I sit down with my dear friend Belle Pardue on a Friday night at the Kona Grill in Dallas. They have a reverse happy hour for the mall employees, “The Northpark Centre” employees, as she corrects me. “They’re very adamant about it; the ‘re’. This place is closely tied with the Nashers—I know wealthy people who send their personal shoppers to my store all the time.” That really is Dallas in a nutshell—a huge metroplex bustling with aggressive drivers and loads of opportunity, extreme money and extreme poverty, but in the same breath a small world where making connections is easier than one would think. “And the boomers are genuine!” Belle gushes. “It’s so weird, here I know a lot of great boomers.”
We wait until 9pm for happy hour to start before we order our food. I wanted to first ask her in the same way I will ask others what her relationship to her hometown is like and how her relationships both with the location and with family have influenced her life in other places. Belle was born in Dallas, spent a lot of time growing up in Rockwall, which is where we met, and then moved to Charleston. “I love Dallas, I feel safe there.” she starts. “It really is the place that feels like home. But Rockwall…” We laugh.
Rockwall is the smallest county in Texas, the richest county per capita, and the white-est county per capita in the State. It is 30 minutes east of Dallas. “Whenever I’m there, I can’t wait to come back here,” she tells me. “It’s prejudiced.” She describes the Target parking lot. 24-year-old moms with 3 kids whose husbands are youth pastors at one of the 48 churches in the county. It’s funny now talking with her having met there and grown up there together for a portion of our teenage years—we are so far removed from it. No white picket fences, no church, no Target. You have two options in Rockwall, and it really is this way, we agreed: a) Grow up there and never leave; take the white picket fence and the young marriage, or b) Grow up there, leave, and never come back. “Is it because we’re gay?”
“Yes, and culty-church-vibes.”
Our margaritas arrive. “She reminds me of a drag queen I know,” Belle says, referring to our waitress. Another reason I love Belle—she always makes great friends.
“But the culture in Charleston is so different,” Belle tells me. Dallas is a metroplex. For those who aren’t from here, it’s more than just Dallas proper—it’s Plano, Rockwall, Grand Prairie, Irving. It’s even Fort Worth, too. It is diverse and encompasses so much. So many counties and suburbs benefit from Dallas infrastructure and economy. “But it’s a stopping ground for the Midwest,” Belle mentions. “People come and people go. Especially from California and the Midwest.” It is an area of transplants. Many come seeking the tax breaks and a new life—it’s easy to be an entrepreneur here, with the connections to Dallas natives and socialites like the Nashers and the lack of a state income tax and things like traffic cameras. We giggle. “Yeah, the best thing Greg Abbott ever did for me was get rid of the traffic cameras.”
“But in Charleston,” Belle tells me, “the culture is deeper. They have Gullah culture there, born in the belly of slavery and all the horrors that come with that, and it sticks. But I was drawn to the way people stay there; invest in that city. There’s so much history, and people take pride in their roots. Identity and culture can be watered down in Dallas.”
Our conversation shifts towards education. “You know, I talk to a lot of rich people at my job,” Belle says. “I know a girl who is starting a sustainable fashion line with her wealth. I spoke with another guy who is joining the military to be independent. I think the Highland Park education system is doing something right. The kids coming out of that are deciding for themselves what they want to do with their money—there’s independence there.”
I ask her what makes the rest of the South different. Coming on the heels of Oklahoma mandating the Ten Commandments to be taught in schools, the sort of financial liberty of Highland Park isn’t reflective of the type of education being instituted elsewhere in the area. Because it’s an important question when you have money– what do you want? “I don’t know,” she says, “I think the Oklahoma legislature is fearful of what kids will do when they realize that they have the freedom to choose what they will do with their life.” The morals of the Ten Commandments are somewhat universal—no one should murder; no one should commit adultery. I would think that anyone of religious or non-religious background would agree on those points. “But it’s a power thing—it’s a control issue.”
“How do you think Texas politics have influenced your willingness to stay here long-term?”
If I would have asked Belle this question years ago, before gay marriage was legal, her answer would have been different. “I would have flown to another state to be with Cynthia,” she says. “What worries me today is our gun laws, the question of taking kids’ phones away in school, etc. I can’t raise a family here, not with these schools. It’s now a question of do we leave the United States? And I think that is what we are going to do.”
For our grandparents, post-WWII, the American dream was fully alive. We were unstoppable. We landed on the moon. The economy was booming. Maybe if Belle and I had lived back then, we would have wanted to stay. But the American dream our grandparents had doesn’t exist anymore, we agree. “I was in this diner,” Belle tells me, “and the guy cleaning up my dishes told me, in Spanish, that this is not what he signed up for coming to America. There’s no education on what to do with citizenship and retirement. There’s no support for immigrants. Sure, we have our freedoms, but how far along are we, really? I live paycheck to paycheck. Ten years ago, that money would have gone a lot farther.”
“And people who live paycheck to paycheck in Europe don’t have the same problems we have,” I mention. “There’s no healthcare support, or any support for the vulnerable, built into the system here.”
“I have a healthcare bill from when I was in Charleston,” she says. “My auto-pay turned off. It was an accident, but I’m not paying it.” We laugh. “Yeah, I’m just not paying it.”
“You shouldn’t.”
We exchange parting thoughts. Precious moments and laughs over credit cards. I later ask her what home means to her. A question that escaped me during our interview. “Home is where I feel safe,” Belle tells me.
Simple. Home can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Where we are born can influence so much of who we are, but our ability to choose a place and people who make us feel safe is what home really is. Belle understands this. She lives it. She has built a community around her and Cynthia of beautiful, talented, encouraging people, some of whom I am lucky enough to know. She has lived in several places, and still several more should we both make it to Europe—“we will,” she assures me, “I just know it,”—and in each place she finds rich culture and beauty. I admire her.
To follow Belle and her business, you can find her on Instagram at @bellepardue and @sayplzsaysyes.