I’ve long talked about moving away from Kentucky. To some far away place with great civil rights, lots of lesbians, and maybe some awesome seafood. I talk about how terrible Kentucky is and this Commonwealth is in a tight race with Indiana for the coveted title of “Worst EvAr.”

But do I really hate Louisville, or even Kentucky at-large? Or do I just hate Fern Creek? It’s probably not that simple, but it still deserves a moment of pause and consideration. Because why move one thousand miles away, when you really just need like eight miles, right?

I should explain how this thought appeared on my radar. As a side note, continuing that radar metaphor, I suspect if my brain was illustrated it would look like an ATC screen on the day before Thanksgiving. Very cluttered and busy. Hard to say.

Anyway, I got up and decided to go out and try to find an undershirt before clinicals. Something light, long-sleeve, and clingy to go under my scrubs. After Marshall’s was closed, and Target didn’t have anything to fit the bill, I thought that I would go eat breakfast. Which is my first mistake, being that it was 11:00 on a Sunday morning which means Church crowds. I rode by First Watch, but they looked busy and their food isn’t really my favorite. So I rode down to ZEGGZ in Middletown. As I’m creeping along on the motorcycle looking for a place to park, I notice the crowd demo. Mostly older, white, straight people. All I could think was, “Could we not?”

So I rode on and on and on, and eventually I ended up at North End Cafe on Frankfort. I ended up foregoing breakfast altogether in favor of their Bacon Cheeseburger, cooked medium, with some sort of decadent white cheddar. It was really good. The atmosphere was better too. Sure, it was mostly white people, but that’s to be expected, because gentrification is Louisville’s fourth favorite pastime. Right behind Basketball, Bourbon, and Horse Racing. In no particular order.

I had tweeted recently that for the most part, the closer a restaurant is to my house, the more out of place I’m going to feel. This is about the same with bars. This is not me saying that I’m better than the other patrons. I mean I am, but I digress. However, as a queer trans woman, I just don’t fit. There’s no where in my zip code for me. I went to Outback the other night, because it was near-by. I was the youngest person at the bar by like a couple decades. It was odd.

Everywhere I’ve lived, with the exception of the two years I spent in Texas, has been along the Southern Jefferson county border or beyond, out in Bullitt county. I’ve never lived anywhere that one would charitably describe as “fun” and/or “hip.” It’s with a certain amount of longing that I stare off into the good time daydreams of places like New England or California. Forgetting about things like shit tons of snow and buying heating oil in bulk, or the horror stories of housing prices in the Bay Area.  Which leads me back to my original question. Do I hate Kentucky and, by extension, Louisville because they’re terrible? Or do I just think that because living in Fern Creek is so bland?

When I posed the question on Twitter, Liz responded to my question with a question, asking, “Why not both?”

I know what she’s getting at, and she’s probably close to the truth, regardless of what I’d like to admit. Instead of answers, I’m left with yet another question: What do I do with this information?

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