Shana from Scranton.

24. March. 2010

Term is over, and many of the students in our program have started to trickle out of Oxford, either to return to the States or travel in Europe. Mostly, this doesn’t affect me too much, as I haven’t gotten too close with many of them. Tomorrow, though, my favorite person I’ve met here is leaving. Shana from Scranton.

So, of course, she wants her last day to be awesome.

We start the day off hungover. A bunch of us went out the night before so that everyone could say bye to her that way. The party atmosphere is an easier goodbye than personal ones, I find. Goodbyes are tough no matter what.

After bitterly complaining about our heads, we head to a place called Tiger Lily for me to get a tattoo. On my right leg, I got the crest of New College, the college I’m associated with here. Shana, a few weeks before, got a similar one (although a lot more elaborate than mine) on her side.

The tattoo artist’s name is Mad Mick, and he is a middle-aged British punk, with a myriad of tattoos on his body and a thick accent that sometimes makes it difficult to understand what he’s saying. He’s fucking great.

He introduces us to Dave, an Irish fellow who works odd jobs and who speaks six languages and has a few Masters degrees in Linguistics, one from Oxford. He and Mick make quite a pair. Mick always winds Dave up, much to Dave’s annoyance. So they constantly bicker, but in a way you can tell is really endearing.

After Mick finishes my leg, Shana and I get some food at this wonderful pub owned by a Welsh vegan. This is of note because most of the meals at most English pubs contain meat; The Royal Blenheim, on the other hand, not only has vegetarian options but vegan ones. And also, the owner is a charming guy.

We all – Mick, Dave, Brian, Shana and I – go out for drinks at a place near Tiger Lily. I wish I could explain how hilarious Mick and Dave are when they’re together, but I’m afraid I can’t. They have this dynamic that belongs on a television show on HBO. For example, the argument they have over “Star Trek.” Mick always thought that Captain’s Log was Captain Slog, an invisible character, instead of the journal of Captain Kirk. Dave simply can't believe this. The ensuing conversation had me in tears.

After three or four beers, Shana, Brian and I head over to Christ Church to see David Eagleman, a neuroscientist and a fiction writer who wrote a wonderful book called Sum, which consists of forty different hypotheses for the afterlife. The stories are, of course, not about the afterlife at all, but about human life. They are insightful, clever and moving.

David Eagleman, though, is slightly less charming than his stories. He walks out in front of the audience and stands before us in a superhero pose silently, holding our gaze for a few moments before beginning to read from his book. He is a very brilliant man, just a little pompous. He makes an annoying comment about how the New Atheists and religious people have created a stark world of either/or, whereas Eagleman qualifies himself as a “possibilian.” The silliness of his term notwithstanding, his remark about the so-called New Atheists irks me, as he creates a false dichotomy between a handful or writers (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc.) and a juggernaut like Christianity. Eagleman is merely trying to place himself separately from all of those extremes so that he’ll seem inoffensive to all and so the unoffended will buy his book.

I ask him a question relating to this.

He says something about the “hypothesis” of atheism.

I say, “Is atheism really a hypothesis, though? Isn’t it more of a response to other hypotheses?”

And he agrees. He says that Dawkins, for example, would completely agree with his “possibilian” assertion that certainty is nearly impossible to have on matters such as the nature of the universe, etc.

So even though Dawkins would agree with his “possibilian” philosophy, Eagleman still insists that there is a fundamental difference between him and the New Atheists.

Whatever.

Besides Eagleman, the Oxford Literary Festival has allowed me to see a bunch of writers: Philip Pullman, Martin Amis, Dave Eggers, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, and a handful of other panel discussions or lectures on other topics. I was supposed to see Richard Dawkins himself, but he cancelled a few days before the event. Bummer. The Festival was incredible, anyway. It was so inspiring; after every event, I go home and write, or brood about how I’m not writing. Either way, I feel like a writer, as these seem to be my two default settings: writing or berating myself for not writing.

Afterwards, we all head home. Shana still has to pack her bag, so that is the next endeavor. As she does so, we reminisce about the term. We recall staying up all night writing essays about Shakespeare. We both had our Shakespeare tutorials on the same day (in fact, right after each other), so we’d often end up pulling all-nighters together.

We remember walking a few miles along the Thames, away from the city, to a remote restaurant called the Trout.

Or the time we went to a party at our friend’s house and I got to play guitar, something I’ve only gotten to do a few times here in Oxford, and how we played songs and sang obnoxiously and drunkenly loud.

Or the time we ate Jesus Waffles in Cambridge.

Or, most importantly, the animosity that existed between us in the beginning. We used to not really like each other, probably because we’re so similar in attitude. And how even once we became friends, we would still fight. Vociferously. I’m not talking about little tiffs; I’m talking about screaming arguments.

Once, while walking home from a party, we fought so loud and vehemently, a cop stopped us to ask if everything was okay. What was funny was how suddenly we broke out of the fight and laughed. Our fights were never about anything significant, and, truthfully, we sometimes enjoyed them.

Shana and I have had a lot of fun together, and it’s a bummer that she’s leaving. It makes me see that my time here will soon come to an end. Oxford has been a kind of purgatory for me, a break from my life but one that didn’t simply stop it. Instead, it pulled me out of my life, allowing me to view it from the outside, meditate on it, and progress personally even if everything else was, in a way, on pause.

Shana is bright, funny and, once you break through her tough veneer, very sweet. I’m going to miss her around here.

We spend the last few hours hanging out, relaxing, as she has a bus to catch in the morning. It was a great day, the kind of day we wish we had more often here. A good last day for Shana.

The next morning we walk to the bus station. As I said, goodbyes are tough.

I hope things work out for her and that she’s not stuck in Scranton, PA for too long. It would be a real shame. She deserves a lot more.

So, here’s to Shana P. Murphy from Scranton! Good game, kiddo.

Some Paine, Some Gain.

I’m sorry to do this to you, but take a gander at the following quote: 

“It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force of local prejudices, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town in England divided into parishes, will naturally associate most with his fellow parishioners (because their interests in many cases will be common) and distinguish him by name of neighbor; if he meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea of a street, and salutes him by the name of townsman; if he travel our of the county and meet him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions of street and town, and calls him countryman, i.e. countyman: but if in their foreign excursions they should associate in France, or any other part of Europe, their local remembrance would be enlarged into that of an Englishman. And by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe, are countryman; for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale, which the divisions of street, town, and county do on small ones; distinctions too limited for continental minds.”

Thomas Paine wrote those words in his infamous Common Sense in 1776. Before coming to England, I read these words and had an epiphany that should have been obvious: I was going to be, for the first time really, an American. I was going to represent an entire country. Now, I don’t use the verb represent in the diplomatic sense, or the way a teacher will warn a student on a field trip: “Jon, remember, you’re representing Pickerington here. Don’t act like a brat.” I simply mean that my identity will be, to use Paine’s term, enlarged.

The only time the idea of my nationality ever came up before has been in that rah-rah rallying nationalistic sort of way exuded during the Olympics or after a major tragedy (or especially, I would imagine, if there were a tragedy at the Olympics).  But, now, I thought, I was going to be seen as an American and that identification would mean something: it may mean that someone will hate me automatically or incorporate that fact into their judgment of me.

Or it may mean nothing.

So far, I have yet to experience any anti-American sentiments directed toward me. I’ve had conversations with Brits in which they describe their anti-American sentiments, but there always seems to be a presupposition in these discussions that their feelings do not include me.

Maybe this is because I ask them straight out.

I’ll say, “What are your feelings about Americans?”

And they say, “Well, we think you’re kind of bullies, aren’t you?”

Or, “You do seem to love stuff, things, in the States.”

Or, “I don’t know…sometimes you seem to be a bit…fat.”

They come across as reticent to express these stereotypes. Sometimes I can’t tell if this is because they don’t want to offend me or because they are merely reaching in their minds to find some sort of answer to be polite.

Although, one drunken Brit kept insisting that “England is still the most powerful country in the world. We really are.” And his friend kept saying, “I don’t think that’s true, mate.”

Anyway, the point being that I haven’t yet felt too much like an American, in the sense that I thought I would. But, there is one aspect of my identity that has become pronounced.

Skateboarding.

I’ve always had a strange relationship with skateboarding. Actually, that’s bullshit. I began to have a strange relationship with skateboarding as a direct response to my growing relationship with fiction-writing and literary academia. The two, I thought, did not match. I exaggerated the disparity in my head, imagining that the two could not work in concert with each other, as if I had to pick one: Was I a well-spoken, well-dressed, wine-drinking, literary intellectual? Or was I a loose, torn-jean-wearing, beer-guzzling, curse-ridden skaterdude? On different days, one felt truer than the other.

Since arriving here, I haven’t been able to skate in the conventional way that much. That is, I have not been able to skate spots. I mostly go out on the road in front of the complex I live in and skate flatground. This usually satisfies the basic urge I have to skate, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Flatground is to skateboarding what a driving range is to golf or masturbation is to sex: it can be fun, but it in no way compares to the real thing.

No one in my study abroad group skates and, obviously, Oxford is not overflowing with skaters, so I am relatively alone in this. And when English people walk or ride their bike by me while I skate, they show absolutely no interest. In America, people will at least get annoyed. I’m not saying people are always supportive or encouraging; but they at least show some awareness. The people passing me, at best, pretend like I’m not there.

So, it may be due to this loneliness or the sense of isolation, but, now, when I watch skate videos, I get sad. I miss skateboarding, and I miss my skater friends. And in missing them, I see how much skateboarding is a part of my life – nay, is one of the most important components of my life.

A story:

A friend of mine is getting a tattoo. It’s her first, so everyone from our flats goes with her for comfort’s sake. It’s a gorgeous day, so I decide to bring my skateboard. At this point, I have yet to venture into Oxford with my board. This is for three reasons, the last of which is the most pertinent: 1) the weather has been shitty; 2) I’ve been busy with school; and 3) I’ve been weary of the attention a skateboard would elicit here.

You see, skateboards are fucking loud, especially when you’re on a well-peopled street during the day. In America, people turn their heads, realize what it is and, most of the time, move on with their day.

Here at Oxford, everything is different.

It’s as if nobody in Oxford has ever seen a skateboard before. Earlier, I mentioned the fact that no English person showed interest in me when they passed me. Well, that was not at all representative of how they are in the city centre. Now, as I skate through town, they stare at me with a mix of curiosity and disdain. Or, more aptly, I can’t tell if they’re more curious or disdainful. Either way, they can’t keep their eyes off of me.

We come to Cornmarket, a very busy street lined with stores and restaurants. I shouldn’t skate here, but the ground is so smooth and the day is so beautiful and I’m so elated to be skating something that isn’t the street in front of my apartment, I say fuck it and skate.

Now, people are afraid, a feeling I’ve never quite experienced before. They don’t know that I’m not going let my board slip and hit them. To them, I am a volatile image.

I draw so much attention that a man playing guitar for money asks me to move away from his spot.

What strikes me during all of this is how proud I am of my skateboard. Though I was worried about what Oxfordians would think, I now realize that I don’t care. I want to skate and that is that. I think about the skate videos I’ve been watching lately and how they now make me feel. I see clips of groups of guys traveling around and hitting spots, drinking and laughing and filming. This is who I am. Skateboarding means the world to me. Now, this is something I’ve always known, but it took me coming to a prestigious university to study literature for me to really know it, to allow it to exist in me naturally, like eye-color or shoe size. Riding around Oxford, amongst scholars and intellectuals, I’ve never felt more like a skateboarder. It feels great.

Until, that is, a cop tells me to stop. Some things are the same everywhere.

Experiences of an (Actually) Awkward Atheist.

(That's me on the left, creeping.)

26 February 2010

It’s Think Week at Oxford: a collection of events – talks, writing workshops, stand-up routines – centering around atheism, skepticism and humanism. How cool is that? In regards to religion, England aligns with me much more than America. I like any country that puts Charles Darwin on their money. There are still areas in the States in which the teaching of evolution is still a debate; in England you see his face every time you buy groceries.

Unfortunately, Think Week coincides with my busiest week. I have so much reading and writing to do that any free time I have must be spent working. So, tonight – Friday night – is the only night I get to go to any of the events.

The first is a lecture on the subject “Public Perceptions of Atheism,” a potentially fascinating topic. In the last few years, with the popularity of books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, atheism has been discussed much more than it was when I was growing up, which is a great thing: the idea has become more normal, more pronounced. But with its newfound exposure comes a litany of stereotypes and misconceptions. The media – mindful of the faithful – tend to depict them as bullying old men and treat them as almost a novelty, as if they’d written books about a conspiracy theory. And women are completely underrepresented in regards to atheism. I know women that are atheists. Plenty, in fact.

Anyway, it’s a fertile subject. The lecture, however, is not as interesting as I’d hoped. The woman (see!) giving the talk is young and smart – no question – and she runs a wonderful organization called Camp Quest UK, which is an off-shoot of an American organization that is, to quote the website, “the first residential summer camp for the children of atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and all those who embrace a naturalistic rather than supernatural world view.” She is, by all accounts, an awesome woman.

But she barely covers any of the issues she brings up, which, to be fair, are the exact ones I just mentioned two paragraphs ago, so it’s not as if she doesn’t mention those issues. It is a short, un-thorough talk, during which she constantly checks her notes in order to not say very much.

Next, I head to a bar called Copa to see a comedian named Iszi Lawrence. Her act was advertised under the title “Experiences of an Awkward Atheist,” but awkward she is anything but. With messy, dyed-white hair and a fucking cool (no other word, sorry) outfit, she holds herself very assuredly on stage, handling the silences and the missed jokes like a pro. Not that there are too many of those, but a good test of someone’s stage presence is their ability to tolerate a miss. Iszi passes.

Oh and she’s also funny. Did I mention that?

We talk afterwards, and she’s charming. She obviously practiced at conversation from having performed all around and talking to people at her shows. She’s the kind of person who will never let the interaction get awkward, a trait I often find in performers.  I mention this because this demeanor, when detected, often makes it difficult to tell whether or not the person views you in a way that is particular to you. Is she interested in what I’m saying, or is she just tolerating me? Or, more probably, is she viewing me in a way that isn’t rapt or bored, but as just another nice person who liked her act?

Do not take this as a criticism of Iszi. It is about my neurosis. You see, eventually, these questions are answered in my head in a negative way. I think to myself: Oh, so who do you think you are? A charming, good-looking comedian, who does a lot of shows and meets a lot of people, in all probability, does not take too much notice of me. Now, this doesn’t make me feel shitty or anything; I do not base that very legitimate fact that she meets a ton of people as a means to feel bad about myself. That would be dramatic.

She and some people involved in Think Week head to another bar. After I finish my beer, Tim –one of my roommates – and Mark – a guy we met at the bar – head out to follow them. When we arrive at the bar Iszi had mentioned, we find it closed, with Iszi nowhere to be found.

So I separate and go to a club alone.

* * *

The club is called the Bridge. There isn’t a very long line, but I am kept outside because I don’t have a girl with me.

“We’re only taking mixed groups right now,” the bouncer says to me.

“Okay.”

So I stand there with one other guy as many groups are allowed in ahead of us. The guy in front of me is eventually joined by a friend, who convinces him to leave. Now I am the only standing there being kept out.

Then, suddenly, after a huge group plows past me, I realize now that I am the only person in line. There is not a single other person standing with me. At this point, it can’t even be accurately called a line. One person is not a fucking line. It is exclusion.

I stand defiantly in line for ten minutes by myself before the bouncers let me in on pity. The image of me standing there is probably pathetic. Not only am I alone and outside, but I’m pretty underdressed. I did not intended to go to a club tonight; it was a drunken caprice that began with the stimulation of Iszi.

Finally, I get in, but now I am in a low mood, as the prolonged humiliation of the line didn’t exactly give me a confidence boost before entering the club. Also, the delay (and the sadness) sobered me a bit. I therefore get a shot and a beer as soon as I get inside.

The Bridge has three floors. Ostensibly, each floor has a different theme. This claim is dubious. I imagine that this was true at one point, but that eventually the various themes merged into one.

Standing in the club, I realize that I’m not cut out for this kind of thing. I think about my first night in London, about an incident that I forgot to report in my first blog. I can’t believe I didn’t; it was a very prescient moment for me.

So, after all the logistics with my flight over here (which, you’ll recall, was diverted to Scotland where we stayed the night in a hotel, and then I stayed a night in London because we got in so late), Adam and I went to a bar. After I’m sufficiently inebriated, I start ruminating on this trip. I think, I’m going to be different in England. I’m going to use this time as a way to get over my insecurities. I’m going to start approaching women in bars and clubs, risk getting rejected, as I’ll never make friends in England otherwise.

I look around and see a beautiful girl sitting alone at a table. I take a deep breath, make sure no one is watching, and walk over to her.

“Do you want to dance?” I ask.

She looks me up and down and says, “No."

As I walk back to our table, I think, Nope. I’m not going to be different. I’ll probably be the same as I’ve always been.

I do not have a strong will.

Now, standing in the Bridge, I again become certain that I will probably be the same as I’ve always been.

I order another beer and wonder whether or not I should just go home. A girl approaches the bar next to me and orders a drink. While she waits, she glances over at me, which, in England, is a lot more significant than in America. I lean over and say “Hello,” but she doesn’t hear me. So, I’m about to repeat myself when the bartender comes back with her drink, and she pays and walks away.

By this point, it’s late and I’m tired. And when you’re alone in club and not dancing, there is nowhere for you to stand without seeming weird and nowhere to sit that doesn’t take up more space than necessary (like a table or booth). It emphasizes my loneliness. 

So I finish my beer and leave. As I do, the bouncer from earlier gives me a look that says, “Yeah, I know how it goes. Sorry.”

I go home and sleep, as alone in my bed as we are in the universe.

The Violence and Giddiness of Literature.

It is one of those moments that comes to us sometimes. We are in the midst of something meaningful––or something important, or, oftentimes, something that contains the quintessence of a particular time in our lives––and we are aware of its importance. We are aware that what we are feeling somehow expresses an ordinarily quiet notion: that slippery abstraction of living, of experience, of time.           

Maybe it’s just me.           

Being a fiction writer has its disadvantages. One of which is this constant desire to summarize and qualify. I can’t experience anything meaningful without attempting, mentally or verbally, to express that meaning. In fact, two close friends of mine (you know who you are) were discussing me once––I was told this later––and they both commented (lamented may be a more appropriate verb here) about how I could never simply let a moment pass, how I couldn’t just let life happen, how I had to talk about everything all the time.          

Well, as a response to this, I said that since fiction is my passion, it makes complete sense that hyper-loquacity has become my tendency. Think about it: there isn't a single moment of silence in a novel or short story. Every moment is linguistic. Even moments of silence, in fiction, are described with words. So, for me, something isn’t as meaningful––nay, may not contain any meaning at all––unless it can be articulated in prose. Doesn't make me any less annoying to my friends; it just explains why I do it.

So, the pregnant moment I’m having walking down an English street may be the result more of my odd eccentricities than of any actual, objective significance.

Apologies if this is so. But – I have to keep reminding myself – it is indeed my blog.

* * *

Oxford still maintains the tutorial system it started with hundreds (yes, hundreds) of years ago. Recently, this system has come under fire, as it is not exactly financially tenable. There is simply not enough money (even for an absurdly well-funded University with as many well-connected alumni) to continue a one professor/one student ratio. In other words, Oxford may have to become more like a regular university sometime in the near future. 

Until then, I’m lucky to have been able to experience the tutor system. It is encouragingly independent. You are assigned reading (a lot of reading) and given an essay prompt, which are ordinarily vague and open-ended, sometimes frustratingly so. The purpose of this is to inspire the student to grapple with the topic instead of arguing one point tirelessly throughout the piece. The most prevalent criticism I’ve received for my essays has been a (relative) lack of counterpoints.

Anyway, it’s Friday and today I have my tutorial on James Joyce’s Ulysses. My tutor, a unanimously well-liked man named Edward Clarke, asked me to meet him at his flat. So my friend Shana walks me there, as it is kind of confusing to find. The walk there is pretty, but I don’t notice too much of the wonderful nuances until afterwards.

The tutorial is exactly what I had envisioned when I thought of my time in Oxford. Edward Clarke is an admirable man: charming, extremely erudite and personable. He seems to be interested in engaging with the texts, in culling from them something new, something excited, whatever the avenues it takes to get there. He's also, it should be mentioned, very handsome.

We discuss the opening sections of the novel, which, with one notable exception, are not nearly as esoteric as I had anticipated. He says that that’s a universal assumption aimed at Ulysses, that it’s some sort of literary trick, that it is only interested in proving its cleverness and its author’s education. He says that there is real value in it, though, that it contains some urgent truths about humanity that aren’t obscured from so-called “regular” people, and that it’s the greatest novel of the twentieth century.

He has me read my essay out loud (which I'm also pleased about). I wrote an explication of the opening paragraph of the novel. Our dynamic is fun and intellectual, a combination my younger self would simply gush over. You see, I view this Oxford experience as another in a long, long line of tests to myself. When I was in high school and I was a fledgling intellectual (which means, essentially, an arrogant asshole), I always wondered whether or not I was a fraud, whether I actually enjoyed academic pursuits or if I merely wanted to be perceived as someone who did. I had always visualized this test as a sheet of paper with a line drawn vertically down the center: on one side there was a check for every time I couldn’t finish a novel because it was too challenging or gave up on a story or turned in a lazily written essay or didn’t know about history or didn’t care to know about history or, in general, every time I felt the pang of mental exhaustion that seemed disproportionate to its cause.

So, as I’ve gotten older, when I find myself enjoying––or, more aptly, feeling completely propelled by––a scholarly occasion, I remember that old feeling of presumed fraudulence and I make an imaginary mark under the side of the argument that has the checks for every time I pushed through intellectual difficulty or overcame a struggle in fiction or impressed a professor with an insight or a turn of phrase or, in general, every time I realized that this measurement I set for myself when I was younger is utterly irrelevant and that life isn’t about proving the validity of the claim of yourself, that, instead, it’s simply about doing, motivations notwithstanding.

I leave the tutorial elated. I think to myself, I’m at Oxford. I’m really doing this. I just spent an hour discussing, in depth, a novel that always seemed beyond my scope with a man of whose literary acuity I would be lucky to achieve a portion.

I walk down his street, which now strikes me as markedly English and profoundly beautiful. The houses stand tightly next to each other, with nothing between them save an inch of paint. It is a sight an English person would find banal, but to me it speaks volumes about my progression in life. I wonder down that street with a renewed sense of conviction that what I'm doing is important. I've spent a lot of time in my life regretting missed opportunities and hypothesizing about alternative lives, but here on Edward Clarke's street, I do not think about anything else but what I am doing.

It’s funny: most of my time thus far has been spent in relative quiet, reading and writing. In about a month, I’ve written over 15,000 words of essays, blogs and fiction. I’ve read four Shakespeare plays, two novels and a portion of Ulysses. It has not been some conventionally exciting time, but it has been supremely fulfilling. I find myself (a phrase Cecily Miller will appreciate) thinking of this passage in The Biographer’s Tale by A.S. Byatt, one of the novels I’m reading for one of my tutorials:

“There are a very few human truths and infinite variations on them. I was about to write that there are very few truths about the world, but the truth about that is that we don’t know what we are not biologically fitted to know, it may be full of all sorts of shining and tearing things, geometries, chemistries, physics we have no access to and never can have. Reading and writing extend––not infinitely, but violently, but giddily––the variations we can perceive on the truths we thus discover.”

Violently. Giddily. Yes, that about says it.

It was a wonderful moment.

Week Two: Electric Boogaloo.

22. January 2010.

It's Friday night, and Matthew Ranger, the student president of New College, the school within Oxford to which I belong, brings us out to the New College bar. The itinerary phrased it as an “induction,” but it is really just a night out. The bar is sparsely peopled: besides our group, there is a smattering of other New College students, playing pool and chatting.

An observation: there is a frustrating amount of good-looking, dashing men here at Oxford. They’re well-dressed, well-educated, and well-spoken. In my head, they sit around discussing Proust or modal logic, drinking expensive red wine and laughing at witty jokes I don’t understand.

In other words, I have low self-esteem.

A man walks into the bar who matches this description exactly, except he has the added bonus of being exotically foreign (he’s from Lisbon, it would turn out). I spot him just as I’m going through that self-deprecating rant in my inner-monologue, and I think, “See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! In comparison to a guy like that, I’m the most vanilla person you could meet.”

About twenty minutes later, I notice that the man is sitting on couch near the pool table, by himself. As I am similarly alone, I approach him and ask him what brings him to Oxford.

He tells me he was here to give a presentation on climate change and that he’s returning home to Portugal tomorrow afternoon. His name is Louis (with the s pronounced); he’s 31; he’s married; and he works for a company that invents in carbon-based processes. He’s an impressive fellow: he speaks five languages and does things like give presentations at the University of Oxford.

I start telling him how the bright, good-looking men of Oxford are intimidating and discouraging.

He says, “It is not about good-looking. It is about confidence.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s my problem. I lack confidence.”

“You see that girl over there,” he says, nodding in the direction of the bar.

 I do.

“You could get off with her if you wanted.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You just have to approach her.”

“Well, this isn’t even about sex, so much. It’s also just about meeting people to hang out with. I literally have no friends here and my apartment is starting to get to me.”

“Let’s meet some people, then.”

It’s about ten, and the New College bar is beginning to close. Most of the British students left a while ago.

Louis asks Matthew where those kids were heading, and he tells him he’s not sure. But he says there’s a bar not far from here we could go to.

So, Louis and I head out into the Oxford night.

* * * 

We arrive at a pub called The Half Moon. Pub is a very appropriate word for, not just because that’s the English parlance, but also because of its décor: everything’s wooden and old-timey; there are a bunch of loud Englishmen talking about rugby; and there’s a fireplace and an upright piano in the front.

A man gets up and reads some lousy poetry. He’s a local, and he clearly hangs out at this pub all the time. Probably knows the owners. He reads a poem about his cat shitting all over his house and one about rugby and another in Spanish (which Louis says is terrible).

Then two young guys play some acoustic music, and they’re not half-bad. They covered Joe Dassin’s “Les Champs-Elysées,” a song I love.

Then, another poet reads, except he’s a fucking treat. He orates boisterously and proudly, reciting poems like one entitled, “Mediocre Man,” a poem celebrating the fact that he’s completely mediocre in everyway. He is hilarious.

Louis and I decide that this place, while fun, is not what we’re looking for. We finish our drinks and head out again.

 * * *

As we walk down the streets, Louis convinces me to ask a few different groups of girls about places to go.

“You see, that way, if they are at all interested, they may invite you come along with them.”

I ask two groups and get two completely different replies––one groups says to go back the way we came to find some clubs; the other tells us the center of town is what we want––but both share one thing in common: they were not interested in continuing the conversation beyond politely pointing me where to go.

Undeterred, we press on.

Finally, we find a club. There is a short line out front––a promising sign––so we stand in it. Inside, after checking our coats (1 pound per coat, thank you very much), we get some drinks and find the dance floor. There are about forty or fifty people dancing and probably another forty or fifty standing outside the dance floor staring at the people dancing. After some boasts of confidence (by which I mean shots of whisky), I step onto the dance floor.

Now, I must preface the next development with some comments about my dancing. For those of you who haven’t seen me dance, let me just say that when I was younger, I inadvertently adopted the Michael Jackson-style of dancing. I would not say that I’m particularly good at it; it’s just how I learned to dance. I’ve noticed, over the years, that not that many people dance that way. As a kid, I didn’t realize that. I just liked watching Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.

So, anyway, I get out there and start dancing. Eventually, people begin noticing my dancing and give supportive nods and gestures to me. Nothing extremely complimentary; just people being nice.

Then, this guy comes up to me and kind of challenges me through dance: he does a few similar moves and nods to me, as if to say, “So? I can do that shit, too.”

Now, I’m drunk. So I take him up on the challenge. As if they understood, people cleared a circle in the dance floor and we go at it. I go first, essentially doing what I was doing before he interrupted me. Then, he goes, doing comparable steps to what I just did. Then, we it comes back to me, I do a few little numbers and then jump into “the worm,” a move I used to do all the time at 7^th grade “Teen Nights.” Then, I get back up and pointedly made come-on gestures at my competitor. At this, the crowd applauds and then turns to my challenger, as if to ask what his response will be. His answer? He bows out.

Applause for the winner!

Next, I go to the bar to get a drink, which literally takes me a half an hour. When I come back to the dance floor, Louis is waiting for me.

“Nice moves,” he says. “But you did not end up with the girl.”

He points to my challenger, who is dancing with a number of attractive women.

“Well, that’s okay,” I say. “I had a blast. That was fucking awesome. I can’t believe I was in a dance-off!”

We start dancing again, and, after a song, I end up dancing next to this beautiful girl in a white dress. I move a little closer, testing the water; she doesn’t push away. After a few more tests, we’re officially dancing together. For about thirty seconds.

Because suddenly, the loser of the dance off pushes me away from the girl and says something in a harsh tone, but I couldn’t hear him.

I start to walk towards him, but Louis grabs me and says, “Let’s go.”

I nod in agreement and we split.

 * * *

We arrive at the corner of George St. and Cornmarket.

Louis says, “I’m going this way,” pointing towards New College.

I say, “I’m going that way,” pointing towards Hythe Bridge.

“Well,” he says, “then must part.”

We shake hands.

“Thanks for taking me under your wing,” I tell him.

“Jonathan,” he says, “You do not need my wing. You did very well for yourself tonight.”

“Thanks, Louis.”

“It’s nothing. Remember: confidence. Now go make some friends. Just try not to dance with their girlfriends.”

We laugh and part ways.

It’s raining now, and I have quite a walk before I’ll be back to my flat. But as I begin the journey, I realize that I couldn’t care less. I am happy.

The Very Definition of Auspicious.

7.JAN.2010

I’m sick. And tired. But not sick and tired the way my mother used to say she was sick and tired. I’m not fed up with anything. I’m not at the end of my rope, as it were. I am literally sick and tired. I have the nastiest cold I’ve had in years, and I got about an hour of sleep last night. From the looks on the faces of the other passengers, they aren’t doing too well, either. When the captain comes on the intercom and perfunctorily announces, “Welcome aboard flight 238 with service to London, England,” an infinitely cheerful man near me claps. No one joins his merriment. 

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that I’m not utterly excited about my travels. No, no, no. In fact, I’m more excited about this trip than I have been about almost anything in my entire life. But there is a point of ailments and exhaustion that pushes any excitement into the background. As the plane takes off, all I can think about are my mucus and my eyelids.

The flight is uneventful. I read a little, eat a little, sleep a little.

About an hour before we’re scheduled to land, the captain announces that, since England has been hit with the worst snowstorm in fifty years (!), our plane has to be reverted to Newcastle, a town which Google Maps tells me is 283 miles from London. A collective groan goes through the plane. I, though, am unbothered. As I had not made any hostel arrangements in London and as I don’t have to be in Oxford until the next day, any diversions in the mean time are actually quite welcome. So, I’ll get to see Newcastle. Cool!

Then, after 20 or so minutes, the captain comes back on to tell us that, in fact, we’re being reverted to Glasgow, Scotland, which is about 10 hours away from London. People are pissed. Even the cheerful fellow seems pretty angry. Still, I’m unmoved. For some reason, I simply don’t care. Whatever happens will happen.

We land in Scotland and, after a lot of standing around, are driven to a Marriot Hotel at about one in the morning. At the airport, I get a drink at the bar. As I’m standing there talking to Swedish woman about the weather, a young English guy approaches us and says, “Hey, they’re loading us onto buses, now.”

I thank him and say that if he hadn’t told me, I may have missed it.

He says, “Well, I saw the board,” pointing to my skateboard.

His name is Adam, he lives in London, and he skates. We become instant friends. At the hotel, we order pizza and get a drink. Then, we watch this strange English reality show called “Raise It, Kill It, Eat It.” The premise: people experience the world of meat, learning how animals are slaughtered and processed. In the episode Adam and I watched, they showed a pig being castrated. It squealed vociferously. It was horrible.

The next day, we’re awakened at eight AM to go back to the airport. Once there, we wait in a prodigiously long line for hours. Then, we are told that there is no flight. Then, we are told to get back in line. Then, there is a fire alarm and the entire airport is evacuated. It was a comedy of errors. The Glasgow airport has an inexplicable slogan posted on its walls everywhere, and its enigmatic weirdness perfectly captures the experience: Pure Dead Brilliant. No one (even some Scots I talked to) knows why an airport would want to have the word “dead” associated with it, but there it in big, bold letters. This phrase encapsulates the mix of fun and misery, of wonder and bewilderment, of excitement and annoyance of this travel experience. On one hand, seeing Glasgow (albeit through the bus window) and having a storied journey is wonderful and amusing. On the other, I’m fucking sick and tired and would like to get to Oxford.

Then, finally, some progress. We board the plane and take off after having spent approximately 5 hours in the airport. The flight to London is short. When we finally arrive, the captain announces “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to London,” and this group of strangers––who, by this point, have developed that kind of camaraderie people in such circumstances often develop––are truly happy. There is a we’re-all-in-this-together vibe on this plane. I’ve met some great people: the Swedish woman (who’s name I never caught), Adam the skater, Carrie, an American at Cambridge College, and a few others. We’re strangely close.

When the cheerful man claps at the captain’s announcement, everybody joins him.

 * * *

At Heathrow, we sit on the plane for an hour because ice has frozen another plane to the runway. When we finally de-board, it takes them three hours to deliver our luggage to us. When all is said and done, it’s 9:30 PM, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with the people at Oxford to let them know I’ll be late, which means I don’t have a place to stay there. Of course, I could find a hostel, but it’s late and––I’ll say it again––I’m sick and tired.

Adam, thankfully, offers to let me crash at his place, which I immediately accept. The serendipity of skateboards.

Adam’s flat (oh, let me use the nomenclature) is in East London. It takes almost 45 minutes to get there by the Tube. The London metro system is enormous. Like New York, London makes Boston feel like the metropolitan equivalent of training wheels. Boston is a big city and it can be navigated by public transit, but it is an easy city. The fact that I was once intimidated by Boston shows how much I’ve progressed in the last few years and how much Boston has, in fact, prepared me for other cities. For instance, the next morning, as I attempt to make my way to the bus station, I figure it out very easily without the slightest bit of anxiety or confusion. Boston has not shown me how other cities do things (as London’s system is quite different: you have to tell them where you’re going and they charge you based on that, then you use the ticket to exit the station), but it has prepared me to learn quickly.

Adam’s flat is perfect. It is the place of a young Londoner, exactly the kind of place I hoped to see while here. I want to see the tourist sights, of course (the Globe, the London Bridge, etc.), but I also want to experience what it’s like to actually live there. And Adam is the sort of dude I might know if I lived in London.

I meet his roommate Fran and a couple of his friends. We walk to a club called Catch, for which we wait in line. I’ve never waited in line to get into a club. Outside, we drink cans of beers because you can drink on the streets there. It is a very liberating feeling. The club is densely crowded and, for the most part, typical. If I were not in London, it might even be annoying. But as I am in London, it’s wonderful.

The next morning I snap awake, hungover and tired. I call Oxford and finally reach someone, and, to my great relief, the man at the Study Abroad office says that I haven’t really missed anything. I tell him I’ll get there in a few hours, which he says is fine.

I say goodbye to Adam (who was supposed to accompany me, but, alas, is too hungover), and head to the bus station.

I see London in daylight. It is incredible: the ornate architecture, the different phrasings (like let instead of rent), the cars on the opposite side of the street, the equivalent companies, and the coaches. This is my first time in a foreign city. It’s a remarkable experience.

And again I’m sick and tired.

* * *

The ride to Oxford is, thankfully, unencumbered by difficulty. I’m on the bus essentially alone, on the second level in the front. I get to see a lot of non-contextualized London (which I’ll see more of in the future), and the English countryside (which, not surprisingly, looks like most countrysides, with the exception of the profusion of sheep).

When I arrive at the OSAP (Oxford Study Abroad Programme), I am immediately plunged into a walking tour and a party, during which I meet the other students in the program. Before I even get to my apartment, we go out for dinner and drinks. By the time I get to my room, I’m drunk again.

The next day I rest.