Oct 1st, 2005
Being a Crass American
When I visited Paris last winter, I observed an exchange at an H&M that prompted me to write a satirical piece on the stereotype of the crass American tourist.
One year later, I had a moment where I thought for a second that I may actually be that crass American tourist.
On Friday, following the first of a series of inductions for my graduate program, I decided to grab a bite to eat with someone I had met from my program. After walking up Kingsway for a bit, we found a nice Italian restaurant and stepped inside.
As we were entering the establishment, it occurred to me that I did not have any cash in my wallet. Seeing as how I hadn’t seen the credit card indicators on the front door of the restaurant, I quickly asked a nearby waiter, “Hey, do you guys take credit cards?”
He looked at me with a hint of annoyance, and I then realized that he was about to seat a group of people who had walked in ahead of us. He nodded abruptly and responded, “Yes, we take credit cards,” before proceeding to seat the group of people.
My companion shook her head with a slight smile and remarked, “You’re such an American.”
The observation stuck in my head because I have never thought of myself as a typical American. First off, I’m two-thirds of the axis of evil. If that doesn’t get me off the hook for being a typical American, then the fact that I’ve spent several years of my life living abroad should, right?
Well, the comment stuck in my mind heading into the next evening. After my third (and final) induction, I had several drinks at a departmental reception before meeting a group of my friends out at a bar called Smollensky’s.
I was fairly buzzed by the time I got to the bar and when I saw a couple of my friends, who happen to be European, arriving at the same time I bellowed an emphatic greeting. What I got in response were a couple of bemused smiles. One of my friends leaned over and conspiratorially mentioned that I wasn’t in America anymore so I should tone down the volume of my voice.
“Well fuck it,” I responded. “I am an American. I don’t care where I am.”
Suddenly, a flurry of memories rushed through my head: singing What a Wonderful World at the top of my lungs on a night bus in Trafalgar Square; dancing and singing in Sinhalese (which I don’t speak) at a bar in Kandy while a room full of horrified Sri Lankans looked on; trying to get a Thai “working woman” who didn’t speak any English to sing Jack and Diane with me at a karaoke bar in Bangkok…
It was then that I had a frightening thought – maybe I am a crass American. Maybe all this time that I had been thinking of myself as a cultured “citizen of the world,” I have just been parading around as an ugly American tourist.
But then, another flurry of memories rushed through my head, and saved me from this dreadful line of thought: Ducking my head into a random car on M Street in Georgetown and high-fiving a six-year-old sitting in the back seat; getting into a shouting match with a cab driver who refused to tell me what country he was from while he drove me home from Adams Morgan; and getting kicked out of a Baltimore Orioles game for heckling the opposing team too loudly – and all the while, being reprimanded by friends and relatives.
It was then that I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized that I’m not a crass American.
I’m just crass.
