Culture Shock

I think an extended trip back home for the holidays is a most delightful thing, filled with invaluable lessons. Some arrive through the compounding daily reminders of exactly why you fled in the first place, and others just confirm you made the right decision by choosing a blissfully long-distance path. Not to mention the scientific value of seeing the Stockholm Syndrome in action, or the chance to figure out why Uncle Steve gives you that conspiratorial wink and a hundred dollar check every year. Pure Gold.

G joined me on the holiday journey this year, with full knowledge of the sadistic pleasure I get from introducing people to my family. My agenda is admittedly selfish, it's all about vindication. The moment when whomever I expose to the fold turns to me and says, "I'm so sorry, those stories... I thought you were exaggerating." Like Christmas Eve --after I had warned G how my father's side of the family has a way of making me feel like an outsider, the immutable result of a teen pregnancy, a mistake they couldn't sweep under the carpet-- my aunt asked everyone to line up against the mantle for a current family portrait, and then shuffled me out of line, handed me a camera and said, "Be a dear and take the picture for us, hmmmm?" Now imagine about five people treating you similarly, all the while chastising you for feeling it necessary to move four hundred miles away.

Being at Mom's is another brand of sadness and isolation. That bunch includes the impoverished, drunk, and desperate, or a combination of such, each with artistic mentalities and lefty leanings out-of-place in their small town; a place so full of economic and intellectual despair, it makes Flint Michigan look like Paris in 20's. My family is one thing, but I don't think G fully understood how far we had travelled from (what we've come to know as) civilization until Christmas morning. We woke to discover we needed a few things for breakfast and dinner, milk and such, so G volunteered to 'run up to the store'. Mom sniggered, I grabbed my shoes, and T (Mom's boyfriend) started to write down directions to a truck stop on a highway twenty miles away. "They'll be open I bet." he said. "If not, you'll have to drive a ways." A half hour later we arrived at something called the Pit Stop!, who was doing a booming business being the only store open in a fifty mile radius --in itself an absurd notion to a couple who have a Korean-owned grocery on the corner that stays open come sleet, rain, snow, heat, cold, wind, holidays of every faith, terrorist attacks, two-day blackouts, and frequent armed robberies. "I'll run in." I said. "Want anything?"

"Yeah, grab a Times while you're in there, we'll do the puzzle over breakfast." I laughed, assuming he was kidding. He wasn't. "What?" he said, confused. "No breakfast puzzle?"

"Look around honey..." To say we were conspicuous would be an understatement; we were the only sedan in a sea of Ford F250 trucks, and the only vehicle that didn't have a NASCAR emblem, a pissing Calvin sticker, and confederate flag displayed somewhere on the chassis. The only people who weren't wearing Carhart flannel-lined overalls and a foam-front hat. The sole two without a hunting license pinned to their coat, a shotgun in the gun rack, and who were not carrying an armload of the $5.99 special on twelve packs of Old Milwaukee's Best. "They're not going to sell the Times here, babe." I said apologetically.

"Really?" he asked, still in disbelief.

"Trust me."

Funny how even the shortest stint into the hinterlands reminds you how living on this island of misfit toys shapes your reality. Life here, as fucked up as it may be, has become the only thing that makes sense. I guess as a poor person I just get along better with urban poor people vs. the rural impoverished. When I emerge from the tunnel into the noise and filth and commotion, resume my wretched refuse status, rejoin the free-breathing huddled masses, I just feel better. My shoulders drop, a physical "Ahhhhh" passes through me. Antithetically, when I'm in my mother's small, safe, quiet little town I spend most of my time on edge, unable to stop darting my eyes around nervously; like the only black guy at a Charlie Daniel's concert.

G and I made it back to the city just in time for code orange and the influx of a million extra holiday revelers. The good news is nothing trumps a High Terror Alert as an excuse to enjoy a night in, alone, stay away from said revelers and all the other New Years Eve hoopla we dread as a rule. So you see, we didn't lay around last night watching movies and eating our weight in crudite because we didn't want to go out, it was the Terror Alert...you can't be too careful.

Anyway, it's good to be home.

Posted by Antigeist at January 1, 2004 04:40 PM