Odessa: Bicycle (Un)Friendly

So, as you know, I am currently in my home of origin. Here are a couple of glimpses, Natalie and Meg can confirm:

-Not within two hours of being here, I encountered the following: I had been on my bike for about ten minutes, cylcing off the atrophy from the 5 hour carride coma. I passed 3 boys playing in their yard, the oldest of which could not have been over 10. As i rode by, they yelled 'pop a wheelie!' Seeing as I can't pop a wheelie, i halfsmiled and waved, for a second allowing myself some child-like hope that i might have a nice evening biking through Oiltown, but ironically, the same children almost immediately crushed it. The oldest, once he realized I wasn't going to pop that wheelie, added to his request, "pop a wheelie or i'll shoot you!" and the younger two joined in, "yeah, we'll shoot you! we'll shoot you!"...They also yelled some comment about my "tight pants". I was wearing my brown old-man-pant cutoffs. Ashlee, recall my uniform of Summer '05. They are not tight. Not at all.

To the untrained visitor, this may all seem like a nearly, but ultimately harmless, situation; kids being kids. But to this native, it betrayed almost everything that is difficult to reconcile with my place of origin. Keep in mind the whole incident probably took no longer than 15 seconds to go down. But those seconds conjured a lineage of fathers and father figures who equate/d power with violence, desires fulfilled with cocked guns. The brief seconds betrayed a collective well trained hyper-alertness to non-conformist masculinity, and the 'requisite' self-indictment to shut it down with violent immediacy, elst diminish one's own manliness. Pre-pubescence does not protect from--in fact it leaves wide open to--the passing on of these dicked worldviews. "Shooting the gays" is an extremely present trope here, and dimly veiled by humor. I've heard it from my own dad, brother, uncles, even mother. No joke, the phrase can actually be heard if you hit the right nerve in a conversation.

To quote Jacob, "How the fuck did I come from here?!"

On the lighter side (if you don't think about it too much), another glimpse:

I was stopped in the parking lot at HEB yesterday...yes, we have HEB...by the cart-collector guy. Actually, he called me back to his post that i had already passed by a few yards. "Excuse me, did they offer you a bag for those?!" I had only purchased two glasses of tea, so I said i didn't need a bag at the register. "Oh no, I didn't ask for one." He stared at me...and stared...i waited for him to say something, but no words came...i smiled awkwardly, turned around and walked away...

wtf.