Little Pink Houses

You may recall from a previous confession that sometime in the 1980's, convinced that the man I thought I loved could never really love me, I ran off with a No Good Boyfriend with a local motorcycle club which shall remain nameless here.

A club composed of a bunch of bikers can make strange (I want to say bedfellows here, but that could give a wilder impression than was actually the fact - only one of the "club" guys was actually a bedfellow).

Except this one time. I did get drunk with the president of the club one night, and he did in fact sleep with me, but that was only sleep. To be honest, we just passed out.

The Prez was an ex-Nazi. I was an ex-civil rights worker. We got along. Can't remember why he came over that night the NGB was gone - he coulda been in jail, now that I think about it - and it's very likely the Prez showed up to take advantage, but it turned into an even stranger friendship of sorts.

I remember sitting on the roof of my apartment with the Prez that night, drinking Jack Daniels, and talking about how we each kept looking for some idea of freedom, but never really found it. I said I joined every movement I ever joined looking for freedom, and left when it became about someone else being in charge. He helped me understand a little bit about why the poor white farmers living in Northern Wisconsin tended to racism. The Posse Comitatus was popular in some of the smaller towns not too far to the west of Green Bay.

I'm still not sure what kind of drunken understanding we achieved that night, but ever afterward we would smile at each other with some kind of ill-defined recognition whenever Pink Houses came on the jukebox.

Pink Houses
John Cougar Mellenkamp

There's a black man with a black cat livin' in a black neighborhood
He's got an interstate runnin' through his front yard
You know he thinks that he's got it so good
And there's a woman in the kitchen cleanin' up the evenin' slop
And he looks at her and says, "Hey darlin', I can remember when
you could stop a clock."

Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free
Little pink houses for you and me

There's a young man in a t-shirt
Listenin' to a rockin' rollin' station
He's got greasy hair, greasy smile
He says, "Lord this must be my destination."
'Cause they told me when I was younger
"Boy you're gonna be president."
But just like everything else those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went

Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free
Little pink houses for you and me

Well there's people and more people
What do they know know know
Go to work in some high rise
And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico
Ooh yeah
And there's winners and there's losers
But they ain't no big deal
'Cause the simple man baby pays for the thrills, the bills,
the pills that kill

Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free
Little pink houses for you and me