Playing the Changes For All of the Boys

Even after living in England for 3.5 years, I still have these moments of feeling like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.

Usually it comes after hanging out with O. and his friends, the sort of posh (or would-be posh) Oxford/Cambridge types I thought only existed in books. It’s a world I can only glimpse from the outside, because truly to be a part of it you have to be born into it, or at least to have gone to one of those universities, because their entire lives pivot on the Oxbridge axis. Not that they talk about university – that would be gauche – but all of their friends are from those days. Their significant others are, too – I said to O. last night that their world is like two concentric circles moving in opposite directions at random speeds, and when the music stops you look at the person in front of you and say: “Oh, right. Haven’t shagged you yet.” O. – who two weeks ago literally set up his best friend with his ex, with the explanation: “They’re both single” – laughed and said, “You’re right.”

Last night after O. and I went to the theatre we met up with his friend M. for dinner. I mostly just listened as the two of them leapfrogged from Paris vs. London architecture (amazingly, managing not to sound pretentious) to Thatcher to Iran to… which women are “fit” and whether O’s friend has managed to shag his ex to personal information about women they’ve shagged that I’m sure these women would be horrified if anyone else knew. Midway through some of the most revolting bits of the laddish conversation (which frankly, I secretly love to hear, though cannot bear the thought of myself being talked about that way), M. said: “Parsnips.”

“Parsnips?” I said, checking the boxing match on television for clues.

“I need parsnips to go with the beef I bought for lunch tomorrow. J. [his flatmate] invited Hermione and Lotte round,” he said.

M. is not a foodie, and he doesn’t particularly like to cook. But he proceeded to explain to me where to buy meat in London – not at the supermarkets, and Selfridges is actually cheaper than whatever the name is of the best butcher they have down the road -- and how, if you buy a good enough piece of meat, you don’t need to be a particularly good cook. He imparted all of this information in a tone that implied that it wasn’t a great tip – it was just something that everyone in London knew, like that you stand on the right side of the escalator on the Tube.

* * *

Sometimes in England I revel in my American-ness, becoming almost a caricature of myself. Because I am American, people will understand why I, say, speak to people I don’t know at parties without having been introduced. I can ask comically timed questions about whether it’s wrong to pour my milk into my tea first.

But more and more often these days I am embarrassed to be American. Not so much for the politics – I’ve been explaining since the day I got here that at least half of us didn’t vote for W – but for the behavior of Americans abroad. Not so much the Ugly American – just the utter cluelessness of it, and the tendency to treat the rest of the world as Epcot Center; a quick theme park ride to be done, immortalized in photographs, and never considered much again except to tell friends you’ve been there.

It’s become so embarrassing that I find myself making jokes about it before anyone else does, like the way I’ll sometimes be the first to make a fat joke. Or the way you giddily share gossip about people who everyone dislikes – it’s an easy way to cement your feeling of belonging when secretly you fear you don’t.

As we left the theatre – Phaedra at the Donmar Warehouse, which O. and I agreed was quite possibly the worst play we’d ever seen – we heard Americans talking loudly about how much they enjoyed it.

“You can already imagine them telling all their friends when they get home,” I said. “’We went to the theater in London and it was just fantastic,’” I mimicked. “Or maybe they’ll say it was ‘brilliant,’ because then it really sounds like they’ve been to London.”

O. laughed. I felt faintly guilty.

Afterwards, at dinner, the conversation turned to an American girl we all know, a Princeton-educated Southerner whose idea of life in London is travelling as much as possible and when in London, going to different expensive, trendy restaurants. Not because she’s a foodie, but because that’s what you do in London, she thinks. She giggles loudly about how she “should” get to theater. Then there was talk of M’s American cousins, who are more typical – I try to explain to M. and O. – of the sort of American most foreigners will never meet, because they are the kind who don’t travel.

M spent the evening venting to us about how they weren’t interested in anything – he took them to Buckingham Palace and they couldn’t be bothered; they only wanted a picture of the English sheepdog they saw. They didn’t care about the changing of the guards – only wanted pictures of themselves pretending that the piles of horse excrement had come from their own behinds. At restaurants they only wanted chicken and plain rice, and if they had to have fish “could it please not taste like fish?” One of them was shocked when she first arrived at M’s and saw he had a shower, as opposed to just a bath. “Oh, you have showers here?” she giggled. He took them to Paris for the weekend and said he gave up even trying to take them to a museum.

“I should have just taken them to Alton Towers,” he said, referring to an amusement park north of London.

“That sounds awful,” I said. O. looked at me and smirked. “These are your people,” he said.

On the way out of the restaurant we heard – everyone within a five mile radius could hear – an American girl talking loudly, her every three words sounding like a question. (“And this one time? At band camp?”)

I rolled my eyes at O. and said, “Don’t even say it.”