I went to college in a small town in Eastern Washington surrounded by monoculture. The term is agricultural, referring to the endless powerful earthy roll of the silt-heavy Palouse hills… deep black after they have been tilled in the spring, then sprouting a nearly imperceptible hint of green as the seeds awaken… and then the green almost overwhelms until August turns the wheat gold. The hills themselves are uneven, and farmers draw the boundaries of their crops based on the rise and fall of the land rather than by square hectare plots or circular watering wheels. It is one of the most curious and breathtaking places on earth. Somehow, I always felt like I had reached the end of the universe by living there. If I were to step in the wrong direction at any given moment, I might fall off. I lived in Pullman for six years. It does have that effect on one. The monoculture in Pullman has other significance as well. Despite WSU's best attempt to display a variety of skin colors in the students it promotes on its webpage (http://about.wsu.edu/admission/), the campus population and the surrounding community is predominantly white. As a student athlete from 1993-1996, I can tell you that students of other colors existed on campus … and they predominantly occupied roles on the football field, outdoor track, and basketball court. But we lived in this segregated, odd, isolated reality. Our telephone numbers had five digits (landline... nobody had cellular back then). We were seven miles from the Idaho panhandle, home of some of the most active and vociferous Aryan nation communities in the country (http://aryan-nations.org/?q=node/5). A black professor at Gonzaga university in Spokane had his mailbox bombed. A young and popular gay gentleman simply disappeared one night in Moscow -- leaving his car, keys and art portfolio behind (http://www.unsolved.com/ajaxfiles/mur_william_hendrick.htm). And me, so clearly marked white and heterosexual, struggled to smile at every person as I walked through campus. I am NOT like them, as I stumbled over myself to open the door for a Puerto Rican professor. I am NOT like them, as I smiled too broadly and friendly at any student darker than me (which was most of them). It was a sad and true reality.
Pullman was also the home of the university Greek system on steroids. With little else to do, students "went Greek" in droves. The guys wore similar clothes. The girls wore the same color lipstick (I have the most AMAZING photo that I can't find right now! Gr!). The only student riot that occurred during my time in Pullman had nothing to do with civic rights, student fees, or the racial/homophobic tensions mentioned above, but about BEER. The campus tried to make Greek Row dry, and they had to call in the National Guard. Lest you think I jest: (http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=7876) . AND If anyone wonders, I was HERE that morning: (http://www.bloomsdayrun.org/).
Honestly, you can't blame the people. The rolling Palouse fields surround Pullman, Washington as far as the eye can see, and the isolation starts to take its toll. I worked side by side with a Y2Ker… the guy spent most of 1997-1999 constructing an entirely self-sufficient underground labyrinthine bunker for him and his family of five, complete with electricity-generating exercise machines, oxygen tanks and masks, and enough fuel, water, food, and necessities to live underground for three years. I left for Tucson in August of 1999, and I have always wondered what happened to that family. I am quite sure they entered their bunker in December 1999. I'm pretty sure they've come out by now, too. How long were they in there? And what were their thoughts when they came out….?
But I digress. The point is, there was so much space, so much time, so much isolation in Pullman, that people found their own authenticities, and they weren't always in social, loving, ways. I found my own comfortable place at a bar in town called Rico's. Perhaps because of my study abroad experience, perhaps in response to Pullman itself, I stepped slightly away from the mainstream students, the greeks, the athletes and the others... whatever they were. I stopped wearing makeup. And jewelry. I threw away my TV and my watch. I stopped eating and wearing animal products. I carried around my guitar. I wore long skirts and my hair long, straight, and down. I sunk myself into music, into poetry. I relished the deep earthy smell of the Palouse, the night stars that Tucson can't shake a stick at, but I also found the isolation daunting. I had friends -- musicians. If we weren't out soaking up the night on the Snake River, we would meet there, at Rico's. There were no Greeks here -- it was reputed to be the gay bar. Thankfully! It was not a gay bar per se, but it was the place gays could BE, and perhaps for that reason it felt more real to me than the bars inhabited by people who seemed to find their worth in relation to others rather than asking questions about themselves. There were rarely blacks here, but I think that was because of the music -- it was classic rock and roll on the speakers mixed with some occasional odd bits of alternative, grunge, and random Americana. The blacks I knew were all out practicing stomp or listening to R&B and rap. Hip-hop had not yet entered the Pullman vocabulary… perhaps it had elsewhere. 
The popcorn was free. Smoke filled the establishment (back then), which had once been a theater, so it was a deeper room in the back than the front -- with a hanging balcony for pool tables and PacMan (yes, PacMan) machines. They were free. It was the local jazz and blues bar, and the only one within 80 miles. It was also a book exchange -- with ceiling-high bookcases filled with volumes you could take with you for free -- as long as you left one behind, and perhaps even if you didn't. The brick walls-- once an exterior space of another building complete with faded lettering, rose cold and high on one side. Benches were built into them, so the cold ran straight through you in the winter. But the beer, wine, cigarette smoke, fast service, and simply-built sandwiches with chips kept us warm as we sang our way through the long, dark winter nights. The microphones were deep in the bottom of the establishment, under the pool table balcony. It was here the musicians gathered to sing. 
People seek authenticity in places like Rico's, like the blues bars in Chicago. Like some parts of Chicago, it was whites like me both playing and singing the blues, rifting jazz melodies, or imagining themselves to be the next Indigo Girls while the young blacks of the town kept far away from the scene. There is something about music that helps pull someone together when the world seems fragmented around them. Grazian is correct -- this authenticity is not a set feature. It has everything to do with what the person judging the authenticity is seeking, what they need, and what they value. Some seek it in sitting next to the books at Rico's and reflecting on academia and philosophy. Others found it in the vigorous pace of stomp or the crooning voices of R & B. Still others found it in solidarity with their sisters, marching forward undaunted, unafraid, and un-alone with their matching lipstick and lettered t-shirts. I put my own 22-year-old search for authenticity to music. For better or for worse, the Rico's crowd put up with me week after week until I finally left the Palouse behind and them in peace: Thanks for a great semester!
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