Loading ...What Do You Think of Cincinnati? is a TCM series wherein we ask folks who have no connection to Cincinnati whatsoever what they think of when they hear the word, “Cincinnati.” This is an exercise of study, to hopefully posit some idea of our standing in the world so that we can better define where we need to go. You can read other “What Do You Think of Cincinnati?” entries here. This week’s guest blogger is Chris Duncan.
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Living in the boondocks of southwest Virginia, I know Cincinnati only by my weirdo associations.
Weirdo association #1: I’ve got a loud-mouthed dumb hag of a neighbor that is Marge Schott incarnate. When my neighbour, Lou (female), says to me, smoking a Misty, “Wingnut is gonna bring this country down, I’m telling you. A nigger in the White House. What a load of shit,” in reference to President Obama, I can’t help but recall Marge saying, “Hitler was good in the beginning, but he went too far.”
Weirdo association #2: In 1993, a girl living on my dorm floor at Radford University (where us rejects who couldn’t get into Virginia Tech attended) said she was from Cincinnati. Oily, stringy hair with a big white or green bow, always wearing a denim dress and white Keds, Holy Roller regalia, Melanie was obsessed with sin. Toted around a bible all the time. I have no idea how she ended up at a party school like Radford. As a loser, whackjob, and emotionally-disturbed-person magnet, I got to know her fairly well. Lucky me.
“Have you been saved?” she asked me through tartar-caked teeth, looking at me with wide, light blue irises holding Jesus-filtered water. I sat on her dorm room floor watching Rescue 911. My irises were and are defecation brown, stagnant. I was everything she wasn’t. I slept in her room most nights, on the floor, right next to her bed.
“I’m a Methodist,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “We don’t use that ‘get saved’ lingo.”
She snapped and popped Fruit Stripe gum, sat on her legs on the floor next to me.
“I hate sin,” she said. Pop. Snap behind her front teeth. “But I love the sinner.” She la-la sang her stance on sin: “Hate th’ sin, love th’ sinnn-errrr! Hate th’ sin, love the sinnn-errrr!”
Cincinnati. Sin-cinnati. Weirdo association. Melanie had a nice ass and pure eyes. I have no idea what became of her. We both ditched Radford after a year. She moved back to Sin-cinati. I bolted for Virginia Intermont College, known for mediocre students and producing lesbian horse-back riders.
Weirdo association #3: My urologist is a black guy—to hell with you Lou/ Marge!—and he’s from Sin-cinnati. Dr. Davis. Eric Davis played for the Reds. Hitch in his swing. Could knock the shit out of the ball. Dr. Davis=Eric Davis=Sin-cinnati=another weirdo association. When he’s checking my left ball’s inflamed varicocele or shoving a lubricated finger up my rear, I think of Eric Davis impaling me with his baseball bat, and the sex act (if you can call get raped with a baseball bat a sex act) causes me to feel what I generally always feel: guilt and self-loathing. Thanks for the intrusion in my neural network, Melanie. I’m sinnn-errr. A montage attacks the movie screen behind my clenched shit-brown eyes: Eric Davis alternately impaling me and making a diving catch on a screaming liner, Melanie proselytizing her spiel, Lou and Marge putting down the niggers and Jews, and then Loni Anderson makes a Sin-cinnati WKRP appearance, which doesn’t mesh well with Dr. Davis’ largish index finger. I shake my head, clear the cobwebs, fling Sin-cinnati off my radar screen and back into the Rust Belt.
Finally, Dr. Davis hands me a Kleenex to clean my greasy sphincter and I do the Ickey Shuffle to my Ford Ranger, and I thank God I’m in Abingdon, Virginia.
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Chris Duncan lives in Abingdon, Virginia. He teaches English part-time at a local community college. He’s working on a novel about two brothers who work as funeral home technicians.
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Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jason-riedy/ / CC BY 2.0 http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinfoilraccoon /
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