Robert DuSold

Well, I never thought I’d live in a town in New Jersey, or a town for that matter.

I thought I’d live in Manhattan kinda forever, but when I met Tom, my world changed and the possibility of buying a house became a reality.

I had basically spent my adult life chewing my way up the homo food chain, from the bottom, and finally met someone who wanted to build a real future with me. Together.

We needed a change, needed to maybe put the rent money in a house as an investment and definitely we needed a change of scenery…

We scraped the moolah together and moved to Maplewood NJ in 2002… after some difficult times for Tom and I after September 11 and my brother Tommy dying.. too young.

First we had looked around for a place outside of the city.. a “weekend house” as it were, but they were far too expensive and too far away for us to make that work.

We knew we needed to move to a community that was accepting of us…gay men… and we both had heard that Maplewood was diverse and liberal and accepting.

We had researched and found the schools were rated in the upper percentages statewide then and there were people in the arts who had been pioneers moving out here to the ‘wood.

I had worked with a few of those peeps who lived here way back then and, since there was a new direct train from the city I could commute for New York gigs and have a home base for out of town jobs.

Tom could commute into the city too.

Score.

And that is how and why we moved here.

Maplewood has become an exodus for people from Brooklyn and Manhattan who mostly want to raise families. My niece and her wife moved here shortly after we did to do just that.

It’s inevitable that things change in 20 odd years… this town has gradually exploded in popularity and population.

Everything has gotten more expensive, the property taxes are stupid.. but the home values have increased to an almost unbelievable level…somewhat typical for the burbs.

There’s NIMBY’s out here now too.. you know the not in my backyard peeps and BOUGIES.

The town has gotten exponentially more entitled… cuz now you need a shit ton of money to be part of the earthy liberal experience .. I’ve witnessed a lot of gentrification of not only homes and neighborhoods but businesses in Maplewood over these last couple of decades.

While we’ve lived here, social media has exploded too.

We’ve made friends, continued our careers, morphed our careers and become I’d say pretty well known for a variety of reasons.

We’ve served on community boards, done lots of charity work and contributed the best we can to give to our little hamlet. We’ve started businesses that serve the area too.

Anyway, we’ve loved our community and contributed to it.

I never thought I’d live in a town….

I never thought I’d live in this town…

Village Green spoke with two Livingston residents on Feb. 14, both of whom later made public comments at the Feb. 14 Maplewood Public Safety Committee meeting; they detailed an exchange with a ceasefire protester who told them, “You should go to the gas chambers,” at the Feb. 4 Ricalton Square rally.]

Local Newspaper Village Green

Or this town…

On December 14, the Maplewood Township Committee issued a statement condemning antisemitic graffiti that contained an explicit, violent threat that was found in a bathroom stall at Columbia High School earlier this week.

“KILL ALL JEWS” was written on the wall

Or this town….

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtFGPsYnx4

Or this town…

Or a town where a child could accuse an elementary school teacher of ripping the hijab off her head and have a local famous Olympic fencer dox her, run her out of town and ruin her life..we’ll get to that too.

Or a town where if you throw a stick you hit an actor or someone in the arts, that censors a grade school concert version of “Summer Nights” from “Grease” because it encourages rape culture. Which is somewhat ironic because the family can listen and have a sing-a-long to “Wet Ass Pussy” on the way home in the car…

What stirs in my head is how did this most accepting Shangri-La morph into a blurry mirror image of MAGA land?

Undoubtedly, a lot of the crazy is the thumb warriors on social media who are desperate to be heard.. which in itself is a product of privilege.

It’s so fucking easy to pile on and opine, particularly anonymously, and put your two cents in before you grab the Pinot and move on to the next 30 second good vs. evil episode.

We all do it.

That said, I keep asking myself…

Why here?

A big reason is the forward facing messaging from the Township and elected officials in Maplewood that is dunked, fermented and sautéed in identity.

I keep thinking that it had to be a good thing that Maplewood and the sister town of South Orange have rainbow crosswalks and Black Lives Matter paved streets and a festival for every ethnic group under the sun.

But, I do believe that the towns’ laser beam on identity emboldens people and telegraphs that they are “seen” … “We See You!” …. and therefore obliquely encourages them in their specialness and visibility to open their mouths and sometimes say vile, hateful garbage. And sometimes worse than that.

Cuz they can. Cuz they’re supported. Cuz they’re seen.

Instead of a town concerning itself with ..let’s say.. not sexy things like safety, traffic, crime, noise pollution, overflowing sewers, potholes the size of Cleveland… which are absolutely out of control here.. we get vigils, rallies and town halls.

If a social media post from the Township went out that simply said “…we fixed that giant pothole on Valley and Oakland!” …I do believe my life would be complete. I would cry with joy.

Doing the business of a town is sorta boring, but necessary… and if we are all supposedly looking for equity, that boring shit affects everyone of every stripe and socioeconomic status.

There’s an awful lot of official performative town pontificating going around… the YouTube link I posted earlier is of the new Deputy Mayor of Maplewood at a rally saying baseless, ignorant stuff…with a platform. And a microphone. I think it would behoove her to open a book and do a lot a research before she tries again to expertly opine on the conflict in the Middle East.

She, and other elected peeps are pandering to emotion. At the end of the day that is way sexier than fixing potholes or cracking down on running stop signs I suppose.

The other rather unique aspect of living out here is the warring factions of social/racial justice groups and Facebook groups, which are very organized and they’re angry.. like everybody else nowadays I guess.

When their anger is aimed at you, it can ruin your life.

In my inured numbness with yet another round of an orange, criminally indicted, bankrupt rapist hitting the Zietgiest, I’ve never stopped being aware really of how easy it would be to take people’s freedoms and rights away in a totalitarian regime.. you know.. hurl accusations and silence your critics, shut down discourse and target innocent people.. That’s the constant noise many of us have been living with for years.

It’s pretty unbearable. It could happen to us.

On the flip side, it is happening to us here in MapleOz… and it’s sure as fuck not what I ever expected when we moved here. Not in our town of diversity and acceptance. Not in our beautiful stigma free town. This is the city where the gays move to flourish, have brunch and buy succulents.

Based on lies and innuendo, good people in Maplewood have been slandered and irreparably harmed in a community that purports to be a sanctuary city… a refuge for the marginalized.

Here’s the real story of a man and a woman.. one Hispanic, one Jewish who have been caught in the crossfire and will never be the same.

Their stories resonate with me.. I don’t know them.

But, I know them.

And I know that occasionally shit happens, but it’s concerning now… as it seems trendy to be targeting educators and Jewish people… and it sure seems to me there is an endgame, which has nothing to do with students, but everything to do with retribution.

There’s a Hatfields and McCoys thing going on in this area with racial/social justice groups… they spar with each other at times and have become ingrained in the political, township and educational discourse.

Here’s what happens when you are a beloved principal of Columbia high school, attempting to prevent a fight and you’re up against a racial justice cabal here in Maplewood.

You get arrested.

You also get smeared as not only a racist, but a sexual predator by a group that purports to concern itself with justice.

All of the accusations are muddy and not vetted and baseless, but here’s his mugshot… taken yesterday.

Obviously, it’s ruined his life and has devastated the students at Columbia High School.

Here’s what happens when you’re an elementary school teacher in the Maplewood school district and are accused of ripping the hijab off a child’s head.. and you’re Jewish.

Ibtihaj Muhammad gets on social media immediately… without any facts… and doxes you by providing your name and address.

You get death threats, you lose your job, get run out of town and pilloried by the school board, the local synagogue, and pretty much the whole town.

The accusations were false.

Here’s what happened yesterday:

You get a flyer distributed by a staff member at Columbia High School that says this:

“When we speak about celebrating Ramadan within the US context, it is imperative to contextualize the the US is a co-conspirator with Israel, preventing Muslim Palestinians from partaking in Ramadan as the Israeli Zionist occupation enacts a genocide against them.”

I guess “Kill All Jews” was simpler.

Here’s what happens when you start a Facebook support group in Maplewood for Jewish people… you get threats and have to have the police patrol your street.

It seems to me, Maplewood is at a breaking point. Maybe just for me…and I know it’s easy to ignore the daily crazy shit… but this has weighed heavily on me.

I’m not sure anymore if we’re not at a point of no return.

I’ve loved this town, but I wonder now where else could we go?

This isn’t that cool little secret place of acceptance and diversity anymore.

Anyway, I think about this stuff.. and maybe my way of attempting to fix the crazy out here is to at least write about it.

And if I saw this, I would be a bit more hopeful…