The End of America, Book 5

(opening excerpt; to be continued later)

What I value about America is mass produced black tee shirts with mythical lizard images.

What I value about America is meaningless choices between gas stations and the worthless distinction called “Super Unleaded.”

What I value about America is the waitress in a coffee shop who by my third day of vacation in Palm Springs already knows what my order is going to be, and also the high school boy who works there and who, when I come back for the second time in a day, says, skeptically, “You again?”

What I value about America is any cranky opinion you want to have.

What I value about America is the leaking pump in my toilet bowl.

What I value about America is my ability to comment on the rest of the world without ever having to go there.

What I value about America is that instant when two people in a car sail out over a cliff, look back at the ridge where the police have gathered to watch them die and silver-streaked rocks glint in the sun, and as the car heads towards the ocean below they think to themselves that America never seems so beautiful as when you say goodbye to it.

What I value about America is hard drive crashes.

What I value about America is giving directions.

What I value about America is the way I don’t have to know anyone well.

What I value about America smells like cheeseburgers.

What I value about America is staying with friends for a few days in a house on the Susquehanna River and driving into Front Royal in the evening for dinner because even in the Shenandoah Hills there’s one good Mexican restaurant.

What I value about America is the hawks born in the trees in the courtyard of my apartment complex who think of the apartment complex as home.

What I value about America is lunch meat.

What I value about America is the way freedom of speech means that every organization gets to decide for itself what it’s unwilling to listen to.

And the way that anybody who calls somebody else an asshole thinks they have a right to a response.

What I value about America is going to work in the morning.

What I value about America is the way my whole life I’ve been told what America is.

What I value about America is the constant feeling I have that I never want to talk about America again.

What I value about America is, of course, American cheese.

But only when the slices are individually wrapped. Otherwise they all just stick together.

What I value about America is a woman who sits in the back of the class, says nothing, turns in a decent paper then disappears for weeks, shows up again at last and sits silently for a few more weeks and turns in nothing, then finally e-mails the professor on the last day of class saying “I’ve done all the work, can I still turn it in?”

What I value about America is the way Americans are asked to consider everything in terms of value. And in terms of the value of America.

What I value about America is the struggle between environmental groups trying to clean up the ocean and a corporate push to develop desalination plants to pull drinkable water out of salt water.

What I value about America is that activists hand out condoms, and roadhouse bathrooms have condom machines.

What I value about America is pop music.

What I value about America is the Charleston, the bunny hop, and the mosh pit slam.

What I value about America is all the ways to waste time on the job.

What I value about America is the struggle between sincerity and insincerity.

I value the way, in America, claiming to be sincere can be a way of saying “I have the right not to know what I’m talking about” while claiming to be insincere can be a way of saying “I have a right to feel this has nothing to do with me.”

What I value about America is comfortable running socks.

What I value about America is immigrants working for sub-minimum wage.

What I value about America is tequila and beer specials beyond the Mexican border.

What I value about America is the vision of a future in which one day all of us, no matter our race, class, or cultural background, will be working retail.

What I value about America is the way football season, basketball season and baseball season overlap so that year round, most evenings of any week, I can watch a game that I like at just that moment when I’m too tired to think.

What I value about America is Friday night parties.

What I value about America is oral narratives about its factories.

What I value about America is the fish taco in San Diego and the chicken wing in Buffalo and barbecued spare ribs just outside Dallas.

What I value about America is low fat salad dressing.

What I value about America is the impossibility not only of giving any issue a fair hearing but even of agreeing what a fair hearing means.

What I value about America is the stranglehold of the two-party system.

What I value about America is the meaning of what “is” is.

What I value about America is that equal numbers of U.S. citizens get incensed over an out-of-wedlock blow job and a war that kills hundreds of thousands of people.

What I value about America is greasing the palms.

What I value about America is men who live for the thrill of debate.

What I value about America is innuendo.

What I value about America is jazz, blues, folk, and rock and roll.

What I value about America is that the Duke and the Count and the King are musicians.

What I value about America is the bars and restaurants within a few blocks of the beach where people order tacos and nachos and pizza and beer and margaritas, even the bright yellow creamy Mango margaritas, and through the echos under the high ceilings they talk loudly about football teams and cars and boats and the price of gas and broken marriages and how much they want to get married again, and they show off tattoos and breast implants and wear tee-shirts that advertise their interests and laugh in a way that sounds half like they’re having fun and half desperate, then finally they step out to the parking lot full of oversized SUVs and drive drunk the few miles back to their vacation rentals.

So if you ask me about the end of America and what I value about America, you’ll have to listen to the answers.

(to be continued)