For Your Listening Pleasure: Shit Town

Thanks for posting. Just listened to the first episode and it is great!

Listening to this now. It's compelling!

I really can't get a handle on John B. As the story unfolds, though, I become more convinced he visited us.

I tried, but I can't get into this. I've read that the series takes a "sharp left turn" at the end of ep 2, but I'm not sure I want to listen to the rest of it to get there.

Anyone have a spoiler?

Spoiler * * * * * * * We learn pretty early that the murder John B wanted investigated didn't actually happen.

The big reveal at the end of Episode 2 is that John killed himself. The remainder of the story is partly about the fall-out from that, and partly just a profile of who he was and what his life was like.

It's interesting. I grew up in Appalachia, not the Deep South, but I could picture just about every single person interviewed in the story. And to be honest, John B comes across as flat-out unlikable a lot of the time, but in kind of a fascinating way.

I'm on episode five. What a wacky story

I'll wait for Ryan Murphy to do the miniseries on Logo.

The story of him wearing a green wig to Birmingham Southern College in the eighties is just so bizarre.

I became addicted to this thing and finished it just now after starting it yesterday.

I can't believe this podcast isn't getting more attention here, it is tailor-made for the DL.!!!

We have the depressed, closeted eldergay stuck in flyover who lives with his Mother and hates his life. He has projected this unhealthy obsession on this straight trade that he pays to have a emotional (and even physical through their piercing sessions) relationship with.

He lashes out at women and at anyone that finds happiness in another relationship. And he constantly thinks that everything in society sucks.

I swear to christ it could have just been renamed "Portrait of a DLer"

Hearing the "church" sessions between John and Tyler explained so much. It is obvious how addicted John became to Tyler touching him, to the pain of the acts which caused him to finally feel something, it's all he had to fill the hole from his loneliness and depression. He became more and more addicted to what Tyler was giving him, and as Tyler kept pulling further away as he got involved with his new girl.

He drunkenly calls Tyler pleading for him to come back over, and Tyler refuses. John is left thinking of how pathetic his life is, and in his mind it will never get better. Finito.

A very sad, but illuminating portrait of a damaged gay man stuck in rural Alabama.

The entire 6th Episode is about John being gay and how he handled it in rural Alabama...very sad.

It's a nice look into what life is like there.

The widespread racist attitude, everyone is quick to throw around the N-word, the entire set up of the secret bar is to keep away black people, and the local company not so subtly brands itself with the KKK. It really is something.

But also everyone is nice and happy to talk to Brian Reed, there is an openness and a certain recklessness that comes from that sort of life. I loved Brian's shock at how everyone thinks it is the most normal thing to do to just ask that guy if he killed someone.

And those accents and expressions!

A fascinating look into the rural south.

John B McLemore

Tyler Goodson

Tyler's tattoo he got commemorating John.

John's back tattoos he had Tyler do over and over.

[quote]He has projected this unhealthy obsession on this straight trade that he pays to have a emotional (and even physical through their piercing sessions) relationship with.

I don't for a second believe those relationships were 100% platonic.

I actually don't think John ever slept with Tyler, even though he of course desperately wanted to. Part of what makes it so sad, the closest John could get Tyler to penetrating him is with the needle. Why he wanted it over and over.

Could be wrong, but it's my hunch.

Excellent series. Excellent.

[quote]I actually don't think John ever slept with Tyler, even though he of course desperately wanted to.

Tyler getting a tattoo (and a huge one, and a very specific one at that) in John's memory just doesn't strike me as something you'd do for someone you're not intimate with. I mean, I know John was a father figure to him, but it's in such a visible place, and pretty elaborate instead of just his initials and the dates.

Idk, Tyler never had someone that looked out for him and cared about him the way John did.

He obviously had a very damaged life, and then John came into his life and gave him a job, stability, guidance, a home and unconditional love. That's a powerful thing.

Yessuh!

My thoughts exactly, R20

John loved Tyler in his way, and vice versa.

I'm thinking Tyler's father was the horrible man that John B had something of a relationship with and that a lot of his initial attachment to Tyler and his brother was due to the fact that they'd all been damaged by the same man who turned out to be a pedophile. I also find it funny that no one ever mentioned the gender of the child whom he molested.

As a lonely gay man in a small southern town I can identify with John B in a way that scares me. If I didn't have to to to work every day I'd be him in another dozen or so years. Loneliness will derange and eventually kill a person.

[quote]I'm thinking Tyler's father was the horrible man that John B had something of a relationship with and that a lot of his initial attachment to Tyler and his brother was due to the fact that they'd all been damaged by the same man who turned out to be a pedophile.

Yeah I've seen that idea bandied around, it's definitely an interesting thought.

[quote]As a lonely gay man in a small southern town I can identify with John B in a way that scares me.

Honestly, why stay? Living in that type of environment sounds like hell on earth. And I'm not talking about packing up and moving to New York or anything, just moving to a city in your state. That small town small-minded suffocation is no place for a gay man.

I loved the entire podcast, especially Episode 6 with the long interview with the closeted gay man who met John on a hookup phone line. That episode was so sad and moving.

One thing that was unclear to me though: in the last episode, Tyler asks the interviewer to turn his tape recorder off as they're discussing if he would tell him if he ever found John's gold. There's a break and I expected this thread to be picked up later on, but it never does. Anyone knows if the gold was ever found?

What Tyler said to Brian off the record was said off the record for a reason, Brian Reed isn't going to share that.

Tyler Goodson is already facing serious charges, if he did find and take gold from the property he isn't going to reveal that publicly. This is his real life, not just a story.

It was a great story but the last episode sort of petered out.

I loved the last episode- in the final minutes bringing the story back to the formation of the town, Mary Grace's place in it and the birth of John B. makes a sort of cosmic connection to "objective" history and the individual human lives placed within that history.

I also thought the aftermath of John B.'s suicide was ironically truer to reality than a made-up fiction with a "meaning" attached to it. The wealthy Burt lumber people (the son who was the focus of the original murder suspicion) bought the Macklemore property and one assumes all the money went to the cousins from Florida. Most likely there is no buried treasure (from what I read in The Guardian Tyler Goodson now has a media rep and is looking for paid interview opportunities with the success of the podcast).

Does anyone know if the maze has been destroyed? The articles I have read haven't mentioned this as far as I know.

A question for the body-modification crowd: how is it that Tyler could repeatedly pierce John B.'s nipples over and over? You would think after a certain point one would have to stop with the piercing. Maybe John B. had super-large tittie clamps installed and that's why the funeral home said they couldn't get them off.

I saw a picture of John's chest on Facebook and his nipples were enormous. I'd go looking for it, but it kind of grossed me out to be honest.

R24, R23 here, It's impossible for most people to understand. I also live in big ancestral house, though I've had to mortgage it to pay my Grandmother's final medical bills and debts. When I was in my early 20s I did leave this town, only for family obligation to bring me back three years later. And those years were spent helping a friend with her children and business. Now, the idea of leaving what stability that I have, as well as this house, that I have a love/hate relationship with causes me to nearly have a panic attack. I think I'd actually rather die than have to establish myself somewhere else this late in the game.

Leaving this place with a partner doesn't do the same thing and I often fantasize about it.. But going out into the world at my age with no relationship experience in search of someone who may not exist, for a first relationship that odds are would fail due to my inexperience... Can't do it. I also can't initiate contact with anyone after being burned a few times by closet cases. I spent a lot of money on therapy to attempt to work through this. We only established that I am incapable of being the aggressor, and that rejection triggers hypo manic episodes that can last months and feature idealization of suicide. Adversely, a closet case approaching me causes the same reaction. I have no clue about being approached by an openly gay man, I haven't had that happen since I returned here 13 years ago. I don't respond to medication, those that work plateau in a year or less.

I wasn't always this way. When I speak to the friends that I used to be close to they remember the person that I used to be, the guy who turned down dick countless times at bars, gay campgrounds and websites because I wanted a relationship. Apparently it all went down hill at 28, when I finally forced myself to give up my virginity to a closeted asshole.

I hear John B speak so negatively about everything and it causes me to remember the times people have told me how I've changed, How I went from being happy-go-lucky to depressing, a completely different person, and I know that it's from years of being desired more as an object for sexual release than for the person that I was.

Frankly I'm fucked. People don't seem to understand that once the damage is done that it can't be undone, trust issues overtake everything, unless you find yourself feeling limerance for someone. A couple of times of being limerant over a closet case and you find yourself figuring out how to position the shot gun between the floor and the baseboard in the way that is least likely cause enough kickback to change the aim of the barrel.

I imagine James Franco is securing the filming rights of this podcast / audio book novel as we post our comments.

John B. is a fascinating character but once the narrative strays from him it just becomes about the machinations of white trash Southerners and gets old quickly.

Tyler might as well get paid....he comes from and has nothing $ wise. Great story, very southern gothic. Nicely done. I'd like a follow up with the main players. RIP John B

[quote]'S-Town' and the Loneliness of Being Gay in the Rural South

Goddamn RIGHT!

Listened to the first two hours last night; haven't read the whole thread yet. When I searched on DL there was another thread, but clearly this one is more active.

Initial reaction was "good god how sad and pathetic they all are," but as it plays out, I get how anyone could be there but for Circumstance, or Grace, or (as a cynical professor used to tell us) "Wisdom in the Choice of Parents."

I fell asleep to hour two last night and dreamed of a stressful day put on hold until we all could listen to the next episode (I know, obviously I have issues with stress and freedom)

Got through episode one, but could t go on. It was just too depressing.

Something tells me Tyler thinks that hour glass tattoo is a sundial.

R38, now He's trying to get fans to give him $1,000 for a vet bill for one of the dogs. He's a POS and I hope people see him for what he is.

Can, like, the dogs get whatever money John had? Tyler doesn't deserve it, and neither does Cut The Nipples Off Rita.

Maybe the real reason for the suicide was the gold was running out.

Rita telling the undertaker to cut the nipples off was probably my favorite thing I've ever heard.

It's all quite Flannery O'Connor.

Shame John B was too messed up to move to a suburb of Birmingham.

I think it’s hilarious that none of you have realized that the “gold” that John had was “fool’s gold” he created in his own shop. Tyler said he saw gold bars but there were no records of any purchasing of gold after John’s death. Remember in an early episode he turned Reed’s dime into “gold”? Haha - john had the last laugh.