BASED ON THE CONVERSATION I know will follow, I often dread to open my mouth. My diphthongs, my glottal stops, my singsongy inflection conspire against me and commit me to having the same conversation, every day, two, five, ten times a day since the late nineties. I’ll have to write off the next ten minutes.
I love New York City. I belong to it and it belongs to me. Like most adopted New Yorkers, my love informs my politics and worldview, my lifestyle and relationships, my dress sense and street smarts, my hopes and aspirations. I walk the walk just fine, but whenever I talk the talk, I am stopped dead in my tracks.
“Hey, where are you from?”
I’ll say “here” or “New York,” depending on where I am. I’ll try to neutralize my accent, but it’s too late. I know where this is going and there’s no way out.
“No, I mean really from?”
If I have the energy to make them guess, just less than half of people will say England. The remainder will guess either Australia or New Zealand. Every twentieth person will guess South Africa or Ireland. I’m not sure if this corresponds with the commonly held view that in general Americans aren’t all that worldly, or that by accident or design my accent has morphed over time.
“I was raised in England.”
My choice of words is conceited. If I can’t be identified as a New Yorker, I’ll accept “citizen of the world.” Anything but being backed into this one again.
Now, I’m aware that my accent has done me infinitely more good than harm at this point. It’s opened doors, created opportunities, allowed me to jump the line, endeared me to otherwise indifferent people; it’s kick-started thousands of conversations, it’s gotten me laid well and often.
In major U.S. cities, being English is almost always relatable.
People always want to tell me that they spent a semester abroad in England, that they have family who live there, that they love soccer, Monty Python, Benny Hill, and Mr. Bean. An effective conversationalist uses first impressions to find common ground. It’s cruel to derail a person’s line of questioning but I attempt in vain to do just that, every time. It’s not malicious; I’m trying to avoid being defined by a place that’s never really felt like home and instead be allied with a place that does. No one lets me.
“What town?”
“A small village outside of London. I’ve lived here for years though. How do you know Brian?”
“West, north?”
“East of London. Hey, are you wearing Issey Miyake?”
“What’s it called?”
“You would have never heard of it. I can barely remember it myself.”
“Seriously, what’s the name of your town? I lived in England for a semester.”
Oftentimes my inflection, the cadence of my voice starts to feature in their sentences. My accent is almost always contagious.
“What did you study?”
“Economics. What town?”
“Corringham.”
“Never heard of it. Are you a cockney?”
He or she is almost always trying to be friendly, personable, yet it’s got my blood boiling.
Bad teeth, gray skies, warm beer, pale skin, blood pudding. I am always overcome with the urge to create distance between me and all that; to prove that that’s just not me. I wouldn’t identify myself as a self-loathing Brit. In fact, I’m slowly beginning to like myself. Oblivious to my attempts to sever the national umbilical cord, people often introduce me to other Englanders.
I don’t dislike British people per se. I just don’t like them here.
“This is James,” says the ruthless man introducing his friend. “James is another bloody Brit!”
Other “Brits” are my kryptonite. Well-meaning Americans always manage to conjure up an estranged countryman and set me up on a sort of expat playdate, unaware that their very presence strikes at the heart of my special powers—my presumed wit and charming accent. The intermediary will watch us shake hands and leave. Probably thinks we must have a lot to talk about, but I am instantly transported to my unhappy place.
I’d always railed against the archetypal Brit as portrayed in the American media, but I confront it whenever I meet an estranged countryman.
“Where are you from then?”
James’s accent is always clipped, if a little slurred; nonregional. His hair is foppish and curly.
“Just east of London.”
I always give a vague response and hope that his or her concept of geography is thrown off by the alcohol that’s causing him or her to sway. Nope, it’s clicked. It usually does. Oh shit. He’s pointing, smiling.
“Essex boy!”
In England and throughout the package vacation zones of southern Europe, the county of Essex has the unenviable reputation as a capital of utter barbarism, the nexus of tackiness and uncouth. I’ve referred to it as the New Jersey of England in the past, though in reality it’s not nearly as quaint.
It’s frosted hair, souped-up cars, bumper-to-bumper traffic, gangsters, random violence, ecstasy dealers, binge drinking, tanorexic girls, vandalism, designer-brand clothing, shopping malls, funky-house and theme-pub franchises. The urban areas smell of sulfur, the countryside smells of pig shit. Depending on the prevailing wind conditions, the odor in Corringham changes hour by hour. Essex is a cultural blind spot, a geopolitical punch line.
“Au-right, geeezaah!” James apes an Essex accent and slaps me on the back. The performance is too theatrical but technically accurate.
“What are you doing ’ere then?” James continues the impersonation.
I was blissfully unaware of the British class system until I moved to New York and met the Jameses and the Tobys, the Nicholases, the Emmas, the Sebastians, the Brunos. They are all in media, PR, or finance; overpaid, oversexed, and over here. The men have the Hugh Grant thing going on and use it night after night, whittling their bedposts to toothpicks.
“I’m a writer,” I’ll say.
“Oh, you’re a wri-ah!”
I make a fist and think about throwing it into their crooked teeth. All that money spent on boarding school, summer vacations in the Dordogne, winters skiing in Val D’Isere, and to have a mouth that looks stuffed full of smashed crockery. Twisted bicuspids, discolored canines, and unruly incisors aren’t the only things they bring with them from Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, and Surrey. They bring their colonizing instinct and stick together, a clan, a posse, a clique. Every year there’s more of them. Tarquins and Olivers and Annas and Bridgetts. They meet to drink and watch cricket and rugby, only they call it “Ruggah.” I have more in common with a house cat than these people and no one can see it but me and them.