British As a Second Language by David Bennun

Author:David Bennun
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781409004677
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In due course, I acquired a bigger room and a newer tenant took the boxroom. His name was Gordon and he was American.

It’s a fact of British life that anti-American sentiment is either bubbling just beneath the surface, or boiling over it. The British left seems to harbour a petulant revulsion towards the USA and all its works, whatever they may be, while the rest of the country views America with amused disdain. This doesn’t dissuade the rest of the country from wearing American clothes, buying American music, watching American films, eating American food and taking its holidays in Florida.

Having grown up in an environment that was no less influenced by America than by Britain, I don’t share the widespread British contempt for America, and initially I couldn’t make sense of it. I now believe it to be something akin to sibling rivalry – a combination of jealousy and silent, grudging admiration. America is the golden boy: successful, attractive, outwardly confident, widely emulated. Britain – more in its own eyes than anyone else’s – is the scrawny, nerdy brother, coveting America’s self-assurance, its flashy gear, its fascination among the girls, and consoling itself with the belief that it, Britain, is the more intelligent and cultured. Typically, the British overestimate their supposed rivals – although the idea that Britain might be the USA’s rival in the first place would be the source of much American hilarity were it widely known over there. One thing that it is fair to say about most Americans is that their interest in the outside world doesn’t extend that far.

The British feel impelled to dismiss Americans as loud, brash, obnoxious, arrogant, asinine, over-indulged, pushy, fatuous, ignorant and oblivious. I’ve always thought this to be an unjust stereotype. A pity, then, that it applied in its entirety to Gordon. And more of a pity that I had to live with him.

Gordon was also gay, allotting him a second demographic to which he could give a bad name. It’s no coincidence that Brighton hosts the largest gay community, proportionately speaking, in the country; the city has a deserved reputation for accepting those who might be excluded elsewhere. But it didn’t accept Gordon, and nor did the gay community. The gay community, or at least that part of it with which I was acquainted, considered him both an embarrassment and a nuisance, and wanted no part of him. Like the tenants at Green Street, alas, the gay community couldn’t get rid of him.

‘For God’s sake,’ grumbled one friend, a college lecturer who – to his chagrin – had been unable to prevent Gordon signing up for his Gay Studies course, ‘why can’t he shut up about being gay? It’s as if he’s got something to prove. I find myself wanting to tell him, “Look, Gordon, we believe you. You’re gay. You’re the gayest gay who ever was gay. You’re gayer than all the rest of us gays put together. Now put a Pierre Cardin sock in it, will you?” ’

Persuading Gordon to stop talking, whatever the subject, was all but impossible.

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