(Originally appeared in Mutant Renegade Zine #13, Winter 2000)
I am a witness to almost four decades of American history. I was born in 1955, the same year as rock-n-roll. I saw myself firsthand the Civil Rights movement as well as the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies. I took all the drugs, wore all the clothes, and listened to all the rock bands that came along. I was a hippie when I was thirteen in 1969. I was an original punk rocker in 1972. I helped to create the climate that exists locally today for creativity. Through all of it, I have been an out gay man. I was queer in 1965 when I was only ten years old. I had sex with any man, girl, boy, or woman I could get my hands on and I'm not sorry about anything. I have been and I continue to be free. I have lived life my way and if you don't like it, fuck you.
I would like to talk to you about the new millenium and what I can predict in the upcoming years. Dayton will die. Dayton was only a strong growing city in the presence of the industrial boom of the post war years of the fifties thanks to Wright Patterson, GM, NCR, and a few lesser concerns. Those kinds of resources will never be seen again. To expect a community to thrive and grow by frying hamburgers and selling them to people is shortsighted or criminal.
The arts have no place in the Midwest and will generate no revenue no matter how much money is thrown at them. There is actually a prohibition against imagination in the bible and unless we eliminate God people will continue to flee to the suburbs to escape him. My theory is that Christ is only Satan in drag at best and that he is blocking the light at the end of the tunnel. I think that we should let Jesus get down off of the cross and party.
The atmosphere here is stifling. The evacuation out of Dayton is not a result of whites fleeing blacks. People were abandoning the white trash, rednecks, and hillbillies that stares at them threateningly and witlessly like Pentecostal cattle. We are all being judged and judging on a daily basis to out own detriment.
Dayton is one of the most segregated cities in the world. All stratum of this city are pitted against one another. Blacks are banished to the west. The meager of income are resolved to the inner east. The real monies are found in the north and the south, which are predominantly white. Now, I introduce the Hispanics who could not have chosen a better time to influx. They will eat this city up. In my estimation, they are the only hope for this city. We need new blood. We need jobs downtown and places to live right down and I don't mean loft spaces that run five to six hundred a month. We need small cheap one-bedroom apartments for singles. Mom and Dad and the two point seven kids are never going to live downtown. Once, I has the idea of putting white picket fences all along Main Street ten feet high. I thought that maybe that would bring people back downtown. Actually, people do live downtown, but niggers and faggots are not acceptable. Of course poor people do not exist here. This is a shame and guilt based community thanks to God and his minions, which I prefer to call lion chow. If you have any moxie, you will flee too.
Do not flee away from here, but flee to a future where people are allowed to have in themselves as they are. Relieve yourselves of limitations of the small minded live stock like creatures that inhabit this wide spot in the dirt road of animal husbandry that we call a community. A community is about cooperation and there is none here. Most people do not approve of each other. Intolerance is tolerated.
In the future, money will be the only thing that matters. No one will touch or be touched unless it is done professionally. Intimacy will be regarded with repulsion, even more than it is already. Every person for itself as we are finally dehumanized each into its own vehicle with its own cell phone. I see it rolling in like a tsunami, a living hell of isolation and restraint fashionably shrink-wrapped for your convenience.
Buying this city up house by house is the only way to change it for the better. East Dayton is dirt cheap and up for grabs. $20,000 with no down payment for the first time buyer. That's a mortgage of $200 a month, cheaper than rent. Buy out the hillbillies, white trash, and rednecks. Make the city our own.
We can legalize all the vices and tax them and eliminate poverty in Dayton. Tobacco and alcohol already support out schools along with the lottery. Prostitution is a great way to fund the arts. The arts will never fund the arts. Drugs can fund the new ballpark after the novelty has worn off. We can have rock festivals in it or maybe flea markets when it can't pay for itself. It's a long drive from the burbs to the scrapyards of east Dayton. I'm sure the prostitution will pick up along Third Street when all those men down here charged up and drunk from all the excitement. Just think of all the new liquor establishments that will definitely go in around the ballpark. It will be a stretch for the city to fund all the added security that I know we needed to keep it all white.
Perhaps, the next phase is to build a bullet train from Centerville. I think it would have been a better idea to block off the entire downtown and turn it into an amusement park. The Wright Flyer sculpture already bears a strong resemblance to a roller coaster. Why not build a roller coaster from the bridge to Fifth Street. I can see bumper cars on Monument. We could put the remaining indigenous people in the vacant store windows as displays. A live freak show would draw a lot of gawkers. Monster trucks on the square would be a hit I'm sure. We could put a brothel in the arcade, after all, this city is already a whore for Danis. We could have the Bill Goodman Gun and Knife Show on Ice at Memorial Hall and what about the heavy petting zoo for the little ones. The Sears Building could become the Imaginearium and we could all imagine that it wasn't there. Hell, why not reenact the Dayton Flood and just flood the fucking city.
I think we could create a lot of jobs with a little imagination. Oops, there's that dirty word again, imagination. I guess the East Dayton Arson Festival is out of the question too. It would be great to have Joe Camel there for all the little white trash kids with Disney nicotine patches for their little atrophied arms. The new millenium is bound to be bleak with nothing but a fountain and expensive baseball tickets to look foreword to. Maybe the Inventors Museum won't disappoint. I invented something myself. Maybe we could sell it at the museum. It's caledl Cacklins. It's poultry rinds instead of pork rinds. We could make them in different flavors that would capture the interest of the locals. We could have flavors like stale beer or baloney gravy. We could have an event like the one in Pamplona, Spain only instead of running from bulls in the street people could run from disgruntled welfare mothers. Other events could include bobbing for dentures and tough baby contests. Also, I think that a guided bus tour of murder sites all over the city would bring the people back downtown. We could show all the visitors where a customer wrestled to death at the old McCrory's on Main Street or where an employee was beaten to death with a jar of jelly at Shears.
Dayton is a fun place. You can get hammered at Sloopys, lit at Pappy's Place, or blown at the Stowaway. We have so much that is really going on right here in out own back yard that we really don't need to invent anything. It's all in how you look at things. And even though I believe that this city is hopeless, I can still see the positive. When the city is empty, it will make a great place to train the new SWAT team. Now, if we could only legalize reality. Happy Millenium.
The atmosphere here is stifling. The evacuation out of Dayton is not a result of whites fleeing blacks. People were abandoning the white trash, rednecks, and hillbillies that stares at them threateningly and witlessly like Pentecostal cattle. We are all being judged and judging on a daily basis to out own detriment.
Dayton is one of the most segregated cities in the world. All stratum of this city are pitted against one another. Blacks are banished to the west. The meager of income are resolved to the inner east. The real monies are found in the north and the south, which are predominantly white. Now, I introduce the Hispanics who could not have chosen a better time to influx. They will eat this city up. In my estimation, they are the only hope for this city. We need new blood. We need jobs downtown and places to live right down and I don't mean loft spaces that run five to six hundred a month. We need small cheap one-bedroom apartments for singles. Mom and Dad and the two point seven kids are never going to live downtown. Once, I has the idea of putting white picket fences all along Main Street ten feet high. I thought that maybe that would bring people back downtown. Actually, people do live downtown, but niggers and faggots are not acceptable. Of course poor people do not exist here. This is a shame and guilt based community thanks to God and his minions, which I prefer to call lion chow. If you have any moxie, you will flee too.
Do not flee away from here, but flee to a future where people are allowed to have in themselves as they are. Relieve yourselves of limitations of the small minded live stock like creatures that inhabit this wide spot in the dirt road of animal husbandry that we call a community. A community is about cooperation and there is none here. Most people do not approve of each other. Intolerance is tolerated.
In the future, money will be the only thing that matters. No one will touch or be touched unless it is done professionally. Intimacy will be regarded with repulsion, even more than it is already. Every person for itself as we are finally dehumanized each into its own vehicle with its own cell phone. I see it rolling in like a tsunami, a living hell of isolation and restraint fashionably shrink-wrapped for your convenience.
Buying this city up house by house is the only way to change it for the better. East Dayton is dirt cheap and up for grabs. $20,000 with no down payment for the first time buyer. That's a mortgage of $200 a month, cheaper than rent. Buy out the hillbillies, white trash, and rednecks. Make the city our own.
We can legalize all the vices and tax them and eliminate poverty in Dayton. Tobacco and alcohol already support out schools along with the lottery. Prostitution is a great way to fund the arts. The arts will never fund the arts. Drugs can fund the new ballpark after the novelty has worn off. We can have rock festivals in it or maybe flea markets when it can't pay for itself. It's a long drive from the burbs to the scrapyards of east Dayton. I'm sure the prostitution will pick up along Third Street when all those men down here charged up and drunk from all the excitement. Just think of all the new liquor establishments that will definitely go in around the ballpark. It will be a stretch for the city to fund all the added security that I know we needed to keep it all white.
Perhaps, the next phase is to build a bullet train from Centerville. I think it would have been a better idea to block off the entire downtown and turn it into an amusement park. The Wright Flyer sculpture already bears a strong resemblance to a roller coaster. Why not build a roller coaster from the bridge to Fifth Street. I can see bumper cars on Monument. We could put the remaining indigenous people in the vacant store windows as displays. A live freak show would draw a lot of gawkers. Monster trucks on the square would be a hit I'm sure. We could put a brothel in the arcade, after all, this city is already a whore for Danis. We could have the Bill Goodman Gun and Knife Show on Ice at Memorial Hall and what about the heavy petting zoo for the little ones. The Sears Building could become the Imaginearium and we could all imagine that it wasn't there. Hell, why not reenact the Dayton Flood and just flood the fucking city.
I think we could create a lot of jobs with a little imagination. Oops, there's that dirty word again, imagination. I guess the East Dayton Arson Festival is out of the question too. It would be great to have Joe Camel there for all the little white trash kids with Disney nicotine patches for their little atrophied arms. The new millenium is bound to be bleak with nothing but a fountain and expensive baseball tickets to look foreword to. Maybe the Inventors Museum won't disappoint. I invented something myself. Maybe we could sell it at the museum. It's caledl Cacklins. It's poultry rinds instead of pork rinds. We could make them in different flavors that would capture the interest of the locals. We could have flavors like stale beer or baloney gravy. We could have an event like the one in Pamplona, Spain only instead of running from bulls in the street people could run from disgruntled welfare mothers. Other events could include bobbing for dentures and tough baby contests. Also, I think that a guided bus tour of murder sites all over the city would bring the people back downtown. We could show all the visitors where a customer wrestled to death at the old McCrory's on Main Street or where an employee was beaten to death with a jar of jelly at Shears.
Dayton is a fun place. You can get hammered at Sloopys, lit at Pappy's Place, or blown at the Stowaway. We have so much that is really going on right here in out own back yard that we really don't need to invent anything. It's all in how you look at things. And even though I believe that this city is hopeless, I can still see the positive. When the city is empty, it will make a great place to train the new SWAT team. Now, if we could only legalize reality. Happy Millenium.