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.

- # # # -

NEW MOONS & PALE ASSES: On Being Comfortable & Uncivilized, Meditating Naked, Alone, in The Woods

Pray inwardly, even if you do not enjoy it. It does good, though you feel nothing. Yes, even though you think you are doing nothing.

- JULIAN OF NORWICH
Fourteenth century English mystic

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's a rare thing, anymore, for a supposedly civilized man in a supposedly civilized society - in the world's only remaining, albeit collapsing, "superpower," as it is - to find himself drawn to a remote spot in a wood for no purposeful reason, other than to to sit and meditate in silence in a weed-filled, secluded meadow in the so-called witching hours.

Completely naked, no less, beneath a very dark new moon, alone in the darkness with nothing but the sounds of critters in the surrounding grass, a whispering breeze, and my own heartbeat to keep my bare ass company.

Needless to say, obviously, I'm not the kind of civilized man of cultural superpower leisure one expects to find naked in the woods, meditating and pacing my breath down to an almost melodious purr.

Hey, I do my own thing. And the tendency to spontaneously strip naked in a field is, well, one of my many quirks. Sue me.

Bloggers and technocrats can't be into that weird metaphysical shit, you're probably saying right now. This is the 21st century! We have Wiis to make us fit, WOW tourneys to make us magical, and streaming audio sermons and e-book bibles to help us find faith...

Trust me when I say that some of those primitive things we've given up to build our civilizations are often the ones that, well, bring us the most peace. And the more we lose touch with things like our bodies, with nature, with our spiritual bond with this here plane of existence, the less peace we will know, our children and grandchildren will know.

It takes some getting used to in our Brave New World Order built upon junk ownership and 24-hour information - the embracing of momentary solitude as a fleeting eternity, the touch of your normally cloth-covered flesh intermingling with dandelions and scratchy twigs and even ants, the whole "Trying to feel at one with the world" thing often left to New Age self-help gurus to make a profit off of at air-conditioned retreats and cult meetings down at the mega-chain bookstore.

I'm sure, well, I'm being judged right now. And I don't care.

Seriously, when was the last time you were so naked and alone, so vulnerable and exposed, and yet felt completely comfortable with it?

* * * *

Throughout the mythology and folklore of much of the ancient world, it was the darkest phase of the lunar cycle that was often seen as the more powerful and benevolent than the full moon, a time for healing and fasting and, yes, even prayers and thanksgivings.

Hell, there's a reason all of our supernatural occult thrillers involving werewolves and teen vampires, zombies and demons, often center around the full moon. Our ancient forebears used to share those same legends, sans cinematography, CGI, or good screen-writing, around their hearths and campfires - for some odd reason, they usually associated the full moon's light with mischief and evil.

The NEW moon lore, however, often gets overlooked. Doesn't make for a good movie or trashy romance novel. Stories involving pale, illuminated demons make for better suspense than, oh, say stories that often involve good omens, faith, and solitude.

Which, well, for guys like me, tends to be a good thing.

Can you imagine if, like with full moons, the same Ohio woods I've learned to disappear into on certain nights, for meditation and contemplation, were suddenly filled with goth kids playing at witchcraft, pale-ass hipsters covered in glitter and opining undead, bloodsucking heartthrobs, or hordes of crop-circle crazy housewives and spinsters in search of Divine Mother Earth crap they read about in some poorly written ecofeminist manifesto?

* * * *

I've meditated, alone, all over this country. And this rather uncivilized ritual is, of course, not limited to mere new moons, nudity, or even the mere absence of other people.

In California, beneath a live oak in an old, abandoned cemetery, overlooking a gorgeous series of box canyons and vineyards. In Wyoming, there was this sea of the most gorgeous golden grain right before a late summer storm I came upon after covering a Legion baseball game - I felt the whole universe burst upon my chest like a mortar. Virginia, well, I had this spot on the farm near the train tracks.

One of the best moments, ever, was in Denver, smack dab in the middle of Larimer Square, at four in the morning, right as snow was starting to fall. Of course, sure, I was clothed in below-freezing weather, and of course, the place was crawling with the usual homeless folk digging for scraps in the trash bins. But, oh, how beautifully still and tranquil a city such as Denver becomes as snow falls.

There's been motel rooms in Mississippi, dark, empty truckstops in Arizona, beaches in Florida, dust-choked tamale stands in southwestern Texas near the Rio Grande. Once, in a crowded art gallery opening. Another time while pulling barbed wire to repair a section of fence, perfect transendental moments at rodeos, in barber shops, even while playing chess with a Buddhist monk.

Meditation requires no ritual, no spontaneous nudity. There is no right or wrong way to do it. The magic of life is that it just keeps happening, like shit. It takes effort to slow down the self long enough to catch that beautiful alchemy in the act.

* * * *

So, well, what do I get out of vanishing into the bush, on a lark, out of stripping naked beneath a long-ignored new moon?

In all honesty, I couldn't tell you. The way that can be spoken or written, according to Lao Tzu, cannot be the way. If I put words to the few moments of calm, those moments would cease to have meaning.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: "If a Punk Redneck Peter Pan Carjacked Rehab Hippies" Does Describe my Personal Style Quite Well, Actually...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I'm a loner, a solitary man, a veritable 21st Century Libertine.

Beyond that, well, I'm just one mean-ass nonconformist motherfucker, I do my own thing, and I'm little too out there, in my own special way, for most people.

I make no bones about it, really. Life's meant to be filled with strange people and mysterious freethinkers - hey, somebody's gotta do it.

In public, I try to put up a front of being an extrovert, of being good-natured and humorous, and, of being, occasionally, talkative and a good listener, friendly and self-absorbed, all simultaneously...

But at home? In the ol' Bachelor Pad of Mystery and Mirth? My Fortress of my Motherfucking Solitude?

Why the fuck would any sane person think my personal sanctuary would be any less strange than I am, on or offline? I live like a mad monk. Or maybe a curio shop owner. Or, possibly, one of those people destined to become a crazed old man who scares small children on Halloween.

Regardless, well, wherever I've hung my hat in this world, through the three residences here in Oxford where I've rested my boots, through the seven different dwellings over the past ten years across three states, there's one constant:

My "home life" is almost always a thousand times weirder than most "normal" folks expect.

Even from me.

* * * * *

If you can't take the heat, stay the fuck out of my apartment.

Seriously.

According to my lease, that energy-guzzling box near the living room window is an air-conditioning unit. I've never used it, never even tested to see if it works. I don't use A/C because, well, it's a waste of energy, a waste of the human body's own climate control system - the good ol' sweat glands and skin.

Man was meant to sweat. Women, well, were meant to glow. Especially during the dog days of summer. And, yep, it gets pretty toasty in there at times, especially during the hottest months, when the air heaves with bone-soaking humidity and the mercury floats up towards one hundred degrees, Fahrenheit.

I usually advise female friends who stop by for the first time to wear a sports bra - I make no exceptions for the dainty, the pretty, or even the damned-too-cute . If it gets too hot, well, feel free to strip off as much clothing as you wish. Or sit in front of the numerous energy-efficient fans.

Hell, I'm probably half-naked... don't be modest. By giving up the A/C, we're helping save electricity -- as well as the friggin' planet.

* * * * *

I smoke. And I smoke in my own home. Cigarette (and occasionally cigar or pipe) smoke permeates every corner, every nook and cranny.

Asthmatics and those with allergies are welcome to ask, politely, that I not smoke whilst they're visiting - I'm generally a decent host. People who give me the second-hand smoke lecture? Well, there's the door. Leave anytime you wish or shut the fuck up.

And I smoke tobacco. And tobacco only. Other substances are never welcome.

If I know you're holding, well, it's out the door with it and possibly with you, too. We can still be friends, but, well, I've been clean for almost a fucking decade, dammit. Show some respect.

It always blows my mind when some poor stoner swings by and thinks that, well, because I'm puffing away, they can puff away on anything they so choose. In the homes of others, well, I'm fine with it and could care less. But in my place, you'll end up getting yelled at, verbally humiliated, and, possibly, assaulted.

No joke. Ten years clean. Assaulted, as in knock the damn taste out'cho mouth.

Once, a fling's cousin lit up and laughed in my face when I told him to remove his kind herbal product from my home. When I insisted, he stood there and kept puffing away, giving me the Legalization lecture. He really thought I was kidding -- Who doesn't, in this modern era, partake of such a plant, silly librarian who's fucking my uncle's daughter?

I broke his little finger with a crescent wrench and left a forearm imprint in his throat.

People, like all animals, sometimes need to be conditioned to respect the master of a given domain. And if one acts like an obstinate, unlearned animal in my domain, well, I will break that animal. Almost felt bad, but, well, rules exist only so long as they are enforceable - and I am more than capable of enforcing my rules with all of the gusto of an Old Testament legend.

He never lit up in my apartment after that. Even apologized. Kid lived like a fucking Mormon the rest of his visit. And, well, he wasn't really able to speak for the last few days at my place, so I was able to get quite a bit of reading done...

He did, however, manage to crank out a few pages of his doctoral dissertation with nine working digits and to drive his stick-shift sedan back to his Kentucky university.

Needless to say, the fling ended shortly thereafter.

* * * * *

"Jesus Fucking Christ, Jason! You really eat this shit?"

It's a common refrain, when people look into my refrigerator or peek into my kitchen cabinets.

Organic crunchy soynut butter and fruit-only preserves. Flax-and-psyllium-husk cereals and whole-grain, no-sugar-added instant oatmeal. Pork shoulder, cans of smoked oysters and sardines and anchovies, baby spinach, gravadlax and Middle-eastern lavash, thinly sliced turkey pastrami and hummus and at least three varieties of olives.

No junk food. No processed sugar or corn syrup. Not a candy bar or potato chip to be found.

And I'm from Virginia, too, a Southerner who grew up eating all sorts of cute, furry and feathered critters. I have a hearty respect for those who harvest nature's edible wildlife. When time provides, I've been known to barter with local hunters for organic, free-range vittles.

Finished off the last of my squirrel stockpile last month. Made a wonderful soup, actually, with leeks, red onions, and plenty of cilantro and thyme, dill and rosemary. If that grosses you out then you'd probably, well, starve to death in many of the poorer parts of rural North America.

And Berberé, that marvelous Ethiopian and Eritrean spice mixture? Goes great on a veggie pizza, venison or with beans and rice.

This is how I eat. It can be quite nauseating for the weak of stomach to witness, especially those who find it appalling that an educated man would gnaw the flesh from Bambi's carcass.

Yeah, I cook and consume some pretty strange things. Every damned day, save for the occasional workday lunches or whilst on vacation.

And there's no booze in the cabinets, beer rarely in the icebox.

Seriously? Seriously.

For as much as I supposedly drink, for all the perceptions that I'm a raging alcoholic because I write so much about bars and booze and the fucktardish lifestyles of the binge-drinking collegiate masses, I don't as a rule keep any sort of alcohol on hand for guests.

It's a BYOB sorta deal. I rarely drink at home, actually. Most of the time, my dwellings tend to be only slightly less dry than a West Texas creek bed.

* * * * *

Yes, it's true, whatever you've heard or read over the years -

I do have a chin-up bar installed in my living room, so I can watch Star Trek reruns, cartoons or ThinkTV while I work out. I don't have a couch, because, well, I would rather stretch out on the floor.

...And I'm rather well-known for my repetitive, downright predictable eating habits - there are people reading this right now, in fact, who don't even need to guess what sandwich I will order at a restaurant at least twice next week...

...And there's weird music almost always playing, downright bizarre occult trinkets and paintings and sculpture hanging from the walls, obscure books packed into the bookshelves...

... And there's no proper bedspread on the mattress, just an assortment of hand-me-down sheets and thrift-store clearance items and, yes, even the horse blanket that I was conceived upon in a Colorado trailer park three decades ago...

... And I still haven't felt the need to replace the headboard, either. Women just seem to break the damned thing...

But it's home.

* EPILOGUE *

"You know what I miss about fucking Oxford?"

"I dunno. What?"

A random phone call from a former friend of an ex-fling who, well, turned out to be a lot cooler to hang out with after the pair had graduated from the Local U. and the fling ended (as they all do).

She dialed the wrong Jason by mistake. We ended up chatting for a few minutes. Strangely enough, she'd been planning on calling me anyway, to invite me to dinner when she was back int town for Alumni Weekend.

"Your place, the one you used to have on High Street, above the beauty shop..."

"Yeah, that was a cool place, huh?"

"Not really, but it was so... you... ya know?"

"Heh, yeah. The Bat Cave thing?"

"Hahaha! ... You really are a fucking mystery, you know that...? "

I closed the cell at the end of the call, ate a can of smoked oysters for lunch, and did some chin-ups while Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk duked it out with some alien menace on television.

- # # # -