Parking Lot Square Dance

It’s really true when I say that everyone in Tennessee is oddly nice. They are NOTHING like New Jerseyians (I might be making this word up), or worse yet, New Yorkers. I only came across two people down there who had a problem with us, well, besides the cops. One was a local red neck who had a bit too much too drink, and thought about beating X into a bloody pulp on our last night there. But, that’s a story for a whole ‘nother blog. The disgruntled guy this story is about is the old school truck driver from Pigeon Forge…that we met at the parking lot square dance. Yes, I said parking lot square dance, you heard correctly.

We weren’t trying to go to a square dance, we just wound up there because X wanted to see if any of the gift shops there had black cowboy hats. And, surprisingly enough, neither the Jesus store or their neighbor, the confederate rebel store, had one. The name of the shopping center was Settlers Village, so I suppose a rebel store, a blue grass bland and a square dance is what we should have expected.

After not finding the hat anywhere we headed over by the square dancers and ask one of the spectators where there was a good bar we could go line dancing at…when in Rome. Anyway, the woman tells us about a place on the outskirts of Knoxville, which is about an hour away from us. But then she eyes all of us up, mainly me, and tells us we better get some red neck clothes before we go. That was a bit unnerving, but I assured her I had a cowboy hat back at our cabin, which was true.

As we were about to head back to the car, I notice the old truck driver guy looking at me and whispering and pointing in my direction. He apparently noticed my “New Jersey: Only the Strong Survive” T-shirt. He seems me eyeballing him back and he laughs at me and says, in a L-O-N-G drawn out southern drawl,

HBTD: Is New Jersey even part of the United States? (He’s laughing still, but at me, not with me.)

B: Last time I checked it was.

HBTD: (Still laughing) Well, welcome to America.

Now I’m pissed. Mr. two packs a day of Camel unfiltereds is going to fuck with me…oh no.

B: (smugly) Welcome to 2008.

Now he seems just as pissed as me and starts rattling off some story about driving trucks and how he wound up in “one of those Brunswick’s,” and how he couldn’t care to ever go back. So I told him we were completely ok with that. Well, that went over like a lead balloon, but thankfully, he seems to be out of clever things to say to me so he just stood there staring me down, looking all pissed off.

We were attempting to leave again when he stops us and asks us who is paired up with who. There was one married couple and then that left me, K and X…and he seemed to think one of us was the odd man out. There was no way this discussion was going to go well. And I wasn’t, by any means, going to explain to him that two of us were lesbians. Not where we were. X announced he was single and waved his hand at K and me. Thanks. I just told him we were all single and started walking away. Then X said,

X: I gave you the opening to tell him you were dating K.

B: Whatever…I’m not telling any of these old school red necks I’m gay. Not f*cking happening. He already doesn’t like me because I’m from Jersey. God knows what he would have done if he knew I was a lesbo.

Everybody laughs. But then they all made fun of me on the way home, how they were going to capture me and make me the new attraction in Pigeon Forge, “The Lesbian with a Smart Mouth.” And that if they really wanted to make me an attraction they would probably just lynch me.

Thanks guys!