Cream Cheese Bagels and Mutual Intelligibility

So I’m in this trendy German café, a place called Miner’s Coffee, when I begin to feel it: a remote tumbling, a just-what-is-this? commotion in my abdomen. I had just finished my coffee, which could have been better, and was now faced with a choice: Would I leave the café—which I’d been frequenting for the free wireless internet--or find something there to eat? After a weighing of options, I choose to stay and take care of business with the most obvious German cuisine within eating distance: a cream cheese bagel.

I stand up, stretch, and make my way to the register. Even though I already know what I want (after having sighted it from my oversized, albeit very modern seating arrangement in the corner), I still look at the menu to provide some semblance of decision-making. Three seconds suffice. I reestablish eye-contact and let my demands be known.

„Ich hätte gern einen Cream Cheese Bagel.“

The barista, whose angular hair looks as if it had been dried on the Autobahn, squints.

„Bitte?”

Strange, I think. After making a few hold-on sounds that register in neither language, I find it again on the menu, spot it in the glass display, and repeat my order confidently.

„Ich hätte gern einen Cream Cheese Bagel.“

Silence.

Granted the café was loud, and maybe his aspiring guitar-player deafness and my tendency to mumble formed a combined effort of miscomprehension, but his blank stare was disarming me. Loathe to say it again, I resort to the universal language of pointing.

“Das.” I say.

The barista follows my invisible finger laser to the now unfortunate choice of sustenance.

“Ach!” he aspirates very germanly, turning back to me somewhat tickled, “Einen Creeemchezz Beeyghil!”

Years of learning German and avoiding trendy chains such a Miner’s hadn’t prepared me for this moment. Frozen Strawberry Shake. White Chocolate Mocha. Apple Pie Latte... I realize that he misunderstood me not because of my German, which is not always perfect, but because of my English. It was a bit too accurate, a smidgen too native sounding. I clearly ruined things with my flip of the English switch, sounding like that French snob in my Critical Theory class only in reverse. But I couldn’t help it: the menu, prominently displayed above the counter (for easy pointing), is almost completely in English. What else was I going to do?

“Ja, genau,” I confirm, preparing my most authentic German accent. “Einen Creeemcheezz Beeyghil.”

Einen Creemschezz Beeyghil. We finally understood one another and the minor lesson in communication had been learned. Which would be this: there was nothing proprietary about language. It may have been English, the language I grew up speaking, but it was also, for all intents and purposes, German. In Miner’s coffee (pronounced meener’s coffee) I could have played the language prick and corrected everyone I heard ordering a Schnappehl or a sandvich, but that would have been both irrelevant and, by consensus, wrong.

“Danke.”

I collect my change, wade through the smoke and return to my enormously modern chair. The bagel tastes approximately like the floor, but I finish it in a couple of breaths. Although my brief encounter amounted to pretty much nothing in the increasingly bigger picture of cultural ignorance, for the moment, it made me hear the words --so dear to my Long Island upbringing (see below)-- like, totally ueber-differently.

Wrong Island: a rant

Rising ever so expectantly, so curiously from the lower portion of New York State like a swollen equine member is a piece of suburbia I like to call home: Long Island.*

The island is long, yes, (118 miles), and like most islands, surrounded by a substance called water. But unlike most islands, Long Island (which also looks like a deformed lobster claw) is surrounded by a mysterious, phonetic fluid called wawtr.** Alarmingly, this wawtr has penetrated its denizens every vowel, changing words like chocolate (chawklit) and god (gawd) in the most magical, post-apocalyptic way. Ask them where they’re from. Go ahead. They’re all from the Lawn Guyland. Poor bastards.

Like many towns on the island, mine is named after a conquered Indian tribe. Our school team was named in their honor: The Warriors. True to our subjugated brethren, we too knew what it was like to lose, to be the E for Effort underdog. Looking back at it, however, maybe if we had been called the name of some rugged, off-road SUV, we would have won more games. Hindsight...

The place has a certain charm –a passion, even--that blossoms only in the midst of road rage. Every time I’m back for the holidays, I’m reminded of this. No matter how long I’ve been away, I still manage to remember everybody’s name as soon as I’m back on the road. It’s nice to know that fuck truck is still around, cutting people off just like old times, never signaling or parking correctly; always a pleasure to know that tony in his modified Honda civic --with its gloriously low suspension, flagellating mufflers, and anally stimulating bass--doesn’t require my daily presence to reach his full potential. For those who couldn’t bear to move away, I salute your service.

Though, I never really appreciated Long Island until I moved away –and to Germany no less. When meeting and conversing with these Germans, I’m often be asked where I’m from. With a smile, I throw down my ace.

“I’m from New York.”

This would normally be sufficient proof of me being cool. New York City, for many, is a world onto itself; a kingdom in the European imaginary that dissolves any distinction made between the city, the state, or the individual who misleadingly claims to be from there. But the difference between Long Island and NYC is super-sized, galactic. Fearing the worst, I wouldn’t push the precision agenda too far, but sometimes, some of the more discerning conversationalists –most, I assume, with doctorates in Geography—would call my bluff.

“The city?” they’d ask, meaning Manhattan, their eyebrows providing the are-you-really-from-Manhattan? italics.

“Well,” I’d say, clearing my throat, “just outside the city. Really close. Long Island. Minutes away. You know it?”

As I would find out, most knew only of Long Island ice tea, the popular and efficiently volatile drink sold in most German bars. For all they knew, Long Island was a brand name. For all I knew, they weren’t completely wrong.

The island, which I sometimes to refer to as Wrong Irand, has a lot of parking lots: sprawling, consumer-strewn fields of asphalt that constitute, in my opinion, the cultural thesis of the island. Cars are separated by lush, verdant medians, offering small sanctuaries for plastic bags and feral shopping carts. Mountain ranges of yellow speed bumps keep the mood buoyant as you destroy your suspension—ha, ha! the sparks –so pretty!—and teach you that you should pace out life instead of rushing through it like an ambulance. (Remember: you can shop tomorrow, too!). Sure, there are parking lots everywhere the world over, but for some reason it seems that we do them better –with theatrical flair and efficiency. Without parking lots, of course, the economy would crumble; high school kids would have nowhere to drink or discover their sexuality; citizens would have no forum for public debate, would rebel, die of hunger, set fire to historical buildings, or vote improperly. The very health of the State and the individual relies on these labyrinthine, get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way arenas.

But the circuitry of malls and starbucks alone wouldn’t make our Lonely Planet guide any different from most places in the US. What makes Long Island really stand out is its seemingly endless list of luminaries. Lindsay Lohan, Amy Fisher, Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, the Baldwin brothers, Howard Stern, to name but a few. Yes, that’s right: we are sexy, at times a bit risqué and dangerous, but sexy…and funny, too! We also have The Hamptons –do you have The Hamptons?—which makes everyone on Long Island famous by proxy. In addition to our authority on the red carpet, we enjoy an important literary tradition: Walt Whitman is now the name of a mall and a multi-leveled industrial center located poetically in Huntington (his birthplace). A few minutes away from this gem lies the white-collared hamlet of Melville (named after good old Herman), which –thar she blows!—happens to be home to the island’s most important corporate pasture! Read it and weep.

But our greatest literary references come clearly from the oldest fiction writer Himself, Gawd. The biblical import of Long Island is indisputable. Just look at the names of certain towns –Jericho, Babylon, Islip –just try to deny that it isn’t anything but the chosen land. Wait, you whisper in prayer, just who started all this Holiness? Why, no other than Charton Heston –I mean, Moses –err, I mean, Robert Moses. Yes. Robert Moses. Although Mr. Moses didn’t have the honor of naming these towns (who names towns anyway?), the mogul / evil suburban mastermind did manage to name a lot after himself. After coming down from the mountain (which we will associate here with his ego), he read these Ten Commandments of Urban Planning, changing everything:

1. Thou shall erect monuments in thy honor.

2. Such monuments may be identical and exceedingly phallic

3. Thou shall displace struggling families in order to father a network of highways

4. Thou shall name two highways after thyself

5. Thou shall sanction beaches, one named in thy honor

6. Thou shall charge much to park at these aforementioned beaches

7. Thou shall build many bridges and give the wretched a chance to escape

8. Thou shall charge much to escape

9. Thou shall be responsible for –but not limited to—a future of domestic commonplace, endless commuting, monopolized transportation, easily-delayed and expensive monopolized transportation, high taxes, cell phone bans while driving, bad drivers, soccer moms, little league dads, PTA meetings, bake sales for the Spanish club, heavily-chlorinated tap water, wawtr, gateway drugs, that tight-shirt with gold chain look, real estate prices, really cold supermarkets, bowling alleys, dangerous postal employees, teenage angst, Debbie Gibson, home improvement, and the Mets.

10. Thou shall inspire the weak to stay, procreate, and never leave.

Long Island’s infrastructure wouldn’t be what it is today without Robert Moses, who I sometimes affectionately call BoMo. And maybe, despite being a racist, immoral, tycoon of impunity, he did do some good for the island. And I admit, there are some good things about the place –my friends and family, for example. But having lived there for most my life, I found it natural to want to write about its ‘challenges,’ to share with the world my painfully common experiences and reflect on my plans for recovery. This post, which I imagine will grow and expand into other things, was a piece of cautious, tough love, optimism at its most handicapped and should only read with a short term memory.

*This may seem a bit crass, I know, and I’m sorry –beginning this way is truly inappropriate, but unfortunately, I was never given the option to be from anywhere else.

**This has been most likely scientifically proven and notarized by several British-sounding linguists as authentic.

Marginalia

Infidelity isn’t an easy subject to write about. When the real thing happens to you –and not that inbred, chair-flinging fool on Jerry Springer, the consequences can be earth-shattering. You do all the crazy, clichéd things: tell your friends (those who you ditched after things got serious) that you “can’t believe this is happening,” that “you’re better off,” that “[…] never again [!]” Driving alone in your car (you’re now destined to be alone) you ask the steering wheel “what was going through their head?” But the steering wheel has no idea, and neither does your ex-partner. Like most phenomena that attend a guilty shrug, the only explanation is that it...well, it just happened.

This leads me to a reluctant confession: during some of the more questionable times in my otherwise virtuous life, I have been a little less than faithful, a little south of the monogamous border. Let’s say, I’ve dabbled, played the game, seen what’s out there –and I’m not proud of this. But before you begin judge, hear me out: just because I cannot stay true to just one book, read it to the end, without interruption or shameless abandonment, does not make me any less of a reader than you, reader.

I start with all the right intentions. I go to the bookstore with just enough money for one book. After some flirtatious perusing, some cradling and fondling –Can I help you find anything today?—I return all but one to the shelves –No, thank you. Found what I was looking for—and make my way hurriedly to the register. Even Odysseus had to tie himself to a mast. Not sure what he paid, but mine cost only $15.

Later, however, after reaching the twentieth or so page of my new book, I find myself hovering over a word for too long. This is how it begins. My eyes may be starring at the page, dutifully, behaving like good boy scouts, but my mind is elsewhere, frisky and anxious. Then it catches my eye from across the room –a book I started but never finished, bought but never read—and its pages are whispering. I look away ashamed and continue my hovering. This time, I tell myself, will be different.

Hours later, chapters later, I return to the first book racked with guilt. Books are spread and spent on my floor, resembling some kind of crime scene, as I reread the last sentence, softly and tenderly, with promise of change. But it’s no use. I’m distracted again. I’m thinking of those descriptive lines, those delicate metaphors. Before I know it, I’m walking across the room again, bookmarks are falling to the floor, and I’m nose deep in another book. I look to the mirror on the opposite wall and can hardly believe what I see.

Last time it happened, I thought I could handle it. And for I while I could. Organization was key: The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire on Monday; Roth on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings; Thursdays free (a me-day); Friday some Mitchell. (These are generalizations, of course.) But by Saturday I started mixing up protagonists’ names, plots were overlapping, print stains on my hands, unfamiliar paper smells. Just like the week before, I was losing it.

I’m not sure what I actually get out of reading since it’s such a rare ceremony that I finish a book (maybe if I finished that book on Psychoanalysis, I could relate this to a fear of death.) Sometimes, it seems I spend more time in bookstores buying books, or contemplating their purchase, than actually sitting down and reading them. I buy more than I consume. But I’m learning to accept and understand this as my inventory grows. Where books were once my bag of chips before dinner, my empty carbs, they are now a delectable buffet that never ends. They are like wine. Certain words or ways with words may go out of fashion, but ink will never spoil. I’ll break them out at the right time, for the right occasion –maybe even finish them if I’m in the mood. And although I won’t do this at the rate in which they migrate to my shelves, at least I know, despite my textual trysts and promiscuous cross-referencing, that I’ll never be alone.