The America Trip

Several years ago, in the middle of being homeless, I had a very strange trip to the United States. It was like Scotty coming along in the Starship Enterprise and beaming me over to the States and then a week and a half later, returning me to homelessness in London.

I went over to do some renovation work on a house in Georgia for someone I had met on several occasions through friends - he used to live in London and rent out rooms to them in his flat. I'm going to call him John in this story, and despite the story I'm going to tell, he is overall a fair-minded and courteous individual.

"John" has joint Irish and American nationality - he has spent much of his life in both places - he moved back to the States to be closer to a 12 year daughter who features in this story.

He bought a dilapidated old house on the edge of a small town in Georgia with the intention of renovating it and becoming a kind of "community landlord" in the same way as London. He has excellent building skills but was working as an electrical engineer and had no time to spend on the house. For some reason he didn't have the cash flow to pay someone there and he therefore wrote to a friend of mine called Pete Green, a builder I later did some work with. He offered to pay his ticket to the States, give him a holiday and sort him out with some money at the end when the job was finished. Pete wasn't available so someone suggested I contact him, although my building skills (gained through squatting) are not at a professional level. He was amenable, so I borrowed money from some very kind friends (I wasn't claiming benefit at the time - when I first became homeless I didn't claim benefit for a long time) both to buy clothes to make me look presentable to American immigration and to give me to some money to show them.

So that there wouldn't be any problem with U.S. Immigration, he bought me a return ticket with Lufthansa (�180) on at an Internet site I suggested which was pre-booked for 2 weeks later. U.S. visas are for 3 months, so the deal between us was that I would overstay my return flight and he would give me reasonable amount of money at the end.

I know that for many people flying is as ordinary as getting on a bus, but I've only ever flown on 3 occasions - to and fro Switzerland as a teenager, too and fro South Africa about 7 years ago, and this occasion. So for me flying to America (via Frankfurt) was exciting. I was a bit worried about immigration, but it was uneventful and John was waiting for me on the other side of the barrier. We went off to see his ex-wife - as he didn't have any money to give her for maintainance so he borrowed $100 from me - although the money I had was borrowed strictly to get through immigration I couldn't really refuse, seeing as how he'd just paid out �180 for me. I didn't get it back, but weighing things up that was fair enough.

John (and I emphasise this) is a very friendly and hospitable individual and made me feel welcome when we got back to the house, which was on the edge of a village/small town - American villages are more spread out than in England - there's less of a sharp demarkation between village and countryside. Next morning I got up early, and as I always do, went for a walk (like a dog sniffing the bounds) I like to orientate myself. I became aware that I was getting some very strange stares from people who passed by (this was a small road in the country) and towards the end a guy - I think I could say a redneck - stopped - obstensibly to offer me a lift, but actually to find out who the hell I was.

I gradually became aware that the idea of simply going for a walk along a road, as distinct from in a designated leisure area, was regarded with fear and suspicion by many Americans - I was reminded of a short story I read at school "To take a walk" where the subject is arrested by a robot car as displaying symptoms of mental illness. We even had to drive 100 metres along the road to visit our nearest neighbours.

America is undoubtedly the strangest place I've ever been - much stranger, for example, than South Africa. Under our current prime minister, who seems to be acting in the role of a sort of elected American colonial governor, we are engaged as an ally in America's quest to build a global empire, and it is continually being forced down our throats that we share a common language and culture with America - all the endless programmes on tely about the Second World War - which ended a long time ago, about those nasty Germans and our American allies etc. Although an obvious attempt is being made to Americanise British culture, I really do think British people would find it a strange place - not to say that there aren't large numbers of very fine Americans - many of whom oppose America's imperial role

I did about 70 hours of work for John - I'm sure I didn't have the level of skill he wanted but we got along well. However, as I'm sure you now realise, there was a problem. The problem was John's relationship to his daughter, who I'll call Sally, who was aged 12. Sally lived with her mother, but came to stay with John at weekends.

What can I say - there seemed to be stuff developing between them sexually - so far as I know it hadn't gone as far as sex, but it did seem to be going in that direction. She slept in his bed, in the opposite direction to him. By itself, for weekends, it's not that big a deal - I found it a bit weird but hell, what do I know? - I'd just got there. But there seemed to be an incredible amount of horseplay going on between them, and I have to say this was practically all the time, in the house, in the car, cafes, everywhere. He kept on trying to grab hold of her, it seemed (not sure) that he was trying to grope her. "I wanna kiss you, I wanna kiss you" in bed in the morning etc. So I'm trying to work out well where does she stand in all this - dropping casual comments like "your dad's .. whatever". She seemed excited and to like the attention. I dunno - I haven't got teenage daughters - I discussed this with a number of people when I got back, including a very astute radical professor of psychology from the States. She thought it was way out of line.

On the second weekend we went out to visit some friends of his, a single mum and her daughter. I noticed that when we got out of the car he chased this kid, and she really wasn't into this at all. They dropped by next evening on the way to visit some friends and he ends up in a wrestling match with the daughter on the floor in front of me and her mum. This woman says out loud (not facing me, but to me) "I really don't know what I think about this". I thought "Join the club, love". The two girls go into the jacuzzi and we chat for a while. Eventually this lady wants to go and John goes to get the girls. He shouts "I can't go into the jacuzzi with your kid butt naked in there" This lady doesn't reply immediately so he goes in. This lady wakes up and says to him directly "Did you go into the jacuzzi with my kid naked in there?" - not as an accusation, but just to find out. He brushes it off, and I watch her get out with her kid as soon as soon as she can walk out the door.

OK - so what do I feel about all this and where it is going? I didn't really know, but my problem is that time is running out. My return flight was that coming week, and if I overstayed then if the shit hits the fan in two weeks time, and I could see it coming, I have to use the money I've borrowed from friends to get back, and I might have a lot of problems re-paying it. Plus this is a really strange country to me - I don't know how to do anything here. I would have liked to have hung around a bit more and tried to get my head around it more, but I didn't have the time. I didn't feel up to confronting John with this stuff - I didn't know him that well, he'd just paid �180 to get me over here, I was staying in his house, and how to say "Quit messing around with your kid". John is a very friendly guy, but also into martial arts in a big way, with a fucking great sword on the wall. As I hadn't got a clue about America, or contacts, I thought I was better placed to do something about the situation back in the UK. So I left when he was work, leaving a note saying I was going off to the mountains.

Getting back was sort of interesting. I mentioned before about Americans and cars. Well, there's effectively no public transport system outside the cities. Yeah, sure, there are Greyhound buses and railways, but well, in British terms, it's as though there were buses and trains between London Southampton and Bristol, with maybe a stop in Reading or Swindon, but (I kid you not) nowhere else. I remember a conversation we had with this guy fishing at the lake in a park we went to - I mentioned the lack of public transport compared to Europe. He said "Well, I guess people are afraid that if MARTA (Public transport in Atlanta) is extended into their area, it'll bring all the poor people in. Such a conversation would be unimaginable to a European.

John had told me, although on reflection it might have been for his daughter's consumption, that hitch-hiking was illegal in Georgia, so I decided to walk towards the airport, about 50 miles away. As my flight didn't leave for a couple of days, it wasn't in a rush. This was in February so it was pretty cold. I tried to walk across country, but as I didn't have an adequate map, I had to return to the road. In the end I walked about 20 miles, to a big town half way to Atlanta. Various people in cars swore at me because I was walking along a road with a rucksack; therefore poor. When I arrived at this town I was sure that because it was on a major route there would be a bus but not so; I had to get a taxi to the airport. Once there I went to the Lufthansa desk - I'm sure that it helped that I spoke German but they were pretty nice to me. I explained the circumstances and the air hostess said to me "Look, you want to go tonight, don't you?" (My flight was in two days time) I said yes, but my ticket was non-changable. She looked at it and then said OK, I'm going to re-book it. I'm sure if it had been British or Americans they would have quoted the rules to me but German people are more flexible. I was so glad to get on that flight. I know that Georgia is one of the most reactionary parts of the States but it really did smell of fascism and I was glad to be going to an anti-fascist country.

When I got back I started to make attempts to find out who to contact in the States, and also emailed John to tell him I had left and why. He initially responded by saying what are you talking about, but after I spelled things out in detail he thanked me for giving him some things to think about and actually invited me back. I would like to have gone back, but not under those circumstances and with him paying for me. In the end, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt - the States is so fucked up that going to the authorities about Sally could have done her even more damage and I had to weigh up the two - I hope to hell that I don't find out in years to come that I made the wrong decision. I have spoken to John on a couple of occasions since - once on the phone, and once in the street when I met him en route to Ireland, where he's now living.

I only got a small snapshot of America, and in the most extreme part of it, but I can only go by what I saw. One thing that struck me was the sheer quantity of consumption and waste people were buying endless new gadgets and there was so much thrown away stuff - you can see where all the earth's resources are going. Maybe the same thing strikes people from Africa, Asia, South America, when they come to Britain or another European country, but it's peanuts to the U.S. Food seemed very cheap; we went to self-service restaurants where for under �5 you could go and take as much food as you wanted - there was an immense variety and the quality was high. There were some enormously fat people who kept on going back and back again. Another thing is American TV, which is crazy. Everything is soundbytes - there's no in depth coverage about anything - it's like random bits of news, movies, ads all mixed in together. It's as though no-one has an attention span of more than 15 minutes. So you've got this sensationalist and completely arbitary coverage of the world. You might have a major global crisis in a particular place, but be watching something about a disease in monkeys in Cameroon. They love big disasters like earthquakes, but hate having to explain any continuous process - American news seems to lack any kind of coherence. So Americans really haven't got a clue about what is going on the world, or that their government is building a global empire, policed by about 1000 overseas military bases. I know Big Brother is trying to make British TV like this - currently the ludicrous Hutton report is being used for a takeover of the BBC, but it has a long way to go before it becomes American.

People were superfically extremely friendly (except those encountered on the road) but you couldn't seem to discuss anything in any depth - maybe that was just because they didn't know me but I don't think it was that. There seemed to be this undercurrent of fear, and I got the feeling that it was a fear of the poor, which could not be admitted to or talked about. The inequality in the US is more at Third World than European levels, and they have a gulag of 3 million people in prison.

Despite all this, it is a very big country and I know that there are many different kinds of people there - I must say I would like to go back and see some more of it - I'd also like to meet some native Americans. Well, maybe some day