Left that country.
I live in Hong Kong now. I left my apartment and life in New York and took two suitcases and a duffle bag with me. (I got a grant to work here for a year.)
About two weeks before I left, when I was home taking stock of all the things in my apartment I don’t need, a very pungent-smelling guy (it was a very hot day) knocked on my door trying to get me to sign up for a service to lock in my utility bill rates. I couldn’t tell if his accent was African or Caribbean but I didn’t really feel bad about that after our exchange. The only good thing about my opening the door was that his smell drew the mosquito who had been feasting on me for two weeks into the hallway.
He wanted to see my bills and I told him no, I was moving. He said that I should still show him because I could take this service with me to my next place. (Total scam, in my opinion.) So I told him I wasn’t just leaving the building, I was leaving the country.
“Oh, back to China?” he said excitedly.
WTF!!! I didn’t want to say yes, because I was pretty offended that after our short interchange he still didn’t think I was “from” America. I mumbled something about seeing my family. I guess I didn’t want him to think he was right, even though I was indeed going “back to China.”
As a friend of a friend said, I don’t look like a FOB and I don’t talk like a FOB. (She said this after I told her that a stranger in Fort Greene asked me if I spoke English before he started to ask me for money.) There’s nothing wrong with being a FOB, and it’s not even like I’m super proud to be American, but I’m just tired of people thinking I’m OTHER, not FROM here. I was probably more American than him, and spoke better English than him, and he may not have even been an American citizen. I just don’t know what more I can do, besides speaking English properly and understanding American social norms, and dressing like an American, to make people stop assuming I’m from another country. I know that New York is chock full of recent immigrants, but for God’s sake, Americans come in all colors. Why can’t people in New York grow up!
This is part of why I want to live in the Bay Area again. No cabbie there is going to ask me where I’m “from,” and people aren’t going to say “Ni hao” or “Konichiwa” to me as they pass me on the street. Some of it may just be interest, like “I’m not from this country and am curious as to what country you’re from,” but after 9 years it had stopped being quaint and funny.
Now that I’m in Hong Kong, I’m soooo happy to have a break from some of those conversations. It had just gotten to a point where those sorts of exchanges had intertwined themselves with feelings I’d had of being an outsider in New York, of just being different from everyone else. It was all very unhealthy and frustrating. Bye bye, New York.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Tags: china, clinton hill, conversations, hong kong, irksome, strangers, wtf
Funny. You see it as them separating you from America, but it’s just as likely they (especially your scammy salesman) is trying to connect to you as an outsider.
Grammar bad. Hope understood.
i definitely think that some of the interactions i’ve had are an attempt by the other person to be like, “i’m not from here, and you don’t look like you are either – let’s bond!” so i have to keep that in mind. but it’s just very tiresome after a while for people to be constantly commenting about my ethnic appearance. do people see anything else? it had gotten to the point where in my head i’d think, “wait for it… wait for it… bingo.”
I’m gay and Jewish and aside from the dark eyes and big nose nobody would know I’m gay.. wait, I mean oh gosh I don’t know what I’m saying.
What I’m trying to say is that I feel like an “other” and I know I am an “other” but my otherness isn’t immediately visible so I wind up being on the receiving end of lots of nasty comments about gays or Jews to my face but by people who are covert bigots who have not clue. Then I get the people who do figure out my sexuality or my race/religion/background (how do you classify Jewishness?) and make certain assumptions. Ugh. What is one to do.