Em-eye-es-es-eye-es-es-eye-pee-pee-eye [kris]

What I like about cities is that everything is king size,
the beauty and the ugliness. ~Joseph Brodsky

The cicadas are so loud here. A steady pulse that crescendos slowly, mischievously, until I am caught off guard by sudden and intense whirring in my ears. The air is thick here. Hanging—a lukewarm, sweaty mass. Both the cicada chorus and the muggy air bring to mind “Louisiana Bayou” (though I’ve never been south of Springfield). The streetlights are surrounded by soft orange-gold orbs against a deep violet sky, made of light strained through the heaviness. Hazy and moist, the air here is always in a transitional place. Not dry, not wet. This is a transitional city. “The Gateway to the West”. I am sitting in an overstuffed micro-suede chair next to an open window in the living room of my friends’ new house. This house is a first home for them and a transitional place for me. In between living with the closest of friends in a dodgy, or as Kristen says “bohemian”, one-bedroom in South Central Pennsylvania and something else. Here. Looking out the window I watch the steady stream of red, orange, and white lights cascading up and down Lindbergh Boulevard. Smiling, I remember Kate saying in 10th grade “cruising Lindbergh is the thing to do on Friday night, and the best way to meet guys!” I never cruised Lindbergh with Kate.

Then.
A crash course in St. Louis culture/geography: St. Louis County is separated into three basic sections: North, West, and South. The East side of St. Louis is across the Mississippi River in Illinois, home to strip joints and shotguns. Across the Missouri River on the West is St. Charles and St. Peters. Home to cheap land, cheap building, Wal-Mart culture, and white flight.

I haven’t actually lived here since I graduated high school, which for a true St. Louisan is looked on as the pivotal point in life. The time you look forward to, and, once completed, back at. While living on the east coast for three years I may have been asked twice where I went to high school. Anyone from St. Louis is well aware that this is the most important conversation-starting question from which a person can be categorized into a multitude of groups and labeled accordingly. Lafayette: rich. St. Joe: easy. McCluer: ghetto. I’m not a fan of the “high school question”. Growing up when I told people I went to school at Parkway North there were generally two equally undesirable reactions. I lived on the transitional line between West (rich) and North (ghetto) County. Anyone west of me and east of St. Charles heard Creve Coeur/Maryland Heights and seemed to think white trash, or “white trash of Parkway”—the term given by my freshman soccer coach when she chewed out our team for bad behavior on a rowdy bus trip home from a weekday afternoon game. The other response, this one received from people north and east of me, was an unspoken assumption that I must be spoiled and snotty (spoken apologetically later if we’d become friends). These memories are especially painful to me because I was just as much a perpetrator of the “high school question” as I was a victim (as all of us St. Louis kids were). I wouldn’t say it to their face, but for no truly identifiable or legitimate reason, hearing that someone was from St. Charles or South County initiated a change in my demeanor, lessened interest in their friendship. My more optimistic St. Louis friends would explain this “high school question” tradition as a way to connect. “You went to Ladue, do you know (insert relational connection here)?” Either way, the only place I’ve been asked about high school upon my new residence in St. Louis is on job applications—so far so good.

A favorite memory of mine growing up in St. Louis, before geographical location and the “high school question” determined our places in the social hierarchy, was in Mrs. Gaal’s second grade class at McKelvey School learning to spell “Mississippi” (as in our river, not the state). An over-full class of frenzied seven and eight year olds skipped past and climbed atop clusters of metal and plastic, navy mini chairs and laminate desks with colored construction paper name tags taped to the corners while practicing our spelling. As we moved in a mass both rhythmic and chaotic we chanted “Em-eye-es-es-eye-es-es-eye-pee-pee-eye!” while waiting our turns to go into the hall and recite the week’s words to Mrs. Gaal. This was terribly funny to us, for reasons I could have only understood in the glory of my seven-year-old mind. Mrs. Gaal had apparently given up on kiddy crowd control that sunny Friday afternoon. Crazy. Blissful. Everybody fit then. No divisions yet. Before our real initiation into St. Louis culture, before the time when our relationships were filtered through the labels and images we would soon learn to live under.

It didn’t occur to me that I might not like St. Louis until the end of Jr. High. By then I’d been exposed to enough places to know that there was a world beyond Busch stadium on the East and Old St. Charles on the West. My parents are from the Detroit area—Mom is from “down river,” or Rockwood and Dad is from Harper Woods. They’ve lived in St. Louis for 20 years now but when they say “home” Mike, Tom and I know that our parents mean Michigan. It’s always been that way. The Lantzy family settled in St. Louis on a whim. A string of moves—Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and then a sudden and permanent stop in St. Louis, Missouri. A place Brian and Deb Lantzy had never visited and had no previous connection to. Sort of like Powerball. There’s no specific reason that we stayed, I’ve asked. “I don’t know, Kris, it just kinda happened," Mom said. I guess not moving a family with kids one, two and four years old an eighth time is enough motivation for any sane person to stay put. So in 1987 the Lantzys came and stayed. But growing up we all knew Michigan to be home, and it was in Jr. High that I started asking my parents to move there. We talked about it for Dad’s job and Tom’s golf, but as a family, moving never happened.

Now.
A green and white Hazelwood EMT van speeds past the open window accompanied by sirens that break the cicada trance and flashing lights catch my eyes. Stirred from reminiscence, I watch as the van turns right onto Lindbergh and is quickly out of sight. I am living about 100 feet from Lindbergh (in North County). And another 200 from an entrance to I-270. Within walking distance there is a Walgreens, Starbucks, several shops, fast food restaurants, and the civic building. It’s a busy street, but apart from the single ambulance, those cicadas are still much louder than the traffic outside. St. Louis City itself is not nearly as populated as the County. Urban sprawl and white flight have left city population in many places sparse and marginalized, spurring a long transition from lively river city to largely abandoned ghost town in some parts. In many places St. Louis is now a dirt and brick shadow of who she used to be.

At this point in my second residence in St. Louis I’ve not found the nagging feeling that I don’t fit here to be untrue. It’s still true. I don’t fit here any more now than I did growing up. As far as my image is concerned, I’m a mess most of the time, and though I’ve tried I can’t convincingly pretend to care about the Cardinals—however, this time around I feel the cheerful freedom not to. The difference this time is I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one who feels this way—something I believed in my core growing up. So true to me then that I didn’t even have to think it, or wonder. It was just true. I was alone. Alone in the loneliness I felt. Alone in the overwhelming sadness of assuming I was an outsider, and in the exhaustion of trying to find the way in.

What I’ve found here is a handful of kindred spirits who don’t fit either, and have actually ceased trying. People who have experienced life outside of the St. Louis bubble—life with true community, and deep relationships that are both messy and broken. Connections unrestrained by the haze of expectation, the sense of striving, and the fear that sits in the St. Louis air, buffering relationships. Ensuring a ‘safe’ distance. Keeping the surface of the waters calm. The image intact. What I can say about St. Louis, six weeks in, is that my new friends here have made me wonder if anyone feels like they fit. Especially the people who look so much like they do, and whose rejection made me feel so much like I didn’t. You can feel it at any social gathering, a slight tension. A mixture of defensiveness and over-effort. It’s the semblance of unrest. The feel of people straining to look good. Be good. Be liked. Keep their reflection/projection in tact. At the core, hoping to be someone worth loving. It’s this subtle feeling that can destroy a person in St. Louis if they aren’t aware of its presence and origin. Aware of the roots.

I also think that this feeling, this acute inconsistency, this small crack in the façade that goes easily unnoticed if not given a closer look, is both the breaking point and the key to St. Louis. The greatest weakness and deepest source of pain. This is the space in which my heart has found a tearful warmth for St. Louis. A desire, though still small and new, to know what, or who, is beneath the shallow, manicured surfaces and the abandoned places, the scars that St. Louis would hide if she could. The vacant homes and buildings, the rejected, shameful city pockets. What would she be like if all of these walls came down, and with her image left behind the true design for this sparkling gateway city on the river came to the surface? For now I don’t know. St. Louis may be changing, and she may not. I can’t tell yet. What I do know now is that I am changed. And changing. So either way, here is different to me.