I’m the L.A. Doll in John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Small Town,” and I Hate This Godforsaken Shithole

Picture it: Los Angeles in 1985. I’d moved there two years earlier to make it as a model, but all I had to show for it was a couple of car shows, one page of a local JCPenney circular, and a weekly “session” at Chateau Marmont with a freaky rich dude who I can’t say more about because of the NDA.

So when I met this guy with the most perfect curly mullet who promised me a little pink house in one of the flyover states, it sounded pretty good. Forty years later, I’m still not even sure what state we’re living in, but I do know that I hate this goddamn place with the fire of a thousand California suns.

When we first moved here, it was fine. It was the Reagan ’80s, a time of flag-waving and parades and scantily clad women cheerleading in MTV videos for no particular reason. Men who had never even watered a houseplant wore Future Farmers of America jackets—the heartland was just that cool. We got married and bought a little yellow house, marveling at how much more expensive it would have been in LA, and my husband promised he’d paint it pink. Four decades later, and this split-level ranch is still the color of morning urine.

Maybe I could have tolerated the location if our relationship was great, but once the first bloom of romance wore off, he started talking about wanting it to hurt so good. That’s really not my thing. Then our money ran out, and we had trouble finding work—because, my husband said, there was little opportunity. So why did he take me to this fucking place if he knew that the town had not had decent-paying jobs since the days when the Coke bottled there contained actual cocaine?

When my husband told me he didn’t have a plan, that he just wanted to “R.O.C.K. in the USA,” I took a panicked job at the Tastee-Freez. Teenagers sneered at me as I served them their chili dogs. Did I occasionally spit in the relish? You betcha. Ain’t that America?

I’m no longer working in the fast-food industry, but the indignities continue: Five nights a week, I dress up like the fucking St. Pauli girl for my job as a waitress at the Schnitzelhaus. Everyone is German in this part of the country, and I’m pretty sure at least half of them are Nazis. They’ve been surprisingly open about it since the last election.

The final straw came for me after a very long Beers and Brats shift, when a table full of gray-goateed dudes told me they couldn’t wait until women lost the right to vote. After I rolled my eyes, they said not to fight authority because authority always wins. Later, when the head asshole said he thought his sauerkraut looked a little green, I just smiled.

I went home to face yet another lonely ol’ night with my husband, only to learn that he had lost my entire month’s tips in a poker game. As I started to lay into him, he waved me off.

“Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plow,” he muttered cryptically as he headed to the bathroom.

“Put the fucking fan on in there,” I called over my shoulder. There I was, standing in the living room in my tight-fitting Schnitzelhaus dirndl, smelling like Germanic meats and despair, and it hit me: Dying here doesn’t sound like all that much fun.

So I told my husband I was going out to pick up some smokes, threw a hastily packed bag in the cab of his Chevy Silverado, and headed west. I feel a little bad for ditching him, but I need a lover who won’t drive me crazy. And as it turns out, I am a girl who knows the meaning of “Hey, hit the highway.”