Divorce: Wanting One Vs Getting One
Leaving America is not nearly as surprising as how it feels when you finally get out. But you know it's not really you, America, it's me. Wait a minute...ummm, no, it's you.
“This is why we bombed you people!”
The speaker was a drummer friend of mine. On the occasion of some minor inconvenience while on tour in Switzerland. Funny because, at least by my recollection, the United States has had no sustained bombing campaigns in Switzerland, of all places. Moreover, even if we had, we wouldn’t have started the campaign over what he had estimated was coffee bad enough to justify said attack.
So I laughed, right up until the tour manager said to my public denial of the drummer’s claim, “well the US actually DID bomb Switzerland…” A semi-accidental run either early during World War 2 or toward the end. And there it was, America’s proclivity for democracy via B-52 driving home the fact that when it comes to geopolitics we favor the big stick and to hell, really, with talking, or even walking, softly.
But this is where it gets complicated since no one hates America the way American’s hate America and it’s with this in mind that I recall a treasure trove of college freshmen disappearing overseas for a single semester and all coming back with accents from wherever their host country was.
[T]here’s that whole global aspect to human stupidity that would suggest that the root causes of such stupidity are universal.
Accents and wide-eyed wonder at how “cool” Europe was and how, by elimination, America was not. This stinking cultural insecurity typically had driven me to distraction. Having traveled the world extensively it seemed fairly safe to say that there were stupid people all over this toilet bowl of a planet. And so, paradoxically, while I could healthily be described as a US-skeptic, nothing made me a patriot faster than Anti-American sentiment.
But things change. All things. And while leaving America just had started to seem procedurally necessary, it was just a shot in the dark about what it would be like once the necessary had become what was actual.
Jamie Stewart had famously said to me that his recent expatriation, to Germany no less, had been driven by a desire to “stay ahead of disaster this time,” a sentiment that I had started to share after a Sunday afternoon shooting on my block that had caused my then-four-year-old daughter to have to dive and take cover behind a parked car.
None of that spoke to how it would be to actually be here (Europe) though because while afternoon shootings anywhere in the rest of the world might be rare (or more rare), there’s that whole global aspect to human stupidity that would suggest that the root causes of such stupidity are universal.
In other words, given the state of the planet is the 6000 mile move just a matter of jumping from the frying pan to another, equally hot, frying pan? And how does one address that issue without sounding like Madonna?
Meaning here it would be useful to recall the interview someone had done with Madonna, like two weeks after she had given birth to her first kid, and they asked her to share her secrets of motherhood or some such shopworn concept. Two weeks…Madonna and her coterie of half a dozen in-house helpers might have had a lot to say but even Madge knew this to be a ridiculous conceit and demurred. I mean how much can anyone know after doing something for two weeks?
But having made as informed of a decision as possible after having toured all over G-d’s green planet, Europe was the final destination. So how’s it going?
I’ve met members of the French National Front…who clearly hated me but, and this might make only a scintilla’s bit of difference, they weren’t also afraid of me.
Well to quote Vincent Vega, it’s really the small things that are most noticeable. In all but one major regard, and that would be…fear. America, where scary people routinely do scary things to scared people, is so thoroughly bathed in fear, like the Palmolive previous generations hadn’t realized they were soaking in, that it’s made even sleepy Sundays, not very fun at all days.
As a 6’1”, 225 pound black man, navigating the world with a total disregard for whatever that might mean in the face of dominant paradigm concerns regarding crime and a propensity for violence, I’ve been amused, primarily, at what most marks my relationships to nervous America. This…fear.
Unchanged regardless of whether I’m wearing $1000 wool coats courtesy of my stand as an editor in chief of a men’s fashion magazine or straight from the gym in dirty sweats. Only slightly altered if I’d been strolling around with infant daughters. And majorly changed depending on the time of day.
Stories abound about shit I cared very little for: old ladies clutching their purses tighter on elevator rides, people crossing the street to avoid you, cops trying to talk “black” with you, none of which mattered or left much of an impact on me. America’s problems with race are like America’s problems with erectile dysfunction: something that could bother me but thus far absolutely has not.
But what undergirds all of this is this absolutely corrosive sense of fear. Pervasive, unyielding.
And not just fear of a Black planet but everyone scared of everyone. All the time. Something you only notice, like a shitty smell, when it’s gone.
So while you have racists everywhere, this is much less of my problem when it’s just the realm of ideas and not feelings. I’ve met members of the French National Front, dyed in the wool racists, who clearly hated me but, and this might make only a scintilla’s bit of difference, they weren’t also afraid of me.
“OK. Yo quiero ZUMO, pendejo!” And then under my breath a bit, “This is why we bombed you people.”
In man to man terms this means that while casual interactions with the average Frenchman, or Polak, or Spaniard might be framed by any number of different things, it is completely absent the subconscious (or maybe not so subconscious) fear that marks the vast majority of my interpersonal relations with strangers—you know…those friends you haven’t yet met according to the aphorisms—anywhere from the American corporate world to San Francisco social settings.
And I say man to man since this is an entirely different world with different impacts in total than man to woman, or woman to woman. But I can only speak to the fear that I know, not the fear I don’t know.
In fact I strongly suspect that trans panic is partially based in this idea that men are gaming the system by opting out, which would explain why there’s so little trans man panic when compared to trans woman panic. And even if misery loves company, having more men around whose asses are more easily kicked might be a plus for some, just not for me.
This is also not to say that the American man’s fear is irrational by any means. The numbers of mass murders since I left America have been almost daily in their scope, but wild in terms of their magnitude. People getting shot where you don’t expect people to be shot. By people you don’t expect to do the shooting.
Moreover it’s also a World Star Hip Hop world where IG stories abound with ass kickings far and wide and so American men’s pumps are primed for any and all manner of interpersonal stranger violence, as well as the means to make it happen in the most crucial of ways possible every minute of every hour of every day. From Ely, Nevada to Brooklyn, New York.
And now a month in from this kind of daily grind, how does it feel to be out of it? If the money holds out and Russia doesn’t invade? For the record and the foreseeable future it seems waaaaay easier to be the most dangerous person in a very nice neighborhood than to be a very nice guy in the most dangerous neighborhood.
“Yo quiero un vaso de jugo…” I start saying to a “mesero” in a restaurant in Spain. He screws up his face, this Bangladeshi Spaniard, like he was smelling shit.
“Zumo.” He intones, unsmiling.
“Jugo?” I say, less sure now of my high school Spanish.
“ZUMO!” Apparently in Spain spanish “jugo” is not juice. It’s weed. And juice? It’s Zumo.
“OK. Yo quiero ZUMO, pendejo!” And then under my breath a bit, “This is why we bombed you people.”
Which, in total, is still much better of an exchange than ME getting shot because it’s rush hour. That is…I can live it with it. Easily. Quite easily. So hasta luego amigos. Y por favor...¡Que no te disparen!
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I miss you already. But you're in a better place now.
I'm really happy for you, and I really liked this one.