text: so when you asked what happened in kentucky i thought you meant like what made Kentucky Kentucky lol but you meant what happened when i had guns pulled on me maybe? **8:50 PM** yeah! 😩 that's why i was confused genuinely interested bc thats a fun story post hoc (vocab word of the day! someone used it in class and im using it now in probably the wrong context) **8:52pm** lol, i was confused too clearly i was like, how the fuck do i explain Kentucky to a New Yorker and why am I being asked to **9:51pm** wait i wanna know what happened wit da guns in kentucky **12:25am** i'll tell the story tomorrow i don't want to tell it in a way that plays into stereotypes or paints Kentucky as a negative place because it's one of my favorite places on Earth &#x200B; **7:07am** so first things first there was a pretty girl the prettiest think roll out of bed without makeup on pretty think a wardrobe full of things she bought in India pretty think no bra millenial hippy pretty think positive vibes and a longtime interest in Jainism pretty think 24 years old and slightly obnoxious in 2009 &#x200B; her boyfriend was a friend of mine a skinny affluent suburban kid from the northside of Columbus, Ohio &#x200B; he liked to play video games the pro-social kind like Minecraft and he'd talk to me about how they could maybe save the world by bringing nerds together for good &#x200B; he'd tell me this over craft beers in a Unitarian Church on Bardstown Road &#x200B; you know the kind of church with taps and bartenders and salvaged wood tables with mason jars for water &#x200B; the kind that got converted into a for profit company because the progressives who built it don't need God anymore &#x200B; and besides their children were more interested in witchcraft pokemon and the understandable joys of dancing naked in same gender company in the thick dark woods &#x200B; anyway, it's through these two people the pretty girl and her boyfriend that I met Andrew the girl's older brother &#x200B; since he is the first character with a name i think it should be clear that we immediately hit it off due to a shared love of anti-civilization philosophy and anarcho-communist ideals &#x200B; besides I knew how to farm organically and could strike up a wallet-opening harlequin smile at the St. Matthew's farmer's market &#x200B; Andrew, for his worth, knew how to operate and repair machinery produce high quality bourbon and install gravity powered-irrigation systems on land his family had owned since the early 1970s &#x200B; the land was a few hours south of all of these immaculately maintained victorian mansions in Old Louisville and the Highlands &#x200B; it was also just a few hours south of where *we* lived at the time in a shotgun cohabitation with a large yard in Schnitzelberg &#x200B; keep in mind, this is 2009 and I am an appropriate technology anarcho-communist on a farm hand's income so my directions were written down with pen and paper and there was no GPS in my car or on my phone &#x200B; on the drive down, I listened to music loudly alone in the car but I didn't let Okkervil River, Neil Young, or Fleetwood Mac distract me i simply followed Andrew's written word like I was a fresh Biblical Scholar at Southern on the verge of losing my inerrant convictions through my sincere, devote attention to every serif and san of a higher power's life-directional >!lack of clarity!< &#x200B; i got off I-65 the winding two lane road became a straight one lane road that one lane road became gravel then dirt and finally it stopped at tall grass and a small break in the trees &#x200B; this was the end but something didn't look right i didn't see a large back-to-the-land yurt in a secluded clearing with three palimino horses drinking from a crystal clear, cold spring fed unpolluted creek &#x200B; i saw a doublewide in decent condition with a mix of tobacco and weed growing in the backyard and shagbark hickory and dying ash in the front &#x200B; i pulled into this dirt driveway slowly to turn around and briefly check my directions &#x200B; however, that's when it hit me that i was driving a 2002 Saturn Ion well off the well-travelled roads and I was in a drug grower's driveway in a part of the country that is notoriously suspicious of *their own family members* let alone longhaired outsiders in India-import cowboy western buttondowns with big city, Jefferson County plates &#x200B; i claim no great stroke of wisdom for this humble realization the dogs, the nine pitbulls, they helped me &#x200B; so did the three adult men bearded, strong, healthy on their porch with shotguns pointed my way and words heading toward me that i couldn't hear &#x200B; as dumb and clueless as I might be sometimes, I am the reckless, wayward son of Quaker missionaries and this was not the scariest thing that's ever happened to me not close &#x200B; I simply raised my hands and slowly moved my left one to lower my window &#x200B; the first thing i hear is WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE but against reason, i laugh i say: isn't it obvious? *i'm* *lost* I was *invited* to see Gerry Dickens do you know him? &#x200B; at this, they laugh louder and harder than I had in my profound fear and vulnerability "*You* want to see *that* crazy old man who never wears clothes?" &#x200B; (they lower their guns) &#x200B; "See where the dirt road ends and turns into a skinny driveway of unmowed grass between those rows of mostly beech and elm trees *that's* where you go." &#x200B; "But, first, let me guess... you're dating his daughter, aren't you?" &#x200B; **5:10pm** i liked the way you told that very memoir-y like it could be a cool nostalgic bit in a lil memoir or book or whatever also thats not at all how i imagined it also is it not taboo to talk abotu how beautiful a girl is when ur friend is dating her? ALSO i see a pattern in guys liking the hippie no makeup kinda pretty bc all my guy friends (including you i suppose) have expressed this specific aesthetic &#x200B; **8:52pm** haha, yeah idk i like people when they are comfortable like pjs over a fancy dress 99/100 times but this is Kentucky as I understand it or this is a slice of Kentucky i wanted to give the sense of a deeply rooted people who are comfortable with who they are and who like being outside and like doing things themselves and are a little romantic and kooky and it's not a joke i saw so many naked people in Kentucky and it's not necessarily a sexual thing it's just people don't think they need to be ashamed of their bodies or awkward about it even if they are women who haven't bothered to shave anything in 11 days \-not so bad, right? like not for everyone, but not a nuclear wasteland in need of other people's intervention and charity \-like fuck. this is the horse capital of the world and horses aren't exactly for beggers \-oh, and yeah.