Back on My Bulls**t: Knoxville, TN
Drifting through a city in crisis while on a personal crisis
Back on My Bullshit are intermittent, totally idiosyncratic travelogues. Don’t worry, I give standard recommendations below but this isn’t your mom’s Travel & Leisure city guide.
I noticed the crowd as soon as I entered the lobby of the Crowne Plaza in downtown Knoxville. Mostly men in dark hoodies adorned with the iconography of a late 80s cliched motorcycle gang: skulls, snakes, menacing flames, winged bones, grim reapers, devils. The women were fond of visibly dyed hair, whether it was bleached blonde tresses or Crayola bright colors. Distressed jeans, frayed leggings, lots of cargo pants. Tattoos crept up from covered torsos, sneaked out from long sleeves, and matched their aesthetic's overall heavy metal vibes.
But it wasn’t their wardrobe choices that piqued my curiosity. It was their faces. Exhausted. Pockmarked. Scabbed. Battled. Haunted. Whatever was connecting them felt dark, despite their calm and polite demeanor. I asked the receptionist if there was a convention at the hotel and she said yes, and gave me an acronym. Up in my hotel room, I Googled the organization. A local chapter of Narcotics Anonymous was hosting their big annual weekend retreat.
My trip to Knoxville was not going to be a lighthearted one.
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