# Indiana, Illinois to Wisconsin



## Dagonshucks (Mar 2, 2018)

So I was going to Salem to get my mom a birthday present. Everyone I talk to is like, "Oh, Salem? Oh, you're going the wrong way." It's like this my whole trip. So I catch a ride with a trucker and he takes me from Knoxville to Indianapolis, and I don't know anything about Indianapolis, so I decided to cut myself up a Speedo and go swimming in a river, looking gay as shit. Someone thought it would be funny to give me a trenchcoat and I was wearing it feeling like someone was watching me, and every corner I turned I had been seeing black cats. I walk up to a bridge out of the river and 4 guys roll up in a van and jump out with a baseball bat and another one tries to run me over but stops short of smashing into a pillar, and I'm begging for my life while running away, listening to one just degrade me.
I lived, but I didn't call the cops because I tried to beat one with a huge wrench once and went to jail in Memphis.

So I make it to Chicago, because I couldn't get a ride East and I heard hate crimes were legal in Indianapolis, and tried to stage an anti-nuclear protest near the nuclear laboratory, but nobody could tell me anything about where to go to talk to subversives or whatever. I had already covered another Manhattan project site in Oak Ridge, but I couldn't find any family in either city. So I get on the bus as far North as I can, and make it to Winthrop Harbor, which has the same name as my ex boyfriend (who I'm trying to get back with.)
It wasn't long before I got kicked out of town for sleeping outside, so I went to the next town, Zion, and got chased across the state line by a cowboy police officer foaming at the mouth with a belt in one hand and a dog in another when I haven't even broken the law yet. I was sad to see Illinois go because it supposedly was easy on homosexuality, but it seemed to be tough on the poor and homeless.

I was soon in Wisconsin, which is said to have a local scene of what seemed to me to be predominantly nomadic subcultures, but I couldn't find any kids and am still there stranded in Milwaukee through an arctic blast as it seems that the place is extremely anti poor, having agricultural identity issues and low tolerance for the elderly and mentally ill.

So if you are gay, stay away from Indiana. If you are homeless, Illinois does not seem like a good place to go. If you are a dirty kid, consider how Milwaukee could be a trap, but please come and save me and stay with me until Boston, which also I've read is anti-gay.


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## EphemeralStick (Mar 2, 2018)

Wow, sounds like you went through the ringer, I think. 
I used to go to a bunch of gay house parties in Indiana when I was younger, it was a weird scene to say the least.


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