This Is Not America - A Collection Of Stories

Dear friends,

Since I moved to NYC two years ago, I’ve been writing short stories on living in America, as seen through the distorted lens of a foreigner. So far I’ve published these stories right here. Today I have posted two Dutch stories on www.tenpages.com as part of my upcoming collection of stories This Is Not America.

Tenpages.com is a website, co-owned by 5 renowned Dutch publishers, where new writers can be discovered by readers. Readers can buy shares (€ 5 / $ 7 apiece) in a posted manuscript; when there are 2,000 shares sold, one of the participating publishers will publish the manuscript as a book.

I am asking you to help me publish my first book!

Of course, you probably can’t read Dutch. So, read the stories here; if after reading you think, Oh well, why the hell not? then go to:

http://www.tenpages.com/manuscript/this_is_not_america.

Click on "Koop een Aandeel" and buy a share (or more). All it takes is 100 people buying 20 shares --- or 80 people buying 25. If my book gets published, all share holders share in the profit. If less than 2,000 shares are sold, all shareholders will be reimbursed € 4 ($ 5) per share they bought.

Think big: a book leads to a movie; a movie leads to a Disney ride and before we know it we’ll all be filthy rich. Besides, you might enjoy the read, too.

Thank you so much for your support,

Cheers!

Carlijn

This Is Not America

This Is Not America – David Bowie

“Of course, when our Jimmy lost his job, too… Well, let’s just say that it was pretty darn tough on all of us. What with me having the cancer and all after my first divorce, and our Janice throwing up her dinner all the time. We did ourselves a lot of praying, I’ll tell you that, dear. A lot of praying. What’s that smell?” I am standing on the side of a dust-bowl dirt road some three miles outside Wyola, Montana (a speck of a town, some 50 miles from anywhere), and the all-American sportswear lady talking from behind her 9/11 remembrance T-shirt – the words We Will Never Forget and a bald eagle hover over a drawing of the American flag and two smoking towers – is Nancy Olson. Nancy and her third husband William (“Please call me Bill”) have come to our rescue.

We are in a pretty bad state. My friend Silke, cameraman André and I have been on a road trip through the backlands of America in the biggest rental car I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure the car could qualify as an apartment in most countries – all that is missing are some curtains and a coffee maker. This morning we decided to take a little detour into Montana. You know, take the scenic route. We parked right off the dust road at an idyllic stream to have our picnic lunch, and jumped out of the car. The second we slammed the doors I knew, the way you know in that slow motion split second that your ungainly stumble – arms flailing, weight shifting – will result in a fall. The way you know that volatile cotton candy sensation in your head is a sneeze in the making. And, like a sneeze, there was no stopping it. Slam. Slam. Slam. Click. We locked ourselves out of the car. The click made our heads snap back, all eyes on the dashboard. And there they were, the keys of our rental, peacefully dangling off the air conditioned ignition. Inside a car that had just locked itself. Pretty much like an apartment.

So we are in a pretty bad state. Only André has his phone on him – but reception stutters in and out of existence, with a best of one single bar if he stands in the middle of the road, on his toes, holding the phone high above his head. No luck trying to call the rental company, 50 miles away; there is not a house or farm in sight. All the windows of the car are firmly closed. We are stuck. And getting hungry.

There is no real traffic on the road – after all, we were going for scenic – but every once in a while an encrusted truck or well worn car speeds by, the dust-tinted windows obscuring equally spent drivers. We wave, call out, jump up and down for them to stop. The quiet faces crawl out, like hermit crabs from under caps and moustaches and logger shirts, in muted curiosity; the faces seem to turn in our direction involuntarily, like sunflowers to the sun, as they drive by without slowing down. We are so stuck.

But then Nancy and Bill pull up. A bowl of ginger dust leaps and snaps at their flatbed truck as it comes to a halt. A little American flag flutters off the antenna; professional fishing gear hangs from the gun rack in the back. They take immediate pity. Bill tips his NRA cap, scratches his head and says with considerable authority: “Let’s see if we can open this sucker up, pardon my French.” Nancy starts rooting through a big cooler filled with cold cut sandwiches, potato chips and drinks. “You poor things!” she says. “To be stuck out here in the wilderness, nobody around but ‘damn Indians. I’m darn glad me and Bill happened to pass by. We grew up ‘round here. Come here to go fishin’ every Saturday. My second husband used to come out hunting, here, too. Poor bastard. Sandwich, dear?” As Silke and the boys start gathering tools and plotting a strategy to open the car doors, Nancy and I go for a stroll.

I am always surprised, and secretly mollified, to that strangest of intimacies Americans seem so comfortable with – where they share personal details of their lives with random strangers, unannounced and apropos of nothing. Maybe I’m the perfect stranger for that kind of thing; or maybe Nancy was born to share. Either way, she’s overflowing with stories and I am all ears.
“Of course my first husband Hank prayed all the time. And I do mean all the time. Except when he was rollin’ in the hay with some floozy or other. I guess he’d call that Divine Intervention! He wasn’t a bad man, you know. Ol’ Hank. He just couldn’t keep his hands to himself is all. He was a red-blooded all American boy I guess! Just like my second husband. He’s dead now, of course. What is that smell?”

Something does smell funny. Funny, but not necessarily in a good way; one scenario that vaguely comes to mind is a group of people farting in an effort to put out a huge pile of burning rubber. But that doesn’t even begin to cover the dark audacity of this scent. We’ve sauntered off the main road, and as we take a corner the smell stabs us like a knitting needle in the brain. I look up to see a dead skunk by the side of what looks to be a hidden driveway. “I knew it!” Nancy says triumphantly. “Nuthin’ quite like the smell of skunk – dead or alive. Why am I not surprised nobody’s cleaned this thing up…” It takes me a second to realize this is not a real question. It is one of those questions where the person posing it assumes the answer to be already known and you can either shake your head and shrug in disagreement or cock your head and nod a conspirator’s nod in consent. I can tell by the inflection: Nancy’s voice doesn’t go up at the end to assert the question mark; instead, it goes down halfway to suggest she knows all too well why there is nobody cleaning up the road kill. Also, Nancy is rolling her eyes. I am not sure what she is talking about, so I give her a non-committal half-shrug and my puzzled face. Nancy nudges her head in a direction further up the driveway, to the farm house at the end. “They never clean up after themselves. Dirty and lazy, is what they are.”



I follow nancy's nudge to a typical 70’s horror movie mansion – one where based-on-true-story-teens are held and tortured to the death by a family of chainsaw wielding inbreds. A family like that would likely not clean up any road kill: they probably wouldn’t be bothered by an extra funky smell or two. Or, I think, maybe this is where Ol’ Hank and his latest affair have started a new life together. Hank probably doesn’t have time to pick up anything in or around the house; he’d be too busy rolling around and praying all the time. Nancy’s bitter tone indicates the latter scenario, so I wait for her to launch into another sympathetic account of the heartbreaking human condition.
“And they’re always complaining, too; that the government doesn’t give them enough money, or enough jobs. Well they stole my Jimmy’s job, I can tell you that!” Who is she talking about? I’d like to have a word with the people who stole poor Jimmy’s job! What with his gambling problem, he needed his steady pay more than anyone. So I say, “Do you know the people who live there?”

– “Well, they’re Indians, dear.” Nancy makes a face like she smells something bad. It could be the dead skunk. “Government probably gave them that house for free. They get everything they want for free ‘round here. Did I tell you how my son Jimmy lost his home after they took his job?”
– “Maybe if there’s anyone home we can use their phone to call our car rental company,” I feebly steer the conversation in a less awkward direction. I try not to look at Nancy. Instead I take a picture of the dead skunk.
– “Hah! Over my dead body! I’m not going anywhere near that place!” Nancy now looks like she hears a distant chainsaw roar. “They only care about their own anyway. They’d never let us use the phone. You know, if they even have one. I sure as heck don’t know how to build for smoke signals. Hah!”

Nancy sees the expression of awkward surprise on my face turn into one of puzzled concern. She continues, “Well, none of them stopped to help you out today, now did they? I’m sure they all drove right by you. They don’t care about nuthin’ but their own kind. Now let’s get the heck away from that skunk! What are you taking a picture for? It’s a dead animal! Silly goose. Let’s see how Bill is doing on your car.”



What just happened? Did this darling old lady really morph into the Eva Braun of Indian-haters just now? It can’t be, I think. She makes such great sandwiches! Listen carefully, and then think carefully, my dad would say. My dad is a philosopher at heart – for every truth there is an opposite just-as-truth. Behind every ideology lies a personal history. Who are we to decide what other people should believe? As a consequence, my dad’s ideas – or at least, what I think he must have meant – have made me the kind of person who is inclined to refrain from all judgment. Maybe that explains why Nancy is so eager to share. I don’t know – I just know that I didn’t ask for this digression.

Don't jump to any conclusions! I think. She’s just an old lady with a family story to share, and Nancy’s story, is just so, I mean, it’s just way too human. How can someone so human be inhuman? I tell myself, Nancy is not some moral version of Schrödinger's cat. I think, I’m really not much for cats. More of dog person? Maybe. Then I remember how Adolf Hitler was widely known for his love of dogs. He adored his German Shepherd, Blondie – not to be confused with the hot singer in that 80’s band. Although I’m pretty sure Adolf would have liked her, too.
I think, I bet Adolf was a nice enough guy as long as you didn’t get him started about world domination and final solutions. I bet, before Adolf became Hitler, his personal ad in the local Zeitung would have read something like, “Artistically inspired, passionate boy seeks adventurous girl to take on the world. I’m into pina coladas and paintings. You are a cute twenty-something visionary, must love pets and Our Beloved Nation.”
On the first date with a girl he’d chat about art and how, when he was little, he always told his parents he’d be a famous painter one day; he’d maybe mention his love for travel and his mild case of claustrophobia (“You know, I just need more space to live”). Just like any normal guy.
Back in the day, on that first date, Adolf’s mustache must have trembled with the social restraints of his German Bratwurst upbringing. Ah, Germany, that society stuffed to the brim with ground-up emotions, neatly and hopelessly bottled up inside that tight German skin that dictates formality and procedure at all times. Where all that pent up passion is dying to burst out of its skin like hot lava; where restrained emotions are ready to pop - like Bratwursts, to rupture only when the pressure inside the frying pan has become unbearable.

I’m pretty sure Hitler would need at least three dates for any emotional spillage to even be considered. I bet the girls he dated didn’t get the feeling that something was off until that third date. Things would slowly take a more personal turn. (“Remember when I said I needed space to live? Well, I’ve been working on this brilliant solution…”)

Nancy, I evaluate, is not aiming for world domination, or even for the violent extermination of everything that is not her definition of “American”. I mean, for one, she’s just too old for that shit. And too busy helping out random strangers by the side of the road. Neither is she waiting for the third date to get personal. Nancy’s no German Herr. Nancy is born and raised in Sloppy Joe country – picture the same random heap of ground emotions that Germans squeeze into a Wurst, only loosely spread out on a bun, held together only by grand amounts of tomato paste. And like a Sloppy Joe, Nancy’s life story has been trickling right into my lap from the moment she so generously offered me that first bite, two hours ago when we met. Her family history is one of the most tragic and strangely upbeat I’ve heard in a while. I feel for her and her poor, wretched family. She made me laugh a couple times. She saw a stranger in need and stopped to help. I kind of like her.

My point is, I’m dealing with that most slippery of all foes, a nice racist. As we start working our way back to the others, my brain hurts like someone is squeezing the last bit of toothpaste out of it. What do I do?

My first response is Smile And Act Like Nothing Happened. Maybe I’m just misinterpreting all this, her being American and me being Dutch and what do I know about what people mean when they say anything anyway? If Germans are Bratwursts, and Americans are Sloppy Joes, the Dutch are much like a cheese sandwich for lack of imaginative meat product: a yellow hole-ridden dairy product, forever wedged between bigger and more powerful slices of German or French bread that could easily run over our country in five days the second they decide they no longer like the taste between the holes. All that my cultural heritage really ever taught me is how to play nice and not be immediately tossed out with the lettuce and tomato – like, say, Poland.



By the time we get back to the car, Bill has rolled up his sleeves and is working himself into a sweat. He and Andre are trying to jam a coat hanger down the tiny crack between the door and the car, to see if they can reach the lock from the inside. Without any luck. Bill cusses under his breath and jumps off the car. As he lands, his one leg barely touches the ground; it looks like Bill is trying to stay off it. Is he limping? Maybe he is one of those War Veterans who lost a leg while trying to die for their country.
Bill scratches his head and says, “We’re gonna need us some heftier tools”, and starts rummaging through the flatbed for more suitable utensils. There are, of course, none. I realize I am half expecting him to reach down to his knee, pull off his prosthetic leg – carved, no doubt, from a piece of good old Vietnamese oak – and bust it through our rental’s window. Nothing beats a prosthetic leg to get you out of a sticky situation! Problem solved. He’d then tip his NRA cap, Nancy would pack her cooler, they’d carelessly throw the leg in the back of the flatbed along with the fishing equipment. Off they’d go, in a tornado of dust, to someone else’s rescue.
But Bill doesn’t reach for his knee. Instead he kneels down to tie his shoelaces.
– “Walkin’ ‘round here like they own the place”, Nancy picks up our conversation where she is sure we left it. “Trying to keep the rest of us from getting hunting permits. Hoggin’ the guns. And none of them work. All they do is drink and gamble all day long. Government hands them everything on a silver platter. Always have.”



Oh my god, I think, this is it. I’m not mistaken; Nancy’s a total racist. What do I do now? She’s been so kind and motherly – she really does remind me a bit of my mom, with her matter-of-fact way of helping us. Not to mention the fact that she brought enough food to feed an entire family for two weeks, even when this morning when she woke up it was just going to be her and Bill on a one day trip. I remember how my mom used to pack dozens of frozen pork chops and bags filled with potatoes for our summer vacations to Italy. “You never know when you’re gonna need it!” she used to say, oblivious to the pathological smell of raw slabs of meat thawing out in the trunk halfway across Germany, or the fact that she was raising three daughters who were convinced (well into their teens) that pork was a widely unknown phenomenon outside The Netherlands. I can’t imagine my mom would hand me a sandwich, blow my nose and say, “Oh, by the way, I think whites should reign supreme. Now remember to chew, before you choke! Always so impatient.”

How strange, I think, that a lady who is so visibly proud of being American – the shirt! Her husband’s NRA cap! The way she uses her right to freedom of speech! – would so readily forget what makes an American. What ever happened to the Self-evident Truths that all men are created equal, endowed with certain unalienable rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Maybe Nancy is one of those people who think there is only so much happiness to go around – if anyone else pursues any, it means you have to give some up.

I wish I knew what it feels like to be an American like Nancy. I don’t. And it appears I sure as hell don’t know how to make a decent stand. I remember one time, in Italy, my mom and I were strolling along the shores of Lake Garda when we came across two little boys catching fish from the lake. The boys were 7 or 8 years old, like me, only they were local Italian kids. They had laid down the tiny fish they’d caught on one of the numerous large flat rocks on the lake shore. As my mom and I got closer to the rocks, we saw the fish were still alive, gasping for air as they were flopping about in a fruitless effort to get back in the water – scraping their scales and fins and leaving a bloody, glistening mess on the rock. They were doing whatever fish do when on land; the opposite of drowning.
The boys were looking on in respectful fascination for this one-acter of life and death, their hands on their backs. My mom said, “I can’t bear this”, and without looking at me she pushed the boys aside, picked up the fish by their mangled tails and slapped the tiny bodies, hard, on the rock, until they stopped moving. The boys took one look at my mom’s face and ran. She stood with her back at me for the longest time, staring at the lifeless little fish on the rock. I remember standing there, looking at her motionless back. After an eternity she picked up the remains and buried them in the sand. She got up, and only then did she look back at me, her eyes red. She didn’t say anything; she just took my hand and we walked back to our vacation home.

Damn it, I think, is this really all I took away from what my parents taught me about doing the right thing? And how could it help me now? Between my mom’s lethal hands-on compassion and my dad’s ultimately indecisive sense of reason, there has to be a better way to deal with this specific situation. I mean, after all, I’m trying to make a stand for live and let live here – for making nice on a global scale. There must be a way to do that without bloodshed.

I’m about to ask Nancy when exactly the Olson family tree first arrived in the States, when a voice comes out of nowhere. I am so caught up in my feeble stand for niceties that I don’t notice the guy strolling towards us from up the street until he’s come to a halt right next to me. “Hiya”, he says, startling the shit out of everybody. “You stuck?”



– “Uhh, yeah, we locked ourselves out of our car,” I say. Nancy has frozen mid-monologue. She steps back and is now looking apprehensively at the guy’s long black braided hair.
– “Yeah, I figured you might be in trouble,” he says, and spits on the dust that settles at his feet like a well trained dog. The fleck is foamy, dark and thick, and it takes the earth a lifetime to absorb it. “We don’t get many strangers here – not on purpose, anyway. I thought I saw you just now from my window. Figured I’d come over to see if you need any help.” At this point Nancy looks like she is vigorously wishing she had a prosthetic leg on her. But the guy isn’t paying attention to her. He’s looking at me. “I own the farm right off the main road. We breed horses. This is my land here, pretty much as far as you can see. Figured I’d come ask if maybe you might want to come in, use my phone. Have a cold drink. It’s hot out today.”

– “Your house looks like the one from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” I wheeze. “I mean, it’s not like we… I mean, it’s just…” I hear flies buzzing. Why do I always do this to myself? “We were just looking to have some lunch and then we pulled up at the little stream over there and then all of a sudden we’re in the middle of nowhere with no keys. You know?” I sigh. “I watch too many movies.”
The guy shakes his head in friendly puzzlement. “Yeah, isn’t it great out here? You can actually swim in that stream, it’s so clear. I always go swimming here in the summer. Lots of trout in there. You fish?” He nods at the fishing gear in the flatbed. “Plenty of good hunting, too. Well, used to, anyway. Bear, bison, coyote. We used to keep them in check; they kept the deer and the elk in check. But everybody has a permit nowadays. People ‘round here forget that the wild animals need a season to breed too. Keep shooting them, none be left. I guess some people just don’t think about these things anymore. Anyway. You sure you’re alright?” the guy says. “It’s gonna rain soon. Let me know if you want to come over, I’ll make some lemonade.”

– “We’re fine”, interjects Nancy, by now a good ten feet away. “Just fine.”
– “Alright”, says the guy. He turns to me. “If you ever want to go camping out here, you’re more than welcome to. It’s beautiful out here in the summers at night. Be careful not to put your tent up too near the wild path – see right over there where the grass is beaten down? It’s a cougar path. You don’t want to run in to a momma cougar at night. Or in the daytime, neither. Alright, take care now. It was nice meeting you.” And off he goes; slowly working his way back up the road until he is a mere shape of a man shrugged in a dusty cloud.

“Wow, he was nice. Not a homicidal maniac after all!” I say to Nancy. She doesn’t return my smile. And why should she? There’s nothing funny about it. I’m not taking a stand. My stand for neighborly love can apparently go fuck itself. Sure, my thoughts on how we should all just get along are hopelessly naive, and bound to shatter on the rocks of a more complicated world. But that does not alter the fact that I am taking the coward’s way out. As always. I am the eternal avoider of confrontation; the Switzerland of taking stands. Nancy just shrugs.
– “Yeah. Well. Must be a half breed. Now, let me get you another sandwich, dear. Let’s get some meat on those bones! I don’t want your mama to start worrying about you! Like our Janice. I told you about her, she was the bulimic? She used to eat all the time and then throw up all the time. You see, she didn’t like herself much. At least that’s what the doctor said. You know what I mean?”


Go to http://www.tenpages.com/manuscript/this_is_not_america and click on "Koop een Aandeel" to buy a share (or more) in my first collection of stories!

Suffer Little Children

Suffer Little Children – The Smiths

A woman skidmarks into the restaurant where I work. At first I think the leash in her hands is pulling at a very eager dog trying to scramble its way to our kitchen on its hind legs, but then I realize the bundle of excitement on the end of the taut strap is not a yipping family pet but a little boy of about 3 years old. The boy is tugging and pulling at a harness tied all around his chest and back where it is masquerading as a fun little backpack. Why is this woman walking her child on a leash?
I think, maybe the boy is one of those wolf children you hear about every couple years; feral kids who’ve been raised by a pack of wolves or other wild animals. Maybe the woman is a concerned child care worker and the leash is part of this miracle kid’s slow rehabilitation into civilization. You know, to keep it from gnawing at people’s shoes, or worse, marking his territory in public. Meanwhile, the boy has realized it is the backpack that is causing his grief. With tremendous effort he tries to reach the clasp tying him to the woman. There he is, whirling like a dervish around his own axis in hot but futile pursuit, a dog chasing its tail. I try to catch a glimpse of the boy’s face. It does look somewhat savage.

On second glance, it looks a bit mean. It might be his struggle to break free – what with him lunging forward and backward, gasping for air, a little vein on his red forehead about to pop – but the kid looks like he would set the place on fire given half a match. The more I look at the boy, the more I think that this is probably the kind of kid that would twist the legs off puppies, just because.
Isn’t our boy just so inquisitive, you can see his parents try, all apologies and smiles at the neighbors as they bury another mangled pet in the back yard. When do you realize, as parents, that you might have a future homicidal maniac on your hands? I can see how you’d better contain and restrain this kid from an early age on. When left in the woods (I imagine him, in full harness, tied to a tree and watching the rest of the family drive off into their summer vacation) he would probably pull the wolves’ ears and poke them in the eyes and end up being eaten alive before the pack would even remotely consider raising him as one of their own.

Maybe the woman is one of those moms who get confused, so busy keeping her family and her wits together that sometimes she forgets who’s who in the family pecking order. I am half expecting the family dog to come wagging in after them, leash-free, maybe wearing a little sweater and a beanie. Slobbering up an ice cream cone. It happens, you know. Confusion within families about who’s what. I guess you need to be really level-headed to make a family. Then again, what do I know? I don’t have any kids and I don’t think I ever will. Apart from my physical fear of giving birth, I’m just not much for small children. It’s not that I don’t like them, necessarily; I just don’t really know how to act around them. I'm always afraid to break or traumatise some fragile framework; common case scenario is I go out of my way to try and be nice or funny, and in return they give me that blank face kids and cats seem to reserve just for me. It's just awkward all around. Besides, what if I turn out to be a confused mom?



The closest I ever got to resembling anything motherly, was when my oldest sister had her first child, and I went to live with her for a couple weeks to help take care of her and the baby. At that time, all I knew about babies was that they feed a lot and they sleep a lot and in between they crap a lot, and all I knew about parenting was that there are some parents who insist that all visitors wash their hands before touching the baby. I can sort of see how you wouldn’t want the crack addict on the corner sticking his gnarly jagged finger in your offspring’s mouth to suck on, but I find it rather insulting when people ask me to wash my hands before laying one on their gene pool. I mean, your average baby is the dirtiest thing! They have no sense of personal hygiene whatsoever, sticking their grubby fingers into everything while soiling themselves. If anyone should wash their hands more, it’s them.

Anyway. I don't know much about kids, but I do know there was a time when dogs and children still ran free. I was a little girl, and always alert for any occasion to pet a dog – any dog, anywhere. I loved anything furry back then, and dogs in particular. Back in those days my mom told me time and again to always ask first before touching someone else’s pet. She’d watch in petrified horror every time I ran up to random strangers’ snarling pit bulls and frenzied chihuahuas on the street or in the park. My mom is not an overly dramatic woman – not like me, anyway – but I can only imagine the slideshow in her head of ripped off fingers, blood gushing out of mangled legs and loose flaps of meat hanging off the face of her youngest coming home from school. What do you tell your husband, or worse, your own mom, when that happens? I can see the I-told-you-sos lining up around the corner. So she’d make sure to tell me, every single time I went anywhere, to keep my hands to myself until given explicit permission to touch anything animal. To this day I find myself apologizing when I touch someone unsolicited – much to the awkward surprise of some of the guys I dated.

As a kid I totally understood where my mom was coming from. I wouldn’t want anyone to just come up and touch my dog, either. Hey, that’s my dog! I get to pet it. You go pet your own, sucker. So I would go up to people as politely as my borderline tizzy would allow, and ask them if it was okay to put a hand on their dog. Most people are really pleased when strangers like their dogs and come up to touch them. It’s strange how different the sentiment is when it comes to their kids. Especially when you think about how much rarer it is for people to like other people’s kids and want to pet them. You’d think it would be a good deal more appreciated.



One day when I was walking to the store with my mom, I spotted a poodle across the street. Not just any old poodle; this was a real big one, in full coif and everything. It was a luxurious poodle, with an expensive woman attached to it. I was already halfway to dog-touching heaven when I heard my mom call after me: “No touching without asking!” So I asked permission, my eager seven year old fingers knotted behind my back. The woman sized me up for a second or so, and nodded, yes, you can touch my poodle. As I was burying my face in its fur the woman and my mom struck up a conversation – the awkward kind, spawned not by the wish of two strangers to share any possible mutual interest and get to know each other, but the kind that solely exists to bridge the time-gap until your child is done fondling someone else’s poodle. My mom could be really patient that way. So she stepped up to the lady and said, “My daughter really likes dogs”, and added, in the way small town moms bring up their good upbringing rules when confronted with possible small town tattle-tales, “Of course I always tell my children to ask the owner’s permission before touching their pets.”

The lady sized my mom up for a second or so, and nodded. “Ah yes, indeed. With kids these days, you simply never know where they’ve put their little fingers.” After that, my mom never told me to ask permission again. Not for petting big rabid-looking dogs with rabid-looking owners; not for running with scissors, or juggling rotating knives. Insults directed at parents can probably be held responsible for mangled and traumatized kids all over the world.

So I arrived at my sister’s house with no knowledge about babies whatsoever except for what I’d seen about newborns on TV. Consequently I knew that, from the very second babies are born, they are fat and happy looking, all soft clean pink and dimply knees and big smiles and a perfect belly button; the new mom gets back to her former routine and weight within two weeks.
In the real world, newborn babies lack some serious credibility. For one, they are greasy beyond control. Not clean at all! And they don’t seem to fit in their skins. They’re wrinkly, like some lackluster shopkeeper gift wrapped them in the womb before sending them off; their excess skin is covered in all kinds of crazy rash, their heads stay warped for days from squeezing through the forever too narrow corridor (why doesn’t evolution do something about this pointless cruelty? Come on!) to the outside world. There are no smiles for the new aunt; newborn babies mainly look angry and disturbed, their faces knotted in what I can only hope to be a fading memory of the pain of being born.

The strangest thing is, about an hour after he was born, my sweet nephew didn't look like he was in pain at all. He didn’t look knotted, or angry. I always figured babies aren’t really persons. I mean, they can’t have a decent conversation, they crap themselves, and they don’t know who they are. If anything, I figured they’d resemble a mental patient stepping outside after spending 9 months in solitary confinement in a padded cell in the dark. The outside world too hard and bright and loud to handle. His eyes squinting against the bright light, his ears sensitive to the smallest sound; his helpless body caked with dead skin flakes and covered in rash from lack of sun, squeezed into the harsh light all stumbles. Weak in body and mind, without a sense of self, groping for anything he might recognize; a basic survivor.

But when I saw my nephew in the hospital nursery, he was nothing like that at all. He was the Zen Master in a movie. The processing computer system in The Matrix. A universal satellite. The Encyclopaedia Brittannica. Motionless on the outside, with an almost superhuman awareness behind the eyes. The entire world was waltzing in, and he had started processing it all. There was no confusion, no squinting. My newborn nephew was taking in everything around him without even blinking. And I do mean everything. His ears pricked up to every hospital sound – registering, cataloging, building reference. Nostrils trembling with the smells of the room, the cafeteria on the first floor, and I’m pretty sure he picked up the outside trees and cars, too. I stood there watching him. I have never seen such focused intensity, ever, on anyone. All antennas up. At some point he shifted his gaze to look me straight in the eyes. Whatever, newborns can’t see anything but shapes and shadows, no real colors? My ass. My new nephew looked straight at me. And he saw me. Every single molecule. He was palpitating with new information, processing the incoming world at full speed, and not going mad. The effect wore off after a few hours. The next day, he was just a baby, with the crying and the poop. But I’d seen him, lying there. Completely open to the world and letting her in – all at once. How do you welcome someone like that into the family? Coochie-coo just doesn’t seem to cut it.




When I first held my wrinkly nephew up to the light I realized that babies are not born with belly buttons; nor is the belly button the result of cut umbilical cord tied into a careful little knot. Doctors cut the umbilical cord about 3 inches away from the baby’s belly and put a clamp on the end to keep the baby from deflating. The leftover bit of umbilical cord slowly dies and eventually falls off the baby’s body, leaving the scar mark that we refer to as the belly button. The first time I changed my nephew’s diapers I nearly dropped him when I saw the strip of bluish flesh hanging off his little body. Nobody ever tells you about this on TV. I figured this was it; aliens do exist and now they had finally got to my family. Even after my sister explained, for the first four or five nights I was afraid to even look at the clamped down strip of dying tissue; whenever I washed my nephew I would avoid going anywhere near the area.

Then, after a week or so, I had gotten somewhat used to the sight of the shriveling afterthought. My nephew didn’t even seem to notice it, so I decided it was time for me to stop being a big baby and deal with it. Besides, the poor boy’s belly was slowly turning a distinct greenish grey from lack of soap. So the next time I washed my nephew, I carefully held the cord – dried out and strangely resembling a strip of beef jerky – up between my thumb and index finger and started washing his belly. Suddenly, with a soft sticky sound and the slightest change in pressure, the cord let go. There I was, holding my nephew’s umbilical cord in my hands, clamped and all, but no longer attached to him.
I gaped at his naked little stomach in terror – for a horrific split second I held my breath, waiting for the sound of deflating balloons, and for my sweet nephew to be reduced to an empty bag of wrinkly skin before my eyes. All gift wrap, no present. I broke my nephew! What was I to tell my sister? It was an accident. She should have told me not to touch without asking permission first! She knows how clumsy I am. Why did she even leave me alone with him? This was all her fault!

My nephew smacked his lips, gurgled something about the meaning of life and started peeing on the changing mat. He couldn’t care less. This boy was ready to be released into the world.

Meanwhile at the restaurant, the woman braces herself to give the leash one final, magnificent pull filled with determination, irritation and something else. I may be mistaken but I think I detect a hint of fear in that pull. She will not lose her child today. And she doesn’t. The little boy is jerked back with such force that he falls on his diapered ass, and, after his initial surprise, he starts to cry. Mommy! The expression on the woman’s face makes way for concern, love and something else. I may be mistaken but I think it is relief. My little boy still needs me. He is not growing up just yet. He’s still part of me. We are still connected. I see this woman trying to hold on to that feeling of being necessary, like when she was pregnant; not just a caretaker (anyone could do that; people do it for money or for the hell of it, all the time), but essential to his survival, the womb vital for the boy’s very being.

That’s when it strikes me. The leash is not a tool for desperate parents, their last resort to keep an untamed child from destroying the civilized world. It is not the lazy way out of bad parenting – yanking a rope instead of teaching your child when and where to run and what not to touch and why. The leash is not used by parents who do not care. It is for parents who care too much. These parents have not realized that their child’s umbilical cord has been cut and the remainder has fallen off for a reason. They think they need to stay attached, to keep the clamp in place. The leash is their artificial umbilical cord, physically connecting them with their child until they are prepared to let go.
Or maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I'm not a mom. I'm not a feral child expert.
Then again, I totally get this particular woman's fear to cut the residual umbilical cord of this particular little boy. You can tell that this kid will totally be one to deflate. He'll be leaking all over the dining area and god knows where else in no time. It's an accident waiting to happen on too many levels. I haven't learned a whole lot since I moved to New York, but I do know it's considered a bad thing to be liable for someone else getting hurt. Never mind it was an accident, and you didn't mean to - you can save the heartfelt apologies for your loved ones as you pay damages for the rest of your life. Forget about that nest egg, or your kids going to college. All it takes is one unsuspecting Upper East Side lady who lunches and breaks an expensive hip as she slips on her way out; panic ensues, until someone pokes an accusing finger at the deflated toddler - who would ever allow their child to run wild like that? Lady and restaurant sharing their indignation and lawsuit. I'm pretty sure this woman is not insured for that.

I Am a Rock

I Am a Rock - Simon & Garfunkel

There’s a dog lying by the side of the road. It’s been dead for a bit. Its belly is already swollen with the gases that inevitably announce rot and decay; its dead ears, filled with hatching maggots, are no longer twitching at the buzzing of the flies. Our driver looks at it without much interest as we curve past it on our way to the hotel. She looks over her shoulder and says, “You probably want to keep to the side of the road when you walk around here at night.” We are on St. Croix, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands off the coast of Puerto Rico.

St. Croix is America. Only it isn’t. No open plains or wide skies or skylines here: the tiny island is crammed to the brim with nature wrestling over top of itself to be noticed by the sun. It being an island and all, the bright blues and greens of the Caribbean, the palm trees and hibiscus strewn about, the rain forest and sandy beaches, banana daiquiris and sunsets indicate this could be paradise. And it is. The beach area off St. Croix and, at a stone’s throw, Buck Island, was voted Top Ten Most Beautiful Beaches (In The World?) by National Geographic, we are told. Largest living coral reef in the Caribbean, we are told. The Friendliest People you’ll ever meet, we are told. And indeed, people everywhere on the island greet us so often and heartfelt that we start to think, at some point, that they must get a monthly allowance for every “Good morning” they pitch at a tourist. Or maybe they get beat on with a stick for every visitor they forget to greet. It’s hard to tell from the expressions on the faces.

We get a giggly “A’ight” in unison from three flawless teenage girls. Sitting the way only girls in hot climates can sit together, on the steps to the porch of a tiny house, they can’t be more than fourteen, maybe sixteen years old. Beautiful: what the smell of hibiscus would look like, if the smell of hibiscus were three girls. One of them breaks the surface of her stunning face into a smile as we walk by, revealing the near-toothless, cavernous mouth of a seasoned meth addict – or maybe she has simply been foolish, refusing to follow the island rules of tourist engagement one time too many. Again, it’s hard to tell.



Best snorkeling ever, we are told. Sea turtles nest here by the bucket load; shark nurseries cradle curious lemon sharks, and docile nurse sharks. Cute, like kittens, and perfectly safe to swim next to, we are told. Like kittens. The stingrays ‘round here never poke their stinger right in your heart or anything. They just ray, their puppy dog faces beaming up at you in wagging tail delight. In the bluest waters you’ve ever seen, parrot fish crunch their buck teeth down chunks of hard coral; endless shoals of yellow wrasses envelop the diver by the millions – swirling, sparkling, shooting up and down and sideways around him with that choreographed mixture of simultaneous push and pull, this half-conscious centrifugal force, they place the diver – awkward, sluggish, his pink meat still giddy with the new sense of weightlessness: out of his element – at the center of their shark feeding frenzy waiting to happen.



It’s a pretty good sound. The sound parrot fish make when they break off a piece of coral, I mean. I was half expecting it to be a wet sound, it being under water and all. I was expecting it to be a sound as wet and warm as the sound rabbits make when they munch on a carrot. That’s one of the best sounds in the world, the sound of a bunny rabbit munching on a piece of carrot. It’s the sound of safe, of succulent and soft and pink and carefree.
Curiously enough, the sound parrot fish make underwater is as dry as the crunch of potato chips. It’s a familiar sound, the sound of an evening curled up on the couch to watch a movie you’ve seen three times before, so it doesn’t matter when you talk all the way through it – only underwater the crunch is taken completely out of context. It’s a sound that belongs on land; when you hear it underwater, two conflicting elements collide with such immediacy that it makes you jerk your head, instantaneously aware of the fact that you, much like the sound, are very much out of your element.

You tell yourself, I’m 80% water, how can I feel out of my element? Your scientist sweetheart says, Really, salt water is very much your element. Listen, he says, Salt water is so much like our own body juice that when you start bleeding underwater, your body won’t even send out a signal to stop the bleeding because it thinks the water surrounding you is part of you; the salt water tricks your body into thinking no wound is actually there – no skin has been punctured, so no blood is lost. And he’s off again, exploring ever deeper waters, fearless, comfortable.



Leaving you with the tiniest seed of this horrific idea, taking up root in the darkest room of a secret vault inside your head, that the water around you is somehow alive – that it’s not just a platform accommodating life, but its own conscious being, the world’s largest living organism with tides for a heartbeat, and currents for a bloodstream – the world’s largest predator, actually smart enough to lull the human body into unwittingly hemorrhaging out into its gaping mouth. The whispering break, its soothing sway of wombs forgotten, inviting you to crawl right in, fetus up, close your ears, let go, forget: all a trick!

You know how some people say they love their dog (or worse, their cat) over people, because animals never lie to you? Those people suffer the gross misconception that nature is somehow true (and that people somehow are not part of nature). They say things like, Nature might be cruel, but that’s in its nature. Or, worse, True coral needs no painter’s brush. I don’t trust those people at all. They are the kind of people who can stand by and watch, with greedy interest, their fat, empty faces screwed up so as to not miss a thing, whenever something particularly cruel happens in nature.
They are the kind of people who set up foundations to rescue stray dogs in Rwanda. People who care about other people only in the most abstract sense. Love Thy Neighbor. We Are The World. They are the same people who say that people are different from the rest of nature in the respect that man knows how to deceive, to lie, to manipulate – conveniently eclipsing the notion that that it’s not just in man’s nature, but in nature’s very own nature not to stay true to its nature – that nature is an instinctive deceiver. They think when their dog raises its hackles, or when the chameleon at the zoo changes color, it’s just the cutest thing. Silly nature!



In the meantime, you wouldn’t believe the massive swindle that’s going on in nature. I mean really, it’s that bad. Nature will lie to your face any change it gets. Take, in this particular case, nature below sea level. Forget about fish that puff up to pretend they’re twice their actual size, or marine predators that pretend to be seaweed to lure in their prey. Those disguises at least have some human scale to them: the organism plays tricks on itself, and once exposed the deception is obvious. I’m talking about the water, that most treacherous of all that is nature. Water doesn’t merely pose as something it isn’t; it tries to trick you into thinking you are something you’re not. It tells you straight-faced that you are water, and it will claim you the second you let your guard down.

Of course the water is not just trying to claim you, the hapless tourist; it is incessantly trying to reclaim all things earth – on St. Croix it is trying to swallow the entire island. Tides nibble endlessly at the shores, turning rocks and glass bottles into sand at an imperceptible pace; hurricanes tear off entire stretches of land in a violent split second and haul them back into the sea. Water fuels the rain forest as it rambles overnight across the already unkempt roads, egging it on to usurp. Nature is like that, always trying to take back, expand, conquer, colonize.



People tell you nature is fragile. Man needs to protect it. On St. Croix people tell you not to touch the coral. It will die and never recover and you will be responsible for killing an entire ecosystem. The real reason not to touch coral is that coral, when it punctures your skin, will continue to grow inside you, latching on to your bones and infecting the hell out of your body. It being half plant, half animal, it knows how to do that. Posing as pretty plants and pretty rock, coral will overtake you when given half the chance. Fragile, my ass. Did you know the coral in the Red Sea found a way to survive and thrive in the ever warming waters caused by global warming? I saw it on TV. Oceanographer Philippe Cousteau and his team of implausibly beautiful people took a sample and rejoiced.
They continued to talk about figuring out the Red Sea coral’s survival technique and using it to rescue all the corals of the world. Man protecting nature so nature gets better at eating him alive. Have we learned nothing from all the genetic horror movies we’ve seen? Jurassic Park, Deep Blue Sea, Mimic, Splice. They tell you one thing: man should never, ever, ever try to give evolution a hand. It will end badly. Right this moment, the Red Sea coral is gearing up to survive in body temperature, and the second it can, no swimmer or diver will ever be safe again. Of course, man’s response to coral infused manplantimals roaming the earth will probably be to genetically enhance parrot fish to get rid of the problem. We never learn.



An old man comes up to us at the gas station, asking for change. Right under his milky left eye, three bright green somethings are nestled, comfortably burrowing into is cheek and sponging off him like the barnacles on the back of the loggerhead turtle we spotted earlier. I can avert my eyes just long enough to see the proliferating tumor protruding from the front of the man’s stomach, a foot long arm of living coral softly punching his overstretched skin against the inside of his t-shirt. The man says he has lived on the island for over 30 years now. I don’t know if he ever goes into the water, but it is trickling into him; the water has been slowly overtaking him since day one.



Water, that most treacherous of all that is nature. After only a week on the island, you’ll feel the water’s soft tidal sway tugging at you whenever you are on land; you have to make an effort to walk straight. After only a week on the island, when you are not in the water, you have to consciously tell yourself to get up and go to the bathroom whenever you have to pee, instead of just letting it go. After only a week on the island! That is how colonial the grip of water is. You must never forget that it will masquerade as just about anything in its attempts to possess you, feed off you: a womb, a safe haven, a warm lull, a place to get away from it all. It will trick you into feeling like you belong there; doesn’t the flow of the water, the effortless ease of underwater movement, feel so much more natural than walking? Nobody ever gets seasick in the water. Didn’t we originate from the oceans, in long forgotten times? Why not go back and stay?

Come back to me, leaf corals beckon you closer. You remember this, don’t you? Come back home where you belong, they coax, We missed you. The pop in your ears when you start to dive under is more businesslike. Want the pain to stop? Just cut that umbilical cord already, and be born again. 80% of your body’s already down here; your reverse birth will be only 20% discomfort. Want the pain to stop? Then stop deceiving yourself and come back to me. You clear your ears and let yourself sink towards the ocean floor. It does feel like coming home. Should you give it a try? Remove your mouth piece and take a deep breath, your lungs filling with water instead of air. The struggle, yes, but only for a minute or so, and then – 80% of your body starts singing, Yesss, yess, yesss, we’re going home, almost there… Right before your survival instinct kicks into overdrive to force the rest of you to come up for air – arms flailing, floundering, clumsy once more – the biggest lie the water tells us is truth.

You have to keep telling yourself, with every breath you take through the umbilical cord of your snorkel, I am not water, I am land; I am not water, I am land. With every inhale and exhale, you need to betray 80% of yourself to remember your truer nature. That fundamental deceit is all around us. It is in us. We breathe it. It is who we are. I am not water; I am rock. I am the island.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Racing Cars

Watch the German report right here.

‘Now I do believe that’s an insult, see.’ Had we been anywhere else in the world, I would have figured the man across from me at the local bar was joking – but we’re in Arvada, Wyoming and this guy is dead serious.

Wyoming, of course, is the manliest of manly states. Notorious for its abrupt changes in weather – hot and sunny one moment, heavy rain and hail storms the next – I had expected many a rainbow. But Wyoming doesn’t do rainbows. Rainbows are gay. Soccer is gay, too, as are Democrats; and vegetables are extremely gay, unless you call them crop. Wyoming is for Marlboro Men only. People here ride horse, rope cattle and then they go back to the ranch to throw slabs of home slaughtered Angus beef on their George Foremans. They say things like ‘I wursh my clurthes in the turlet’.
To give you an idea of where I am: the plane that flies you from Denver, CO to the airport of Sheridan, WY (an hour and a half outside Arvada), is so tiny that it barely fits the entire Arvada population of 25. It is, in fact, so small that the steward/copilot states, as we all try not to bump our heads working our way down the aisle, ‘Don’t settle down just yet, folks, we might need to do some shiftin’, see.’ By which he means he must evenly distribute our combined weight over both sides of the plane so as not to topple it over in mid flight. I am in Arvada, middle of nowhere, USA.



At the local Arvada bar, just now, I good-naturedly compared cowboys to ballerinas, and find myself being stared down by a 250-pounder by the name of Bubba, who is unmistakably not amused. The hat, the chaps, the spurs, the moustache, the smoke and the cheap beer; they’re all there. Unless Bubba used to be one of the Village People, I am looking at a cowboy – the real deal. I’m sure the moustache in particular would fare well in certain New York City scenes. But as I said, we’re not in New York anymore – and I do believe I might be in trouble.

How did I end up in this tight spot? My memory flashes back to the past three days. My German friend Silke, camera man André and I have been introduced to the cowboy way of life at Arvada’s Powder River Ranch Cowboy School, to shoot one of Silke’s American culture reports for RTL Television. Silke and André are actually working; I am happy to tag along as the story’s sidekick, riding horseback and roping longhorns. How hard can it be, really?

So far, Cowboy Bob and his wife Betty have shown tremendous patience and restraint trying to show us how to work with the horses and navigate them. It’s definitely harder than watching Cowboy Bob do it. ‘It ain’t about shouting, see, or whipping a horse into doing what you want; you want to make him want to work with you. You have to establish a relationship with the horse, see – draw him in.’ Bob is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of horsemanship. ‘You have to read the horse to understand the horse, and when you understand the horse you can communicate with him. Use your body language. If you do it right, riding a horse is like a dance, see, it’s about being in sync – if you know how to lead, the two of you can dance across the land together in the same rhythm.’
Bob speaks horse fluently; his body language and minute gestures make the animals respond immediately to whatever he wants them to do. ‘You have to be clear in your intentions, see. If you give off mixed signals, the horse will not know what to do, and that makes him nervous. Give the horse the singular energy of what you wish for him to do, and he’ll do it alright.’ May the Horse be with you.



Silke quickly picks up the general idea. Of course, she’s a pretty commanding presence to begin with; not only does she know what she wants, she usually gets it, too. In no time at all, she’s steering Ring, her horse, all over the round-pen. ‘Und Links! Rechts! Gerade aus! Good boy!’ she goes – camera in one hand, German black-yellow-red vuvuzela in the other – and off he trots, only to immediately stop and walk over to her obediently when she steps back and beckons him like Bob showed us.

I am slightly less imposing, I guess. I tend to not know what I want a lot. I mean, I like a lot of different things. Not much of a one-track mind. Ever ambiguous. I’m a philosopher, you know! Unfortunately, in horse language my paper hat qualifications translate to complete and utter confusion. On the first day of Cowboy School, I am mixed signaling my horse Uno all over the place, and as a result, it decides to do call it quits and follow its instinct rather than my half-baked orders.
‘See, the horse likes you, but he doesn’t respect you,’ Betty sympathizes. The horse likes me, alright. For the past half hour I’ve been trying to navigate it, from the ground on the other end of a leash; I want it to turn right and run a lap inside the round pen, but so far all I got it to do is trot straight for me, and come to a halt only to affectionately smother its nose in my bra. Uno seems pretty happy with the way things are going, gently leaning its 1,300 pounds of horse meat attached to the soft muzzle into my boobs.
(Admittedly, things are improving. This morning, the horse did not care for me at all. Cowboy Bob’s final comment on my laborious ground work was a heartfelt: ‘At this moment, see, the horse has more interest in the flies on his back than he does in you.’)

I really do not mind this state of affairs either, you should know. I’d rather be liked and ignored by an insolent horse than thrown off by an obedient one in a respectful gallop.
I’m actually pretty impressed with myself. I think it’s pretty considerable to pose such little personal threat to such a notoriously jittery herd animal that it doesn’t even realize I’m there. So what if I’m not cut out to be the next Buffalo Bill; I bet I’d make for a pretty nifty prairie wolf. Smiling Coyote Decimates Unsuspecting Herd, I imagine the Arvada Daily headlines. See how you like me then!

On the second day of Cowboy School we ride out to find the 800 head herd of long-horn cows that roam the ranch’s endless acres of land. We find a fragment of the herd, and the plan is to drive them to a nearby pond. By the time we find the small group of cattle Uno is in a jolly good mood; he has burst into a spontaneous run about a million times. I have gained fear blisters on my white-strained knuckles from clutching the leather strap attached to the saddle; my thighs are raw and throbbing. ‘It’s kind of ironic, see,’ Cowboy Betty observes. ‘Humans intuitively tense up when they sense danger. It’s the adrenaline kicking in, see. But the only way to bring your horse to a halt is to completely relax. Every time you press your thighs and toes into his side and grab the strap, see, Uno thinks you are actually asking him to go faster.’ Nice. The one time I manage to send out an unambiguous signal it results in the exact opposite of what I mean. I force myself to relax my muscles next time Uno gets the jitters. Uttering a rather uninspired ‘Whooooaaa’ as I let go of the leather strap and gently pull the reins works like a charm – the horse doesn’t seem to mind, but even though it feels awkward and fake to make the cowboy sound out loud, it has quite a soothing effect on me.

As soon as we get upwind of the long-horns, they prick up their ears and start shifting wearily from one leg to another in the long grass. They don’t look at us directly, but make sure to keep one eye on us at all times as we slowly approach. The bulls position themselves between us and the cows and calves. They don’t trust us one bit. ‘We don’t want to scare the herd, see,’ says Cowboy Bob (although when he says it, it sounds a bit like scurr the hurrd). ‘We just want to get them to water.’ So we need to be very slow and careful in our movements and not make too much noise. I can totally do that – I’m pretty sure slow and careful and quiet is exactly how I feel. I don’t need for these cows to respect me; I just need them like me enough to not want to stampede all over my pointy little head.



I am pondering all of this later that night as we walk into the Arvada bar – André holding the camera, Silke clutching her vuvuzela and me donning what I hope is a reassuring smile. As we open the door, the seven locals inside immediately prick up their ears. ‘Hi! We’re from German television! This town is sooooo nice!’ Silke tries to break the ice to smithereens as we barge in – strangely enough to no avail. The men start shuffling ever more wearily on their chairs, not looking at us directly, but keeping one eye at us at all times. The woman to the right repositions herself so as to almost disappear behind one of the local men’s broad backs. The bar lady decides to mediate. Why does anyone go to a bar? To drink, she figures. Even foreigners. And so we drink.

Over the next hour or so I find myself trying to wean six wary cowboys and one cautious woman off their conviction that we are here to bring their country lives to ruin with our big city frivolities. ‘What are you doing here? And you’d better tell me the truth,’ the cowboy to the right says by way of introduction. I explain how I jumped at the occasion to catch a glimpse of a part of America I’ve only ever seen in the movies. I’ve never been in a town this small, or countryside this big. Where I come from, pretty much everything is small, the big cities as well as the outdoors. My mom grew up on a farm, I say, suddenly inspired. When I was little my uncle would let me stir the fresh blood pouring into a barrel as he slaughtered pigs in the barn. To keep it from clotting. ‘What kind of hog?’ he grumbles, and, ‘Sounds like the tiniest damn farm I’ve ever hurrd of.’ But I think the pig blood story mollifies him a bit – as it should! Either way, it’s the only anecdote I’ve got that any cowboy might relate to.
It doesn’t hurt that the woman, who turns out to be his wife, attempts a crooked little smile at my ill aimed stabs at conversation. She slowly emerges from behind her husband’s back to show me pictures of her first grandchild.

We smoke cigarettes inside, and spit on the government (although when he says it, it sounds more like garment) for decreeing that people can’t decide for themselves if and where they want to smoke or not. At some point, the man admits that he’s not a real local. ‘I’m a transplant, see. Grew up in O-hi-o.’ He’s been in Arvada for 35 years now. A foreigner, like me. ‘We ain’t got nuthin’ to hide here, see, but that don’t mean y’all can just come runnin’ in here and film us with them purdy cameras,’ he grumbles.
- ‘Don’t be an asshole, asshole – he’s just being a dick,’ the cowboy across the bar confirms the happy shift in mood matter-of-factly. ‘And you’d just lurve to get yur urgly mug on TV, wouldn’t cher, asshole?’ He tips his hat, and introduces himself as Big Bubba (not to be confused with Tiny Bubba, a droopy and very drunk looking ranch hand sitting quietly off his left). ‘I’m a roper ‘round herr,’ says Bubba. ‘So y’all been hangin’ out with them folks at the cowboy school, eh? Now might I ask, what did you little ladies lurn about cowboys so far?’

My first mistake is that I choose to ignore the positively sarcastic undertone clinging to the moustache. I can handle this, I think. All I need to do is answer truthfully. In my head, all the things I experienced in the past few days are coming together: Cowboy Bob’s revelations about how riding is like dancing; Betty’s remarks on muscle control to direct the horse’s speed; the muscles in my own thighs, sore in places I’ve never even heard of. You know how sometimes bits and pieces of a bigger picture suddenly click into place, like a seat belt? I have that moment right now. That feeling of high speed security. I point at my bent, sore-legged posture, and stretch my arms in front of my chest, fingers touching, in what I am sure is a universally witty fusion of a bow legged stance and a plié, and say: ‘I’ve learned that being a cowboy is a lot like being a ballerina. See, even the way you stand is exactly the same!’



You know how sometimes the way things that make solid sense in your head have a way of falling to bits and pieces the second you voice them? I have that moment right now. That feeling of total loss in progress. Everybody in the bar falls silent. I can practically see the men’s stubborn hair jump straight up in their knotty red necks. The woman shudders and ducks behind a back. After an eternity, Bubba slowly locks his gaze onto mine, and says: ‘Now I do believe that’s an insult, see.’ All eyes are on me now.

So here I am, at the Arvada bar in Wyoming, with an imminent stampede on my hands. I start noticing the innumerable animal heads hanging off the wall of this bar, much in the way city bars are proud to exhibit pictures of visiting celebrities, shot with steady cameras, and mounted on the wall. The Arvada bar displays specimens of all wildlife and cattle that ever visited the area – shot with a sawed off, and mounted on the wall. Prairie dog, coyote, big horn, mountain lion, long horn, deer, elk, buffalo, bear – each looking down at me with the infinitely sad wisdom of those who have experienced the Cowboy Wrath firsthand. Time for me to be scurred – be very scurred. Only one thing I can do.

‘Whooaa,’ I say. ‘Let me explain.’ Bubba’s pupils get narrower and narrower as I stumble through a fuzzy rendition of Cowboy Bob’s beautiful horseman philosophy. Bubba’s moustache trembles a little as he finally clears his throat. ‘Well, I happen to rodeo ride wild Colts and I can tell you for a fact that it ain’t nuthin’ like no goddamn sissy dance. You can’t talk to no horse. Them horses don’t listen to no goddamn communication. You have to shut them motherfuckers down before they buck you right off. You have to control ‘em, let ‘em know who’s boss. You...’
- ‘Hmm, I guess you’re right. That doesn’t’ sound like a dance at all. It sounds more like a marriage.’ I can’t help myself; I am on full blast collision course. Everybody’s dead quiet as Bubba half-raises from his bar stool, his open mouth still pondering over the little round ‘o’ of his interrupted speech. Does he have one hand on his holster? Smartass Foreigner Decimated By Angry Mob, I imagine the Arvada Daily headlines.

Then the bar lady’s face splits into a wide grin; she gives a little chortle at first but soon she explodes with laughter. ‘Did you hurr that? That’s the furniest thing I’ve ever hurd! Did you hurr that, Bubba?’ She raises her hand to give me a high five; with the other she wipes a tear from her eye. ‘Like a murriage! You crack me up!’ I look around, flustered, fear blisters throbbing. Everybody’s grinning – for now, anyway. We order another drink. I don’t care if you respect me, see; I just want you to like me.

Push Up

Push Up– Freestylers

'Miss! Miss, wait up!' It takes a few seconds before I realize the Asian lady that comes galloping from across the street is actually shouting at me. Did I drop something? Worse: did I drop something on top of her, or – worse still – on the unborn baby inside of her? Will she sue me? Suck me dry for every penny I’ve got in years of tedious law suits to come? Start a random rant on how the lord will smite me unless I repent, now? Or is she about to ask me for directions to MoMa? I hope it is the latter. I happen to know the directions to MoMa, and to many other cultural spots in the city. I like when people ask me for directions, especially in midtown. It makes me feel all born and raised like, quite the local, and that always makes me smile.

I hate, on the other hand, when overweight unfunny guys wave tickets in my face and ask me if I like to laugh, especially in midtown. The dumpy, sad looking comedians hang around on the corners of the Theater District attempting to sell overpriced tickets to their ever underwhelming stand-up comedy shows. They think if you like to laugh, you’ll probably laugh during their routine. Not because their routine’s funny; they hope you’ll be laughing anyway because, well, you agreed that laughing is what you like to do. You said it yourself! An easy crowd guarantee.

'What cup size bra are you?' the lady asks apropos of nothing, jabbing a well manicured finger in the direction of my left boob. I involuntarily take a step back; the lady takes a step forward. We do an awkward little shimmy while she continues her request for information concerning the extent of my chest. 'You’re a C, right?' The lady frowns in a business-like manner as she peers beyond my collar bones.

– 'Uhh...' Strangely, rather than thinking, What the hell lady, that’s none of your fucking business and would you stop staring at my tits already (which would undoubtedly be any local’s response), I wonder why today of all days is the day that I am wearing a Victoria’s Secret Wonder Bra, roughly translating to: What You See Ain’t What You Get. I’m not a C cup. I’m not even a very convincing B, really. You can’t will these things to happen, you know. Boobs, unlike noses or ears, or wild goldfish, just stop growing at some point. So, in order to look like the real boobilicious deal, every now and then I fake it all the way. My push up bra is heavily padded, leaving no trace of nipple or natural boob other than the cleavage that was never there before.




When I bought my push up bra at Victoria’s Secret on the Upper West Side, I walked past the racks and into the strangest bra I’d ever seen: a fully padded super-push up with fabricated nipples. The bra was a set of boobs in itself: anatomically correct, only softer, and machine washable – and instantly turning any flat-chested waif into a succulent work of nylon nipply goodness. I imagine the Nipple Bra is for boobs what a Ferrari Testarossa is for small penises. As with the car, the trick with the bra is to make it look casual, like you were born with it.
The idea behind the manufactured nipples is to give off the impression of not wearing a bra at all. Your own nipples – never cold or animated again, being buried in layers and layers of polyester – are cleverly replaced by a set of durable synthetics. A fine, clean-cut (nobody need be offended, since they're fake!) way to show off nipples. And, since they’re not real, there is no longer any need to be a prude. Off to the wet white t-shirt contest it is. Don’t forget to pretend to be embarrassed when your polyester pinheads come poking through.

A few blocks from Victoria’s Secret is another lingerie shop, a mom and pop two-rack type of setup donning a rather moldy selection of bras, except for a small section of sexy undies in the back: four or five different body stockings with the top half of the boobs cut out. So yes, if you wear them, your bosoms are lifted much in the effect of the fake nippled Wonderbra, only in the brandless bra your actual nipples are exposed. The weird thing is: the nipples on the girl that covers the wrappings of the brandless underwear are photo shopped out. In the land of the brave, girls are encouraged to show off fake nipples whilst hiding their breasts as they pretend to be bra-less super women, but you cannot show the real nipple in a picture of a girl wearing a non padded bra.

Strangely enough, this means that today, hordes of women end up covering up their nipples in order to show them off, only this time around in a collectively accepted way. Our first generation feminists must cry themselves to sleep at night. I bet the new and improved pads don’t even burn when you set fire to them; they probably just fizzle out. Or melt into an unyielding block of constrained boob.

Meanwhile, back in the Theater District, I am fully aware of how sensitive my situation is. I am caught in a conundrum. What am I going to tell the Asian lady poking at my padded chest? Bluff and say, 'Yes, I’m a C thank you very much, and by the way, stop staring at my god given sin pillows?' Or fess up that my (granted) luscious cleavage is merely the result of a thoroughly cushioned front, and feel like an idiot? Lie and spit in the faces of all the women who dared break out of their corsets, annihilating the right to physical self-determination my mum and her entire generation fought so hard for; or be genuinely exposed in front of a total stranger? The lady is obviously looking for the truth. But can she handle the truth? Of course, there is always the chance she’ll notice my unnatural lack of nipple and reveal me for the raisin smuggler (as my friends so delicately put it) I really am. It’s a tough call.

The lady notices my discomfiture, but mistakenly attributes it to her inappropriate question rather than my inner post feminist struggle. 'Donna Karan is coming to New York and I am supposed to dress her for an event. I roughly know her dress size,' she starts explaining. 'But her pr people never told me her cup size. All I have are red carpet pictures, but those are all taken years ago.'
– 'Oh,' I sympathize, 'And she put on some bacon over the years?' I sort of know who Donna Karan is – well, I know that she designs clothes and that she’s pretty old. I’m guessing she let herself go. And good on her, too. She’s probably sick of wearing her own size zero line year in, year out. Time to relax and start wrapping up the rolls in something XL-ish bought at a shop sporting the words Plus Size and Fashion over the door. Or Tall Couture. Modern European Designs.
'No, no, no!' The lady looks at me in disbelief. 'She lost a lot of weight over the past few years!' How could I not know this?
'Anyway,' she decides to let this one slide, in all probability because I thought most of my response inside my head and didn’t say it out loud. 'I’ve been looking all over the city for someone to match her body type, and I think you’re about her dress size so if I know your cup size I can finally get her some bras.' I feel strangely flattered. Donna Karan and I share a dress size – after she lost all that weight. Not bad! Then I remember that I haven’t a clue what Donna Karan looks like. She might have been a true rhinoceros in her day, slimmed down just enough to be considered for a stomach bypass surgery.

And just like that, the idea of being taken for a big boobed girl is just not as attractive as it was before. 'I’m not a C. I’m just wearing a huge bra. Push up. Makes me look way bigger than I really am. I’m a modest B, or maybe not even, trust me!' I blurt out. Feminists be damned; I won’t be mistaken for some fat chick.