What Are We Gonna Do With All This Trash?: This Is Not An Ethnocentric Diatribe

April 13, 2007

This Is Not An Ethnocentric Diatribe

So, one of my many adventures landed my wife and I in the streets of Paris, France. As we were walking around, wondering how we got there (my wife used Travelocity), I came to the realization that the American attitude and the French attitude are not a bit congruent. Sure, Americans are rude, loud, ignorant, know-it-all, cowboy colonists, but sheesh.. Allow me to explain, whenever I was in a restaurant and asked for 'French' dressing for my salad (une salade en Francais; that extra 'E' aint' foolin me, Frenchie!), the waiter invariably slapped me clear across the face. Some slaps were of the 'pimp' variety, others were not. Asking for 'French' dressing for my French Fries resulted in an even larger amount of slaps. It got so bad that my wife started slapping me across the face for ordering 'French' dressing (you know that saying "When in Rome..."; I don't really care for it, plus Paris is nowhere near Rome). At restaurants here, I can get all the 'French' dressing I desire, sans slaps. Apparently, there was a huge war (the bloody and drawn-out "Guerre Du Salade") and the French waiters are still quite a bit bitter about all the casualties.

Anyway, I got slapped so many times, I started thinking about the disconnect I was noticing between art and culture. Here I was in Gay Paree, a place known for being incredibly artistic: the Louvre, the beautiful architecture, the literature, the fashion, Monet, Manet, Jacques Cousteau, and Sophie Marceau. But culturally, the people (notably the waiters, with all the wanton slapping) came across as narrow-minded, exclusionary, even bigoted. And I didn't have to come all the way across the Atlantic Ocean in an infernal flying machine for that bullshit, if you know what I mean..

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A History Of Trash

Trash, at first, was a pretty cool guy. You know, he’d come over with some beers, and you’d hang out and have a couple of laughs. Maybe Trash brought some weed with him, and you guys tried to sync up Dark Side Of The Moon with The Wizard Of Oz until you remembered you lost your VHS copy of that movie sometime in college and that you fucking hate Pink Floyd. Good times were had, nonetheless.

But then, you don’t know what changed, but Trash started to overstay his welcome. He’d just linger for hours, never taking the hint you wanted him to leave, no matter how many times you yawned obnoxiously or mentioned how early you had to get up tomorrow. Trash just didn’t get it. You were getting older. You didn’t have the time anymore to stay up until 3 a.m. to talk about the Port season of “The Wire” or how much you miss Jawbox. Eventually, you just stopped taking Trash’s phone calls and no longer replied to his group e-mails about sneaking into abandoned mental hospitals.

Last time you saw Trash, he was smoking alone outside a local dive bar, looking down at his decaying and mismatched shoes. You hoped he had been doing well. You hoped he had not been hurt by the disintegration of your friendship. And if he had, you wanted to comfort him. You wanted to tell him that even though people move on with their lives, it doesn’t mean they stop caring. You wanted him to see in your eyes a sincere appreciation for the time you shared, because all the relationships in our lives help make us who we are, and even if you weren’t the best of friends anymore, you wanted him to know that there would always be a piece of Trash in your heart.

But instead, you looked away and crossed the street. You were with your new girlfriend, and you really didn’t want to have to explain Trash to her. She’d never understand.