Ten Years in America

I always know one day I'm coming here, United States. And my fadda, he was from the United States. Just like you, you know?  

He was a Yankee. He used to take me a lot to the movies. I learned. I watch the guys like Chuck Norris, Zero Mostel. They teach me to talk. I like those guys. 

After a decade living in the United States of America, one should be at this stage of the "immigrant spic" narrative. 

I'm no puta or ratero but why am I stuck down here? That's the question. But you can send me anywhere. Here, there, this, that. It don't matter. There's nothing you can do to me that Margaret Thatcher hasn't done.  

But my big shot friends' in Hollywood better come up with something soon. I didn't come to the US to break my fucking back. Look at this. Fucking onions. I ought to be picking gold from the streets.

Though I can discern the difference between a pelican and a flamingo, these last ten years in America, it must be said, have been a solitary adventure. This sanctum sanctorum began in 2010, in Bangkok after several years of rape, pillage and murder. But the crime-scene wasn't just Thailand. Me go party same-same in Liverpool, London, Beijing, Barcelona, Bali, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Singapore, Kathmandu, New York, Los Angeles, Wichita, Phoenix, the list of glam locales goes on (and on). But then the world gets tiring and a character turns weary. Yea! Time to retreat, recharge, reflect! To rethink strategy and logistics for the next round of mortality! For there is, according to an old Thai proverb, no greater happiness than peace. 

So now, much like Tony Montana, I gotta hit the street and make a million here and a million there. Or maybe one should adjust for inflation and make it a billion here and a billion there? In any event, any million or billion, regardless of inflation, would come in handy in the age of stagflation. How to spend it? Read the Financial Times Saturday mag for tips? Nay, you blithering dolt. Return to University. Do a masters degree and a PhD. Now that would keep me out of the pub/ bar/nightclub, and maybe out of Fulton County Jail, too. 

First you get the lady, then the money, then the power...is that the right way round? No. I have been working from memory and getting the sequence all wrong. But Scarface is right, all right. This is America. You ain't nuttin without money or power. A pleb. A stiff. A sucker. And who wants to be that in the US of A? There's nuttin worse than an American Loser. Losing is a pox in this country. Incurable and highly contagious. Y'all don't want that.

Rather than whack Hector and a posse of frog-faced Colombians in the Sun Ray Motel, I got to task with the reboot. No more dishwashing. I retire! No more Looney Tunes characters or soap opera subplots. It's time to do some business and stop fucking around. Chi Chi! Get the yeyo! 

My social interactions with the indigenous population at post continue to be dysfunctional. The natives are not adept at conversation. However, this was something first noticed with Americans whom I had met overseas in South East Asia and Europe. You'd be discussing something trivial, and, before you know it, you're sucked into some histrionic debate. One example from Bangkok in April of 2011 springs to mind. I was talking to some expat Yank lawyer about Oliver Stone, the American filmmaker. The Yank did not realize that Stone wrote the 1982 reboot of Scarface and called "bullshit" in a loud tone of voice...

That prick. Fucking WASP whore. Thinking I'm some maricon who came over on a boat. Fortunately, I'd noticed something in his soft hands. A shiny modern toy. An "iPhone". "Bruh, look it up on dat thing," I snapped, burying that smiling motherfucker next to Caspar Gomez and the fucking Diaz Brothers! My advice for gringos? If you don't know nuffink in an adult conversation, you keep your gob shut and don't call nobody but nobody Mr. Bullshit! Youse will get shamed by Mr Know-It-All from Liverpool. But hey, that's the hazard with Yanks. Every conversation becomes a competition or a fiery debate.  

In the old days, back in Bangkok or London, I'd get invited to parties, receptions, balls, galleries, exhibitions, nightclubs and bar openings. Here, in the USA, as a demi-recluse, it's nada, nuffink, zilch. No invites. I even bought a new tux, back in April 2012 in Jermyn Street in London, just in case we got invited to any rubber chicken dinners. But nuffink, Guvnor. There are times when Atlanta, the "city of trees" feels more like a petrified forest. But, given my interactions with the indigenous population, maybe this is a blessing and not a curse. 

One thing that I need to do: sort out the library in the office at home. Lots of "free" libraries in the hood and I've been collecting various tomes, for pleasure reading and reference. Now the piles are teetering on the shelves and need to get itemized. And, to make things just like home, I need some CCTV. Why? Because a cable truck has been parked outside my house for 3 days. What am I gonna do, not look at it? Maybe it's the Diaz brothers, coming to get me. Forget counter-surveillance. I need a moat. One with tigers. It'll make me sleep good at night. That's what counts.  

Living in America? Whoa, I feel good. Every sucker in England wants to go and live in America, right? It's a big change from the kitchen sink reality of life in 21st Century Britain. Look at that old dump. Brexit. Inflation. Stagflation. Recession. Slump. Depression. House prices. Rail strikes. The endless cycle of insecurities, the same lame excuse to be insecure about something or other. Bollocks to that, Old Sport. But here's the challenge: laying to rest the problems of the Old World right here and now in the New. I don't wanna be singing the same sorry tune next year.