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Pond Scum: On My Way A Moment I Pause

By Steve Finbow

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I'm coming out of the closet. No, not that one. The one with the Stars and Stripes on it; the doorknob is John Wayne’s fist, and the hinges are fashioned from the tear-stained eyelids of Jennifer Aniston. You ready for this? I love America, I really do. I think I fell in love with your country when I was about four years old. I wore a cowboy hat to nursery school, to the shops, in the garden, and to bed. I sang the theme tunes of Rawhide and Bonanza. A shiny silver sheriff's badge was pinned to my waistcoat. On the front of my hat was a gold star with white plastic edging. I badly wanted a pair of chaps (maybe that other closet is opening a little) but they were quite hard to come by in southwest London. My simulated-leather holsters held two toy guns; these toy guns fired caps. I completed the ensemble with denim jeans and a check shirt the colour of a Country Style chocolate bar wrapper. The shirt had caramel tassels. I hollered and hooted and howdeed and hawked imaginary tobacco.

Art by Nicholas Allanach

Right, put your feet up. Close your eyes: it's story time.

It's 1969, the summer holidays, and rather than being out with his friends playing football, chasing girls, or killing frogs, he's at home with the curtains closed, hunched in front of the television. Both his parents are at work. His meals consist of Marmite sandwiches, Jublees, and jellied eels. He's watching the build-up to the moon landing. His bedroom walls are bedecked with posters of astronauts and his Action Man is no longer a soldier, no more French Resistance fighter, never again a cricket player – his Action Man is and will always be Neil Armstrong. He has made a special effort to stay awake, but nods and then jerks upright, slaps his face – he doesn't want to miss a thing; he doesn't want to miss the "magnificent desolation" of the moon. And years later the abiding image is of the American flag starched but rippling against grey dust and the black sky.

It's 1975 or thereabouts, and a Bowie fan in a tight satin shirt, crushed velvet jeans, Space Oddity boots, hair the colour of Tizer, is gawping at a photograph of Patti Smith on the cover of NME. She’s beautiful. He reads the article. He doesn’t understand most of it but knows it will change his life. He has no idea what the music sounds like but heads into Soho to track down a copy of Horses. He gets home, lies on his bed, and listens to Patti's voice, Patti's poetry. He listens to Patti rock. He cuts his hair raggedy, dyes it black, doesn't wash it. He wears threadbare T-shirts and dirty jeans, dirty sneakers. He takes up smoking to heighten the look of nonchalance, swagger, and emaciation – he's going for the drug-addicted, hip intellectual look. Hello, New York! He affects an accent somewhere between the Bowery and Bow. He listens to Iggy and the Stooges, the New York Dolls, Television, Ramones, Talking Heads, and CBGBs Live – “We're the Shoits from Brooklyn." He becomes a Beat baby – he tucks Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs into the back pockets of his begrimed Levi's.

We are identical twins from Mongolia. We live in the great Gobi. My name is Ozbeg. I’m wearing a Stussy T-shirt and Levi's with a Harley-Davidson belt buckle. My Yankees baseball cap is worn backwards. My feet are warm in my patchwork blue Timberlands. I’m eating a Big Mac. My preferred tipple is Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola. I’m humming along to Elvis Presley and reading Norman Mailer’s An American Dream. Hi, my name is Arelsag I am wearing a digil over my trousers. My behen (sash) is orange. Because it is winter, I am wearing a godon cap; my feet are snug and cosy in my gutal boots sumptuously lined with animal fur. I’m snacking on some booze. I drink airag (fermented mare's milk). I’m strumming a tune on my morin khuur and I’m reading DC Comics Superman/Batman #17. D'oh!

You see? You can’t get away from it. America. America. America. It’s all over the planet like a bad rash, like a cheap suit, like a fungus. I’m scratching my face, looking sideways at myself in the mirror, and plucking mushrooms from my armpits. I’m singing I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy and cleaning my teeth with a Goofy toothbrush. As I walk out of the bathroom, I trip over my girlfriend’s Statue of Liberty vibrator. I eat Cheerios for breakfast while watching CNN. I step into my All-Star sneakers, my Lee jeans, my Gap T-shirt, and sling on my Calvin Klein linen jacket. If it were summer, I’d be wearing Ray-Bans. On with my iPod. I chuck the latest TC Boyle in my bag. I'd rather have a burger (with blue cheese and bacon, please) than roast beef. I prefer the Ramones to the Pistols. I think Frasier is funnier than Men Behaving Badly, and Seinfield is funnier than The Office. I’d choose William Burroughs over Michael Moorcock and Robert Creeley over Craig Raine. Your national anthem has weird lyrics:

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?

While ours is as boring as a nine-hour art film of puppets performing in a bowl of porridge. Actually, that sounds quite interesting, I might give Tracy Emin a buzz. Even your art is better than ours – Jeff Koons rather than Damien Hirst and Gordon Matta-Clark rather than Rachel Whiteread. Damn you all to hell!

I'm a Londoner, but I love New York: I love the Kettle of Fish Bar, The Grassroots Tavern and The White Horse. I’d swap LA for Manchester any day: I love the Dresden Rooms and Hank's Bar. I lived in Liverpool but I prefer San Francisco: I love Vesuvios and the Chinese-rodeo-Country-Western-opera bar I went to on Grant Avenue. I even think I liked Providence but I was too pissed to remember much about it. I prefer Central Park to Regents Park. And I prefer the Lower Eastside to Primrose Hill. I follow American culture like a puppy dog, but, you know what, I’m not going to throw myself on American culture’s funeral pyre. I’m not going to beat my chest, rend my hair, pull my fingernails out, and ululate along to Bruce Springsteen. That's why I write this column – it's a love-hate thing.

I think I’m coming down with something. Right, next time, you’re not gonna find me in such a loved-up state. Oh, no. I’m going for the jugular. But before that, I’m gonna retire to my bedroom – on the walls are Mark Rothko and Jasper Johns posters, James Ellroy’s American Tabloid is cruelly spatchcocked on the bedside table, and I’m gonna slip under my Spiderman duvet, and I’m gonna tune in to a Pammy-era Baywatch. I feel like a good Yank.

Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.

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Steve Finbow writes out of London, England. He has worked for the poet Allen Ginsberg, the writer Victor Bockris, and the artist Richard Long. His fiction, essays, and short plays appear, or will appear, in Eyeshot, 3am Magazine, Yankee Pot Roast, uber, Locus Novus, InkPot, Dicey Brown, The Guardian Online, and Pindeldyboz. He is currently working on a novel (Yeah, right).  He can be contacted here.

© 2005 Me Three