A City Without Commons

A City Without Commons

There’s something I didn’t understand at first.

When my life fractured — when everything split down the middle and the scaffolding fell away — I thought the ache I felt was my fault. I thought it was because I cut people out. Because I burned bridges. Because I withdrew. Because I had somehow socially exiled myself.

That’s the easy narrative. The self-blame narrative. The “you did this” narrative.

But that’s not the truth.

That’s only a sliver of it.

The real truth is harsher and less personal: there is no cohesive social ecosystem here to fall back on.

Pocatello is not a socially porous city. It’s not a city where you drift into new rooms and meet new kinds of people. It’s not a city where communities overlap and cross-pollinate. It’s not a city that fosters casual, unstructured, open-ended human connection.

It’s a city of compartments.

Before the fracture, I didn’t feel this level of angst or boredom or disconnection. And I’ve had to ask myself why. What changed?

Yes, I had a spouse. And that matters — especially in a place like this. Being partnered in a conservative, small-city environment gives you insulation. It gives you legitimacy. It gives you built-in companionship. It shields you from the social void because you are never walking into it alone.

But even more than that, I was constantly filling my time with tasks.

Odd Fellows. Masons. Charity work. Meetings. Projects. Committees. Work. Always something scheduled. Always something to accomplish. Always a structure to step into.

Those environments included people — but they weren’t social. They were task-oriented. They had agendas. Minutes. Rituals. Objectives. They were functional, not relational.

Work isn’t social. It’s work.

Lodge meetings aren’t social. They’re meetings.

Volunteerism isn’t spontaneous connection. It’s service with structure.

Even educational programs here follow the same pattern: you show up for a purpose. You stay in your lane. You leave when the task is done. There’s no organic spillover into genuine connection.

The only place where people “just hang out” is the bar. And that says everything.

When the bar becomes your primary social commons, you don’t have a social culture — you have a pressure valve.

And here’s the other truth: there is no cohesive queer community here.

No queer center. No gay district. No cluster of LGBTQ-owned spaces. No visible infrastructure that says, “This is where you can gather without explanation.”

In larger cities — even in places like Idaho Falls — there are at least pockets. Overlaps. Places where circles bleed into each other. Where you can show up as yourself and not feel like an anomaly.

Here, the queer community is fractured and dispersed. Highly disconnected. You don’t stumble into it. You have to already know someone. And if you don’t fit into that small existing network, there’s no open forum to enter.

That’s the real weight.

Pocatello doesn’t foster socialization for its own sake.

There are no open community circles that just exist to exist. No public salons. No drumming circles. No recurring “come as you are” gatherings. No spontaneous meetups that aren’t tied to productivity, alcohol, or obligation.

People don’t just meet at each other’s homes. Not unless they’re already tightly embedded in a clique.

And that’s what this town runs on: cliques.

Closed networks. Long-standing circles. Family ties. Church ties. Fraternal ties. Work ties.

No intermixing.

No porous edges.

No drifting between worlds.

People stay in the same small network for years, sometimes decades. They don’t venture outward. And outsiders feel it immediately.

So when my life fractured, what actually happened was this:

The scaffolding of tasks disappeared. The insulation of partnership disappeared. And what was left was the underlying truth of the city itself.

Isolation.

Not because I cut everyone off. Not because I failed socially. But because outside of work, drinking, and structured volunteerism, there is almost nothing here designed for simple human connection.

That’s what makes it unbearable.

It’s not that I’m antisocial. It’s not that I burned every bridge. It’s not that I suddenly forgot how to relate.

It’s that this place does not cultivate organic social life.

If you don’t belong to a fraternity, a church, a charity board, or a workplace clique — you float.

And floating here feels like drowning.

The hardest part of realizing this is that it removes the easy target of self-blame. It forces me to confront something more systemic and less controllable.

It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just the fracture. It wasn’t just the people I cut off.

It’s the architecture of the place.

And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

Pocatello isn’t evil. It isn’t malicious. It’s just socially insular. Work-driven. Clique-protected. Task-oriented. Reserved.

But for someone who needs dynamic connection, spontaneous gathering, porous circles, and real queer visibility?

It feels like starvation.

And starvation changes a person.

That’s the honest truth.