New Richmond

there was this girl who lived on front street, her name was chelsie ast, and she moved away a long time ago and died. i have written about her before. she lived in this shitty apartment right by where Joe's Bar and Grill used to be. her window faced the river. right outside of her bedroom window there is this giant tree that is still there. its branches arch out in various random directions. it looks like tim burton planted it himself. when it is cold and the sky is gray and there is snow on the ground it looks like a black monster reaching to grab the grey from the sky and morph into it and become something else. a big and black beacon for a black and bleak.

every one refers to New Richmond at the tail end of a joke. it is a common understanding in conversations with people that the town is horrible and it blows to live here. you don't need to say it. it is already known. every other person you see at the gas station, when you ask them how they are, will say something like well as good as i can be in fucking New Richmond! some people that leave it have a certain sense of snobiness and entitlement. oh i am glad i don't fucking live there anymore and i am glad i got out and god what a bunch of idiots.

(there is this little hidden path of stairs that leads down to the river. hardly anyone goes there or knows that it is there. you go down a first set of stairs and there is a little porch. a huge log sits there, and the second set leads on to the river. a friend of mine showed the secret and we went down there and smoked a joint when we were way too young to smoke a joint and we laughed and giggled about stupid shit, god knows what. a couple years later i followed a pretty girl down there when i was too young to be doing what i was doing and she took me down there and we had sex with each other and it was the first time i ever cheated on a girlfriend. i went home and wept because i felt like a monster.)

i walk around New Richmond a lot. it calms me down. i know what short cuts to take, what parts of town that are best to avoid. and every time, without fail, i see the same five or six houses and think, damn, the world has forgotten about these people. fuck, people that live in fucking cincinnati and kentucky have no idea that the town of New Richmond even exists. it is a vacuum of nothing and emptiness. but i walk around and look at things and maybe listen to some music. everything that i did bad and wrong, i did here first. everything good i felt, i felt it here for the first time.

a cycle of life for someone who is born inside of New Richmond: your mom and dad are usually under the age of 25. you are born and you are fucked right there from the beginning. your mom and dad probably got drunk and forgot to use a condom and BAM, you are a creation of god. you come to in a trailer where your mum, dad, and grandmother, who is about 36, all live together. your first memories are of your parents are either them rolling up blunts or screaming at each other, and your grand ma ma takes care of you 85 percent of the time. you grow up and watch horror movies and play out in the dirt with other kids your age. a couple years past, your dad leaves mum for a younger girl who he gets pregnant, BAM, you got a siser, mom is doing drugs most the time, thanking god for food stamps. you go to school, get in fights, you turn into the trouble kid, the kid who makes the kids from the hill gasp and you are in the principal's office every other day. you don't give a fuck. you get suspended and start hanging out on the street with other kids your age that also got suspended for growing up in the same wretched womb that you did. you ride your bikes up and down the streets, down the secret hills and valleys that only the outlaws know about. you go there and see kids already older then you, mythical figures of freedom and carelessness, and you want to be like them so bad.

a year or two later, your other reckless friend brings a joint he stole off his older brother, and you and a couple other people smoke it and a new feeling of numbness and liberty drenches your mind. you smoke on the weekends and the same older brother buys you some beer. you get drunk and high and have the whole fucking she-bang figured out in this rotten town.

4,5,7,8,9 years later you are still spending the majority of your day looking for bud. half of your income is spent on beer, whiskey, and weed. you have fucked the hottest girl in town a couple times, and the second hottest girl in town, and if your really lucky, the second hottest girl's friend. you talk about nothing but pussy and good weed with your friends, who are just as dazed and lost as you are. every once in a while, you get a glimpse of a better life, of a future where you have your own place and meet someone who understands you and you can grow as a person, but you smoke a blunt and do 6 shots and walk around the streets of holy holy holy New Richmond, your chain, your footing, the place you know better then anyone, the place where you feel every pulse it makes, and you go back to the routine.

one day you get so fucked up that you fuck the third hottest girl in town. you don't use a condom, and BAM, you create god's next child. you get a job at the local Macdonalds and save up enough in nine months to get an apartment, or a trailer with your girlfriend, who you hate, and maybe your mom or dad. the kid is born and you and the girl love him for a little it but then your penis gets bored and you start hitting up girls you know on myspace or texting them or something, and the girl goes out and gets fucked up and your mom babysits 85 percent of the time...

there are generations of hopelessness and loss and weed in New Richmond. a loop, a terrible loop that people are born into and they are not immune to the gravity of this place, of this place where everything that makes you happy/miserable are right there, at your callused finger tips.

(across from the house i grew up in there is a bar called The Landing. a shitty and small bar where people have gone to get drunk for decades. me and my mom and my sister used to stay up late and watch drunken bar fights out of our upstairs window. we would laugh and get excited and be scared and just have a good time. it was a perfect time when it was just three of us, when me and my sister didn't even have a room, we shared a fold out couch, and my mom would work 14 hours a day cutting hair, wondering how she got herself into this mess, the three of us in that tiny two story house. before i met the people who would show me the end and death and shot gun death of innocence, before everything, the three of us roughing it out in a new home, watching drunk assholes fight in the street.)

every once in a while, i go into The Landing and order a glass of scotch and a beer. i drink both slowly, watch the tv, observe people. every time i am there i see something sad and something new. sometimes i go in and get hammered drunk. fuck it, i am in the shit where shit is born, give me another 4 shots and lets see what happens. and everytime i look out the window at my house, and i see my old house, where i lost my virginity and lost my smile and lost my hope and gained my hope and where i was a stupid ass fucking idiot teenager and where i cheated and where i fell in love and where i cried and where i talked on the phone with her for hours and hours and when she told me she was seeing someone else and where you thought that was the end of your life forever and where you moved out and hated it and missed it the minute you left.

i fucking hate New Richmond. i wish i could burn the cocksucker down and kill everyone in it, including myself, and just start over, somewhere else, in a different world, a different universe. chelsie ast deserved more, but she was born here and died young because of it. how many people have we buried at the funeral home in New Richmond? how many young people? you lose count. i buried my best friend. Charles Workman, there at the funeral home, when i was 13. he died because of leukemia. i saw him the day before he died and watched him suffer. nineteen days later, i went to the funeral of John Rodgers, some poor fuck who smoked a joint laced with pcp and died on the spot. his 'friends' dumped him in a fucking playground on bernies lane for his family to find, because they were scared and stupid. nineteen days apart. young and youthful and free and young and too goddamn fucking cocksucking young.

four years later i went to the funeral of Josh Hamilton, a cousin to me related by my stepdad. he died of a drug overdose. Clayton Brown was one of the people who carried the casket of the 19 year old Josh Hamilton down to the car to take him to be buried. Josh was a sweet kid. he was nice to everybody and worked hard. he got into some bad drugs and mixed the wrong painkillers together and died dead because of it.

four months later, Clayton Brown put a morphine patch on his face and died in his sleep. he died in a strangers house and they did not notice he was dead for at least 24 hours. the trailer where he died has since been burned to the ground. he walked his dead friend down into the ground only a few months earlier, and his girlfriend and friends walked him down into the ground then, this hit hitting harder then the last ones. you get used to wounds not healing and new wounds tearing up the old ones. what can you do? you drink(my wonderful poison) or do heroin or oxycotins or whatever.

New Richmond, Ohio. pot smoke making a devils grin that rises above the town. you can see the devils smile hovering over the small town for miles. people pour their shots into the ground because anyone who has ever lived here has saw four or five of their best friends die. New Richmond, Ohio. you. will end. up here one way or another. good times, drinking and bonding with your fellow survivors. playing poker on the back porch in the raw darkness with your brothers, with your soul mate. pictures of you and her playing poker in the raw darkness, with your brothers, only a month before she was to be taken away from you. every tragedy and every first time of hope can be linked to your home. your home of this shit town. your fucking home. your idiot veins.

New Richmond. New Richmond Ohio. 45157.