Now the town we visited is notoriously a liberal pocket among the vast conservative land out there, and we hung out with gays and lesbians by majority, so it wasn’t your usual midwestern experience. But of course this made it far more fun and relaxing than any midwestern sojourn I’ve taken before. For once, I have hope for the midwest. It’s not all scary and conservative. There are cool people hidden out there. I had a great time – mainly because of all the wonderful company (and beer, lots of good microbrew beers).

What did I notice about the midwest? Well there seems to be a larger (pun intended) than usual amount of obese people. Many midwesterners are LARGE. I mean, we have fat people all around the east coast, but most are merely chubby in comparison to some of the people I saw out west. I felt svelte and I never feel svelte. Of course, this is probably due to the fact that they eat/feed you a lot (I swear I gained weight out there) and put meat in EVERYTHING. Cows and pigs don’t stand a chance out there. Those of you who know me well know I don’t eat red meat, but as of late I’ve gotten a little bit flexible with pork products… thank god because I’d have had bugger all to eat out there at the barbecues we went to. You’d think someone would put a chicken on the barbecue – nope. Something as simple as cheesy potatoes has to have tons of bacon in it. I’ve eaten more pork this past weekend than I’ve eaten in the past 20 years – and that was just due to incidental bits in things like cheesy potatoes and baked beans. My poor porcine friends.

It rained off and on the whole time we were there, so we didn’t get to travel around the state a bit as originally planned. We did go see a movie (Year of the Dog with Molly Shannon. Terrible movie. Skip it.) and do a little shopping. Funny how I had to travel all the way to the middle of the country to go shopping at a British imports store.

I had a far better time than I thought I would – and again that was due to our friends being wonderful and their friends being wonderful. I have hope for the midwest. Maybe with people like that out there they’ll some day catch up with the progressive parts of the country. Hey, even little pockets of progressive people is good.

Thing is, I’m still radical in comparison. Everyone we met was evidently monogamous or of that usual societal mindset of pursuing monogamy. I’m very happily polyamorous/non-monogamous and I realize that in most circles that makes me weird. An outsider. Time for a poly pride movement.

The Midwest originally appeared on Diary of a Kinky Librarian on May 29, 2007.