or be eliminated altogether. That was, until about 1am Thanksgiving morning, when I was struck with a headache so severe I lost some vision in my left eye. The sight returned, but the headache didn’t go away until Saturday, no matter the variety or amount of narcotics (some over the counter, some obtained without a prescription) I pumped into my system.
Now, I told you that story so I can lend more weight to the following story: A new downstairs neighbor moved in about a month ago, and trouble with this redneck trollop began almost immediately. It’s instructive for the reader to know she brought with her, previously unannounced, a boyfriend who doesn’t (or refuses) to work while she, a woman of 43 surely odd smelling years, routinely pulls double shifts at a pizza joint, working for tips and whatever hourly wage accompanies them.
Near as I can tell – this is judging by the number of beer bottles and cans I see piling up in the recycling bin on a daily basis – the boyfriend drinks a good portion of the day, at which point the woman comes home and they both drink half the night, leading to all sorts of wacky redneck shenanigans. And there are few things I find more annoying than wacky redneck shenanigans, because they tend to be too goddamn loud from the jump, thus frequently disturbing even a rumor of domestic tranquility for people like me, right upstairs.
About midnight the first Friday they lived there, I heard screaming. It was the female redneck, carrying on at a volume and length unique only to the drunken white trash female, going on about the redneck guy’s various shortcomings. (I have no reason to believe they don’t exist, I just know they don’t need voicing in the midst of a Natural Light fueled tirade at midnight, while I’m sleeping.)
There are cadets in basic training who aren’t dressed down the way this white trash, mayonnaise-sandwich-eating cracker was dressed down…. What started the fight I cannot honestly say, but I do know that by the time she’d gotten around to the third minute of her argument, if it had been me, we’d have been trading fists. In any other setting, I would have found his emasculation hilarious.
At times like these, I find it’s best to lie still and weigh my options. My first inclination is always to go storming downstairs and inform the proletariat that I expect the redneck drama to cease forthwith, lest I cave in someone’s soft, inbred skull with a baseball bat. My second inclination is always to fight the first; the truth of the matter is, I can’t fight. Should I go storming down the stairs to deal with the rednecks in my own inimitable tone, the odds are pretty good I’m going to get my ass beat by the alcohol-fueled retard. Somewhere along the line she flung her door open and pounded on mine. Fat chance.
By the time she was telling him he “can’t even get a fucking hard-on anymore,” I couldn’t help but laugh. She kicked him out (which I’ve since guessed is a common occurrence, as he’s been kicked out about three times and has returned each time) and things died down. There was an incident the next weekend when she came home too drunk to find her keys and leaned on my doorbell until I came down and helped, but nothing else until Thanksgiving day, when I ambled home about 715am with the aforementioned Worst Headache in Human History.
Upon arriving home I heard loud music coming from her apartment, but quickly concluded it wouldn’t keep me from sleeping and went about my business. At 1030am I woke from a nightmare (literally, not figuratively), and only then heard very loud country music coming from the downstairs, intermingled with occasional drunken shouting. The country music, in itself, a waking nightmare. Well, I’m definitely going down there this time, I thought, but what to say?
This is no small deal, knowing the right thing to say. The point is to deliver as driving a message in as few words as possible, and at times like these, one must be careful how he chooses his words. I wandered down to the gas station to get a beverage and to linger upon the question. Noticing my beaten expression, the girl working the register (who knows me casually) asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
“You don’t want to talk about it,” I replied.
“Are you sure?” She only could have been hoping to bestow wisdom in the Dr. Phil mode upon me, quick and to the pointless, as a line was beginning to form.
“It’s my drunken, philistine, redneck fucking neighbors. Still want to talk about it?”
Turns out, she didn’t want to talk about it.
So I traipsed home, having now decided upon the proper course of action. Glancing toward the house I see the boyfriend walk out, turn, and head up the street, meaning either she’s kicked him out again, or he walked out of his own free will (to whatever degree rednecks of this sort actually have and practice their own free will). She answers the door topless and three sheets to the wind at 1045am, clutching a shirt to herself for covering, but thinking nothing of answering the door in such a state. She had things overturned and broken on the floor; apparently the redneck boyfriend did this before leaving.
Immediately she explains that he’d broken the things before leaving. “Did he hit you?” I asked reflexively, honestly not caring. She answered in the negative and I calmly and quietly, but forcefully, delivered my little speech:
“Listen to me, you fucking hillbilly: I have to sleep, I have a Thanksgiving lunch to go to, and I have to work tonight. You turn that fucking radio off and you keep the fucking noise down. The next person who comes and tells you to shut the fuck up will be wearing a badge. The next person who comes after that will be holding a fucking eviction notice in his hand. Am I understood?”
Other than knocking on my door ten minutes later – soaking wet and wearing nothing more than a towel this time – and asking to use my phone (she couldn’t figure hers out), I haven’t heard from her since.
Here’s the point: Over the course of my life, I have met literally every kind of person there is to meet. I have met all races and creeds and nationalities; I’ve listened patiently while absolute strangers have attempted to sell me their third world dirt religions. I’ve had people tell me, with a straight face, that a woman forced to wait two years for a mammogram is a circumstance indicative of a better health care system than the American method. Some of these people I’ve liked personally, some I haven’t. But I have never met a redneck and walked away better for the experience, or happy that we happened to cross paths that day.
I’ll agree it sounds like a mathematical and logical impossibility, but I swear it’s true, and if I’m lying, may I be forced from the road by a hail of gunfire this very afternoon. Give me the opportunity and I’ll write The Case Against Rednecks, debate Jeff Foxworthy in packed bingo halls across the country, and burn the Confederate flag at any race track where NASCAR run races.
All things I’ve written off to common annoyances that come with growing older. I convinced myself that if I changed my diet, these things would improve or be eliminated altogether. That was, until about 1am Thanksgiving morning, when I was struck with a headache so severe I lost some vision in my left eye. The sight returned, but the headache didn’t go away until Saturday, no matter the variety or amount of narcotics (some over the counter, some obtained without a prescription) I pumped into my system.
Now, I told you that story so I can lend more weight to the following story: A new downstairs neighbor moved in about a month ago, and trouble with this redneck trollop began almost immediately. It’s instructive for the reader to know she brought with her, previously unannounced, a boyfriend who doesn’t (or refuses) to work while she, a woman of 43 surely odd smelling years, routinely pulls double shifts at a pizza joint, working for tips and whatever hourly wage accompanies them.
Near as I can tell – this is judging by the number of beer bottles and cans I see piling up in the recycling bin on a daily basis – the boyfriend drinks a good portion of the day, at which point the woman comes home and they both drink half the night, leading to all sorts of wacky redneck shenanigans. And there are few things I find more annoying than wacky redneck shenanigans, because they tend to be too goddamn loud from the jump, thus frequently disturbing even a rumor of domestic tranquility for people like me, right upstairs.
About midnight the first Friday they lived there, I heard screaming. It was the female redneck, carrying on at a volume and length unique only to the drunken white trash female, going on about the redneck guy’s various shortcomings. (I have no reason to believe they don’t exist, I just know they don’t need voicing in the midst of a Natural Light fueled tirade at midnight, while I’m sleeping.)
There are cadets in basic training who aren’t dressed down the way this white trash, mayonnaise-sandwich-eating cracker was dressed down…. What started the fight I cannot honestly say, but I do know that by the time she’d gotten around to the third minute of her argument, if it had been me, we’d have been trading fists. In any other setting, I would have found his emasculation hilarious.
At times like these, I find it’s best to lie still and weigh my options. My first inclination is always to go storming downstairs and inform the proletariat that I expect the redneck drama to cease forthwith, lest I cave in someone’s soft, inbred skull with a baseball bat. My second inclination is always to fight the first; the truth of the matter is, I can’t fight. Should I go storming down the stairs to deal with the rednecks in my own inimitable tone, the odds are pretty good I’m going to get my ass beat by the alcohol-fueled retard. Somewhere along the line she flung her door open and pounded on mine. Fat chance.
By the time she was telling him he “can’t even get a fucking hard-on anymore,” I couldn’t help but laugh. She kicked him out (which I’ve since guessed is a common occurrence, as he’s been kicked out about three times and has returned each time) and things died down. There was an incident the next weekend when she came home too drunk to find her keys and leaned on my doorbell until I came down and helped, but nothing else until Thanksgiving day, when I ambled home about 715am with the aforementioned Worst Headache in Human History.
Upon arriving home I heard loud music coming from her apartment, but quickly concluded it wouldn’t keep me from sleeping and went about my business. At 1030am I woke from a nightmare (literally, not figuratively), and only then heard very loud country music coming from the downstairs, intermingled with occasional drunken shouting. The country music, in itself, a waking nightmare. Well, I’m definitely going down there this time, I thought, but what to say?
This is no small deal, knowing the right thing to say. The point is to deliver as driving a message in as few words as possible, and at times like these, one must be careful how he chooses his words. I wandered down to the gas station to get a beverage and to linger upon the question. Noticing my beaten expression, the girl working the register (who knows me casually) asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
“You don’t want to talk about it,” I replied.
“Are you sure?” She only could have been hoping to bestow wisdom in the Dr. Phil mode upon me, quick and to the pointless, as a line was beginning to form.
“It’s my drunken, philistine, redneck fucking neighbors. Still want to talk about it?”
Turns out, she didn’t want to talk about it.
So I traipsed home, having now decided upon the proper course of action. Glancing toward the house I see the boyfriend walk out, turn, and head up the street, meaning either she’s kicked him out again, or he walked out of his own free will (to whatever degree rednecks of this sort actually have and practice their own free will). She answers the door topless and three sheets to the wind at 1045am, clutching a shirt to herself for covering, but thinking nothing of answering the door in such a state. She had things overturned and broken on the floor; apparently the redneck boyfriend did this before leaving.
Immediately she explains that he’d broken the things before leaving. “Did he hit you?” I asked reflexively, honestly not caring. She answered in the negative and I calmly and quietly, but forcefully, delivered my little speech:
“Listen to me, you fucking hillbilly: I have to sleep, I have a Thanksgiving lunch to go to, and I have to work tonight. You turn that fucking radio off and you keep the fucking noise down. The next person who comes and tells you to shut the fuck up will be wearing a badge. The next person who comes after that will be holding a fucking eviction notice in his hand. Am I understood?”
Other than knocking on my door ten minutes later – soaking wet and wearing nothing more than a towel this time – and asking to use my phone (she couldn’t figure hers out), I haven’t heard from her since.
Here’s the point: Over the course of my life, I have met literally every kind of person there is to meet. I have met all races and creeds and nationalities; I’ve listened patiently while absolute strangers have attempted to sell me their third world dirt religions. I’ve had people tell me, with a straight face, that a woman forced to wait two years for a mammogram is a circumstance indicative of a better health care system than the American method. Some of these people I’ve liked personally, some I haven’t. But I have never met a redneck and walked away better for the experience, or happy that we happened to cross paths that day.
I’ll agree it sounds like a mathematical and logical impossibility, but I swear it’s true, and if I’m lying, may I be forced from the road by a hail of gunfire this very afternoon. Give me the opportunity and I’ll write The Case Against Rednecks, debate Jeff Foxworthy in packed bingo halls across the country, and burn the Confederate flag at any race track where NASCAR run races.
posted by Brian S. Wise | 7:41 AM
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