What is a good show to watch on occasion of my birthday—

(I know, technically no longer my birthday, but if you know something about me it is that I have a tendency to celebrate my birthday over a month, and a month of birthday celebrations leaves little time for technicalities)—

is the film “Kinky Boots”, which, (a), opens with David Bowie on “The Prettiest Star”, and, (b), features disco, camp disco like crazyboots, and one, two, hell, I don’t know, I lost count of how many montages there were altogether. And in a shoe factory yet!

It was a good show on occasion, also, of one month in London, because when Charlie Price explains that Northampton is in the Midlands, and Lola says: “I’m from Soho, darling, Tottenham Court Road is the Midlands”, I understood it, HA HA HA!

After the movie let out, Thusha and I hopped on and hopped off the hop-on, hop-off bus that took us to dinner at Mango Tree,

(“Where are we going?” I’d said, and a normal person might have said: “A Thai restaurant some streets west of here”, or maybe: “Belgravia, it’s fancy in those parts”, or even, if she wanted to be mysterious: “Mind your step getting on the bus, luv, and wait for the surprise”. But Thush, because she is Thush, wasted nary a moment to say: “The arse end of Buckingham Palace.”)

where, somewhere between the mojito and the tom yum gai, one of the two guys at the table next to us started a chit-chat across the narrow space. Maybe it was as easy as “How are you?”, I don’t remember now, but we were chatting up a storm by the time the green curry and the pineapple rice arrived, me and Thush and the dudes: Jon and Jerry from Pittsburgh, good ol’ guys from back in “the States”, business-tripping through Europe.

They took turns telling us stories about setting off the German-language GPS in their rental car; about hanging out at the Amsterdam sex shows with Bud from “Married...with Children”; about Oktoberfest, and the Germans rocking out to Frank Sinatra. FYI, the latest word from our European explorers is that in Lichtenstein they call a mobile phone a “handy”. “Call me on my handy,” Jerry mimicked, “on my mobile. Goddamn Verizon doesn’t work out here.”

Meanwhile, “I love Amsterdam,” Jon kept saying. “I really loved Amsterdam.”

“Dude,” I said, holding an invisible joint to my lips, “you’re saying it like you really loved Amsterdam.”

They were a-laugh-a-minute, because they were American; because they were in “sales”; because Jon quoted, like a maniac, from “Zoolander” and wore a party as a shirt: red and white spots on a black button-down, and the cuffs folded up to reveal a flower print.

Somewhere along the way, Thush slid in that it was my birthday, so they bought us a round of Bangkok Fizzes. We clinked glasses: “Pip-pip,” I said, to which Jerry said, “Pip-pip? What the hell is that?” “I don’t know,” I said, then, “No,” I said, “actually I think it means ‘good-bye’. But it sounds good here.” “I love it,” he said, “I’m gonna say it all the time when I get back to the States.”

Jon insisted on paying our bill, which was sweet, and then he gave me the chocolate that came with it—which means he rocks. Midnight just gone, we pointed them in the direction of the Victoria tube station and waved across the street. “Pip-pip!” we called down Grosvenor Place. “Cheerio!”

I want to see the movie of these two guys making their way through Europe, Jerry the straight-guy foil to Jon’s spiky-haired party boy. “I like lounge,” Jon’d said, and here he’d grooved to an un-lounge-like beat: “Dk-chk dk-chk dk-chk dk-chk.” Jerry’d be played by John Cusack, maybe, and Jon by, well, maybe Bud from “Married...with Children”. That bit where the Dutch guy offers Jerry a line of coke? We’ll call that “inspired by a true story”.

They head back to America tomorrow, tonight wrapping up their ten days on trains, planes, and automobiles around Europe. “I’m going to watch ‘Eurotrip’ all weekend,” Jon’d said, and he probably will, too.

I tease, but really we liked these American boys, because, COME ON, who doesn’t like goofy American boys. Especially tonight, especially after having had to hear, a surprising number of times, actually, over the past month, how disliked Americans are here. Tonight, I say: Get over it, people, I don’t have time for this drama.

It’s like I said when I’d been here a week and Ren was telling me the Brits nurtured a distaste for the Americans: it’s not rational, it just doesn’t make sense, you can’t really hate a nationality. But then I kept hearing it, from all quarters, and for a while there I found myself trying to tone down everything I said or did—and I’m not even American! At the end of a series of particularly frustrating days, Thush called to say something about something, and ended up having to hear me bluster about: “I just want to stomp around my house and swear in my goddamn American accent!”

I was silenced, I suppose, I silenced myself. Didn’t know what to say, or, really, how to say it, even.

But then, after so many speechless days, I wondered why I was doing this, why I was suddenly so hyperaware of my words and my actions, because, sure, I think there’s some embarrassment to being an American in the world these days, what with the dodgy president who, I see, today, according to the headline in the Guardian, claims that God told him to invade Iraq—

uhhh—

so, okay, yes, el presidente gives Americans a bad name—

but the thing is, “Americans” is different from “an American”—(and a New Yorker, well, that’s something else completely)—and the thing is, I have very many brilliant American friends, and America has taught me a lot and given me a lot and, hot damn, America is alright.

London is unexpected in ways like this, by which I mean I did not think—and it was foolish of me to not consider this, I guess—that leaving America would make me nostalgic for it, and, more significantly, make me think about what America is to me, and about how much America has formed me in the last ten years. I spent the last ten years fighting against it whenever someone said I was too American, and now here I am defending it.

Anyway.

Funny thing, twenty-nine: one day you wake up and you’re twenty-nine, and you think, I don’t have time for this drama, and you just get on with it—

because it never ends, does it?, for I still remember that girl, Chandra Whatshername, my first year at university in the American Midwest, oh, she was mean, that one, she flicked back her hair, long and brown and straight, and she said, because I didn’t have an American twang, “Why don’t you move to England, since you like it so much?”—

you just get on with it, Chinese eyes and a funny accent, and—pointy purple flats, Kishimoto sneaks, starry cowboy boots, it just doesn’t matter—you’re out the door and into the world, eight gold bangles jangling down the street.

Jonny Goodrum from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this goes out to you.