I went on a date last summer and was called out for my Asheville look. If I remember correctly, I wore khaki shorts, Birkenstocks, a baseball hat, and my flannel over a T-shirt. “What came first,” he asked, “Asheville, or the flannel and the beard?”
It was a salient point. While I like to think of myself of someone whose style and persona isn’t easily influenced by their environment, I probably have started dressing much more casual than I once did (although, to be fair, I’ve noticed my father dressing much more casual the older he gets, and he’s been firmly ensconced in Northeast PA for 30+ years). And I definitely, for example, didn’t own Chacos or Birkenstocks till I moved here. I was also clean-shaven in Pennsylvania. And my summer wardrobe used to be much preppier, which I bring up because if you’d run into the 2013 iteration of me in my Ralph Lauren polos, salmon shorts, and Sperrys, it might make sense to clock me as a young conservative. These days? I think it’s less overt, and yet, it continues happening. Maybe Aryan coloring transcends personal style.
Earlier this spring, I decided to attend a town hall held here in Asheville by Chuck Edwards, our NC-11 representative, a man who campaigned on being the anti-Madison Cawthorn, and someone who cared deeply about “mountain values” and the people of Western North Carolina. Chuck has, of course, like his disgraced predecessor, made his entire personality into being Donald Trump’s lapdog, spending congressional time, meetings with constituents, and his whole social media output defending not just every choice Donald Trump makes, but the merits of one Elon Musk (versus like, keeping FEMA here). My dream would’ve been to attend this town hall and ask Edwards whether he works for the NC-11 constituents or Musk, but I didn’t get that choice. I didn’t get anywhere near that town hall.
It turns out that my dream was a shared dream. Thousands of people showed up at the A/B Tech campus, and I was still hundreds of people away from the auditorium entrance when word came back that the auditorium was packed. They wouldn’t be admitting anyone else. The general consensus—based on the signs and conversations around me—was disgust with Edwards for being a Trump/Musk lackey, with more than one person mentioning how Edwards prioritized a non-American billionaire over his middle-class constituents.
Once I learned I wouldn’t make it inside the auditorium, I decided to go home and eat dinner. Kudos to the people who waited outside just to make their presence known, but I was hungry. On my walk back, I fell in line with an older gentleman, and once we got closer to our cars, he turned to me and said, “It’s crazy all the paid protestors the Dems brought in today.”
Sometimes, I’m down to argue with idiots who say idiotic things, but I was hot, tired, hungry, and wanted to go home, so I just nodded and said, “Yeah, crazy.” In hindsight, I wish I’d simply said, calmly and politely, “I’m not being paid to be here. I’m here because Edwards clearly is putting Trump and Musk’s agenda and image over his constituents.” I then could’ve had an actual conversation about why this man supported Edwards (because I am legitimately curious about this), but again, hunger and just the want not to engage at that very second won out. I do wonder if this gentleman thought I looked conservative, or if he just assumed that every other middle-class white man who doesn’t dress radically must share his worldview.
A few weeks later, I went on a morning coffee date with a gentleman I met on Tinder. We’d chatted a bit, and honestly, he didn’t seem…well, I guess well is subjective, but he didn’t seem entirely…let’s just go with, in my wheelhouse, because stable is also subjective—he freaked out at one point when I didn’t answer his messages in the allotted amount of time he felt was “appropriate” and at one point, told me I probably was “fatter in person,” when he asked if I wanted to get drinks later that night and I told him I’d be game for a night later in the week, but how that night, I already had plans. After I went radio silent post being told I was probably “fatter in person,” he apologized, explained he just moved to town and was having difficulty connecting with people, and said we should grab a coffee sometime. I still didn’t feel the need to respond.
I was telling a friend about this bizarre interaction, and he pointed out that maybe I should give that guy a chance, pointing out how there were probably times he or I had been going through things and maybe didn’t provide others with the best first impression. I did say for 2025 I wanted to try and be less judgmental, so I took this advice, and when the gentleman messaged me the next morning asking for a do-over and to meet for coffee, I said sure.
This is the last time I will be trusting any of my friends.
We met at Battlecat East—a coffee shop I didn’t know existed until he suggested it (which is nice to know because I love the original Battlecat)—before work on a Monday. I could tell almost right away that this probably wouldn’t result in a second date or friendship, but continued the conversation in my attempt to be polite and non judgemental (he brought up how much money he made 3 or 4 times, which I know would be a green flat for some, but I don’t love).
At one point, he ran out to his car to grab chapstick, which I saw him retrieve from a white BMW…with a MAGA vanity plate.
“So,” I said, when he got back, “you’d like to make America great again?”
“What’s wrong with that?” he said, and this time I did engage, politely and calmly asking him—because I am legitimately curious about this—how a gay man could support today’s iteration of the Republican party.
His reasoning?
He morally couldn’t vote for a drunk like Kamala Harris.
Now, I’m familiar with anti-Republican Kamala talking points. She slept her way to the top. She’s too radical. She never got any bills passed—etc, etc. But Kamala, as a drunk, was a new one. I’m a masochist who regularly checks Fox News and follows Chuck Edwards and the esteemed Madison Cawthorn very closely on social media, and I’d never seen this one come up.
“She can’t string together a sentence,” he told me. “She’s known for that. She’s constantly slurring so badly that no one can understand her.”
I asked him if we were watching the same interviews and debates. He assured me we were.
“That’s why other people always speak for her,” he told me. “She’s been slurring her entire career.”
I pointed out that she was a prosecutor, Attorney General, and Senator, noting that hypothetically, this doesn’t automatically eradicate substance abuse issues, but that these are careers built on one’s ability to speak publicly. Then, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind sending me a clip of Kamala slurring so severely that no one could understand her. Weirdly, at that moment, he said his sister was calling him to check on the forest fires in Asheville and all but sprinted out of the coffee shop.
I thought that would be the end of that, but like…they always come back. Later that day, he messaged me on Tinder to say how disappointed he was that I was such a brain-washed libtard (paraphrasing, but I think accurately). He was doubly disappointed because I “look like a regular dude” who holds “American values.” In a way, he pointed out, my entire aesthetic is misleading.
Now, I do, as I pointed out before, dress pretty standard for a 30-something (fine, 39) middle-class man. And I guess to his credit, I’m not decked out in rainbow tank tops and sheer tops, rather L.L. Bean and baseball hats, and could that subconsciously be by design? It could. I wrote about this in an essay I posted to Medium this winter, if you’d like to check it out.
I will, however, point out that whether or not my aesthetic is conservative or liberal, my Tinder profile does say, “If you want to make America great again, we’re probably not a good match.”
AshevilleExplorer 