Oh I wonder who could wander, or who could want to drift for long, away from all your beauty, all your sunshine, all your sweet
song?
-"Oh Wisconsin (Land Of My Dreams)"
Your state is not your home & it is hostile to you.
-World/Inferno Friendship Society, "Fiend In Wien"
There is home: the place where you were born, or where many of your ancestors came from, or where many of your relatives
still live – so that, even if you have not spent much time there, or indeed any time at all, it tugs at you, inexplicably; your cells
remember it & it pulls at your blood like a moon.
Such places, for me, include Michigan, the northeastern parts of this country, French Canada, & many places in Europe –
mainly the UK & Ireland.
There is home: the place where you came into yourself, where you found your chosen family, where you first felt really & truly
accepted.
Mine is Chicago.
& there is home: the place you have spent so much of your life in that it is more than home, it is you, & you love it sometimes,
hate it sometimes, but no matter how hard you try, you can't escape it. You may move to the other side of the earth & never see
it again, but it will always be as distinctive a feature of you as your fingerprints or jawline.
Maybe this is true of any place where one's formative years are spent, but I think that certain states have more of a hold than
others. Wisconsin is definitely one of them; I have been told that New Jersey & Iowa both have a similar effect.
O Wisconsin, land of my dreams. Wisconsin, a place that has often been hostile to me, a place that I was loathe to claim as part of
me until very recently. Wisconsin – beautiful, cursed, haunted state. The state I have left more times than I can count, but
always seem to wind up coming back to.
A litany of names: Bailey's Harbor, Baraboo, Black River Falls, Cedar Grove, Delavan, Egg Harbor, Elkhorn, Ephraim. Fish
Creek, Fon du Lac, Gill's Rock, Green Bay, Kenosha, Kettle Moraine, La Crosse, Lake Geneva, Madison, Manitowoc, Milwaukee.
Oshkosh, Osseo, Pleasant Prairie, Racine, Sheboygan, Sister Bay, Sturgeon Bay, Superior. Twin Lakes, West Bend, Whitewater. &
others, one-horse towns – some literally, like the tiny town in western Wisconsin where I ended up after hopping a train down
from Minneapolis, whose main drag consisted of a tavern, a few houses, a store, a church, & a field with one exquisite roan horse
in it – whose names I have forgotten, or never knew.
Wisconsin, beautiful: 300 miles south to north, 280 miles east to west, with 108,000 miles of roadways, 14,478,000 acres of
forest, & 14,927 lakes (practically all of the natural ones were formed by glaciers). Wisconsin: state flower, wood violet. State
symbol of peace, the mourning dove with its sad hobo winejug song. State dance, the polka, of course. Wisconsin: we can claim
Harry Houdini, and Golda Meir, and Milwaukee has notably had several Socialist mayors; this state also has the Fox River,
which is one of the few rivers in the nation that flows north. & if you're here, you are never very far away from good cheese or
good beer.
Wisconsin, cursed: we can also claim Joseph McCarthy, Packermania, epidemics of disease & insanity like the one detailed in
Wisconsin Death Trip, the systematic slaughter of many of the Native American tribes that used to live in this area, & a fuck of a
lot of serial killers – Jeffrey Dahmer & Ed Gein, anyone? As of the last few years, it is legal to hunt the mourning dove, our
symbol of peace. Wisconsin is home to a great number of truly ignorant folk, who are immediately suspicious of anyone Not Like
Them; & Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in the United States.
Wisconsin, haunted: by the spirits & histories of those that came before, & by the ghosts of my own life.
Sheboygan – I always picture it as raining, there, even on the sunniest days. I once got gindrunk & slept in my car under
glistening, dripping pine trees on the outskirts of town, with a boy I'd only just met; another time, I learned circus history from a
modern-day tattooed lady.
Manitowoc – with the factory painted with giant bottles of Budweiser, & the tiny but very cool record shop. I have spoken, only
half-joking, of moving there in the faroff future, & creating a thriving punk/art scene out of near nothing.
Door County – this peninsula is cold, & full of stars. Shipwreck history, & hundreds of summer nights that lasted forever, stoned
drunk sitting in someone's backyard staring up at velvet black. & Leroy's Water Street Coffee, where I have spent countless hours
over the past 10-plus years, caffeine-buzzed, talking with friends, or writing, or just quietly listening to the swishslap of waves in
the bay.
Green Bay – which holds memories for me not as the home of the Packers, but as the place where as a teenager I saw punk rock
shows at the Concert Cafe, & where, at a tattoo convention, I had a mermaid etched into my right forearm by a foxy greaser
from Dallas.
West Bend – which has only been in my personal geography since late 2007; it became a rendezvous spot for myself & a
paramour of mine, because of its convenient location halfway between our towns. Once, we got chased down the streets of
downtown by zombies & then had sex in my car in a cornfield; another time, we drank Guinness at an Irish pub in the middle of
the afternoon.
Lake Geneva – stupid, dull, overpriced tourist trap, which became beautiful that sweet final summer of being a teenager, full of
exploring sidestreets & old cemeteries, blowing bubbles & smoking cigarettes or joints on the swingsets of empty playgrounds,
having sex underneath park benches amidst the feet of swarming throngs of tourists, and hanging out in greasestained,
yellowlit diners & talking the sun up.
Kettle Moraine – where I slept in a damp tepee & almost caught lycanthropy.
Whitewater – where I went to drama camp, rolled down hills, & started an illfated teenage fling with a dirty hippie boy.
Oshkosh – in this town with its odd history, I have been a vampy-glam Spade, & an accordion-playing gypsy. I have imbibed
absinthe & written stories. I have met a great number of fantastically interesting people, & I have fallen in love twice.
Madison – known to me, not as the state capital, but as the place where I have wandered the streets in both wintercold &
summer heat, slept in hotels & motels & people's basements, & seen several great shows.
Baraboo – home of the Circus World Museum, former winter quarters of Ringling Bros. I have camped out at the old winter
quarters, & felt the ghosts of circus performers breathing down my neck.
Superior – way way up in the northwestern corner of the state, where at night you can see the lights of Duluth shimmering
across the stateline, & during the day you can visit the Accordion World Museum. The second boy I ever had sex with was from
there, though the actual event occurred one year & 400-some miles away.
There are other places in this state that are significant to me, far too many for me to get into all of them. But, most especially,
there are three, an unholy triumvirate, the towns of southeastern Wisconsin: Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee.
Racine, where I lived from the age of 10-almost-11 to the age of 18-almost-19, & since then have returned to for a few five-month
spurts when circumstances in my life made the idea of going back home very appealing, or at least more appealing than, for
instance, things like spending another winter in a cold water flat – but I was quickly driven away again, because for some
reason living in the town where I spent my adolescent years also sends me plummeting back into an adolescent (& ridiculously
angst-filled) state of mind; in fact, after the last time, I know I said to more than one friend: I would rather live in a cardboard box
than ever stay in that town for more than a month at a time. I meant it, & it is true to this day. Racine, also lovingly referred to as
The Mistake By The Lake, where I have had some of the best, most joyous, & some of the worst, most excruciating, moments of
my life. Where every patch of downtown is layered with meaning – look, that's where I got high for the first time, see the
alleyway where I confessed true love, there's the library where I worked, there's the corner where I got hit by a car while riding
my bike. Racine, where I got fucked over by boys & developed torturous crushes on straight girls, where I explored abandoned
buildings & discovered secret weedy gardens by Lake Michigan; where I occasionally worked up the courage to share my
wretched adolescent poetry on open mic nights at smoky coffeehouses; where I felt like no one understood me.
Kenosha – I still, so often, find myself on the Road To Kenowhere. Strange, I never lived there, but from the age of 16 on, I had
more friends there than I did in Racine – at first because Kenosha had the punks & skins & rudies (Racine was busy with the
whingy emo contingent), then because I had my first year of college there & met a lot of people that way. How many nights have
I passed out there, too drunk to drive home? How many nights did I lie there, on the crusty floors & moldy couches of the drug
fiends I did heroin with? (Most of whom, if they didn't end up dead or in jail, are now not only clean, but also married-with-
babies.) How many mornings did I wake up there, in the arms of either someone whom I have sincere affection for, or someone
who did not seem nearly so appealing in the harsh & sober sunlight? Kenosha, rapists & racists, yes they're there, but so are some
of my very best friends. & I can't seem to stop going back, to drink at the dive bars, to sober up over fries & coffee at the 24-hour
diners; or sometimes just to drive the lonesome county roads off Highway 32, stoned, surrounded by fog & moonlight & the smell
of cabbage & the sound of trains.
& Milwaukee, where I live now. I never thought I'd live here; my orientation was always south, toward Chicago. Sure, I spent
time here as a teenager and beyond, and there were coffeeshops & record stores & people I loved, as well as a long list of Intense
Emotional moments that occurred over pots of tea on Brady Street or while walking across bridges in Riverwest in the thick
summer heat – but I never thought I'd live here. It never appealed to me, I'm a big big city girl; also, far too many kids I went to
school with moved up here, most of whom I had no particular desire to ever see again. But I ended up here, anyhow. & I hated it,
for about a year, always ranting about: There's nothing to do! All the people are assholes, it's like a giant highschool, so cliquey &
snobby! This town sucks! Turns out, maybe it was just me who sucked – I wasn't really giving the place a fair chance. After a
while, I decided I might as well make the most of it while I do live here, and I made some friends, found some places to hang out &
things to do, & eventually Beer City started feeling like home. I still have days when I fell like this place is killing me & I need to
get the fuck out – but I am restless, & that would happen anywhere, & anyway I also have days when I discover a new
abandoned building to explore or meet someone new, or ride my bike down to my favorite park & sit on the swingset and watch
the skyline of downtown glittering before me all blue & orange, and I am completely in love.
Maybe someday I will leave this beautiful, cursed, haunted state & only return for visits here & there, but it will always be part
of me. So tonight, as I stand on the stage at Linneman's, wearing a dress that is the same bluegreen color Lake Michigan is on
perfect summer days, squeezing my accordion, the words I whiskeyslur are my elegy to Wisconsin, & specifically to Kenosha,
Racine, & Milwaukee:
I heard a siren from the docks, saw a train set the night on fire. I smelled the spring on the smoky wind. Dirty old town, dirty old town.