EditRed City Smells Anthology

The following is an essay I wrote (a while back!) which will be published in EditRed's next anthology entitled City Smells. Small Voices, Big Confessions is another anthology published by EditRed. I am very excited to be included! Here's the essay. My disclaimer is that I took creative license with this town and with the narrator's voice, but the essay nonetheless expresses some entertaining and formidable sentiments! Enjoy.

http://www.editred.com/city_smells.php

Toxins make the world go 'round. (City Smells Essay)

So I'm having this sort of epiphany, driving to work and entertaining a slight warmth between the proverbial (and literal, for that matter) legs. Don't shit where you eat. It's a crude saying, yes, and quite indicative of so many things I hate about the town I call home. Monroe is small-ish, dramatic, and smelly on a number of levels. My morning burn, in this case, is a result of thinking about the utter lack of physicality I am experiencing. I should be wearing an "I Survived A Breakup And All I Got Was This Lousy Shirt" tee. As I automatically turn the curves that lead to my job, I ponder the possibilities for action. There has been no lack of offers, for sure. The problem is that nearly every one, save a very enthusiastic polyamorous pagan beer drinker, has involved people I've known for years. I feel like a landmark or a tourist attraction. I can hear them saying, "Wow, we've come all this way, it would be a waste not to stop for a picture." But as a little voice in my head keeps saying, "Don't shit where you eat." That's kind of what my home town, Monroe, is like too. A gorgeous and historical riverfront is the main attraction for visitors. Antique district (read: a few streets that weren't busy doing anything else), downtown steadily being restored (read: gentrification), and a booming nightlife (you guessed it, we're a town of tired lushes) are just a few of the highlights. The money in Monroe, and of course you know there must be old money in a mid-size town on a riverfront, comes from vague sources. As one of the younger set, whom unlike many of my peers, didn't quite get around to debuting at the country club, I am still unsure as to where all the riches originated. The best clue I've had thus far is that the money is related to stench in the air. "Smell's like money," crow the old folks on humid days when the plumes from the paper mill smell positively acrid. I can walk outside the front door of my job and watch the murky smoke rise. The breeze picks up, and a smell like carbonated sewage or burned plastic wafts my way. A few months back, my town made national news for a hazardous "chicken waste product" spill on the interstate. People on the local news grimaced and drawled about the unbearable odor with which they had to cope as they drove home from work that afternoon. Automobile owners proclaimed that they'd had their cars washed professionally three times, and still the stench remained! It was odd really, that no one seemed to correlate the chicken waste extravaganza with that "money" odor that invades my nostrils every day. The paper mill that keeps our city in jobs emits an odor that is strangely close to the smell of the aforementioned offending chicken products. Maybe I'm just a whiney vegetarian. Maybe I'm a fascist recycling queen. Maybe my criminally high lack of ethnocentrism is finally rearing its ugly head. Who knows? I know that I watch droves of people enter the healthcare center where I work every day. "Cancer" is a word like "dog" or "Christmas" around here. You can count on it. "Cancer Alley" is to the south of me, luckily, but lately I've been thinking that the Northeast corner of the state where I live must be jealous of all that scandalous attention. We are doubling up on the emissions and the obscene amount of healthcare needed to deal with the fallout. It's as if no one here has ever truly heard of pollution or toxins and what these nasty words can do to people…besides make them rich. We love toxins! Toxins make the world go 'round. Monroe wouldn't exist if it weren't for toxins. Profits from peddling toxic drugs beef up the kids' allowances or pay for their various sundries through college. Toxins fill our veins as we medicate against the toxins that float in the dirty air that pays our bills that fund our community improvements that instill the toxic class warfare that creates the employees that punch the buttons on those wild machines that cloud up the air in the first place. Go toxins! It's brings me back to shitting where you eat. No one here will ever get much farther than recycling a can or two, because confronting the issue would mean tightening the purse strings. The ebb and flow of society will run like grooves in a record. The old guard will die and their semi-glamorous children will take over, young and spry until the "money" in the air gets into their fresh lungs too. No one will shit where they eat, because they love eating. We wave our flags, we sponsor elementary school fund raisers, and we buy extra strong detergent because money is a really hard smell to get out of your dress clothes. I'm trained not to shit where I eat, but the temptation is most times too delicious to resist. I struggle uphill so to speak, when I haul my metal, paper, and plastics to a local salvage company for voluntary recycling. I endure the strange stares when I wear my "wage slavery" t-shirts to Wal-mart, too tired and jonesing to work up an ethical dilemma over buying my organic bananas from the Devil. The Devil is so conveniently located and stays open much later than the Mom & Pop's. Mom and Pop need a little rest anyway, right…?All these thoughts have bulleted through my head on the ten minute drive to work; the smelly, head-ache inducing drive that leads, coincidentally, directly towards the money-scented mill about which I've mentally complained. I am watching the traffic light and halfheartedly calculating what my behaviors and thoughts mean. I shit where I eat when I recycle, when I boycott, and when I write protest letter to my senators and representatives. I don't want to pick up what my town is putting down. This brings me back to my original quandary. I will work my long day and watch the plume of filth rise from the mill as I sit on the curb near my office to eat my lunch and get some "fresh" air. Tonight I'll probably sit outside at a local pub and drink the beer that distracts me from the stench in the air. The oblivion on people's faces will be obvious as they reach into their $1000 purses or $400 pants pockets to pay for drinks. Should I slyly glance around the table and settle my eyes on someone who can alleviate my physical and mental discontent? Should I shit where I eat by taking the recreational plunge with the last few possibilities remaining in the little relationship ghetto I call home? If I shit where I eat this time, there won't be anyone to talk about it with afterwards. In a town like this, all you've got are the people with whom you commiserate about the gloom and doom. I am willing to go it alone when I recycle, when I bad-mouth my city's government, but it still remains unclear whose ideology I will choose after the charmingly noxious purple and orange sun sets on my town.