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“Yes, Brian. We get it. It’s always you. I’m me and you’re you.”
“Ladies, I apologize, but I am going to have to ask you to put your sweater and pants back on.”
“What?” exclaimed the mean girl sitting on my right. “What are you, a couple of lesbos?” she screeched in her thick British twang.
“No,” I told her. “We’re not lesbians. We were hot and my friend was hyperventilating. We didn’t think anybody could see us, considering it’s pitch black in here.”
“Do girls from your country have any ma
“You know what, mean girl?” I said. “You are not a nice person. You should be a little more open-minded and not judge people based on what country they’re from. I’m not asking you why all the men in your country refuse to get circumcised, am I?”
“Oh, that’s lovely,” she replied.
“No. Actually, it’s repulsive. They look like fucking aardvarks, and I really don’t appreciate it,” I said, getting up from the table and squeezing myself back into my jeans. “Sarah, can we go now?”
“Yes,” she said, and then screamed, “Brian! It’s us!”
Three minutes later we were in the front of the restaurant opening up our lockers. We paid our bill with the mâitre d’, who refused to make eye contact with us. Obviously, he had caught wind of our undress and found it very disappointing. “Au revoir,” Sarah said as we walked out.
“Cheers,” I added in as volatile a way as I could muster. “Can we please just get some fish and chips?” I asked Sarah.
“Your zipper’s down,” she said, shaking her head and then stepping into the street to hail a cab. “When did you take your pants off, Chelsea, and why?”
“I was doing it to support you! It was a sympathy disrobing.”
“Oh, that’s actually nice, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” I told her as I turned my hand upside down and put out my middle and index fingers. “Low two?”
“No thanks.” We hopped in a cab and Sarah told the driver to take us to any place that served fish and chips.
“There also needs to be a bar,” I chimed in.
“Yes,” she agreed. “A restaurant that serves fish and chips.”
“I’m starting to become embarrassed about being American,” I told Sarah. “I feel like our only real saving grace is the Olsen twins, and what does that say about us as a whole?”
“Not a lot. Do you hate Americans too?” she asked the driver, who looked more Pakistani than anything else.
“No, of course not,” he told us. “Only the loud ones. Very good tippers.”
“Yes,” I agreed, pulling out my wallet and handing him twenty pounds.
“You might want to wait until the ride is actually over,” Sarah said. “And don’t you think twenty pounds is a little excessive for a five-minute cab ride?”
“If the only way for these people to like us is to buy their respect, than that is what I intend to do.”
“That’s very honorable, Chelsea.”
“I take you to Fish Central in de Barbicon,” our driver informed us in his Pakistani accent.
“Cheerios,” I told him. “Word to your mother.”
Sarah and I walked into the restaurant and were seated in the back, next to an older couple. “I want a cigarette,” she declared.
“You don’t even smoke,” I responded.
“Well, everyone else is smoking, and it would be nice to just fit in after the day we’ve had. I don’t understand. Everyone’s been so nice up until today, and then it seems like everyone we talk to hates us.”
“You know what makes no sense?” I asked her. “We have more foreigners in our country than anyone, and we don’t treat them like that. I would never be mean to someone who was visiting America.”
“Yeah, we let everyone in our country. I mean, we complain about the people who can’t drive, but that’s about as bad as it gets.”
“And the people who own Seven Elevens,” I added. “But aside from that, I find myself to be very open-minded.”
“I really want a cigarette.”
“Well, don’t ask anyone here. They’ll just get mad at us for bumming one cigarette and blame our homeland.”
“You ask someone,” she said. “I’m not in the mood to talk.”
I looked over at the older couple sitting to our right, who were both smoking. In my best British accent, I leaned in and asked, “Could I bum a fag?”
They were very nice and handed me one, which I handed to Sarah. “Thanks,” she said to the couple, and then leaned over. “I was too shy to ask for it myself.”
I looked at her, wondering what was the point of me asking for a cigarette if she was going to talk to the people anyway. Twenty minutes later, I was looking at her, wondering why we were still talking to this couple. And further, why I was being forced to continue speaking in a ridiculous English accent.
“So where exactly did you grow up?” the man asked. “You have such an interesting accent.”
“Yes,” Sarah chimed in, smiling, “it’s such an interesting story, tell them.”
“Well,” I began, searching my brain for something moderately plausible. “I was born in Devonshire, and my parents split up when I was five, when I moved to a little town called Lewisham, which is in South London.” The only reason I knew about Lewisham is because I had an ex-boyfriend who was from there and we had gone to visit his mother years earlier. It was the only outskirt town I really knew anything about.
“I’m very familiar with Lewisham,” the gentleman responded. “Which part did you live in?”
“Yes, Chelsea, which part?” Sarah asked.
I wanted to bitch-slap Sarah. Why was she continuing on with this when I was doing her the favor in the first place by bumming the fag? If I knew these two were going to become our new best friends, I would have spoken normally.
“Well, I don’t quite recall-I only lived there for a few years-but it was right across the park from Whiteheath.” I couldn’t remember the name of the street, but remembered there was a huge park across from a more upscale town that I thought was called Whiteheath.
“Do you mean Blackheath?” the man asked me.
“Righty-o! That’s it, I knew I was a bit off.” His wife and Sarah laughed as if they were on my side, but I could see the guy’s eyes growing more skeptical, and the questions wouldn’t stop.
“And then where did you live?” was his next question.
“When I was eleven, I was flown to a boarding school in California and I spent the next seven years there.”
“Bloody hell,” he said. “Well, how did you manage to keep your English accent?”
“I dated an English guy,” I told him. “He was pretty much the only person I talked to.”
“When you were eleven?”
“Oh, God no!” I blurted out, forgetting that had been the age I mentioned. “I was twelve when we started seeing each other.”
“Can I have another cigarette?” Sarah asked the woman.
“Really?” he asked me, with an overexaggerated question mark on his face. “Lewisham is kind of a working-class town. How were your parents able to afford such an education?”
I didn’t appreciate the rapid-fire style in which he would shoot one question after another at me, or the inappropriateness of his inquiry into my divorced parents’ income. That was none of his business, and it was clear that he did not grow up with the same etiquette that had been instilled in me by my English nun/auto shop teachers, or whoever was in charge at the boarding school I had never attended. I started to chew my fried cod slower and slower in order to give myself more time to come up with reasonable answers to my interrogator’s questions.
“Well, I got a scholarship, actually.”
“How fascinating,” his wife added. “So interesting.” I could tell she truly did believe what I was saying by her sincerity and good-heartedness, which shone through with every smile. He, on the other hand, was trouble.
“What kind of scholarship?” Hitler asked.
I knew my response had to be sharp and I wasn’t about to blurt out something ridiculous. After some consideration, I responded.