That Time I Dated a Racist Juggalo

In case you don’t know what Juggalos are, they are fans of the hip-hop duo, Insane Clown Posse, mainly referred as ICP. 

ICP are these two unattractive men that paint their faces with clown make up, trying to be scary, and rap offensive things. Juggalos and juggalettes (the women who listen to ICP) also paint their faces and yell “whoop whoop” as their calling. ICP has a very odd following. They mainly attract rough, white-trashy people. Oh, and I dated one.  

Before you judge me too harshly, I was a freshman in high school and very much a virgin. I had no idea who I was or even who I wanted to be. I was finally out of an awful private school where I got bullied pretty much every day for being overweight and weird. I had gotten accepted into into a prestigious high school called New Orleans Center for Creative Arts for Theatre. Finally, I felt that my weirdness was an asset. But even with that glimmer of feeling special, deep down I was profoundly insecure and was desperate for any attention what so ever. Any. And I mean..... ANY. 

Cut to: Riley. 

Riley was a tad bit feminine and had really bad acne. We both got cast as peasants or some other insignificant parts in Cyrano de Bergerac. Actually, I think my role was the flower girl. My acting school teacher cast himself as Cyrano and the rest of the students would play the other parts. The kissing scene was somewhat controversial between the teacher and the high school junior who played Roxane. But again, this was the South, so not that controversial for it not to happen. We had several weeks of rehearsals and 2 weekends of performances. 

One time during rehearsals, Riley discreetly opened his book bag and pointed out that he owned David Duke’s book  My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding. He’s said it was really good, and that he’s read it twice. It was as if he was showing me some sort of illegal drug. But it wasn’t ecstasy or even marijuana, it was David Duke’s autobiography. I was raised in a pretty liberal household, so I knew David Duke was an awful guy, but still… I nodded my head and smiled uncomfortably. I mean, I was getting attention.

Riley kissed me for the first time during Voodoo Festival, a music festival that luckily did not have ICP on the line up. And from then on, we were boyfriend/girlfriend. 

He told me he was attracted to girls that wore JNCO jeans, so I went to Hot Topic and bought a pair of JNCO jeans. Now, I knew  those jeans were ugly and didn’t make any fashion sense what-so-ever, but I bought them anyway. He told me to buy an ICP album, so I bought two. I never listened to the albums. Well, one song... but that was all I could handle. I just couldn’t. I didn’t tell him that though. In fact, I didn’t really tell him a lot of things. At the time, my life at home was chaos. My step-mother had gotten my dad arrested for basically everything, and there was a really ugly child custody battle over my two little brothers. It was so dark that I’m not even comfortable sharing about that to this day…yep, even with me being an open-blog and all. 

Reflecting on everything, I feel a lot shame for dating such a douche. But honestly, I mainly feel sad for 14-year-old Dixie who didn’t have a sense of self. Riley could have said anything. Done anything. And I would have just nodded and smiled uncomfortably. He even told me that my laugh was annoying, and I believed him. 

I forget how we broke up, but I think he probably dumped me. He told everyone that we had sex inside a janitorial closet in a mall…. and that I was probably a lesbian. 

P.S.

We never had sex in that janitorial closet. Yes, we did make out. Yes, he pulled out his tiny dick. And yes, I hesitantly touched it. But that was it. There was no way I was going to lose my virginity inside a janitorial closet in a mall to a racist Juggalo. So I guess I did have some self-esteem after all.