On the sensuality of my hate f*ck with the Midwest..

If we’ve spent time together, you most likely know about my various home cities throughout my years. A couple of those before my time in California and now New York being Virginia, and Iowa. I’m on my yearly pilgrimage back home as the prodigal daughter back home to Iowa to take in the parts of the state I love, before I leave to foresake the state yet again after another year of Dionysian living anywhere and everywhere else.

I have a hate f*ck relationship with Iowa, and the midwest. There is largely, the bitterness of my feelings towards it. The bitter unbearable cold of the winter, when frosbite dangerously nips at my nose far into the negatives. The long long drives needed to go where suited my fancy. The lack of..my people, the lack of that buzz I need to thrive, the bustle and commotion and constantly new.

But meanwhile, damn do I love to have the midwest as a bit of a f*ck buddy. Iowa is the one night stand I return to, when I crave a long lost part of me: the part that thrives in the open spaces, gazing out into the sunset over the corn fields, in sunsets that Mark Twain wrote about. I miss the over-the-top contradictions from the simplicity of the rest of country living. Mountains of fried food, sweet corn as big as your head, soda fountains that haven’t changed since the early 1900s and let you escape time to order from the variety of homemade syrups mixed with your soda water. I love a roll in the hay with country living- I love pulling over to pet cows, I love small town main streets, I love getting lost in a maize maze and the immense pride in the most random of small town fun facts.

So, yes. I can trash talk the midwest with Stephen King and the best of them, but I can’t wait for my roll in the hay with it, love-hating every minute.