'Minnesota Nice' catharsis

I've been thinking about this post since before I started the blog.

It's easy to write about ice and snow and cold and weather, because it's funny, and because it's a bitch, and because it's easy to take pictures of. But it's not easy for me to articulate my comprehension of cultural nuances, especially because I'm nervous of being offensive... to talk about being nervous of being offensive in... well, just about everything.

I'm not making sense already. Here, let me try again:

Deep down somewhere inside, I'm Texan. Stereotypically, Texan = big everything, beef, bad beer, big beefy beehive-y broads, bragging and bravado, Baptists, and the innate belief that no one else matters. I hate Texas. Texas is where the sperm met the egg that became me, and that reality had a more profound effect on me than I'd like to admit.

Then I migrated west to Nevada, where I came out within a week of crossing the desert, grew out my armpit hair, bought a bike instead of a car, considered anarchy, embraced atheism, learned yoga, and went into the Peace Corps. I became as un-Texan as I could get. When people said, "Where are you from?," I'd always say, "Reno."

Peace Corps in El Salvador deserves volumes, not a paragraph. I'll just mention that I was heavily influenced by late night sinful salsa dancing, a radical socialist alcoholic boyfriend, and white guilt. TONS of white guilt. I planned to live indefinitely in Latin America by way of finding a place where I could make art, and live my life dancing/crying/loving and doing all that delicious life stuff I'd been holding out on previously.

After Peace Corps, I went back west - to San Francisco, and I taught sex ed, counseled rape survivors, got involved in transgender health, thought a lot about outreach to sex workers, and started to pursue medical school to become an abortion provider. In California, this shy girl learned how to talk - about stuff nobody really knows how to talk about - and I hung around really chatty people, people who were way more social than I will ever want to be, people who went out a lot and talked a lot about their fabulous ideas and lives and plans to alter the world. I lived in the Bay Area bubble, the land of liberalism and lewd, lascivious acts of love.

Now, back to my point. I'm here in Minnesota and I just realized the other day that I've just started to not miss mountains and ocean constantly. Which is even sadder than missing them. That's to say, I'm getting used to it here, and I'm liking it for a lot of reasons, and I'm still confused for a lot of reasons about how the hell I ended up here and why the hell is it working out so well when it seems so strange. Huh? Everyday, it seems so freaking strange to me that I'm here.

Even after San Francisco, I'm still really shy. My heart beats in my throat when I talk in front of groups. As a social work student, I have to talk in front of groups all the time about incredibly passion-full and emotionally painful subjects - for me, right now, that means talking about death, and bearing witness to it - about oppression and disparity and injustice and phobias - about my own feelings that come up about hopelessness and despair when a client expresses those feelings - etc, etc, etc.

Doing this emotional stuff around Minnesotans is so different than doing that around Texans, Nevadans, Salvadorans, and Californians. I emote. I describe. I cry. I ponder. I ask 500 questions a day, half of which are bold and blunt. I fluctuate. I hide. I get brave and emote again. I don't acknowledge a God, and the only thing that keeps me getting out of bed every day, I figure, is the hope for more authenticity and growth than the day before.

Minnesotans, by and large, do not emote easily. What I've heard is that the mix of Scandinavian and German ancestry created the cultural notion that it's preferable to have a stoic and unblemished, pleasant and even facade. Something like that? Is that right? Minnesota Nice confuses me.

This is what I've been wanting to blog about forever. I find it so hard to articulate. I don't want to complain, but I feel incredibly tentative and uncertain of how to unleash my wild and wacky internal self. I'm terrified of offending the Minnesotan sensibility. I'm afraid of being the weird kid. And I'm frustrated at myself for being afraid.

There. I said it.

Making out.

Believe it or not, I interviewed a "local" today about making out in a car in the winter. I'm gathering data about "local" common knowledge of condensation accumulation in a non-running car, and the feasibility of actual condom usage in a car in the winter. (If you're joining this blog at this post, you'll just be confused unless you read the linked previous posts. So, go on now, read them.)

The interview went like this:

Me: So, you ever made out in a car in the winter?
Local: Yes.
Me: What was it like?
Local: Cold.

At this point the interview was over because I could not stop laughing.

I've basically concluded that I'm learning about condensation accumulation turning to ice in a car in the winter at age almost 30 when most locals likely learned about it as a teenager while making out in a car.

Sigh. Better late than never.

It was bound to happen eventually

Me talking about sex was bound to happen eventually on this blog. And here it is for the first time.

On Monday the temp was about 5 degrees during the middle of the day. It was slightly breezy and the windchill felt like -5 to me. Probably wasn't though. I decided to be strong and tough and bad and walk to my destination, about 2-3 miles away, and finally get a little exercise and sunshine. I got a little lost on my way to one of L.'s sister's house and called L.'s other sister to get directions out of Como Park. Soon enough, I was on my way again.

It was really cold yet I was fine until I got lost. When I got lost, I had to slow momentum and look around and communicate the cross-streets to my navigation guide on my cellphone (meaning my hands were no longer in my pockets, heart rate was decreasing, and my sweat was cooling rapidly). The walk was a great idea but I realized I'm much more laid back about getting lost on foot when it's agreeable outside. I still think in Californian sometimes. (More on that in an upcoming post about leaving the back door open.)

We've all seen used condoms on the ground. Goodness, aren't they curious? I always wonder how they got there. Don't you? Did they actually fall out of garbage bags? Unlikely, really. More likely they never got thrown away. Because I'm more fascinated with gross than grossed out by gross, I really tend to wonder what each rogue condom's story is.

After I figured out where I was going, I started booking it. (Thanks again to those Yaktrax!) Right after I hung up the phone, I almost walked on a used condom. Used condom caught in new Yaktrax - not something you want to deal with when you're cold and lost.

Okay. This is no big deal anywhere else. But this is a big deal here!

1. It was not covered in snow, ice or dirt. Sure, it was frozen (a first sight for me). But it had not endured snow/icefall anytime recently.
2. It was on the sidewalk in a neighborhood. Not an industrial zone or a dark alley, where you'd be more likely to put two and two together.
3. If someone actually really truly used it outside... well, wait, that is not even possible!
4. If someone used it inside of a car, then threw it out - I suppose that's the most likely option. Do you keep your car running for that? Wouldn't the whole encounter reek of exhaust in that case?

So, I wonder out loud, to the universe, to the latex angels, to anyone who might turn a trick in a cold town, to anyone anywhere using condoms in the winter anywhere close to a door where it might fall into the outside world: how? Really, how?

(It's notable that all of my posts thus far have the "ice" label.)