The Land of Guinness and Foreskin

You’re absolutely correct, Mr. Kiedis, the more I see the less I know, but unlike you, I’m not trying to let the new knowledge go. It is imperative that I broaden my horizons. I’m sick of not knowing…not knowing all the more there is to know beyond the United States. It’s amazing how ethnocentric everybody is…everybody including me. And we all subconsciously assume that our own cultural way should be the right way for everyone, everywhere. I ponder the possibility that we’ve been sheltered with extremely homogeneous environments, causing us to fear the unfamiliar and ignorantly reject diversity. Perhaps I am generalizing quite a bit, but my peers on my EGC Abroad program only make my doing so valid.

I don’t even need to start discussing Europeans yet. A name tag reading, “Hi, I’m ethnocentric!” sticks to the leather jacket of every single one of us Jewish American girls on EGC Abroad. However, I have been relentlessly trying to rip my sticker off. I’m different. Not only am I tolerant of everybody else, but I purposely chose a different study-abroad location from my home/college friends so that I would be able to explore and branch out of my usual world. I am using “unfamiliar cultures and environments” as the variable in my experiment to test my soul’s consistency. Will a different set of surroundings and people make me a different person?

From my observations, it seems that most of the Jews in EGC came in cults of familiar faces for a 4-month vacation while the majority of non Jews came alone in search of independence at its highest degree. This week, I hear in the EGC hallways a Jewish girl say, “I think it’s pathetic that some of these kids came by themselves.” This girl is clearly incapable of understanding intercultural differences. What she
doesn’t understand is that there is a Jewish source causing her to need to be surrounded by a large group of similar people in order to feel protected and secure. Jews have been oppressed for millennia: World War II, Spanish Inquisition, Roman Crusades, Babylonian Exile, Egyptian slavery, and the list goes on. The Jewish people have evolved into a defensive people; it is our nature to be exclusive in order to survive. It explains why many affiliated Jews reject those who are unfamiliar to them. So I know where the leather jacket girl is coming from, although sadly, she probably doesn’t. I also understand why non-Jewish students would have no apprehensions about going abroad individually; the idea of experiencing oppression is very foreign to them. Their ancestors never had to be afraid of being few in number, so why would they be now? The problem is that the Jews are making the Non feel guilty for it. But I don’t think this gives Jews revenge; if anything, it just makes us look like assholes to the rest of the world. Can’t we all just get along?

Alright, end of my rant. Let’s talk about sex. I am over the culture shock and have finally settled into Spain since we’ve last spoken. I’ve cut celibacy up into tiny bits and pieces and dumped them into the Balearic Sea. Having realized a Blackberry can only get me laid by Jews here, I added a Spanish phone to the family of technology residing in my handbag. Now, I am soaking in the diversity. Adriana and I have moved out of Fred and Ginger’s honeymoon suite and now reside in a 10-lady apartment with great girls. I have my own bedroom (with a queen size bed) and bathroom, which is more than most of the kiddies on EGC can say. I no longer live in an environment that rains daggers onto my vagina. The nightmare ended one morning when the clouds opened up and God said, “Let’s be friends again, Isabella.” In other words, a beautiful rugby player began my Barcelona rotation.

First trip destination: Dublin, Ireland. We arrive and the ability to speak English subconsciously puts the Irish and Americans into the same cultural category for me. I wrongly assume that Irish men and women interact in the same way Americans do at a bar. In the United States, hypothetically speaking, a typical male who has at least the slightest amount of game approaches a female, asking to buy her a drink; she agrees and begins to chat with him at the bar; the amount of chemistry determines the rest. When the American male does not buy her a
drink, he comes off as being uninterested or even rude. (To me, though, it just means the guy doesn’t know any better. And the very few times this has ever happened, I usually get turned off and just walk away). It’s not that we American women have a high maintenance and think we have the god given right to be bought a drink; we are just kind of repulsed by men who lack chivalry and game. Chivalry is a vital trait of the alpha male, and every female wants to mate with an alpha male. I foolishly suppose that the same ruling goes for the Irish.

At any bar, my usual weapon of choice is my eyes. The teachings of Drunken Master Shaxxy D have made me an expert eye fucker. One moment of eye contact with me and badaboom you are now my drooling slave…which is why I am at the moment extremely confused as Adriana and I pause awkwardly in the middle of a local Irish pub in Dublin on Wexford Street. Why aren’t my powers working? We are unmistakably two of the only girls here that do not weigh over 200 pounds. We are doing a lap around the 2-story pub trying to find men who have some damn etiquette. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with us,” Adriana declares as we near the end of our lap. I sniff at the both of us…no body odor. I then get an immediate burst of adrenaline as a group of three Irish men in their mid-20s peer over at us and then immediately look away as I return the glance. What is this childish bullshit? I grab Adriana and we pierce into the trio saying “Hey boys.” Their initial shyness diminishes immediately and we begin conversing.

Harry is tall with a T-shirt covered pot belly and a mostly healed black eye. Rupert has the gaunt tortured-soul Brandon Boyd kind of look in his black velvet blazer and black skinny jeans. And Franklin seems very boy-next-door’esque with his light hair, button down, and jeans. I decide I’m going to pick on him tonight. He seems so innocent I just want to rough him up a bit and play with him.

Franklin buys me a beer and in a matter of minutes I know that he is a law student who still lives with his parents; it is common for graduate students in Europe to still live with mommy and daddy. Although I am excellent with parents, Dublin is not the time or place to venture into that. I realize that I am going to have to be creative. I start to make my language more and more vulgar with him in order to speed up the process. Every few moments I tug at his ass as if it is a gesture for the words coming out of my mouth. And each time I do this, he blurts with a big smile “Ah fuck off now.” He’s like the Pillsbury dough boy—ass tug, “Ah fuck off now!” ass tug, “Ah fuck off now!” ass tug, “Ah fuck off now!” Franklin’s dough gets hard rather fast and he pulls me in and starts smooching me in the middle of the pub. I lightly graze the denim over his erection and pull back, looking into his eyes, "Follow me.”