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Published: September 5th 2006
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I’m a bit distressed to find, during my first few days in England, that Princess Di and Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell are still prominent fixtures in the tabloids. While the 9th anniversary of Diana’s passing might excuse the front-page tributes, I’m afraid I can’t be so forgiving of the lifeline extended to Ginger’s career - though it’s certainly a blessing that most of her partners have mercifully faded from the limelight. Still, the celebrity bloodthirst of your average Brit puts our own gossip columns to shame. And the countless two-page spreads of a bikini-clad Dannii Minogue on holiday are a firm reminder (so to speak) that the daily American intake of celebrity smut is only about 1/1000th of a percent of what it ought to be.
On a warm, clear, Indian-summer kind of day, Lenny takes me to spend an afternoon on the South Bank. Built up in recent years to become a showpiece by the Thames, the place is a colorful, motley mix of performance art meets theme park. Across from us Parliament shines in the sunlight. The London Eye - a massive ferris wheel towering high above the river - turns in slow revolutions. Street performers are
swallowing balloons and posing in period costume as Henry VIII.
We spend a few hours in Tate Modern, housed inside the cavernous shell of an abandoned power station. The museum is full on a Friday afternoon; we wander through the galleries, making wry comments on the state of modern art. In a gallery of post-war pieces, the video installation
Meat Joy steals the show. Hailed as “an influential celebration of flesh as material,” the piece features men and women in skimpy skivvies rolling around in pools of paint. Now and then a stagehand comes in to slip a chicken or trout into some writhing model’s bikini, and an absolute orgy of paint, fish and flesh ensues. A man sitting behind us, severely watching through his wire-framed glasses, deadpans, “Now that’s what I call a cod piece.” For the first time in my life, I sincerely believe I can be a celebrated artist.
We come across a few works by Francis Bacon - a favorite of my girlfriend’s back home. In a way that’s not quite easy to pin down, those contorting bodies and primal, death-throe canvases remind me of my dear, sweet Ewa. There’s a word to
describe that feeling, but I’m not entirely sure “romantic” is it. Outside, in typical London fashion, a mass of clouds has blown in, and people are clutching the ends of their coats and leaning into the wind.
For the first few days I have Lenny to myself; Greg’s been on location with a TV crew, filming footage for a haunted house special airing on BBC. We watch it one night after he’s back; it’s campy in the sort of way that makes for must-see TV. There’s a clairvoyant with wild hair and wide, panicky eyes, and it’s not hard to suspect that it was a quick glance at the ratings that left her so spooked. There seems to be little paranormal activity at work that hasn’t been painstakingly recreated, though Greg recalls a mysterious incident involving a porcelain doll that the crew has since struggled to explain.
During the dramatizations - first-rate filmmaking, it must be said - Greg provides the background commentary. One of the takes had to be shot after the actors had already left. Stumped for options, the producer himself stood menacingly silhouetted in the doorway, and the cameraman quaked under the covers like
a frightened housewife. Greg seems duly impressed by his colleagues’ ingenuity. Having seen the results for myself, I have to admit: before long, this same series will have an American knock-off.
I have a day to myself, which I deftly spin into the sort of American-in-London montage you’ll recognize from many Hollywood flicks. I watch the street performers around Covent Garden and chase the pigeons around Trafalgar Square; I spend a dazed hour wandering through the endless halls of the National Gallery. I scribble down the names of bars and restaurants I’ll probably never see again, and watch faces bob and disappear into doorways or down narrow streets. From a sidewalk café in SoHo, I watch men in slim-fit jeans and women in pencil-thin stilettos moving to the hectic pace of another day in the city. There are tourists of every size and color on every corner, and I pass a few Americans who greet me with a sort of aw-shucks
bonhomie.
At a pub on a busy street, I meet a couple from Philadelphia. The husband, Craig, is wearing high-riding khaki shorts and an Eagles cap. His sunglasses are perched on the bill - in ways I
can’t pin down, it strikes me as brashly American. His wife, Michelle, flush and clearly pleased as punch to be in London, tells me that she spent a year of study in Sheffield. I tell her about my time abroad in Manchester. We forge the brief, fleeting bond of people who realize that, on second glance, they have absolutely nothing in common. Craig’s head has been working on a pivot, following every blonde Londoner who goes by.
When Michelle heads inside to use the bathroom, he lets a respectful moment pass and says, “Sheesh, these girls are something.” We share some good-humored appreciation of the female form. He says, “I was telling my wife the other day, I had no idea English women had such great breasts.” I don’t quite know how to take that. When Michelle gets back, there seems to be a subtle shift in the mood, the way the light of a French cathedral town will suddenly change at a certain hour. I get the feeling that Craig and I have shared some important moment, and that moment has officially passed. We say our goodbyes; they’re off to the hotel; they’re leaving for Paris in the
morning.
After awhile, melancholy sets in. It begins with the dwindling daylight and gathers steam around crowded pubs, and before I know it, I’m practically distraught to be in London -
of all places! - an American so far from home. These people passing by, on their way to stuffy apartments and take-away dinners and joys that make their hearts sing: they’re all caught up in lives I’ll never know. Strange for it to strike me the way it does; after all, why should these lives matter? But what hits me feels like nothing short of a mortal reckoning: that wherever I go and whatever I do in the days and years ahead, I’ll never know what it’s like to be young and swept up by life in London. I’ll never struggle with rent in some overpriced flat in Brick Lane; I’ll never complain about my job over pints at the pub. I’ll never share my fears with any of these strange, passing faces, and they’ll never tell me with astonished eyes that they’ve fallen in love. Forgetting all the possibilities of the life I have, I’m leveled by all the unknown hopes and sorrows of the ones I
don’t. And it’s all I can do on a very bitter bus ride home to remember why it is I’ve even come here to begin with.
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