The Education of Francis

Copyright 2005 by s. light
This may not be reprinted without the author's permission.
_______________________________________________________________________

I had to go to Berlin. It couldn’t not happen. If we were going to Europe, then we definitely had to see Berlin. Maybe for some people, it’s nothing more than the place where the Wall came down, or for others, where the Wall went up. Then there’s my grandparents’ generation with meanings from before the Wall, of stormtroopers and swastikas. For me, all of those things were there, building blocks for this city that had been such a culture clash for so long, and now was totally open and redefining itself on a global scale. That was why I wanted to go there, and, as I would later realize, because this city had played a part in practically every event that defined our planet in the twentieth century. That, and the fact that I’m a bit of a U2 freak and they had recorded “Achtung Baby” there. Yes, I know; “Achtung Baby” would ultimately lead to the “Pop” album, where everyone just kind of went, “Huh?” But, damn it, “Achtung Baby” is a good album and damn it, I was going to Berlin.

Of course, we would end up cutting Berlin short. I have some family in Germany and we stayed with them an extra day or so because they kind of guilted us into it. And after Berlin, our last stop would be Amsterdam, where we were meeting some friends from home, and well, it was Amsterdam; there was weed to smoke. So, Berlin was cut to two full days and change.

It was on a Wednesday that we arrived, in the early evening. A couple of beers in the basement bar under our pensione and we called it a night. Okay, we called it a night after she made me use the “Helmut” voice. “Helmut vants you, fraulein. Oooh, dat is goot!” The next morning, having breakfast and checking out (they were full for the rest of our stay), we noticed a flyer for a guided walking tour of the city given by residents who spoke English as a first language. This was the kind of thing we hadn’t done, preferring to explore each city on our own, rather than be at the mercy of a tour guide. But, since we were cutting Berlin short and the flyer said the tour didn’t last longer than four hours, we figured it couldn’t be that terrible. Besides, they listed everything we knew we wanted to see: Brandenburg Gate, parts of the Wall still standing, even the Victory tower (where the angels sit on the head of the statue in Wings of Desire). The second tour of the day met at the lightpost in front of the McDonald’s across the street from Zoo Station at 2:30.

2:30. Lightpost. McDonald’s. Zoo Station. Chocolate shake.

There’s a few other pairs of non-European twentysomethings hanging around, until finally, this guy comes over and collects everyone for the tour. He’s about 5’5”, short brown hair, goatee, naturally tanned, wearing a pullover sweater with a shirt underneath, olive green pants, and carrying an over-the-shoulder satchel (not a man-purse, mind you, but what a guy would carry in college). His accent is English, sort of. No, it’s Australian. His name is Francis and he’s from Australia and he looks like a 7/8 scale model version of George Michael without the rock-n-roll fashion sense. Later, Pam would notice his protuding round buttocks and “Faith” would become our song of the day.

Francis begins by finding out where everyone is from. A pair of girls are the only other Americans, the rest of the group being Canadian, or so they claim. I don’t remember where the girls are from, but somehow it gets out that we’re from Texas (if he didn’t ask, we told him, because, throughout our trip, we hoped the iconic mythos of our home would make people like us more than just being from “the States”). Francis realizes he has his work cut out for him, since “the American education system doesn’t care at all about the rest of the world.” Hitler and the Wall are about all that our group has come to associate with Berlin. He actually rolls his eyes at us. We’re walking through Berlin’s version of Central Park, the Tiergarten, heading towards the Victory tower.

“They used it in a movie, I can’t remember which,” Francis says of the monument.

“Wings of Desire,” I chime in.

“Oh, right, and U2 used it in a video. They recorded one of their albums here, too.”

“Achtung Baby,” I don’t chime in. He’s beginning to get on my nerves and it’s only been ten minutes. This has the potential to be a very long four hours.

He starts to give us a history of the park, telling us it was first used as a hunting ground by the king. I think he said it was Frederick the Great, but it could have been a Wilhelm. (I’m an American and therefore lacking in the education department.)

“Andy Warhol did a painting of the King. Maybe you’ve seen it?” Francis asks.

Blank stares from the group.

“What? Are you all culturally destitute?” He is incredulous.

I told myself I was not going to be a brash, blowhard American. I told myself I was going to accept and respect different points of view; the U.S. is not the entire world (thank God). I told myself I would let my horizons be broadened. But, this is just getting to be too much.

“Is this how Australians treat paying customers? I didn’t shell out $40 to be insulted by a squirrely little twit. I have seen many Warhols. Famous ones. In person. I just haven’t seen one of a German king. I don’t think not having seen one specific painting qualifies me as culturally destitute!”

Unfortunately, due to Francis’ smaller stature, his jaws are closer together and don’t have to move very far in order to work and produce speech; he begins talking again about something else before I am able to give voice to my protests.


We continue on through the park and to the Victory tower, where we hop on a bus without paying for a short ride. We end up standing next to George Michael, er, I mean Francis. He begins to make conversation about American politics. We do not tell him of our general apathy towards the government of our own country, as we do not want to be called yet another kind of destitute. We are from Texas so he starts on Bush and son, who will shortly announce his candidacy for President.

“We don’t like him. Nobody in Austin likes him. He’s not our fault. He’s stupid. We hope to God he doesn’t get elected. He can’t run a business, let alone a country. He’ll just call Daddy or Daddy’s friends for help. Please, tell us more about DaimlerChrysler’s new headquarters. That big, spinning logo sure is neat.”

Anything to change the subject, but he chooses to start in on Clinton and Monica and Hillary and even Chelsea. “He really got caught with his pants down.” This generates a chuckle from within himself. “What do you think of Hillary? She’s a real bitch, huh? And that Monica’s a little power-loving slut, isn’t she. Do they not realize what they’re doing to their daughter? But then, she doesn’t really have the looks, does she?”

We were hoping to get away from all this stuff by going to Europe; at the least we didn’t want to be bombarded by it every hour. And now, the guy who sings “Careless Whisper” is grilling us on the whole damn mess. Okay, so it’s just a guy who looks like the guy who sings “Careless Whisper.” Nonetheless, it isn’t what we feel like talking about. So, getting off the bus, we start to drift to the back of the group, catching up only when he’s talking about this building, or that monument. This goes on…


“The Wall used to go right along here.”
“You can still see bullet marks on the front of those buildings.”
“This was Checkpoint Charlie.”
“The river was mined.”
“We’re now standing on top of Hitler’s bunker.”


…until we make it into what used to be East Berlin, where we’re standing in a plaza bordered by three old buildings that mostly survived the war and were then restored; one of the buildings is the opera house. In the middle of the plaza, in the ground, is a scratched piece of plexiglass, through which we can barely make out some empty bookshelves. As it turns out, this was where the Nazis held their keggers, except they called them book burnings and there probably wasn’t a keg. Also, as it turns out, this is where VH-1s “Behind the Music” helps us win a battle on the European front of the Late 20th Century Culture Wars.

It starts with an off-the-cuff ‘80s pop reference: “Girl, you know it’s true…” and then the other American girls do a little Milli Vanilli shoulder shake/running-in-place move.

“Really,” I say, “only one of you should be dancing, since only half of them is left.”

“Oh yeah, right,” one of the girls says with a little laugh.

“What do you mean only half’s left?” Francis asks, as we begin walking on to the next point of interest.

“What? You don’t know?” He shakes his head, so I continue. “One of them is dead. He committed suicide, like, last year.”

“Really. Which one?”

“I think it was Vanilli.” A Canadian decides to be funny.

“If,” I say, “you mean the lighter-skinned one, Fabrice Morvan, that’s right. I think he was from Germany even. It was his second attempt. The first one, he wanted to jump off a balcony at Cedars Sinai, which is L.A.’s favorite celebrity newsleak hospital. Or the balcony was somewhere else and they took him to Cedars Sinai. Whichever.” I realize, suddenly, that my spongebrain has turned on and I must now release all that I know on the subject. This may not be so bad.

“Wow,” Francis says.

“Yeah. Rob Pilatus, the other one, or Milli to his fans in the Great White North, is actually playing music, small-time, trying to be honest and everything.”

“Are you a fan?” he asks.

“No, there’s this show called ‘Behind the Music’ on VH-1.”

“Yeah, we saw the Milli Vanilli one right before we left,” says one of the American girls.

“VH-1?”

“It’s MTV for older people. At least it used to be,” I say. “Now, I watch it more than MTV. ‘Behind the Music’ is their biography show. It’s usually about a band or singer who’s kinda disappeared. They hit it big, had problems, usually drugs, and now they’re just happy to be alive, keeping it real and getting back to the music and all that.”

“And they did a whole show on Milli Vanilli?”

“Yeah, where they came from, everything. They interview the producer who put it all together. They even showed the performance where their cover got blown.”

“Yeah,” Pam says. “It was for MTV, and Downtown Julie Brown was there.”

“They’re out there singing,” I continue, “and all of a sudden, the tape skips and they freak out. The crowd doesn’t know what’s up, but Downtown Julie Brown makes them get back out there and finish the show.”

“Wow.”

“And then, of course, they have to give back their Best New Artist Grammy. Then, it’s all downhill, they put out an album called “Rob and Fab” or “Fab and Rob” and it tanks, leaving them with drugs and depression, and well, we already told you the rest.”

Silence from Francis and his until-now, easy-working fast-acting mouth.


I no longer care about looking out for his next slam on Americans. I no longer care about his lack of knowledge in music and film. I no longer care about Warhol paintings. I no longer care about the shortcomings of the American education system or the superior qualities of its Australian counterpart. I no longer care about the perfect score Francis would get in the appearance category for his version of “Last Christmas” on the special holiday episode of a syndicated lip-sync television show. At this moment, I only care about one thing: I am not culturally destitute.

Okay, so I’m not pop-culturally destitute. But isn’t that all that really matters? It’s not about the innovations or the social commentary anymore. It’s about what came before that’s getting referenced now. Don’t tell me pop culture isn’t culture. Sure it is. Some would just say it’s much lower, than… fine art, or ballet, or opera. For the love of God, Warhol is pop-culture. We’ve used up all of the original ideas. This guy in Sweden got the last one in 1961; I saw a filmstrip about it in 7th grade.

Culture is one of those words that has different meanings to different people. You could say it’s the parts of a society that define it. Hey, I like that. Culture, for me, is the parts of a society that define it. And, sure, you could break these things down even more, like high or low, cyber-culture, drug culture, etc. There’s probably balding professors and grad students in turtlenecks arguing about it all right now, while a cute, neo-hippie girl puts the froth on their cappucinos. Whatever. The point is, I know a little bit about at least one part of culture. We all do. Sure, I know plenty of stuff about plenty of other subjects, but right now, all that really matters is that the world has been saved from pointless mass hysteria, because Francis from Australia has learned that this American yahoo is not culturally destitute.

I Hate Venice

Copyright 2005 by s. light
This may not be reprinted without the author's permission.
____________________________________________________________


I don’t remember what day it was, other than the day after the day before. This one just found us in Venice. Two weeks already we’d been crossing Europe—Paris, Barcelona, Florence, Rome—two weeks that had found us, for the first time ever, as the outsiders. Getting by on a semi-recognizable word here or the rudeness (because we were Americans) of strangers there. All the time knowing we didn’t speak any of the languages and there wasn’t any tour guide to help (which was the way we wanted it, but, still…).

It was a beautiful day, warm with blue skies and no hint of any putrid smell as we’d been warned to expect. Venice was grateful for the weather because it cannot exist without tourists, and that day we were in the thousands. The two of us took the train in from Padua, where we were staying, and then a waterbus, to the most popular piazza in town—San Marco. If, like me, you know your annoying tv commercials, and remember the IBM ad where the guy is in a pigeon-filled plaza doing some day-trading using a screen projected onto a small lens in front of his eye while giving verbal commands, and then takes a call with the same device, then you’ve seen where we were. And like almost every other tourist-worthy sight we’d visited, the church of San Marco was under construction, making it the distraction to the sight of thousands of pigeons fluttering about the square, trying to get some feed from the hands of anyone who’d buy it from the vendors, instead of the pigeons being the distraction to the church.

Now, besides the pigeons, tourists, and vendors of bird feed and postcards, there were tons of tour groups of Italian teenagers, milling around or buying things or laughing or talking on their cell phones or ignoring their chaperones. It must have been some kind of spring break, because they’d been around everywhere, especially in Rome, where they would get drunk and sing karaoke, because apparently, Cher’s own version of “I Believe” wasn’t bad enough. But I digress…The thing to know about Italian teenagers, specifically the boys, was that the hottest clothing trend of the moment were sweatsuits with breakaway pants. Any color was acceptable (red and green were understandably big) and there were usually stripes to help with the garishness. The Venetian vendors decided to help complete the ensemble by selling big, floppy jester hats, also in garish colors. I’ve always been able to spot Europeans vacationing here in the States by their fashion sense. It’s just a little bit off—a logo too big, an extra splash of color. Here in Venice, I was at ground zero, the nexus of Eurostyle.

We watched as a group of boys gathered in a circle, checking out the things that they thought they were cool for buying. Dressed in their sweatsuits, a couple of new jester hats (or a variation thereof), were put upon a head or two. It was too much; we looked at each other and rolled our eyes. As much credit as we tried to give, as open-minded as we tried to be, this sight was just too much so we observed it with typical American superiority, commenting on it like it was “The Real World: San Francisco”.

A few steps behind this group was another boy. He was still chubby with baby fat, not yet having hit puberty like the others. Coke-bottle glasses and a crew cut complemented the chipmunk cheeks to give us a real-life Piggy from Lord of the Flies. His sweatsuit was rainbow-colored, the pants maybe a half-size too big. From a plastic bag, he pulled out his own jester hat, with bells at the end, and put it on.


In trying to clear my conscience a thousand times since the incident, I’ve replayed the following scene over and over in my head, but I still don’t know which way is right. And it sucks even more, because my brain is sponge-like for facts and memories, but my attention in this instance was focused on composing a blasé, postcard-style picture, and not on what was happening around me.


I pointed out the boy to my Better Half as he walked near us, saying something to the effect of, “Check out this loser.” We laughed at him to ourselves and heard the other boys laughing, as they had been doing since we first saw them. I turned back to the church and tried to compose my blasé, postcard-style picture. The (non-)Mrs. got my attention and motioned in the direction of the boy. He was standing alone, ignored (still) by the other boys, his jester hat now in his hand, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. She would later tell me of watching him remove the hat, slowly, sadly, that it was like watching a poem take place in front of her.
“Do you think he heard us?” she asked me.
“No way, it’s too loud here, and I was practically whispering in your ear. Besides, you can tell those guys are all popular and shit. They probably made fun of him or something,” I answered quickly.
“Are you sure?” she asked, for she was not convinced.

The boy was standing maybe ten feet away from us with the other boys another ten feet away. He would shift our way, and then, theirs. It was like this for about five minutes. Near us, then them. The jester hat went back in the plastic bag. His eyes were big and sad, the image magnified by his thick glasses, but he never looked directly at us, just at the ground a few feet away.

And then, I remembered the one thing that shot right through the heart of my theory. English. We ran into more Europeans who could speak it than couldn’t; it was like a 5:1 ratio. Maybe he had understood me. But there was noise all around us and I wasn’t being loud. Or was I? There was noise all around us. Maybe I had raised my voice to be heard above the din and it was just a little too loud. No, it was the other boys. It had to be. Right?

I recognized the dynamic of the group. The clique vs. the non-clique. The many against the one. I recognized it, all right. I was there. Maybe not to such an extreme, but it was more or less the same. Picking teams for kickball or whatever, the dread burning my stomach like an ulcer, as it got down to just a few of us, and then, just me. The fads that I would pick up on too late. The embarrassment from having to go shopping with my mom (“Come out and show me”). No glasses when I was his age, but buckteeth made up for it, and the baby fat never really went away. Divorced parents meant every other weekend at my dad’s, who would take me to school on Monday, where I would often forget my bag, only to come in the next morning to find my underwear tacked onto the bulletin board and I had to laugh with the others to pretend it wasn’t mine and try and save face. I’d never been the outsider before? Tell me when I wasn’t.

I honestly don’t know if it was the other boys or us who crushed this kid into the ground. This kid who just wanted to be accepted, one of the gang. Cool like you. But it didn’t really matter anymore. As much as I tried to play it down, to lay the blame at the feet of the other boys, whether it was their fault or not, I had said something that somewhere had probably been said about me. And I couldn’t take it back.

We stayed in the piazza, sick with guilt, ashamed to leave, embarrassed to stay. Should we say something to him? (What?) Apologize. But what if it had been the other boys? Why crush him even more with the knowledge that total strangers from another country were making fun of him, too?

Mired in our own personal, petty, selfish turmoil, we didn’t notice our sad hero walk over to a vendor and buy a bag of feed. We did see him sit down on a bench and begin to feed the pigeons, scattering a handful onto the ground at his feet where the birds gobbled it up in near-record time. Again, at his feet. And then the birds were jumping onto the bench, and then him, greedy, jonesing for the feed like the addicts they were, coming ever closer, until finally, they were eating it right out of his hands. A little life crept back into his face. And then a family began to gather around him (maybe it was his, maybe not) and he lit up more. When the mother pulled out her camera to take a picture, he was at least smiling on the outside.

Relieved that he would leave the piazza that day with at least one good memory, that just maybe would erase the pain from a few minutes earlier, we made our exit into the maze that is Venice—jostling tourists, Maestre glass, overpriced gondola rides, postcards and trinkets, and pizza at a joint where “Italian sausage” translates to “hot dog.” We should have stayed in the hotel room and made love until lunch when we could have walked to the piazza in front of the church beside our hotel, where there was an equally bad pizza place. And though this piazza was smaller than San Marco, it, too, was filled with pigeons and feed-selling vendors. And though this church was also under construction, it did contain inside, a saint’s tongue, if nothing else. Then I could have written about all of that, and not the fact that this nerd insulted a fellow brother.

I know. Somebody took his picture. He was smiling. Great.

I’m still an asshole.

Feedback

It's been a long-ass time since I've really written anything. Too long. I want/need to get back to doing it. One of my problems is I self-edit a lot, so much that often I don't complete something I've started because I'm never completely satisfied with my work. So I'm going to post some old stuff I've written, some have seen these and some have not. All criticism is welcomed but I'm especially interested in those for whom this stuff is new. Good, bad, whatever, let me know. And thanks in advance.