COSMOPOLITAN STRANGERS: Globally Conscious Childhood Development, Without Ever Leaving the Country, Leads to Seriously Un-American Americans

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's easy to tune out the rest of the world, in a - let's be honest here - rather isolated rural college community surrounded by the college-aged children of some of the wealthiest, most culturally sheltered Americans ten months out of the year.

Within the Oxford Bubble, hell, it's easy to tune out the fact that the median family income for the average Local U. student is estimated to be between three and four times that of the surrounding community, to ignore the economic and societal divides, the extreme wealth in the face of some very impoverished people...

Well, for some people it's easy. For me? Not so much, really.

A simple tour of the campus at three in the morning on a rather frigid Saturday had turned into a rather heated debate.

Personally, I blame the amount of booze we'd both consumed earlier in the night, the lovely bottle of Jack Daniels we were sharing to chase away the Hair of the Dog as we walked.

"Serious, J. - are you sure you're even a fucking American?" The Visitor said. "You don't have cable, don't know who [some pop star] is. AND NO CANDY. And working in this fucking Lalaland... I swear I'd shoot myself..."

Pfft. Struggling actors. Not only do they use me for a floor to crash on, but they just love picking arguments when they're out of work. Something about building up future emotional reserves for casting calls...

"Why do you say that?"

I was still laughing at the fact that it was the fact that I don't have cable television, nor knew who some apparently famous reality television guy was, that set her off.

"Because you don't act American. Not even like Eurotrash wannabes. What the fuck are you?"

* * * *

So here's the deal. I may BE, by birthright, an American, a citizen of the good ol' United States. But I've never really fit into my own country's culture.

In fact, during my formative years, I was relatively sheltered from it, tucked away in a remote corner of the country, surrounded by equally naturalized citizens who didn't exactly fit in, either.

But while I may have grown up isolated on a small family farm in rural Virginia, I was never sheltered from the world. In fact, if there was anything I can be accused of having been sheltered from, it'd be from the culture and customs of Mainstream America.

My father's parents - who technically owned 80 percent of the place - weren't exactly what most folks would associate with a Hillbilly-Cajun union. They'd spent four decades as diplomatic globetrotters, hitting every continent but Antarctica. After spending almost their entire adult lives in mostly developing countries, they really never seemed comfortable in retirement with the often frivolous, shallow culture of the Consumerist Patriotic Motherland.

Yes, I grew up in an isolation tank so much smaller than the societal bubble that surrounds my current home. But I was never sheltered from the greater world - my cosmopolitan kinfolk made sure my sister and I would grow up to be global citizens, without the crushing burden of Post-Industrial United States they themselves didn't fit into perfectly.

I learned to read on a steady diet of newspapers and foreign policy journals, English translations of some of the world's greatest writers, even NATO and United Nations documents. I had toys, sure, but often they were secondary to the 170-acre playground filled with barns to explore, ponds to swim and fish in, fruit trees to climb.

Growing up in the heyday of reckless greed and glut that was Mainstream 1980s America, my sister and I were probably two of the least American children in the country. We learned more about our own country's culture in the same way first-generation immigrant children learn it - in public school classrooms, through making friends with those for whom the culture was natural, through television and radio.

Imagine, if you will, being a man who though born in the United States and having never been off the North American continent, who grew up basically a foreigner in his own land, who matriculated within a culture as a child and teen but who never really was taught to look at it as his own culture.

In all honesty, it's made for some often uncomfortable, heh, assimilation issues for both my sister and myself, growing up surrounded by people who'd spent more time outside of their own country than in it. But, overall, I can't imagine it any other way, and I think I'm a better person for it...

Look at it this way. A retired high-ranking intelligence official once told me that I'd been given one of the greatest gifts any kid in the United States can receive: the freedom to be my own American without my own country's boundaries, cultural pollution, or baggage, to start with a clean slate.

My dad and his brother were given the same amazing gift by my grandparents - while their countrymen were obsessing over the Beatles and Elvis, they were climbing the Pyramids of Giza. While their peers here stateside were obsessing over Cowboys-and-Indians movies, they were running into Big Duke Wayne himself in five-star hotels after being evacuated from war zones.

Of course, well, I'm also a bit of a fuck-up, so I added quite a bit of my own baggage and the slate dirtied up fairly quick...

But, well, for every fuck-up in life, I can honestly say I did it to myself. The violence, the drug abuse, the hoodlum tendencies to gain street cred, the slackertude and solitude, even the occasional dive into either easy women, psychotic women, or, well, sometimes the occasional wife or gangbanger's old lady.

Without a net or a scapegoat.

Hell, I can't even blame the wicked metal, punk, and rap music I discovered as a teenager, the subversive literature I still read, or the fact that the closest thing to an abusive moment in my childhood came in the form of being required to watch the nightly news...

* * * *

I tried my best to explain, well, where I think the origins of my supposed American Un-Americanisms lie, how growing up in a secluded environment surrounded more by global culture than my own country's culture essentially made me a de facto Military Brat without the moving from base to base, country to country...

Sadly, I was fairly drunk by the time we made it back to my place, and my childhood tale ended up coming out a lot more rambling and long-winded than this writing.

"That's hella fucked up... so basically..." The Visitor laughed, throwing herself down on her sleeping bag on the living room floor, "... You were fucked up by your fam and you're still fucked up... but in a good way?!?"

I poured coffee into the auto-drip, flipped the switch, emptied out the rest of the bottle in the kitchen sink. (I don't keep booze in the house - and I don't like backwash liquor shots, either.) When I turned the corner, The Visitor was digging through my movie collection for a DVD to sober up to.

"Dude, you have no chick movies. This is why you're single."

"I dunno..." I reached over her shoulder and grabbed a film out of my Classics section. "How about this? The Italian chick sent it to me last year-"

" - Still single because you're nice to fucking ex-girlfriends, too."

"LOVERS. Or flings. Let's be classy here. Anyway, read the back of the case..."

Bertolucci's classic. The Conformist. Sex, death and a Fascist State.

The Visitor fell asleep 20 minutes into the film - subtitles, dammit. And too complex, I guess. No CGI, no overly choreographed action scenes, lots of talk.

I watched the film, sipped coffee, and waited for the sunrise. And afterwards, I put an indie rap mixtape playlist on repeat on the netbook, puked, had another cup of joe and a fried egg, and passed out myself.

A perfectly normal all-nighter for me.

I like being a fucking weird Un-American American.

- # # # -

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CONVERSATION WITH AN EX-OTHER MAN'S EX: Of Breakfast Meetings at Dawn, Pointless Bickering, and Growing Apart with Age...

RICHMOND, Ind. (ZP) -- For a guy who's spent a good portion of his life as a professional night owl, I'm perpetually surprised at how much I actually enjoy breakfast dates.

Sitting in an ancient diner full of ancient Hoosiers, sipping weak Midwestern-strength coffee, watching the sun rise to the east. It's a thing of beauty, sure, watching shades of gray and indigo give way to reds and yellows and pinks across the lines in working people's faces...

Seriously, a few years ago, eating "breakfast" meant sucking down a greasy plate of eggs and bacon before hitting the sack, a quick, sloppy meal in preparation for a few hours of sleep - I used to be one of those guys who believed that starting the day early meant getting up before the ass-crack of noon. Now, well, sleeping in, for me, is being in bed at 9 a.m.

I've become, and without much regret, something of a morning person.

My dining companion is not. And this isn't exactly a breakfast meeting either of us what to have. But, through an odd quirk of life, we're obligated to hold nonetheless.

"Man, how the hell are you up this early? When I called you were going out drinking. That was, what? Midnight? I hit the road at two or so..."

"Got to bed by two-thirty, and, well, the alarm went off at seven."

"Um, most normal people turn their alarm clocks off on the weekends."

"Well, I'm not exactly the most normal guy."

Buttercup* swirled her coffee-flavored creamy sugar, nodded.

"You know, you're such a fucking Townie. You don't really change, your style doesn't change, and... well, in all honesty, dude, I'm not shocked you're in that fucking town. You're boring as hell..."

"Chica, I am a creature of habit. And what's wrong with Townies--"

Just then the waitress arrived with our food - huge plates of bacon and sausage and eggs, hash browns and biscuits. Buttercup immediately tore into her plate - she'd been on the road for a while after playing Designated Driver all night.

Apparently, she's doing better with the whole anorexia thing, I thought as I watched her eat.

* * * *

We were supposed to have breakfast in Oxford. Plans changed when I informed her that this was Parents Weekend at the ol' Local U, that we'd be waiting for hours just to cram into the few breakfast places Oxford has.

And, well, she'd have to make a detour on her trip from Cleveland to Indianapolis, a 60-mile detour back to a town she, in all honesty, has no desire whatsoever to ever step foot in again.

Hell, she'd never wanted to step foot in Cleveland again. But, well, a person she didn't even like had died, and, well, in true Roman Catholic fashion she'd driven back to her hometown to spend time mourning over that loss with people she can't fucking stand.

"... Oh, hey! Before I forget... Mom told me to tell you hi. Says I'm supposed to ask you about some black chick you're seeing."

"Oh, huh... well, I was seeing this multi-ethnic chick a while back, but we--"

"Heard she was a child, dude. A kid or something? Like, really, really too young for you. And what the fuck is 'multi-ethnic,' dude?"

Caught off guard. It's a trait of those with a vagina in her family.

"______ was 22, just so you know. Good kid. Just didn't work out. And we weren't dating or anything--"

Buttercup snickered.

"Oh, it was 'just a fling,' right? Like I said, you don't change."

This time, I'm the one snickering. More of a smirk, really. I've been told by Buttercup and God knows how many women I've slept with that this is one of my most condescending qualities.

* * * *

"Well, how old were you, Missy, when we were hooking up? About the same age, if I recall... but, well, refresh my old-ass memory here..."

The conversation ends for a second. We both killed off our breakfasts at the same time. And then, out of nowhere, in true Buttercup fashion, a melodramatic sigh and tossing of hair, a lesson in eye-rolling perfection.

As funny as it may seem, I once found these displays of hers to be quite the turn-on. But, well, as we sat there, I found it hard to believe that we'd ever slept together, that she'd been my first real local relationship attempt...

"Oh, well... since you didn't go all emo and blog about it - not that I read that fucking thing anymore - I guess the age thing didn't matter, huh?"

In hindsight, well, I'm thinking that was meant to cut deep.

As we talked, I just laughed.

Oh sure... it'd be kinda boring if I did put up every damned relationship, hook-up, and breakup online...

* * * *

As we were leaving, she bummed a smoke. Supposedly still a militant anti-smoker, well, she's always had this nasty habit of lecturing people about their vices while simultaneously asking to share in them - at no cost to her, of course.

I dropped the tailgate of my pick-up, and we sat there, in silence, for a long time listening to the buzzing, increasingly congested Interstate traffic in the distance.

"Ya know, don't take this the wrong way, but I can't believe we ever hooked up. I mean, EVER, dude. You're really not my type."

Buttercup crushed out her bummed smoke on the pickup bed, tossed the butt to the side, then, without asking, took another of my smokes from the pack.

"Meh... if I had a type, you'd probably not be mine, either," I said, lighting her cigarette. "I mean, maybe it's because we were just... lonely? Oxford's made people do strange things, chica."

Buttercup laughed and put her hand on my calf. As I turned my head, I noticed she had this impish look, those big brownish-green orbs on each side of her cute nose dancing with her eyelashes...

Okay, so maybe I do know why we hooked up in the first place, years ago... The eyes, well, and her Eggplant Parmesan...

I realized she was mockingly fluttering her eyelashes. Apparently, I'd stared a bit too long...

"Okay... dude... I think we hooked up because you're really smart and used to date a famous chick, and, well, let's be honest here, I'm smoking hot and kinda shallow, and we both fuck and fight like animals. But, yeah, it probably was the loneliness..."

"...And the boredom, hon," I added, lighting another cigarette. "God, I mean, we were only hanging out for, what, a few months, weeks? And how much of that was just arguing..."

Buttercup, again, does the fluttery eyelash thing. This time, her creepy, perfectly plucked eyebrows rise like the tide. She looked away, stood up suddenly. The eleven-year-old shocks barely moved with the loss of such light weight.

She had to hit the road to make it back to Indy in time to meet up with another, more recent, ex, to get the keys back to her apartment and to finalize what sounded to be a nasty break-up.

The guy in question, she said, reminded her of me. I took her statement as a compliment.

Without so much as a hug or goodbye, I watched as she sped off for the westward on-ramp...

- # # # -

* NOTE - Name changed to protect the guilty.