Previous Entry:
The flight from Amsterdam to London was brief. Too brief to serve any booze despite its international flavor. Carpe denied. I was welcomed aboard by yet another platoon of pretty ladies in uncomfortable shoes and a single, pretty man in comfortable ones.
He had to wear a vest, though. Poor dude.
The indignities are spread around somewhat unequally, but they do exist across the gender aisle. Some indignities are more indignant than others.
We were denied any concessions outside the bag of salted peanuts also enjoyed by peasants in coach. As soon as you ascend it’s time to descend again. No time for pleasantries. It was all business and the dull, mundane miracle of flight.
This is the case when flying from Seattle to Spokane, as well. A puddle-hop across Washington State. Here, the puddle is the English Channel and not super impressive. Julius Caesar crossed it just to say he did. The locals did not enjoy his publicity stunt.
Of course, he did it in a boat full of unwashed Romans. We were just a couple Yanks.
I hope the English understand my own stunt here - referred to as a travel journal - is written in love. England is a fantastic place and the various inhabitants of that island tickle my colonial sensibilities. Hobbits were born here, and you can tell.
Europe is so tiny. Even measured via kilometers tip to taint. This has to bother them.
It’s amazing they don’t go to war more often. Anymore. They don’t go to war that often anymore. I seem to recall a few dustups in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, all the way to the 20th centuries, come to think of it.
They’ve had a few in the 21st as well. But we don’t talk about those as much unless they impact the price of gasoline. Europe has changed, you see. Believe it if you like. I’ll believe it when I see it. Some of these people still have kings and queens.
I always remember this when people talk about how conservative Americans supposedly are. Really? We’re citizens. You’re still subjects. But at least they have culture? I’m sure that’s comforting as they swallow Hollywood movie after movie.
Europe has been subjected to the evils of one empire or another for all of the time it has been called Europe. Europe is named after Europa, a Phoenician royal once raped by Zeus as he banged his way across the Mediterranean on one of several sex tours.
So, it makes some sense. If you want to be like your god and your god is Zeus, or Jupiter Optimus as the Romans called him, you get to raping. Or you tell stories to justify what you were always going to get up to anyway.
Which came first, I wonder. The chicken or the god? I doubt this question has an answer. Unlike the chicken and the egg question.
In its heyday, which is definitely over, the English Empire needed no microscope to measure its girth or length regardless of tip or taint. The old adage went, “The sun never set on the English Empire.”
And this was a true statement. Odd for empire to tell the truth.
The English owned colonies and people all across the globe. They spread out most horizontally in a manner where the sun literally never set in one place without already having risen in another. This was mostly the fault of Canada and India.
Once you’ve locked down both those locales, you’re guaranteed everlasting sunshine. With Canada lately, you’re also assured of more or less constant wildfires.
This bit of self-aggrandizing propaganda likely exists due to the sun not shining bright in England itself. That’s empire for you. If you don’t have it, steal it. Then brag about it as loudly as possible. Whether it is sunshine or tea.
Bonus points if you kill the locals in the name of peace like we Americans do. Romans did that, too.
The sun sets on the English Empire now, both metaphorically and literally. It sets harder every year as they pick up more American academic drivel. But they still have all that tea they stole from China and India. Both nations looking to rise, themselves.
This is called the Thucydides Trap, for anyone interested in such things.
It isn’t odd the capitol of this once-mammoth empire was founded by another empire.
Trauma can be inherited and passed through the generations via behavior and culture for sure, and genetics for not sure at all. They still build the courthouses Romans inflicted on them, for instance. Often in the same architectural style even.
That’s environmentally learned trauma and behavior for the record. We aren't beavers. Courthouses aren't in our blood. They're in our minds. And if you live in Portland or Seattle they're probably on fire and in the locals’ crosshairs, too.
When I landed in London in 1998 the English Empire was decidedly toast.
The public who once debated imperial policy for its dominions now mostly concerns itself with begging the government for more doctors. Promising more doctors was a recent policy platform from the conservative party over there.
I don’t know if they delivered. They did win, though. Decidedly socialist problems, to be sure. But as already mentioned, England is populated with the most conservative and most liberal people in the world. It’s a mess. Conservative socialists exist.
And this is precisely why I love it. Those cliffs are impressive and do make you believe a conscious god wrought it, but the people are its true asset. Just ask the new King who owns them all now. He won’t dare disagree. Publicly.
There is diversity there. Real diversity. I’m quite aware racial and gender diversity and all of that is present, but none of that matters if people are thinking, saying, and doing the same things. Political diversity is a half decent metric of real diversity.
Not the best, perhaps. But better. Racial demographics as political viewpoint seems intensely racist to me. Racialist at a minimum. Worse than both, it seems inaccurate.
London isn’t quite so old as Heerlen, but it is quite a bit busier, noisier, dirtier, and troublesome to navigate.
That said, all language barriers for the ignorant American evaporates into pure comedy and my own hurt feelings rather than lost opportunity like they did in Holland.
This doesn’t mean I got any action so to speak. But more on that a bit later.
You should hear the way the English butcher the English language. Their rampant disregard for proper spelling is just a single example. Why they feel compelled to insert irrelevant and unnecessary letters in a variety of words continues to confound me.
It is endlessly charming, but I’m going to make fun of it anyway. Because that’s how I show affection.
This is the Queen's English. I’m told this as if it explains anything. Besides, it’s now the King’s English, isn’t it? We’re not talking about Victoria. I can’t imagine passing ownership of my language to some inbred hereditarian. That doesn’t make sense.
But maybe it does. The monarchy is a desiccated, hot-air impregnated throwback to a once-glorious past serving no tangible purpose in the present. Other than siphoning money from the commons to the nobility.
On second thought it absolutely explains it. This is Reagan’s Welfare Queen. Except Elizabeth was a literal Welfare Queen. But now, instead of a Welfare Queen, you shall have a Welfare King!
The colourful manner they speak in was a constant source of amusement. I must also admit they absolutely produce the best political writers. Orwell and Hitchens come to mind immediately. We have a few in the United States, but not a quantity.
London is full of Brits. That can’t be helped. I hope it never changes.
They’re so unintentionally enchanting to an uppity colonial from across the Atlantic. They’re just going about their days as humans do, of course. So charmingly matter of fact when they drop a cunt here or a bullocks there.
Nobody says bloody anymore. Supposedly that’s something for upper class twats. Or so the locals told me when asked why no one was saying bloody this or that despite potty-mouths the size of Cicero’s colon.
Fun, since Orwell tells me it was a working-class innovation on the language originally. The privileged and moneyed folks picked it up and no doubt forgot all about having done so. He had nothing to say about the now somewhat embattled term cunt.
I suppose bloody cunt was a linguistic bridge too far. Or not something a writer would have the bullocks to put to page. Who knows? I don’t have the stone to do it.
The English accent - you know that one accent Americans seem to refer to rather than pinpointing the dozens of English accents which exist - has the habit of lending a solemn weight to whatever is uttered.
I found myself taking statements about upper class twats quite seriously. No doubt the various waitresses I asked about this found it less than amusing. Bunch of lower-class brats. Pretty ones, too. My favorite kind.
Not to be confused with the Lower-Class Brats from Texas. That’s a band. Life is complicated and language is a failed attempt to articulate that complexity.
Attempting to do so is always going to fail. But the attempt is worth attempting.
Fish and chips, as a phrase, is absolutely fabulous when delivered via linguistic gravitas sporting the toned legs of the British waitress.
While the chips in question are most certainly not chips at all, they’re still delicious. The fish is as advertised and mostly free of pharmaceuticals so far as I could taste and feel. London is a busy, cloudy town full of twats and brats, but at least it isn’t Seattle.
I’ve mentioned London can be difficult to navigate.
The obvious issue at hand is the fact the English putter about on the wrong side of the road. This goes without saying. Why they do this I couldn’t say. They didn’t create the automobile, nor did they create the internal combustion engine.
This isn’t a criticism, I didn’t either. But I still drive on the right side of the road whenever possible. I mostly just do this to avoid the cultural convention police. That is, the police.
Interestingly to me, driving on either the left or the right side of the road has much to do with political inclinations.
The American, accustomed to pedaling on the right side of the road, must look to the left first before crossing the street. The English, accustomed to pedaling on the left side of the road, first look to the right.
This is how we both approach political problem solving. Neither of us ever solve political problems, so this is mostly useless in politics but immensely practical when crossing the street.
It explains quite a bit, though if you think about it and try to torture it into sense.
Street signs, at least in the areas we haunted, are not in places one could be expected to read while driving. They are often on the sides of buildings, at the corners a good twenty feet in the air.
This makes them absolutely useless for an observer in any sort of motion whatsoever. Heisenberg called this out once upon a time to the thunderous applause of the Nobel Committee. But those guys are Swedes.
By the way, the Swedes used to drive on the left side of the road until 1967. They swapped over to the right after that. Guess who hasn’t? England. Conservative ass, Socialist England.
You can work around this by calling a lorry. That’s a truck, really. But I call cars in England lorries, too. They’re technically hackneys, but that sounds like an adjective I’d use to describe this book, honestly. Not a cab.
No matter what they’re called, they are everywhere, competently helmed by local lunatics familiar and comfortable with London streets. One doesn’t need a car themselves in London, I’m told.
Except the neighborhood of Soho at around three in the morning, I learned. We couldn't catch a cab there and ended up hoofing it four miles - that’s eighty-six kilometers if I understand the conversion - through the London darkness. Sadly, no fog.
No Uber yet. No Lyft for a quick mustache ride. I couldn’t grow facial hair at the time, anyway. Pink or otherwise.
Interestingly, we were not mugged or killed. Not even once. Good thing, too. We’d just spent absolutely all our pence at the horribly overpriced game arcade and at a pub. A pound a play for Tekken 3 in 1998 was madness.
So, I guess we got mugged by Capitalism in that insidiously voluntary manner it has. Where everyone gets something, except those who give too much or do too little.
Getting killed over not having any money would have been eternally embarrassing.
Besides, I strongly suspect my death will come at the hands of an angry lynch mob. It will be led by people with LOVE in their social media bios, gripping bricks in angry, balled little fists. You should hear the names these people call me. Out of LOVE.
It felt rather surreal, wandering through a nearly two-thousand-year-old city in mostly pitch blackness. I highly recommend it, because your survival isn’t terribly important to me personally. But I do LOVE you all. Hearts!
There was a rather awkward moment in the elevator of our hotel.
My compatriot and I were still a bit drunk and riding up to the room to grab more cash in order to get a bit drunker and the elevator operator referred to me as governor. In his mind, it was gouvernour or some such considering the way he pronounced it.
In my mind it was more than mildly insulting. I can’t even govern myself, never mind others. And I can’t stand a liar. I was once accused of having a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and the insult still galls me.
In a shameful moment wherein I American Womaned all over his face, I insanely replied, “I ain’t your guv’nah, bruv!” He calmly explained it simply meant Sir. To my credit, I apologized for ignorantly misunderstanding his crazy, imperialist lingo.
I also apologized for not having even just a tip to give him, which seemed to offend him. I still don't know exactly how. It was just a tip.
I’m told taking the tip is an acceptable part of British culture, but this guy didn't want mine at all. A theme which would make itself felt the rest of the visit and most the rest of my life. I get tons of sex now, though. Even when I want it sometimes. Imagine that.
In any event, cultural issue resolved. Even Steven. Blood for blood. Follow me for more hot tips on conflict resolution and mitigation. Ambassadors of the world could learn a thing or two by smashing that subscribe button somewhere around this thing.
We explored about London sober, too. I promise. We did the usual tourist stuff.
We rode the double-deckers, waddled around Buckingham Palace like cattle herded through their slaughterhouse, and crept through the Tower. The Tower of London is a remarkable tourist trap.
Quite typical of Europe, their sinister past has been commercialized, commemorated, and then sold to visiting moderns as a never again type of proposal they’ve totally grown out of. I was disappointed. Not in the Tower, but the never again sentiment.
The Tower was historically where the nobility was imprisoned and executed. I don’t see any reason this tradition cannot carry into the modern day if the nobility also has.
It seems to me they’re trying to enjoy the benefits of privilege without taking on any of the risk. The risk in this case being reduced to a tourist trap while the proceeds are filtered directly to those who no longer need fear being imprisoned there.
There were no available tours of the peasant prisons. I mean, there were. But I didn't feel like experiencing the modern British justice system or whatever they call it. The Crown’s Mercy, most like. I never want to meet a cross-dressing magistrate in my life.
Besides, since the Crown in England is also the Faith in England, there should be time enough for that after the LOVE Lynch Mob does me in.
On Earth as it is in Heaven. That phrase means things. Like the authority of heaven is present here in the form of a silly monarch and we’re all supposed to pretend like that isn’t ridiculous, because cultural sensitivities.
It seems to me attempts to create heaven on earth only produce a hell of previously unimaginable proportion. We are England.
But what do I know? I’m not a monarch. The unelected, collective will of a nation. I’m merely human. I use singular pronouns. We are England. Maybe I should swap over to plural pronouns. We are R.B. Lamb. We are Borg. We demand you peasants subscribe.
If you think this opinion is influenced by The Sex Pistols, you're not wrong. Mostly by Thomas Hobbes though. He provided intellectual arguments to justify the bondage of peasants and told us to love it in the bargain. He did this for free.
Unlike Madam Stretch, who enters this story right around here. She has a prorate and I’m told you have to pay up front. I don’t know. We didn’t get that far.
What I do know is I am still in love with Soho in London, over twenty years later.
This little neighborhood had it all. I spotted a sixty-year-old woman with a giant, purple mohawk within five minutes of infiltrating the place. There are video game arcades all over. There are phone booths on every corner slathered in adverts for prostitutes.
At least, those things were there when I was. This was back in ‘98 and while I’m sure the hookers still are, I’m less sure about the phone booths and game arcades. Both of those have been superseded somewhat in the United States.
The former by cell phones and the latter by people like me making fancier and fancier home gaming consoles.
But ladies - and gentlemen - of the night aren't going anywhere anytime soon. The World's Oldest Profession isn't just fantastic marketing. It is a service most likely older than homo sapiens is.
I have zero issues imagining homo erectus hunting about the huts or caves for you know who to get a little you know what. Maybe he’s tired of being homo erectus all the time and would like to try some of that fabled post-nut clarity he’s heard about.
The currency exchanged likely differed. Maybe different art on the walls and real animal furs on a rock bed that probably doesn’t vibrate.
But the services and menu would be quite similar. Even if the menu worked like the English Constitution. Non-existent, not written down anywhere, and relying entirely on fragile convention.
I should quit saying prostitutes, though. I mean escorts, of course. Or so I learned. It’s important to pick up the local lingo beforehand if one is going to pick up a hooker in London. There is a certain finesse to the act, apparently. A finesse I lacked.
The adverts on the phone booths in Soho would have shocked Oliver Wilde into a rare and merciful silence. The phone numbers alone would have confused him no doubt, but he would have to associate those numbers with the ladies also spread across the flyer. Spread toe to toe.
You didn't get a good sense whether your possible date-for-hire would make a good conversationalist over some pinot - though any gentleman would pretend she was - but you did get a good look at her kidneys.
I always knew the inside of British phone booths as portrayed on Dr. Who weren't quite right, but I never suspected how not quite right they were. They do nail the bigger on the inside thing, though. That’s legit. Tons of little wormholes in there.
This is utterly insane to a sixteen-year-old American boy. American phone booths, Superman ignored, are quite mundane affairs.
Mostly urine, a little questionable dust born in some rustic Winnebago, and maybe a phone book with half the pages ripped out. The smeared and oily glass panes aren’t slathered with anything but smeared oils. Nothing like Soho.
So, of course we tried to score. For culture. And science.
We pilfered a few fliers one day, stuffed them into our greedy and stupidly horny private parts - more on that later - and resolved to give it a shot.
Back at the hotel, we argued over who should be the businessman and who should enjoy plausible deniability. I determined we were never going to get anywhere if my angelic compatriot was at the wheel, so I drove the thing right off the cliff.
Those were our options the way we saw them. It’s a wonder we’re not dead, really.
Picking a promising young flyer out of our succulent binder full of women I punched the insane English phone number into a device with a cord stuck in the wall. A lovely British voice answered immediately, “Hellou. Houw can I help you?”
My hands shook as I swallowed my prepared phrase of, “I’d like to order an escort for me and my friend, please.” Instead, I got right to the balled, blunt point in the typical American English I use to charm all the ladies and gentlemen in my life.
“Howdy! Hi there, I’d like a prostitute.”
“What?”
“I’d like a prostitute.” I repeated, not detecting sudden danger.
“Well go bloody find one you fucking cunt!” Click.
She was gone before I could reply the obvious. I thought I had.
I never did, though. I still haven’t to this day. I’ve been propositioned myself, which I declined as haggling isn’t something I’m real keen on. But I’ve never gone beyond the usual commercial courtship of dinner and a movie and flowers and eight balls.
In any event, it turns out people do still say bloody after all. But maybe just Madam Stretch and perhaps only after introducing a little graceless Americana into the social situation.
And I do mean little. It shrunk several kilometers that night after having grown six sizes too large.
But as luck - I call plans that go according to plan luck by the way - would have it, I wouldn't be in the same zip code as that lazy whore the next morning. I wouldn't even be in the same hemisphere.
We were headed to the land of Mohandas Gandhi, of Gotama Buddha, of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. That last one is particularly impressive, by the way.
One of the oldest, most fascinating places in the world. India, baby. It isn’t mystic so much as fucking awesome. But still, there is something about it that defies articulation.
It is possible, at the time, I was merely relieved to escape the country I had failed so spectacularly to pick up a hooker in. To go where no bloody cunts could hurt me with their words anymore.
But no. India is incredible without needing to be compared to the imperial power conceiting itself as its owner for so long. It has been incredible for thousands of years.
And I have no doubt it is just getting started, too.
The adventure continues in India.