COMING FOR AMERICA
THE DILEMMA
Andayi Mushenye
CHAPTER 1
Moonwalking to Belong: A Night of Celebration and Identity
Print
Email
Facebook
WhatsApp
Besides touching down at the airport in Detroit and hearing the magic words, “Welcome to America,” managing to ride out the storm till I knew how to use a computer was the second-highest point of excitement in my new life.
On this Friday evening at the end of the school term and still riding high, I was too animated to let the successful completion of the dreaded computer class go without any celebration. The achievement was such a breath of fresh air because, for the most part, since coming to America, I had been running a never-ending race to blend in to focus on my pursuit of the American dream. And now, I was on cloud nine after finally conquering the final acid test required to function competently and open my ways to succeed in the high-speed environment of the wealthiest country on Earth.
Even though the class had ended many hours ago, I was still in constant rapturous excitement. Feeling technologically plugged in, the ecstatic neurons in my brain would not let this success get by without a celebration. This euphoric feeling meant closing my eyes and going to sleep was going to be an impossible feat to accomplish. Much better, there were no more classes or exams. So I decided after all the accumulated frustrations, something had to give and release the pressure. What better way to do this than going out to let loose with a few drinks, dance my head off, and blow the steam away?
However, the idea that initially looked so fitting posed an unexpected challenge. Through my everyday interactions, it didn’t take me long to realize that if I stuck to my ways and didn’t act as if I belonged, I would likely be isolated and treated as if I didn’t belong. Even though I had at least immersed myself in American culture and technology, I still had a lot of trouble when it came to chatting with my buddies.
Most of my friends were usually eager to chitchat or engage in a debate about their favorite subjects, ranging from American sports to movies, television programs, and celebrities. Since I only knew a little about these topics, I would be the odd one out. Even when I spoke with strangers, my accent gave me away immediately.
Such a challenge told me that if I went out, I needed to blend in in order not to be singled out or isolated. This perspective meant that to fit into what America and Americans viewed as their real America, I had to look like one of their own. The best way to look more American was to dance like their biggest music superstar. That was when I came to terms with the fact that while I may not blend in by the way I spoke, I was sure I would blend in if I danced like a trendy American, and what better way to do this than with a moonwalk?
Even after coming to this conclusion, I realized that acting and dancing like I belonged wouldn’t do anything for me if I didn’t dress and look assimilated. If I didn’t dress up fashionably, I would stick out like a sore thumb, and the prominence of my fashion mishap would likely rain on my parade when celebrating to mark my technological success. Moreover, the confidence that would come with the current fashionable outfit would give me the edge.
Considering this recognition, the only American and trendy look I knew how to put together was that of Michael Jackson. This perception came about because I was known to impersonate his attire during my high school years. When I left my homeland, Michael Jackson was the man to imitate. But little did I know that America had moved on to other stars, and The King of Pop was a long-faded memory. What was trendsetting in my village had been groundbreaking in America over ten or more years before.
Be that as it may, I couldn’t imagine rocking the MJ look without his curly hair, especially after stomaching subtle and overt in-your-face jokes about my large afro. I had already bought my Jheri curl kit and its supplies, just waiting for the right moment, and now it had arrived. It took me a while to follow the instructions, but in the end, it came out the best product of my ability. The moment I finished with my hair and dressed, it hit me—I would not have a second chance to impress. I decided to rehearse my choreographic moves to an exact science.
Feeling dandy and groovy, I went back to the bathroom mirror and practiced my basic moonwalking skills, moving backward while seemingly walking forward. When I reluctantly concluded the dry run, I had no doubt the electrifying sequence of steps had come with me from the motherland and were ready to rock and amaze. Realizing Michael Jackson was a perfectionist with a strict eye for detail, I looked at my reflection in the mirror again, and a pleasant smile lifted my cheek.
When I dressed up, I couldn’t wait to paint the whole town red alone.
However, I had no car to get to and from the nightclub. I’d heard most of my friends sing its praises, but I only had a name: C.J. Barrymore’s. I mentioned to my roommate Moe that I wanted to go out and dance to celebrate my accomplishment. He volunteered to come and pick me up from the club just after midnight when he got off work.
On his way out, and after changing my looks and updating my wardrobe just to fit in, I griped to Moe, “I wonder when will this endless race to assimilate in America ever end?”
As if he was feeling the way I was, he advised, “It’s not about assimilation—it’s about doing what you need to do to blend in, to go about your business without standing out or being isolated.”
“I don’t get it.”
He expounded, “Assimilation means losing your identity and adopting somebody else’s, and that means losing your heritage that makes you who you are.”
I asked, “When will it end?”
“It will end the day you no longer use American television shows to lull you to sleep because your brain does not engage with them.”
“Is that all?”
He chuckled, “Just kidding, not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if a lost American approaches you in the streets and asks you for directions, know that you have finally blended in because most Americans will be hesitant to ask you for directions in their country if, by just looking at you, they can tell you are an immigrant.”
He departed for work.
At around eight o’clock, after calling a taxi, I was standing outside like a greyhound in the slips, all fired up, ready to go and get it on. Though the weather was unseasonably cold for just a waistcoat pantsuit, bow tie, white shoes, and a white tuxedo shirt—all courtesy of my favorite fashion house, the Salvation Army—that hardly mattered when it came to pulling out all the stops and channeling Michael Jackson down to the last detail.
The sun had started sinking into the horizon when the taxi arrived on time, and I jumped right in. When the bemused driver stopped to drop me off at the club, he turned back and gave me the fist pump I needed to inflate my already bloated ego.
“You must be an African Prince to wear white after Labor Day.”
I disagreed pronto, “I’m sure yesterday was not Labor Day.”
He was quick to discern I had no clue what he meant, and he expounded, “What I mean to say is that in America, wearing white after Labor Day means you are someone who has the means to have end-of-summer vacations. In other words, you are just showing off to people how you are so affluent.”
He was right on point because that is the spirit I was feeling, to show off to America, and I crooned, “You got that one right!”
He cheered me on, “You the man!”
I returned the fist pump and roared back pompously, “I’m the man!”
I did a sneak peek at the taxi meter, paid my fare, gave him a thumbs-up, and stepped out.
As darkness crept in, swallowing daylight by the second, the streetlights now shining much brighter, I pulled my shirt sleeves halfway to my elbows, just like Michael Jackson did and strode toward the club.
The instant I opened the double door under the many colorful and flashing entrance lights, a beefy man appeared out of nowhere and blocked my way.
“Sir, your ID, please?”
“My who?”
“Sir, you need to show you are of legal age to enter the club.”
In my country, the legal age to enter a bar was eighteen years old, and I chastised him, “Look at me. Do you think I’m a seventeen-year-old man?”
“Sir, actually, you have to be twenty-one to enter.”
I realized he would not let me go passed him, so I removed my state ID. He checked it and showed me to the ticket window. I paid and entered a discotheque in America for the first time. The first thing that took me aback was the loud music with its earth-shaking bass. Struggling to adjust to the most delightful chest-thumping experience and dimmed, blinking lights, I looked up and saw a well-lit bar counter stocked with various beers, wines, and liquors caught my attention: I headed that way.
CHAPTER 2
A Cultural Clash at the Bar: From Whiskey Shots to Belly Button Shock
Halfway through my grandest entrance in America, I attracted discernible attention from a few revelers I could see looking my way. Their smiling glimpses caused me to add a little pomposity to my gait. Sleek and confident, my eyes swept the rest of the crowd and quickly concluded that I was the best-dressed man in the discotheque. With all the swagger I could flaunt of the son of the soil, I pulled out one of the bar stools and perched myself at the bar.
As soon as the busy bartender caught up filling the orders ahead of me, he asked, “What can I get you today?”
I started to order the most high-class whiskey I had ever heard of. “Can I get a quarter of Johnnie Walker?”
He looked lost. “A quarter of Johnnie Walker?”
“Yes. It’s the smallest bottle.”
“No, we don’t sell them in bottles.”
“Okay, just give me a full glass of Johnnie Walker.”
“Sorry, we only sell shots.”
“Shorts for who?”
“I mean shots in a glass.”
He sensed the lost look on my face as I was busy conjuring the image of shorts in a glass, then reached back and grabbed a tiny glass.
“A shot is served in this mini tumbler.”
“No, that is a tot glass.”
“A tot?”
“Yes, a tot is a small amount of a strong alcoholic drink.”
He was hurrying to serve and didn’t care for any back and forth, “You want it straight or on the rocks?”
Coming from a village where my grandma used a crude water filtration system made of sand and rocks, I declined.
“No, don’t put it on any rocks; just give it to me straight in a glass.”
He realized I didn’t get it. “I mean, do you want ice cubes in it?”
Thinking Ice Cube was one of the famous people that get brands named after them, like Johnnie Walker, a grocer in Ayrshire, Scotland, who started to sell his selection of single malt whiskeys in his store, I perked up. “Ice Cube’s? Sure, he is my favorite rapper.”
“No, not that kind of ice cube.” He leaned sideways and scooped chunks of ice into a small glass. “This kind.”
I remembered I was given these cold chunks in a Kentucky Fried Chicken because it was hot outside and protested lightly, “But it’s not hot outside.”
He grinned, “The ice cubes soothe the intensity of hot drinks.”
But his reasoning flew right in my face because, in my village culture, alcohol is a hot drink only at the exact moment of distillation in the boondocks. Secondly, mixing our illegally brewed liquor known as Chang’aa, our version of American moonshine famously referred to as “Kill me quick,” with anything else is considered cowardly.
If truth be told, it is interpreted as a total waste of the drink and an insult to the hardworking brewer that went through so much to claim the reputation as the one who distills the purest form of alcohol. In the village, the hunt for high-proof liquor is so highly prioritized that a drinker heading to a drinking den will know he is heading to the right spot by the number of drunks he encounters staggering or blacked out by the roadside or in the bushes.
Upon arrival, the brewer will pour a squirt of the unadulterated drink in a glass and light a match whose blue flame will prove it’s the real deal before they accept your order and money. Even this authentication won’t help much because some hardcore consumers will only be convinced once they feel the firewater spreading like wildfire in the stomach the moment they swallow. This illustration also guarantees that the most health-conscious drinker doesn’t have to worry about the dirty serving glass. Considering that over twenty drunkards usually share the glass before him, the potent alcohol will kill any lingering germs.
With such consumer and distillery benchmarks amid severe poverty, the competition for having the cheapest and most potent liquor has led some homebrewers to spike their products with methanol, jet fuel, and embalming fluid. It’s not a surprise the intense concoction has left many dead and the lucky ones permanently blind after taking just a sip. There have been many cases where, after gulping the laced drink, the drunkards who had just lost their sight kept asking the brewer why he turned the lights off when they were just getting started.
Thinking of this, I rebuffed the bartender, “No, no, no, don’t put anything in it.”
He quickly inquired, “Okay, single or double?”
Because I was alone, I said, “Single.”
He served the whiskey in a tiny glass as if it were some medicine in short supply that he needed to ration for everyone.
I drank it at once and ordered more. After four shots, warmth bloomed through me, and soon after, I could feel my stomach on fire. I decided to have a beer to cool it down and relax.
“Can I have a beer?”
“What kind?”
Feeling the shots blasting in my head, I flexed my muscles and boasted, “Real men drink Guinness for power.”
Before serving me the Irish stout, he surprised me with another question, “Bottle or draft?”
Since I had no idea what draft meant, I just said, “A bottle.”
When he put the drink in front of me, I gulped it at once and ordered another shot of Johnnie Walker. Before filling my order, he suggested, “Instead of mixing whiskey and Guinness separately, you might as well try an Irish car bomb. I make the best. Do you want to try one?”
I wondered how the Irish Republican Army bombings had made their way into our conversation when they fought to preserve their territorial, national, and religious identity. I was still deliberating, but he lost me when he started to expound that it was a cocktail of Guinness, Bailey’s Irish Cream, and whiskey. I hardly heard him because a sexy chick swiftly stole my attention with her sizable breasts, which were barely covered by a tiny, cropped blouse, the open front loosely tied with shoelaces. The unfastened strings left many deliberate gaps for maximum cleavage exposure that I suspected was barely legally permissible.
She had now stepped right up next to me, and I could see three-quarters of her smooth, flat stomach was, by any definition, out in the open. Beyond a doubt, my newest person of interest was oozing a sexual magnetism that could have made any man stop and stare by reflex.
She hollered at the bartender, “Sex on the beach, please.”
The instant she uttered those words, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to conclude that her half nudeness in an indecent environment signified she was more than ready for what she was asking for.
Startled by the immediate attention I gave her, she appraised me with a quick up-and-down look from my curly hair to my outfit. Ready to take the chance before anyone else, I shot her an engaging grin and winked. Instead of coming closer for intimate negotiations, my gusto finesse elicited a burst of hearty laughter as if she had seen the funniest clown.
The instant I smiled back, half a smile was still tugging at the corner of her lips like I had tickled her with a private joke. I winked at her, and her eyes glinted with more humor. I was reluctant to let the brief connection end. The chick, whom I’d quickly figured was a waitress from the small tray in her hand, and the immediate attention the bartender gave her, was bobbing her head to the beats of the music.
Feeling a wet heat of desire cascading upward, I shot her a look just as she speared me with huge brown eyes which shone above her hot red lips. When our eyes met, I looked down to break eye contact, but my gaze automatically locked on her snug mini skirt and the smooth curves leading to her abdomen. Instead of seeing a protruding navel, a flat or hollowed scar left after the umbilical cord was cut, I saw a small ring hanging on her stomach. I thought the alcohol was already playing games with my mind, and clandestinely, I took another careful look.
That was when, for the first time in my life, I saw a belly button pierced with what seemed to be a very expensive piece of jewelry. I started to wonder why she’d pierced where her old mouth used to be in her mother’s womb, but the moment I raised my head to breathe normally, I was caught off guard again by how large her breasts were on such a small body.