Chapter 1: Slack-jawed Yokel
I get it, I really do.
The endearing closeness of everything, of people and places and the things in between, a feeling of connectedness that makes holism seem plausible.
The general affability of the natives, not anything so passionate as goodwill but a willingness to tolerate that teeters on acceptance, a sort of benign indifference that’s strangely comforting.
The folksy charm that comes with the conspicuous absence of corporate monoliths, only occasionally marred by encroaching franchises that are still forgivable in their haphazard management.
The way the ageing process is broken down to binary states, graduating people straight from the vigours of youth to the complacency of the well-aged, the sort that suggests they’ll be fifty for the next thirty years.
And everyone looks so damned healthy.
I get it, I really do.
Small towns, country towns, they’re good and wholesome, quaint and lovely, a bastion of traditional values and a simpler way of life. A place where community is a reality and Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft makes sense… so long as you don’t look too closely or stay too long.
Because the thing about small towns, the truth that people like to ignore is… well… they suck.
Hard.
They suck like a piglet (watch Ordeal, and you’ll get that, get it so much you’ll need steel wool afterwards to cleanse your eyes and soul. Belgians should not be allowed to use video cameras). Maybe you feel differently, maybe to you small towns are freedom, isolation, better ways of life or just better communities.
You’re wrong.
Like Lynsey is want to say: ‘You’re welcome to your own opinions, not your own facts’. By which she means you, not me, because my opinion is fact. I mean, obviously. Small towns suck. Fact. I know, I’m from one.
I just want us to be clear on that. “Me thinks he doth protest too much” you say, calling my feeble ranting a sad attempt to distance myself from my country origins. Well what’s that all about, man? I thought we were friends. And what’s with the faux-Chaucer parlance? I don’t have time for this shit. I’ve got things to… you know, and… and places… Screw you. I went to Geraldton for a few days. Yeah, segues are my bitch and I’m their sweet pimpin’ daddy.
Geraldton is my hometown. You probably don’t know it. I was born there and I barely know it. We moved when I was six and I’ve been back a lot since then but I lost the essence of the place a long time ago. The familiarity and feeling of rightness that lets you know you’re home just isn’t there for me. People always say that you can’t escape where you’re from, that somehow it’s in your bones and claims you forever as its own. But honestly, when isn’t sentimental-cliché total pants?
The damnable thing is small towns are nearly always nice to visit. It’s part of their camouflage so you don’t expect them to go all children-of-the-corn on your ass. It doesn’t work though, every time I see a group of blank faced youths a massin’ I get ready to start laying about me with a scythe (which has its own problems because slack-jawed yokel and corn-cult crazy can be hard to tell apart in the heat of the moment). Point being despite my best efforts to the contrary, I actually had a pretty good time.
We drove through Dongara on the way up (an even smaller town 100 km’s south of Geraldton) and after spending the first five minutes driving around town vehemently cursing country drivers and making a spirited attempt to mock every local person and artifice I saw, we stopped at a beach-front called Southerly’s.
Friendly staff, neutral decor, cheap beer and an outdoor area that opened up onto the pristine marina, its general pleasantness antagonised me. It’s like they do it on purpose. Do you know how hard it is to maintain an air of civilised contempt when you’re getting your buzz on and staring literally at a sea of tranquillity? I rallied briefly with a diatribe on the generic pop-electronica but my heart just wasn’t in it, and then the jukebox switched on and played nothing but triple-j hottest 100 albums in what I can describe only as a deliberate and malicious attempt to undermine me.
…
