It’s not as easy as you think

He was a good guy, I knew. My wife knew his wife well. Which, of course, meant that I knew things about him that he’d probably rather I didn’t. And I could only hope my wife hadn’t told his wife… well, that.

I guess the flags in his driveway should have tipped me off. Don’t get me wrong, lots of my neighbors used to have them. Some of them still do, mostly because they don’t pay much attention to the news and they are proud of what they believe those flags stand for. I don’t judge. No, that’s not true. I try not to judge. But yeah, I do.

I can’t remember what it was that set him off. That’s funny. I remember so much else… the smell of pork fat and marinade dripping onto the propane coals. My wife’s dress - the floral one she says she doesn’t like but wears anyway. The saccharine chemical taste of too many margaritas.

I remember him handing me a paper plate full of good barbecue and a plastic mug of beer that was only drinkable because it was cold enough to make the cup sweat in my hand. And he said, “Don’t worry, Jon. We don’t mean people like you.”

To be honest, I hadn’t really been following the conversation around the grill. Last time I’d tuned in they’d been talking about the next Football season. And I knew from experience that even if I pretended to be interested, I’d wind up sounding like an idiot.

I guess my host had seen me standing there looking uncomfortable and being a good guy he’d come over to make me feel welcome. And yeah. Then he’d said the words that make me feel as unwelcome as possible.

“Who do you mean, then?” I said, loudly enough for my wife to hear. Or so she informed me afterwards. Extensively.

“Oh come on, y’all speak English better than I do.”

Oh, right. They’d been talking about some half-time show that was sung in Spanish.

I remembered my own time as a stranger in a strange land. Stranger even than this. Finding out the hard way that the language they spoke wasn’t the same as the one written in my high-school textbooks. Being afraid to speak when I knew I would sound like a fool. The moment the frustration on the cop’s face turned to anger when I couldn’t explain myself. How hard it was to run a business when it took half a day to figure out what an eight-line letter even meant.

And I wanted shout at this guy, “Why don’t they just learn English? Because it really isn’t as easy as you think.”

But I didn’t.

“No,” I said, “I speak different English, that’s all.”

I would have let it go at that. I swear. But then he said:

“And of course, you came here legally.”

I mean I tried to. I remembered the nights spent tearing my hair out over a foot-high pile of paperwork. The conversations with my five hundred dollar an hour lawyer that went ‘well, this is probably okay’ – when my whole life hung on the probably. I remember that word, parole. It’s the word they use to describe you when you’re finally done climbing the bureaucratic mountain only to be told that it will take months or years for them to finally decide if you are legal or not.

Parole. Kind of makes you feel like a criminal.

So yeah, I wanted to shout. “Why didn’t they come here legally? Well, because it’s not as easy as you think.”

But I didn’t.

“Yup,” I said. “Took a while, but I got my Green Card in the end.”

“So y’all can vote now?” He said. And yes, here I got the wrong end of the stick. He probably wasn’t even sure of the difference between having a green card and being a citizen. But the outrage factories had been dinning in my ears about non-citizen voting. So I thought he was making a point. And I remembered… I remembered when my driving license expired before the government graciously sent me that parole letter giving me permission live in my own house. I remember how nice the clerk at the DMV was as she point-blank refused to renew my license. And I wanted to yell… oh, how I wanted to yell, ‘Why don’t illegals vote? Because… it’s harder. So much harder than you think.’

But I didn’t.

“No. I said. That would take a few years more. But I doubt I’ll even apply for citizenship.”

He actually looked a little hurt at that.

“Why d’you not want to be a citizen?”

“It would make life difficult,” I said, “When we leave.”

Now he was just looking confused.

“Why would you leave? You have a nice house. You make good money, right? Y’all have a good life here.”

That… that was when I lost it.

“Have you ever done anything illegal?” I said, loudly enough to still the ongoing football conversation around the pit. “Anything at all? A speeding ticket you never dealt with? A tax deduction you thought was probably okay? Maybe driven home just a smidgeon over the limit?”

“Have you ever… maybe posted something online that implied you might, for example, wish ill to an elected Democrat?” That was rhetorical. I’d unfriended him on Facebook a long time ago.

“How would you feel if that meant some half-trained asshole in a ski mask could come break into house and take everything you’ve ever worked for away from you? That your best-case scenario is to take a plane ticket back to some country that doesn’t even feel like home anymore?”

At that point I was yelling. My wife came over. Shortly afterwards, we were in the car going home. We’d reached the silent stage of our own argument. I was just thinking.

Words spoken in anger are sometimes the truest. And I’d found an unexpected truth. England no longer felt like home. I don’t know why that surprised me. Those halcyon days of riverside pubs and soho jazz are long past; somehow now, when I visit, it is never summer. England seems a damp grey place. With nowhere to park.

Where, then do I belong. This man, two steps from being old. Too tired to move again. Too cynical to dream of better things.

I belong in the America I dreamed of, when once I moved here. Which, now I think, never was.