Confession #16
I Don't Speak English
I once went to a cocktail party in London......a
real swank and high-class sort of affair in South Kensington, one
where the chief amusement of this particular crowd of the upper-class
English snobbery that was in attendance that night, was to try and
provoke yours truly into a burst of some kind of outrage that would
reveal and expose me as some kind of American simpleton and hayseed.
But I knew exactly what I was dealing
with, I had experienced this sort of thing many times before during
my time in this city, and even if these people were practically
begging me to descend into some kind of outraged cliché----“yeah,
well, without us you'd probably be speaking German these days”-----in
order that I might become an easy target upon which they could unload
a torrent of resentments related to their lost empire upon me. But I was having none of it.
Hell, this wasn't my fight, I was just
a student of art abroad and in nowise responsible for the fortunes or
misfortunes of their country, and I was not going to be baited into
venturing anywhere near this trap. And there wouldn't have been much
sport in it, anyway----or so I thought!
I had already faced much worse than the
mere daggers of whispered innuendo that this “polite crowd” was
capable of assailing me with. Like that time when I had been up north
in Yorkshire with my father on an antiques buying trip a year or two
before, when I had kinda-sorta-accidentally headbutted this guy one
Saturday night in a pub. He was the boyfriend of a girl I knew, was
on leave from the British navy and was a veteran of the Falkland
Islands spat. I had only been fooling around with him and didn't mean
to hurt him, but I had misjudged the velocity with which I thumped
his head and it nearly knocked him out. When he recovered he was
fuming and I could see that his first semi-rational thought was to
make a run at me and I was getting ready to absorb the first blows----but then he didn't do anything. As we stood there
staring each other down, eyeball to eyeball, I could see very clearly
in his eyes a doubt and fear that checked his furry.
I saw this again one night in Soho,
when two bad boys---and I mean real hardened cases with absolutely
nuthin' to lose----got me cornered in a compromising situation and
were threatening me with every degradation and vice that had ever
been dreamed up in the pits of hell unless I coughed up a thousand quid. But it just wasn't gonna happen, they had clearly made a
mistake thinking that this clean-cut Yank in a Brooks Brothers coat was some
kind of easy prey. I understood that I was in a completely vulnerable
position and in truth I was even scared myself---but I knew I had to
keep my cool and not reveal anything of my own concerns. I was
reassured by the fact that on my pants was a belt with a big brass
buckle that would make a real impression upon someone's skull if and
when push came to shove. And I was not altogether unfamiliar with
fighting where the odds were stacked against me. In fact, I had been doing it my whole life as the little brother of a big
brother who did not hesitate to resort to fists when wanting to
enforce his will upon me. And I had fought against my rivals and
sometimes friends all through junior high school and had to fight
practically half the upperclassmen of my high school during my
Freshman year, seemingly after every football practice, at every
party I attended, and for what I have never quite been
able to determine.
But there in that cellar club on a back
street of Soho London all I knew was these damned hooligans,
no matter how big, how tough or how hardened they might be, were not gonna
get one pence outta me, not then, not ever. They would have had to
kill me first! So I stood preparing myself for what seemed inevitable
to come, a real tough fight and probably a real brutal beating that I
would have to take before I would be able to untangle and extricate
myself-----but alas, it never came. The threats grew louder and more violent in description but these guys never moved so much as an
inch closer to me. And then I saw it, that same doubt and fear that I
had seen in the eyes of the sailor up north. I knew in that instant that the tables had turned and that I had gained the advantage and
that when pressed it would allow me to walk calmly right outta
that place, which I eventually did, and right between them as if I was Moses walking
through the parted Red Sea.
But anyway, there I was at this party
in South Kensington, determined to keep my cool and keep my hands and
mouth clean on this particular night when among so-called gentle people and so many pretty
ladies----but then I heard one distinct provocation coming from a dim
corner behind and over my right shoulder and spoken in a volume that
was just above all the chit chat going on so that it was just able to
reach my ears. I cannot recall his exact words after all these years but the guy who was speaking apparently had an American colleague----but no mere
ordinary Yank, mind you, but one of the “right kind,” that is,
one who was well bred, well mannered and housebroken to be
deferential to his British cultural superiors. And that's not all: this mythic and apparently far superior compatriot of mine also supposedly had one other attribute that made him especially esteemed by these once haughty imperialists and
Italophiles: he read Dante Alighieri-----and in the original old Italian
language!
God help me! I was in real
trouble this time! This was the sword that had finally pierced
through every layer of the armor of determination and poise that I wore. It
stung and I knew that this repartee must be answered: “Well," I replied, "I
sing along to The Supremes and The Four Tops when driving in the car-----and in the
original American!"
And then I ran for my life!
Kenyon
15 June 2019
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