Im(possibility) City

According to possibilitycity.com, Louisville isn’t just “a place to live,” it’s a place to really live. (Who wrote this copy?) It’s a town without excuses, blissfully free of the hang-ups and holdups that keep things from happening (LOL, “Where did you go to high school?”). It’s a place where blue-sky thinking (???) meets grassroots can-do. It’s a city without limits. Anything’s possible here in Louisville. Especially you. 

How can a city “without limits” feel so limiting? Well, not to sound gauche, but did you grow up with your name on restaurant awnings and the pressure of successful parents whom everybody and their grandparents know? Are you triggered every time someone asks, “Oh, what’s it like having a restaurant named after you?” (I’ll see you in therapy someday, Oskar Huot.) If so, can I buy you a drink?

 

I grew up with hybrid smells of oil and butter and sautéed onions, plastic-wrapped aluminum containers filled with homemade pimento cheese on small toasted squares of white bread, chicken empanadas, and chicken pot pies. My mother sat me in broccoli boxes while she worked in the kitchen of the restaurant that was named after me when I was two years old. Eventually, I graduated from the (I’m assuming) slightly damp, stained containers to asking women dining in the restaurant what was in their purses. 

 

Let’s fast forward to a couple weeks ago when I took myself to Louisville’s version of Hipster Cheers for a couple of beers and patio hangs. I made a disparaging remark about Louisville, a city I have lived in my whole life, and a male friend responded, “Hey, don’t talk that way about my city.” As if we exist in the same way in the same city. Our city is not going to align for everybody, I did not say to him. He couldn’t hear that the city doesn’t work for me. 

 

I still hold a grudge against an acquaintance who said hello to me at a flea market and suggested I bring my “crew” to check out her boyfriend’s art installation. Instantly triggered by the use of the word “crew” by someone in their thirties, it was as if I was being dropped off at the mall in middle school. The one with Sweet Factory and The Gap or the one with the adult-sized marble chess board outside Abercrombie & Motherfuckin’ Fitch?

 

If I’m just a girl who had a restaurant named after her and I don’t believe in the socialization of nouns, who can I become in such an impossible city when people have already decided who they think I am? It’s a strange place to be in your late 30s and single with little intention of settling down.

 

When I was younger, my mother used to tell me if I swallowed gum my butt cheeks would stick together. And honestly, that would be preferable to pretending to smile when someone assumes I am merely a shadow.