I’m about to move for the 13th time. I made a list of all of the places I’ve lived since childhood. The list was 12 cities long and spanned the globe. It was wild to see what felt like a CVS receipt showing proof of a dozen attempts at starting over. Sometimes I was running towards something, sometimes away, and sometimes both. My most recent move was from New York City to Northwest Arkansas, on April Fool’s Day in 2020. I was living in Soho / Nolita and almost overnight, when the pandemic hit and everyone isolated indoors, the drug use on the street escalated. The crime on my street increased, as well. Every few hours when I would take my dog, Val, for a walk, I felt like my city was descending a little more into silent chaos.
Within the span of about four days, I was notified by my employer that I was being let go as a result of everything that was unfolding, my building’s property management company emailed letting me know that they were increasing my rent from $4k / month to $4,200 / month for the 650 sq ft, one bedroom apartment I was renting, and they informed me that my lease was nearly up and asked if I wanted to renew. I called my mother and asked her advice. I didn’t know where to go. There was a constant stream of moving trucks outside of my building. Everyone was leaving. At the time, I was terrified. So much was unknown. Every store near me in Manhattan was sold out of essentials, toilet paper was being hoarded across the nation for some reason, and refrigeration trailers were being converted into makeshift morgues. As I cried about losing my job and the fears associated with my rent going up, in her typical, brutal, tough love fashion, my mom said, “Then you’ll have to go on food stamps.” I was in shock. Was this real? Overnight, the world was completely different, again. As a millennial, born in 1983, I’d seen the world change quickly before, but never like this.
I had siblings and family in Northwest Arkansas, so it felt like a sensible place to hunker down and ride out the coronavirus. At the very least, the lower cost of living would help me avoid having to go on government assistance. I’d visited NWA several times over the years and spent considerable time there, so I thought I knew what to expect.
I couldn’t believe I was leaving New York…again.
I booked a moving company and on April 1, 2020, my dog and I boarded a plane, left New York and flew to Arkansas. When we arrived at the airport in NY, we didn’t see anyone else at the ticketing counter other than one employee in a form of PPE. We didn’t see anyone else at TSA other than three employees in PPE. We didn’t see any stores, restaurants, or coffee shops open in the airport. In fact, a lot of the lights were off. We didn’t see any workers at all. Val and I sat down at our gate and after about 40 minutes, a gate agent in more PPE walked up to me and said, “Are you Ashley? You’re the only passenger today. You can board now if you’d like.” I scanned my digital boarding pass, boarded, and got Val settled. The crew informed me that there would be no beverage service, they wouldn’t be checking on me, and to ring the call button if I needed anything. Was I on the last chopper out of Nam?
Five months after arriving in Northwest Arkansas, I had a stroke. This is one of the earliest conversations I recall upon waking up in the ICU:
Neurologist: (Way too loudly) Hi there! I hear you’re a New Yorker. What brings you to Arkansas?
Me: The pandemic. I left.
Him: Did you live in New York City? In the city, itself?
Me: Yes.
Him: In an apartment? In Manhattan?
Me: (confused) Yes.
Him: Was it a big, tall, building…that you lived in? Elevator?
Me: Yes. Not tall. I think twelve floors. I was on the eighth.
Him: I’m asking because I think it’s probably a very good thing this happened to you here. I’m going to talk to you about the hemorrhage you experienced in your brain that brought you here by ambulance.
Me: (processing) …I don’t…understand.
Him: By the time paramedics or EMTs would have gotten to your building, gotten up to the floor you were on, gained access into your apartment, it might not have ended up like this. I believe you are very fortunate this happened to you where you were able to receive medical care as quickly as you were.
This conversation is important to me for these reasons:
It’s one of my first memories after my stroke.
I think there are two reasons I came to Arkansas. I came here to survive my stroke and I came here to meet my partner.
Everything else here was pretty bad.
I’m going to catch strays here but these are some sweeping generalizations based on my personal experience and anecdotes from my time in Northwest Arkansas for the last 5 years as a half-Mexican, androgynous / nonbinary, queer, lesbian person from another place:
People in NWA don’t like transplants moving here, especially from big cities and they talk about it. A lot.
People in NWA think that Walmart, Tyson, JB Hunt, and all of the other companies associated with them are ruining NWA because they mean more people are moving here and ruining something they truly think is a “best kept secret”.
This is a great area for white, cis, hetero families. They are big on Jesus Christ & extramarital affairs here.
I have never lived anywhere where the young people are so emboldened. I experienced teenagers saying slurs to my face here. They will confront you over anything they feel wronged by (traffic, having to wait in a line at a nail salon, etc.). The entitlement is unlike anything I’ve seen in any country or city I’ve lived in. They seem to have the full support of their parents, who behave just like them and they know no consequences for insane public behavior. NYC kids wouldn’t be able to process it. Truly. It’s culturally fascinating.
I was personally called slurs and experienced blatant homophobia more times in the last year and a half living in Bentonville, Arkansas, than I have in the last 25+ years of being an out, gay person. It got worse in the last year and a half of our 5 year stint in NWA.
There is very little diversity. Perhaps there’s a little more in Fayetteville because it’s a college town, but that’s 35 minutes from Bentonville and I’m a sober person in my 40s. I have no business in the streets.
With the exception of a craft fair, every LGBTQIA+ event we saw posted over the course of five years was at a brewery or was based around alcohol.
The sexism I experienced and witnessed was constant. I couldn’t imagine a male colleague at my previous employers in NYC or California telling women to “calm down” and calling them “too emotional” like I often experienced first hand (and also saw happen to others) in AR.
I have never felt physically unsafe anywhere I’ve lived, even on my own on another continent. However, in Arkansas, I had to make a police report after being followed on four different occasions by the same man in our little housing development neighborhood. The last time, I was on a run and the man returned on his bicycle wearing black gloves and a hoodie on a 90 degree day, and followed me until I confronted him, took a video, and called 911.
Adult mean girls are rampant in Arkansas. From what I saw, there aren’t a lot of people who will protect your name when you’re not in the room. It’s just culturally not their style. Southern hens stay clucking.
Worst drivers. Worse than Dallas.
Two work anecdotes from NWA:
The Director of Human Resources at my employer told me with pride that she was personal friends with Richard Barnett or “Bigo”, who you may remember as the man who put his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk during the January 6th insurrection. If I remember correctly, she said because they were Facebook friends or in photos together or something, she and her husband were even questioned by the FBI. Why did she tell me this?
An employee informed me that they witnessed a homophobic conversation another director / executive had about me, thus beginning the final chapter of my time there, as it was the same job where the HR director was Bigo’s friend. What recourse would I have if that was our HR?
I came out over 25 years ago when we only had to deal with homophobia. Now, we have to deal with homophobia AND convincing everyone else that it’s actually happening. It’s exhausting, frustrating, and demoralizing.
All of this is venting, but it’s also cathartic and validating. I’ve tolerated a lot of hate and ridiculous treatment over these last five years. But all of this is also to say, maybe this next move will be the right change. We are so ready to leave this part behind and experience positivity again. We shed a lot of tears in that little house in Bentonville. My partner’s father passed away while we were living there. Between that heavy grief, all of the negativity we experienced here, the lack of support, and outright hatred, we are optimistic to move on and see what’s next.
There won’t be tearful goodbyes, I imagine. There won’t be a big send-off this time. I’ve never lived anywhere where I haven’t had a goodbye party or a big group of friends to say goodbye to, until now. Five years here, 40+ hours a week at a job, cooking & taking baked goods in for my coworkers, consistently putting ourselves out there, and we still just couldn’t make strong connections. We thought we made friends a couple of times, but it just never worked out. Every time we thought we may have found our people, they weren’t like us and clearly didn’t like us and we just couldn’t ever find a community in Arkansas. This place and these last 5 years felt like rejection. Plain and simple. People talked about us behind our backs and were cruel to our faces. The world was against us here and I’m too strong, too resilient, too kind, and too optimistic to live like that any longer. It’s important to know that in 2025, this is a country where households that look a certain way just don’t work well in certain places. I’m sure this is the perfect place for thousands of families and hundreds of thousands of people, but we aren’t the type of people they want here. Heard.
Fuck em they don’t deserve you 😤
https://www.newsweek.com/arkansas-bill-targets-gender-nonconforming-haircuts-kids-2048152