An American Slob

Four Years Ago

It was Sunday morning and my arms and legs were slumped about the sofa as I stared at the flat screen TV in my living room.  Under the belly-portion of my wifebeater tank, inches above the mesh shorts I wore to bed every night but never washed, I heard a grumbling from my belly - something about when was I going to learn to eat dinner before I went out for a Saturday night on the suds with my buddies.  It was a message from my slowly-expanding, 25 year old tummy to remind me that it (my stomach) was not solely responsible for my bellyache and that maybe, just maybe, those seven longnecks I guzzled last night on an empty stomach should share some of the responsibility for this fuzzy feeling. 

Football wouldn’t start for another hour and pizza or some fries would have been significant treatment for my particular brand of illness, but darned if I was going to de-starfish my limbs from this sofa to make or order any food myself because why should I have to do anything?! Sure I could have called delivery, but my iPhone was probably somewhere all the way over in my bedroom and it was Sunday and I felt pretty sure the Bible said something about not working today.

To distract myself from the shitstorm of misery life was heaping upon me just then, I reached for the Sunday paper and ink pen on my coffee table.  I reckoned I’d do the Sudoku and then draw a penis or two on otherwise harmless characters in the Sunday Funnies.  This would distract me, I hoped, from the mountain of hunger and discomfort I felt until the Kansas City Chiefs could take the field and divert my attention from my own suffering to theirs.  Feeling uninspired by the boxes inside boxes inside boxes, I skipped the Sudoku and decided I’d just get right down to business donning Doonesbury with a whopper when I realized that the ink pen in my hand, the only one in the house for that matter, was dry.  Oh man are you serious? This can’t be happening.  I lapped away at the ballpoint - futilely hoping that my saliva might restore the Bic back to life.  How could I have only one pen in the house and it didn’t work?    

My belly hurt, there was no football on, and I was hungry.  In spite of it being Sunday there was no sign of manna from heaven and to top it all off my pen was now rebelling.  I knew somewhere in the world someone must be having problems almost as demoralizing as mine but it was hard to imagine who.  In a last ditch effort to salvage a day that seems to be getting away from me already; I pitched the worthless pen at the wall.  Dammit! I told the wall when it rejected my offering.  How can life be so awful even on the weekends?  Somehow I managed to slump even deeper into the sofa. I’d gone through 6 of the 7 steps in the grieving process now, and it was time for step number 7. Acceptance.  I needed to accept the inevitable fact that if I were going to arouse a picture of Doonesbury or get a pizza and avoid starvation, I would have to get off my couch today.

I could have summoned my inner workingman and journeyed to my bedroom in search of clothing alternatives to my current Eminem-inspired ensemble, maybe some jeans and tennis shoes, but that was serious work and I was determined to keep this Sabbath holy, God help me. Bumbling towards my room, I agonized over the mountainous obstacles the modern man must hurdle just to survive in the 21^st century.  Cavemen didn’t have to put on jeans and a tee shirt every time they left the house.  They didn’t have to drive all the way across town every time they wanted a Papa John’s pizza. 

Then I decided Screw It.  I wasn’t going to go change clothes.  I was going-out in exactly the same clothes I had on plus flip flops. The end.  White tanktop, mesh shorts, and floppy sandals.  Why should I have to dress myself up when I was only planning on visiting Walgreens to buy a pen and then Papa Johns to snag a pizza?  It wasn’t a job interview and the only people I’d see were the worthless college dropouts manning the registers. I grabbed my keys. 

I flip-flopped and key-jingled out my front door; angry that I had to leave my house and looking remarkably like the Real Slim Shady in my white tank, musky mesh shorts, and sandals.  None of this struck me as odd at the time because who puts on real clothes just to go out to Walgreens or Papa Johns? 

Well, it turns out everyone else in the world except Americans, really.  But my younger, less traveled self didn’t know that and probably didn’t care.  What I didn’t know at the time was that Americans are the most informally dressed people in the world and that I was one of the sloppiest.  I didn’t know that on every other corner of the globe people refused to leave their homes without doing themselves up a bit first.  And back then it didn’t strike me as odd that me and my countrymates often woke up in our bedtime clothes and went out without changing.  However, that was before my mind had done a little changing of its own. 

Four Years Later

Oh, you’ll see America in a completely different light after being abroad for a year.  Things that used to seem normal will now shock you.  Get ready for Reverse Culture Shock.  Everyone and their gay cousin was going Nostradamus on me predicting how I was going to experience “Reverse Culture Shock” when I got back to America.  When I told people I was heading back stateside for a visit, they started in with their unsolicited prophecies about my trip and how weird everything would be to me. This Reverse Culture Shock concept smacked of a steaming heap of cockamamie, but just the same I told folks "thanks" for their dire warnings and assured them I’d brace myself.  Seriously, though, how much could America possibly change in one year?  Surely not much.  And could I really change so drastically in one year that my old home country would shock me?  No. Way. 

Then I touched down in Dulles airport, Washington DC after a year of traveling abroad and holy fashion-catastrophe, Batman! What had changed, apparently, was my perspective on dressing.  What a disheveled mess the American folks had turned into in my absence.  Either I was experiencing Reverse Culture Shock indeed or a nearby Goodwill store had detonated and left everyone in DC wounded with wildly tasteless and ill-fitting clothing.  I hadn’t even exchanged a fist bump with an American yet and already I felt shocked.  Were Americans always so sloppily dressed or did that all happen while I was away?

Sloppy, unkempt, and without anything even resembling a nod to fashion, grown men gallivanted up and down the airport in gaudy t-shirts that hung limply to their knees or even worse, wrinkled and oversized khakis half hidden by fat bellies that hung loosely over woven leather belts.  I looked down the long terminal and witnessed a live catwalk of anti-models: women slouched into flannel pajama pants and pink baseball caps, men who were either unaware or unashamed of their gangly beards and saggy sweats slunched on top of whatever seating they could find.  Everywhere I turned I saw people who had evidently just now rolled out of bed at, I looked at my watch, 11:00 a.m?!

Apparently nobody had bothered to change clothes during that window of time between their alarms beeping and their rides leaving for the airport.  Were my countrymen and women always so reluctant to change into something more attractive and I just didn’t notice it before, or did the clothes stay the same and my mind changed?  In every other place I’ve visited during the last year, I’ve witnessed people who have accepted the awful but inevitable truth that people will make judgments based on appearances.  United Arab Emirates, Japan, Oman, Qatar, Switzerland, and Holland – everywhere I went people were spruced up, tidy, and dressed well.  In other countries, fashion is something that people have in the same way that Americans have facebook accounts; which is to say you’d be in the minority if you didn’t.

For the rest of the world formality is the norm and for Americans it’s a chore.  Americans skip formality in much the same way that we don’t skip dessert. Foreign men wouldn’t think of leaving home without a collared shirt and if they did wear jeans or a tee out they certainly wouldn’t pair it with flip flops the way I tend to do.  What they would do is press and tailor their jeans and tee with the same precision that I do with my dress clothes and then they'd wax their hair just so, shine up some dress shoes, and stroll out in style.  No mesh shorts.  No wifebeater tanks.  Maybe people wear those things when they’re on their own couches at home, but they’d never leave the house without slicking up first. 

And the fairer sex abroad do up their looks just as vigilantly.  A Japanese, European, or Arab woman, if she were being abducted from her home in the middle of the night, would grab a change of clothes as her abductor yanked her out of her bedroom.  Even if a foreign lady is ugly, she typically gives off the impression that she's hot with her clothes and the way she carries herself.  I hadn’t seen a single pair of scrubs or PJs on a lady for over a year.  In Dulles airport, my initial step off the plane revealed at least three American women wearing pajama bottoms and pony tails tucked into ball caps.  One lady who had evidently just swallowed a Boeing 747 rumbled slowly towards a Starbucks in pink cutoff sweatpants and mustard stained shirt.  I wondered if perhaps a jumbo jet wasn’t such a bad snack when doused in French’s, and then I wondered how I hadn’t noticed this or cared about all this physical appearance business before.

What I saw in that terminal in DC shocked me.  It was the Reverse Culture Shock I’d been warned of;   my fellow Americans looked terrible.  While I hadn’t noticed the change taking place in me, apparently my standards for how-someone-should-look-like-in-public had changed.  I’d come to expect people to look fashionable and well kept, even if they were poor or ugly.  Women were meant to look snappy and beautiful; men were meant to look fashionable and respectable.  At Dulles airport in DC, people looked so ugly that I wondered if even the tide would bother to take them out.

I kept walking the direction of the baggage claim thinking about how disgusting and sloppy Americans looked while marveling at the parade of people who reinforced this observation when I stopped to order a coffee.  When the barista put the coffee on the counter I reached towards my back pocket for my wallet and was surprised to find that my pants did not have a back pocket and that my wallet was actually in my carry-on bag.  Surprisingly, I found that my pants did not have a pocket on them because they were not pants at all but instead mesh shorts, slightly dirty and grossly oversized.  Astonished and suddenly aware of my own appearance, I looked below my hairy knees and there, on American soil for the first time in over a year, were my feet – slipped comfortably into a pair of worn out flip flops. 

I snatched up my coffee and quickly slipped into the bathroom, suddenly humiliated.  Gazing at the reflection on the airport mirror, I saw a guy in dirty mesh shorts and flip flops.  A guy whose shaggy blonde hair had not been cut in three months and whose beard had not been trimmed in weeks.  A guy who looked sloppy and unfashionable.  A guy who looked pretty much the same as he did waiting on his couch for the Kansas City Chiefs game to start four years ago.  What I saw was a guy who had come to expect others to look snazzy and fashionable but who had neglected to turn those standards on himself.  A guy whose mind had changed, but whose clothes had not.  An American slob.

An American Terrorist in Dubai

Halloween 2007 – Springfield, Missouri 


…So there we stood outside the bar in ripped leather pants.  We all had our long wigs, silver chains, and black eye makeup.  I had one of my old guitars strapped around my back.  Collectively we'd spent like $400 on the costumes but it was worth it because we looked exactly like Motley Crue.  Exactly like Motley Crue. Right down to the fishnet stockings on our arms.  We were ready to make our entrance into the costume party but before we did, my buddy Kyle reached into his backpack and pulled out 4 cucumbers.  We all looked at him like, Dude I thought we were invading this club as Motley Crue not characters from The Veggie Tales, but then he stuffed one down the front of his skin-tight leather pants and we all understood…


Two Weeks before Halloween 2012 – Abu Dhabi, UAE


When I get to this part of the story my friends at the table are in stitches. We are passively glancing through our menus. I’m offering up my best Halloween costume story hoping to spark some good costume ideas.  The Devil’s Holiday is just around the corner in the UAE and we have decided that we’ll all go to Dubai for the weekend and do Barasti, Dubai’s go-to-bar for expats. We’ve heard that this multi-level beach bar in the heart of the city is an international madhouse on Halloween, so it only seems natural that we attend.  


When we sat down to eat, though, no one had come up with an idea for a costume yet.  We’d talked it over some on our way to the restaurant, popcorning a host of unispiring ideas. A zombie? Nah, too trendy.  Maybe a superhero?  Are we five?  A ghost?  What?  And waste a perfectly good sheet? 


“Okay, look,” I interrupted as we sat down at the table and took our menus from the waiter’s hands,  “What’s the best Halloween costume you’ve ever worn?  Maybe if we tell some stories that will get the creative juices flowing.”  I scanned my circle of friends waiting for an onslaught of great costume stories but they all just rubbed their chins and blinked at their menus.   


“Okay, I’ll start.”  And that’s when I unraveled my Motley-Crue-Halloween yarn.  


“…But then he stuffed one down the front of his leather pants and we all understood. One of the guys, my buddy Tim I think it was, marched right up to the DJ booth and he demanded the DJ play Girls, Girls, Girls.  The DJ took one look at us in our world-class costumes, complete with leather bound cucumbers, and he cut the music mid Brittany Spears.  Suddenly Motley Crue was pumping out of the speakers and we were thrust onto the DJ’s stage where we fake-played our guitars and lip sang to a sea of cheering Playboy bunnies and Frankensteins. Every person there was singing along and cheering for us.  It was epic.  The place went wild!  None of us paid for a drink all night, and maybe it was just the cucumbers but the way I remember it we attracted far more lady attention than any of us were used to.  At the end of the night the DJ announced that there would be a $400 prize for the best costume.  They gave us each $100, just enough to recover the shameful amount we’d spent on the costumes."


"Ha!  Nice, Adam."  


"Love it." 


"Mate, your buddy Kyle sounds bloody brilliant."  


“So did that inspire any ideas?” I ask. 


“I’ve got it!” Cries Leah as she spanks her menu against the table.  “That’s what we need to do.”


“What?  Go as Motley Crue?” I ask, skeptically. I’m not sure Motley Crue would be as well received in Dubai as it was in Middle America.  "I think we need something with more universal appeal.  Remember we’re working with an international crowd here.  You’re Canadian and I’m American so we know Motely Cure, but most of the people at Barasti in Dubai wouldn’t know Motley Crue if Nikki Sixx snorted a line of coke off their eyelid.  Plus, there are way too many of us – The Crue was only 4 people.”


“No. We need to do a group costume.”


Suddenly there is life at our table.  Yeah, a group costume!  Eyes light up and menus are snapped shut and ignored.   We all offer up a frenzy of ideas while our waiter taps his foot next to the kitchen door.  


It doesn’t take long, though, for us to realize that this isn’t going to be easy.  In a setting like North America, finding a group costume that everyone at the party recognizes is a breeze.  What person north of Mexico doesn’t know who Motley Crue is?  We all have common culture and a shared knowledge base there.  But Dubai is not North America.  And Barasti is as Dubai as it gets.  


On any given night, hundreds of countries are represented at this one place. Clubs in Dubai are like the Olympics of socializing.  On Halloween even more so.  What costume could we possibly put together that would be recognizable to a trendy young architect from Italy, a swimsuit model from Brazil, a financial planner from India, a computer programmer from Canada, a surf instructor from New Zealand, etc?


“Maybe we could do the cast of a TV show,” suggests Heather.  


“Okay, good.” I say.  “What TV show has enough international exposure that everyone on earth recognizes its characters…Baywatch?”  The girls at the table all glance down at their chests and grumble.” 


Can't blame a guy for trying.  


“Maybe we could do a sports team,” An Irish girl at the table suggests?  “What’s the most internationally recognizable sports team?”


I pipe up before I give it much thought – “Maybe we could go as the Chicago Bulls during their dynasty with Jordan and Pippin…”


She nods agreement but says she reckons she’s not really into American football and she doesn’t want to wear a helmet all night.  Irish.  It’s getting obvious by this point that finding an international common ground is going to be hard work.  Eyes drift back to menus.  Fingers stroke chins.  Appetizers are discussed.  And then, just as our waiter sees a moment of silence and his chance to sneak in and get our order, Leah strikes gold


“I know,” She boasts, sending the waiter pivoting on his heel and back to the door.  “The one thing that everyone at Barasti will know is drinks. What if we all dress as different, you know, alcoholic beverages!?”  


Drinks.  That’s it.  No matter where you come from, if you’re at a bar you know about drinks. It’s brilliant!  My head spins with possibilities.   How did I not think of it myself?  A tall furry white hat, white skirt, and white furry boots transform a girl into a White Russian.  Knock the stuffing out of a decorative pillow and glue it to your belly and, wahlah, a fuzzy naval.  The opportunities are endless.  


“Like for instance,” Leah’s head is whirling with drink puns now too, “I could maybe wear a nametag that says Hi, my name is Mary and then all I need is some Heinz ketchup dumped over my shirt and I’m a Bloody Mary.”


“This just might rival your Motley Crue costumes, mate.”  


We have a plan! What we don’t have is any-idea that while the other drink costumes will garner mass approval from the swanky Barasti crowd, my drink costume will start an international squabble.  What we don’t have is the foggiest idea that my costume will reinforce the world’s worst stereotypes about Americans and that I’ll have to rip it off in a bathroom stall just to save myself from being slobberknockered into a Bloody Adam.  


“Can I take your order?”  This from the waiter who finally sees a window of opportunity to take our orders.  


“Can we see your drink menu?”


Halloween 2012 – Club Barasti in Dubai 


When we walk into Barasti there’s a live band bopping out Marley tunes while rich young jetsetters from around the globe dance under dazzling costumes. On down the beach a DJ pumps strobe lights and trance music over a crowd of girls dressed as sexy kittens and tan guys dressed up as a P90X endorsements.  In every corner there are fellas holding drinks and exotic ladies tossing their heads back laughing.


Leah, dressed as a White Russian, tells us she’s heading to the tiki bar to get our first round of drinks and what do we want.  Heather, whose skirt is made from Corona boxes and who has a lime stuck in her straw hat, says she wants a Corona – for consistency.  Shannon, who is dressed quite seductively as a Bikini Martini orders a Sex on the Beach, I suppose for consistency as well.


“Beer for me,” I say.  “Actually, I’ll come with you.”  I’m ready to introduce Barasti to the best-dressed drink.  I swagger behind Leah into a crowd of gyrating bodies, anxious to let people see our (specifically MY) brilliant costumes.


I’d spent the weeks between our meeting at the restaurant and our date at Barasti carefully planning and executing it.  I didn’t want to be just-another-drink in the group; I wanted to be the Crème-de-le-Menthe, the guy whose drink costume snags him high fives from trendy Italian architects and playful smiles from the Brazilian swimsuit models.  I wanted to be the hottest Toddy at the party, and I had put together what I thought would be the ultimate drink costume.


The Irish Car Bomb.  


For the Irish part, I’d dried up 10 orange and green fabric markers making my white shirt to look like the Irish flag.  My Irish buddy Finn had nodded his approval at my handiwork and told me that an Irishman should also have a tattoo on his arm.  Pog Ma Hon – he’d recommended - It’s Gaelic.  I’d tattoo the words down my forearm with green magic marker alongside a shamrock. (Irish?  Check).


For the car portion of the costume, I’d purchased a package of Hot Wheels from Toys R Us and strung them up on a chord that I hung from my neck.  (Car?  Check).  


Now for Bomb.  For the dynamite cartridges I’d purchase seven rolls of paper towels and liberated the cardboard rolls from the center.  After spray painting them red and waiting for them to dry, I had a friend strap them tightly across my midsection.  For the bomb’s timer, I’d gussied up a round piece of styrofoam to look like the face of a clock and attached it to the dynamite cartridges. (Bomb? Check).


My drink costume is top shelf.  And it's go time.


“Hey.” This from a guy I don't know who has grabbed my shoulder.  He stands a good six inches taller than me and he's yelling quite loudly to be heard over the band and the trance music.  His scrubs and the stethoscope dangling between his pecs tell me he’s supposed to be a doctor, but he looks more like a body builder dressed up as a doctor.  “What’re ya s’posed to be?”  His accent sounds roughly Russian.  


Leah sees me stop to talk to him about my costume and gives me an approving nod. You’re a hit! She tips an imaginary bottle into her mouth that lets me know she’s going to go ahead and get the drinks without me.  


“I’m an Irish Car Bomb,” I yell back at him.


“Ya, man.  I can see you have the bomb.  You are the terrorist for Halloween, no?  Where you are from?” Apparently the cars around my neck and my flag shirt are being overshadowed by the bomb strapped around my midriff. 


“America,” I say back.


“Huh?”


“AMERICA!” I practically scream it trying to be heard over the loud mixture of Buffalo Soldier and trance beats that collide around us.


The band resolves the song and for just a moment there is quiet.  “American?  In united ARAB Emirates.  Muslim country.  And you dress like the terrorist?”  He scolds me.  “This is stupid!”


“No, no, no. I’m not a…” But the music starts back up and the word terrorist drowns under electronic thumps and the intro to No Woman No Cry.  Where is Leah with those drinks?  


“This American -" He yells to no one in general, "- No good! Why you dress like terrorist to the party?”  He shakes his head at me, and then steps over to a table with 3 other guys, built similarly.  I duck into the crowd hoping to avoid being beaten with surgical precision by the enraged doctor and his cronies, but out of the corner of my eye I see him pointing me out to his friends.  They all squint my direction, crack their knuckles,  and take long drinks of what looks to be tall glasses of straight vodka.  


If you’re reading this and you’re American – there are some things you should probably know about how the world views Americans.

How the World Views Americans

1. America is a nation of Islamophobes.  The rest of the world has access to the same American News sources as we watch, (Including Fox) and they don’t approve of our Muslim bashing.  I’ve had countless conversations with people from every corner of earth and they all want to know how it is that Americans can be so intolerant – yes the 9/11 thing was horrible, the argument goes, but think about Hiroshima.  That didn’t make Japan or the rest of the world anti-Christian.  
2. Americans are ignorant because they don’t travel. The fact that almost half of all Americans don’t even have a passport is insulting to the rest of the world, for whom travel is inevitable.  Foreigners sometimes say, with obvious disdain, that I’m the first American they’ve ever seen outside of America.  How can you claim to the leader of the Free World, the argument goes, when your only experience with The Rest of the World is a weekend in Cancun?  
3. America is just the nation-version of the popular-girl clique at school.  We’re the ones that sit together at lunch and never let anyone else sit with us.  We don’t even acknowledge the other kids in the cafeteria.  Look at them, the argument goes, sitting there in isolation thinking they’re so great when no one else really likes them anyways.    

I slice through the crowd, hoping to avoid a beatdown and feeling a not a little silly that I’m reinforcing the worst American stereotype. And there is Leah, standing at the bar handing over her money in exchange for bottles and glasses.  I run over a couple people trying to get away from the pissed off Russians and I hope no one can tell I’m American just by looking at me. There goes another asshole American.  Always in a hurry and too rude to say excuse me.  


“I got you a beer.”  She says.  I’m relieved to see it’s a Tiger beer from Singapore. Not an American Budweiser product.


“Great.”  I take a swig and stand on the footrest of a bar stool and scan the crowd looking for my assailants.  “Listen, I think my costume is a little misleading.”  


She starts to say something, but before she can, a couple of guys squeeze up to the bar between us.  One of them looks at me; he’s not in costume and neither is his friend. They're both well dressed and look to be about my age. 


“Hi, mate.  Is that the Irish flag you have on your shirt?”  His accent tells me he's British, and to my relief he's neither big nor angry like the last person who asked about my costume.   


“Yes, it is actually. I’m glad you get it.” I say, still inspecting the crowd and ready to make a dash for it.


“Sure, mate, you’re the bloody IRA, right?  I didn’t know Americans knew about the IRA.  Hey, Michael,” He grabs his buddy by the shirt “This American bloke is dressed up as an IRA member!” 


Michael, who has just finished placing his order at the bar, looks me up and down. "Aye, lad.” He rolls out in a guttural Irish accent. “Is it the IRA, ya are?  Yer costume ain’t the kinda thing I’d be a wearin’ ere, but it’s bloody accurate it is.”


If you’re reading this and you’re American – Here are some things you probably didn’t know about the IRA.  I sure didn’t.

The IRA

1. For centuries England has been trying to place Northern Ireland under British rule.  Both Ireland and England consider the region to be theirs.  The IRA is a group of Irish guerrilla fighters who’ve killed thousands of Brits in their attempts to permanently claim the land.  
2. Members of the IRA usually speak Gaelic, Ireland’s original tongue, because they see the English language as another overstep on the part of the Brits.  The words tattooed on my arm - Pog Ma Hon –are Gaelic for kiss me arse, which is Irish English for kiss my ass.  A battle cry, I suspect, that an IRA member would say just as he pushes the detonate button.    
3. The IRA uses bombs, specifically car bombs, to kill British occupants and British sympathizers.  Although the relationship between Northern Ireland and England is mostly civil now, guerrilla warfare still goes on occasionally, and it’s a source of never-ending tension between the Irish and English.  Sometimes an Irish guy and an English guy will be chatting over a beer only to find out that someone in the Irish guy’s family was in the IRA and killed someone in the English guy’s family 10 years ago.  

Michael, the Irish lad, and this English bloke are now staring at each other.  My costume has stirred some bad blood between the once amiable neighbors.  The bartender has placed two beers on the table for them but neither one of them reaches for their drink.  


“No, no, no.  My costume is not IRA. I’m an Irish Car Bomb!”  


“Like IRA car bomb.” Says Michael. He doesn’t take his eyes off of the English guy.  


I try my best to make an appeal.  “No, not IRA!  I’m an Irish car bomb the drink, you know with Guinness and...”


Michael interrupts and looks at me now, “Look, lad, I’ve not ‘eard uh this drink.”


“Okay, well what I’m trying to tell you is that there is a drink made from Guinness and Bailey’s Irish cream.  You’re Irish for God’s sake, man.  Surely you’ve heard of it!” 


“No, lad.  Never ‘eard of it.”


“Nah, mate.  Me neither.”


If you’re reading this and you’re American – Here are some things you probably didn’t know about Irish Car Bombs.

Irish Car Bombs

1. They're completely an American concoction.  No one else in any part of the world, even Ireland, has heard of the drink.

And that’s when I see the Russian Doctor and his posse pushing through the crowd towards the bar looking for someone, presumably me.  Michael and his English friend are still having an awkward look at each other, no doubt wondering whose family killed whose, when I take off for the bathroom. I can feel people’s eyes on me as I push through the crowd trying to get to the safety of the restroom.  I hear words being spoken in my wake.  Words like “bomb” and “terrorist” and “bloody American.”  


The bomb part of my costume is apparently all anyone sees, and word has traveled quickly.  Did you hear that there’s some American idiot dressed as a terrorist here? Here we are in the most western-friendly Muslim country in the world, and this guy can't have a little tact even on Halloween night. Young Arab men, typically the friendliest people on earth, shoot eye darts at me as I push through them in queue to the bathroom.  


Safely locked in a stall, I peel the bomb off of myself and stuff it into the trashcan.  I lean up against the wall and stare at the ceiling.  And it's here that for the first time since I left, I long for America.  America, where I won over the Halloween crowd with a long wig and a cucumber stuffed in my leather pants.   America, where no one thought the Chicago Bulls were a football team and everyone knew the song Girls, Girls, Girls.  America, where I never had to learn about disputes between Ireland and England because my country always had enough disputes of its own to keep my mind occupied. 


Now that I've got my costume off, I realize that no matter how much I try to make myself out to be a world-savvy traveler; I'll always be mostly an ignorant American.  And that whole world-savvy traveler thing, that’s just a costume.