Prostitutes in Smalltown

I don't like country songs, as a general rule, however I like Miranda Lambert. I also like her most recent song about how everyone dies famous in a small town. I tend to agree that once you hit a certain age, everyone in town follows your "extracurricular" activities (for better or worse) with a tabloid fascination.

Strangers (those who don't have at least five generations of family roots planted firmly in the ground) are also a subject of much interest and suspicion. I have been a stranger for the last two years leading a pretty boring life by onlookers' standards. Then some new people moved into my apartment.

If Smalltown were a theatre, my apartment might be a stage: It's right on the corner of mainstreet and from my living room window I have the best seat for watching the locals stagger home from the bar on any given night (if I so choose). There is one thing to be said about voyeurism...if you are in a prime position to be a voyeur, it is likely you are in a prime position to be "voyeured."

My neighbors, who probably struck the Smalltown multi-geners as even odder than I (a Cheesehead by birth) were either unaware or did not care that they were on the mainstage of the town arena. They would have been famous even if they hadn't inadvertently tried. The man downstairs is divorced from the woman who lives upstairs. Their children live with her. His girlfriend-apparent (perhaps live-in, perhaps frequent guest) adds to the already thick tension of the living arrangement. Throw in the fact this is a multi-racial couple in a white rural town, and it's inevitable that these folks will generate some interest amoung the yip-yappers and jaw-jabberers who patronize "downtown" businesses.

This being said, my neighbors took it upon themselves to have frequent, loud arguments, which my landlord too often dismissed at unruly hours of the morning. Girlfriend-apparent, launched personal belonging out the front door for all of the world to see, and was prone to dramatically storming off.

As if this wasn't enough, the couple cinched their celebrity status by being arrested in nearby Metropolis Wannabe (a city about 25 miles down the pike) for prostitution and other related charges. In the days following the arrest, Smalltown was "a-buzzin.'"

If this is what it means to be "center-stage" I have had more than enough and am looking to move to Bigger Smalltown. There, if all goes well, I can live in a house on a city street, in a neighborhood, so if people want to know what I am up to, then they will at LEAST have to go to the trouble to drive a couple of blocks off of the main drag. I find that much more palatable than being just a drunken-stagger away from any weirdos, yip-yappers and jaw-jabberers who can easily observe me anytime, although most likely, taking my dog outside to crap while I am wearing my pajamas.