One of us is a forgettable 50-something son of an air force officer who settled in the Midwest after marrying his college sweetheart. The other is an ivy-league educated Gen X’er who grew up in the shadows of Manhattan. We met a number of years ago working for an early stage technology company in New York and after losing touch for the better part of 10 years, reunited in London of all places.
Though we have deep affection and admiration for each other, our preoccupations couldn’t be any more different. One’s kids are in college while the other’s is in grammar school. The younger uses every spare minute to savor London’s cultural delicacies while the other seldom ventures beyond a ¼ mile radius of his flat. One is long and lean, snacking on dried seaweed – the other is corpulent and showing his years.
The young one wears only white shirts and black suits though he accents both with technicolor socks. The old one wears pinstripes, bankers cuffs and collars, and – always, always, always – black hose.
Espresso. Filter coffee. Box sushi. Tuna sandwich. French wine. Whiskey. Yankees. Cubs.
Two paths: one leads home in a year and the other hasn’t been completely charted. But one thing is shared: we both feel the distance between ourselves and America and we find comfort in picking through the scuttlebutt that continually blows in from the West.
Here, three thousand miles away and liberated from the cacophony of US Media sources, we’re able to develop our opinions over days and weeks as the Pavlovian response mechanism to immediately vomit up an impression is suppressed by both distance and local culture.
Give a Brit a couple of pints and he’ll blather about Obama, Bush, Donald Trump, and America’s obsession with guns. But separated from the libations by 8 hours of sleep, that same bloke really doesn’t care.
It’s contagious. Two years into our respective sojourns, we find ourselves going weeks without peeking at the Journal, the New York Times, and espn.com; we might glimpse Russia Today or BBC News even while CNN and Fox are piped in. And neither of us has felt the need to touch base at the new Five Guys in Covent Garden.
We’re ambivalently in exile.
About Paul Henninger
Paul Henninger is an American expat living in London with his lovely wife and daughter and a dog named Max who is great but may or may not be very smart. When not chipping away at the often interesting salt mines of data analytic solutions he enjoys formulating overly grand plans and solutions for the world's problems, cooking, writing and sampling/indulging in the culinary, cultural, musical and otherwise interesting environs he finds himself in whether that be London, Brooklyn, or on various travels digital and physical.
About Bill Nowacki
Hmmm. What to share? I’m a Believer. I’m a husband and a dad. And through some strange twists and turns, I find myself working and living in London while my wife and sons are in America. I get home every 5 or 6 weeks which isn’t nearly enough.
In my time, I’ve done business abroad in Paris, Niece, Amsterdam, Gras, Vienna, Prague, Madrid, Barcelona, Mexico City, Rio, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Guangzhou, Delhi, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Munich, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Gothenburg, Toronto, Dublin, Montreal, Vancouver, Edinburgh, Leeds, Nottingham, Bristol, Turin, and Milan. Of all these places, London is by far the most approachable.
Sitting at a pub where Charles Dickens sat or drinking a pint where Captain Kidd imbibed is dreamy stuff. Weekly, I find myself walking by the Tower of London unable to turn my eyes from it except to marvel in the splendor of the Tower Bridge. As a romantic, it’s captivating to be sure.
Now in my 50s and separated from the girl I fell in love with almost 40 years ago, I pine for home. Having lived in the gentlemanly solemnity of England, I miss the brashness of America. I love that we Americans wear our emotions on our sleeves and that we believe that things ultimately always work out. I love that we hug each other . . . that we’re loud about our affections, afflictions, and antipathies . . . that we can’t help but put “it” out “there.”
I hear so much from Americans that our country is in decline and the abrasive, abusive discourse that’s permeated every crevasse of our analog and digital lives is the beginning of our end.
Maybe it is. I don’t know for sure. But having observed things here in the shadow of Buckingham Castle, I can say that biting one’s lip makes it bleed. A square jaw can sometimes be a glass jaw. And a cup of hot tea is a poor substitute for forced-air heating.
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