When thinking of a place that felt "other" and that "disturbed" me, I instantly though of an instance a few years back when I traveled with a girlfriend to Indiana on a July weekend to meet her parents. I was raised in a city, grew up in the suburbs, and couldn't feel more uncomfortable in her small town, and the small town culture her family embodied. Her father tried to teach me how to drive his bulky old motorcycle on a gravel road. As a test the next day, he revved his small motor boat up to 55 mph when it was my turn to be dragged on the innertube tied to the back, skipping along the mucky lake behind his house. He chuckled when I couldn't hold on anymore and went thwacking into the water.
As out-of-place as I felt surrounded by all the various redneck trappings of his house - the coolers of Bud Light, the fishing lures, the ATV magazine - I was made most uncomfortable by his presence, his demeanor. I knew going into the weekend that he had committed a horrible crime fifteen years ago, one for which he served ten years and in my opinion should have served far more. I also knew that my girlfriend at the time had a "hate the sinner love the sin" attitude, and still considered him a father, though she had very complex feelings toward him.
This all made it very difficult to know how to act around him. On most "meet the parents" weekends, the instinct is to suck up a little. In this case I wanted to rip his throat out. Decency and my girlfriend's objections ruled that out, but she and I both had too big of a problem with what he had done for sucking up to be on the table either.
When writing about Indiana in 2006, I find it near impossible to edit his monstrosity out.
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