Foggy Londontown Sans Fog

Author's note: I got progressively drunker as this post was written and though I planned to edit it, I thought I would be robbing you of my precious integrity if I were to change any of the wacky, Freudian things I managed to say by the end.

I departed London after just over two days. I visited no museums and harrassed no bobbies. I saw no Big Bens and took no pictures, except one of Hassan climbing the fence as we broke into Kensington Gardens from Hyde Park.

I am on the train, in leisure class, watching the English countryside roll past en route to Paris. I am listening to Edith Piaf, but I am probably going to switch to Coltrane because it is much too difficult to write about pleasant things with Piaf in your ears. And if so, there are so pleasant that they sadden you.

In leisure class they offer you champagne, which isn't why I chose it, but because I booked last minute and it was the cheapest ticket as long as I agreed to a non-flexible clause which means that I ABSOLUTELY had to make my train or else lose the fare. I left two hours early and made it with twenty minutes to spare, whereas if I had left with the hour it actually takes, I would have arrived at probably the same time. Something about my becoming a responsible adult goads me into taking such preventative measures now.

My London experience this time was Hassan, his mother, and older brother. In West London, Hassan and I went to Shepherd's Bush, which is mainly Jamaican and Arab and rundown and spent a jetlagged Tuesday night playing Wii with his extremely intelligent friends from Oxford. We had Carribean food, which was wonderful and tea, the taste of which I can never seem to replicate in the States.

I read the paper and finished crossword puzzles in his garden with Pepper, his black cocker spaniel, nuzzled at my feet. Yesterday, we went to the beautiful park by his house in Ealing and played tennis, which I had not done in probably twelve years. I was absolutely awful, my only saving grace being the two-handed backhand stroke that used to drive my tennis teachers absolutely insane. Hassan and Salem (his bro) and I played a series of round robin matches, all of which ended with the person who served the game losing because our serves were all atrocious.

It was a lot of fun and Hassan got revenge on two English boys on the court next to us, who were far superior to us at tennis, and thusly less capable of being excused when an errant ball hit from Hassan's racket managed to smack one of them in the back of the head as he was preparing to serve. It was hiLARious. They were probably twelve years old and weren't about to start some shit so we totally laughed.

Random things: It was 70 degrees in London the entire visit. I feel terribly uncultured as an American in Europe; not having all these little countries within traveling range is isolating and makes our outlook very ethnocentric (Is that the right word? If only I were cultured!). I also felt intellectually sluggish because Hassan and his family are all brilliant. It's strange to debate American politics with people who know almost as much about it as you do and are removed enough from it to look at it academically and dispassionately. It's also bizarre to be from a country whose policies receive such international attention since they, in essence, decide much of what happens in the world. I'm not begruding this, but it's easy to forget what a strange era it is to be American. It's your responsibility to know your country before you leave it. Otherwise get out. I mean to a library.

Meanwhile, Hassan's brother successfully cornered me into conceding that my political stance against the Confederate flag was entirely biased by emotion and not logic and that my arguments were shoddy. He also made the case for the GOP in 2004, but only because the Dems seemingly stood for nothing, which I frustratingly acknowledged and defended as blindly just as I did three years before. But we had to win! I'm not saying it would have been worse with Kerry (seemingly not possible), but how could we possibly know what he would have done? I certainly didn't and still tried to defend this to the death.

After more wine and a shrimp cocktail (which looked delicious), I've just emerged from the tunnel going under the English Channel to Calais where it's very French and stuff. I am thinking about my debates with Hassan and how bizarre it is to have the full-on Arab perspective that I could never get from other Arabs who can't meet you halfway and ultra-left poseurs whose political pronouncements are baseless and heavily filtered by pamphlets and amphetamines.

We debated divestment, which he won though I once considered myself to be a solid prosecutor of the topic. We debated Guantanemo, which I won because all idealism goes to die in either side of this argument. I half-conceded that Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing in 1948, though not government-sanctioned and also concomitant with similar/simultaneous acts against Jews in the region during a war they did not want. I am looking forward to being a student again because I haven't been a scholar of much in the past few years and miss how prepared it makes me to defend and debate. Or maybe I will just give it all up. I don't mean that as an indictment of Zionism but to have been surrounded the unflinchingly one-sided and closed off my vision to friendships like the one I've forged with Hassan. Maybe I'm drunk. Lord knows Edith Piaf was. C'est toi le plus foooooooort.

So, I'm an hour shy of Paris and what a trip it shall be. I look forward to seeing it alone as I did three years ago when I cut my way alone through Europe. The only honest way to travel is alone. That being said, I miss dishonesty terribly. I will meet my newly married (eternally honest) friend Mike tomorrow and we will tour a Jewish museum in the third arrondissement with his wife as they honeymoon. Then I will go to a French synagogue for Shabbat and stroll the city by evening like a young Dreyfus (Alfred that is... NOT RCIHARD).

Oh. THey just came by with chocolates and tea for the post-meal. It's so cute. The Frenchie told me to take one dark chocolate and one milk chocolate with my tea, but they are so rich and I can't finish them. She keeps speaking to me in French because I tried to answer her questions about what I wanted for dinner in French. POOOULET Si Vou Plait. She totally bought it. Opps i'm still italics when I should be Frentalics. If an unedited version of this post appears on my site, I hope you will comment and say that it is a good thing that i am going to graduate school because I absolutely abhor editing myself. It's perfect as is, except for whenst I get drunk on trains and keep writing when I should stop typing and STOP LISTENING TO EDIT PIAF FOR THE LOVE OF KRICKE>
Frenchie takes my tray and I say "Merci Beaucoup " and she totally bought it. I could be French. I have glasses. I'm just as elitist as these people. I could also be a rapper. Hassan likes to freestyle and I've made it my mission to ably flow with him when we next troll through New York, Amman, London, or Jerusalem. We were meeting one of his girlfriends up last night and she kept calling all angry because we were taking a while to get to the bar and following a verse design to calm her down (with his trademark misogyny), I broke out with this gem:

"Tell her to wait, I'll order a Guiness for her with my dick sitting in the glass as a stirrer."

I am going to hell. Or maybe I am already there. After all, this is Franc.e