Culture Club
Culture and traditions steeped deep in heritage are something that your average Joe white amerikan simply doesn't have. White amerikans as a populace are a hodge podge mixture of ethnicity's that have melted together and produced large groupings of peoples that have no culture, save the amerikan way, to call their own.
I myself am a prime example of such a mixing of the species. Beyond great grandma's receipe of hot german potato salad and serving lots of sweets with breakfast all I have to show for my partial european lineage is a taste for brats and sauerkraut. I, like most amerikans, am forced to beg, borrow or steal anything that resembles culture on the most basic levels.
After having freedom granted to me many months ago, I have done my best to get a little culture during my quest to...well...get a little. I have exposed myself to and then taken in different aspects of life from a hispanic, an english indian and now a guatemalan women and my current crush of the month is austrian.
The latest and currently longest lasting endeavor in my contuining immersion into the dating pool had expressed to me numerous times that her mother was just dying to meet me. After carefully and irrationally disecting this request from several angles, I came up with an idea and set forth the ball in motion. I took the girl and both of her parents out to dinner to have a bit more of a proper setting and made sure to pick a restaraunt chain that does its best to steal whatever bits of culture it finds as a marketable ploy to sell various dishes of semi-authentic ethnic foods. A number of eateries spring to mind that are well suited for this task, but the ultimate decision came down to financial frugality and the fact that I know a bartender at TGI Fridays.
Naturally nevrous describes me well and the circumstances upon which I thrust myself didn't help my nerves any, thankfully, alcohol did.
When we finally met up, I must admit the sight that greeted onlookers was most likely a bit perplexing. First off and foremost, I stood nearly a foot taller than father, mother and daughter as we were lead to our booth. The short and somewhat stocky statures and rich brown skin of the three contrasted sharply to my pasty white and thoroughly lanky frame. But just the outward appearnce didn't hold a candle to our dinner conversations.
Holding-up in my desert oasis for the majority of my life has allowed exposure to very few outside influences. I sound like a surfer when I talk (damn west coast) with a smattering of catch phrases and spoken dilects that have been borrowed from coast to coast. You will commonly here 'yo' uttered in the same sentence as a 'y'all' and there are known instances where certain words will slip out from between my lips with accents from parts of the U.S. I haven't ever visited or made an appearnce in for only the briefest periods of time. I know a small amount of french and a smattering of spanish that I have learned mostly by being submersed in a suburb that is mere hours from the border of Mexico.
With an alcoholically induced smile on my face and one last shot of whiskey warming my stomach I sat down to dinner with a set of parents that didn't speak a word of english. Hilarity ensued, I assure you. I was gently coaxed through several phrases that while I pronounced correctly, the hesitation that came with them brought amused smiles to the faces of the parental units across from me. I did a lot of body language reading and in turn did a lot of non-verbal communicating of my own. The jokes I cracked translated easily and my wit and intelligence was equally observed as I picked up on what was being discussed without ever understanding a single word. When the evening closed, I was invited over for dinner, a birthday party and something I beleive loosely translates to a family picnic and was thanked repeatedly for my hospitality and good natured humor. My only misgiving now is what the future brings?
The thrill of the hunt is long over and I have watched the spider-web cracks that I have planted in her armor grow to the point where it is falling off in places and she has shown signs of exposing emotions I never thought I would ever see. I can probably be happy with her for a time, but in the end I know the differences are too great and that happily ever after has different meanings regardless of what language you translate it to.
Is happiness for a time worth the possible trauma that can and most likely will be inflicted? Do I have it in me to suck everything I can learn from this soul and then discard it like a rotting husk? Will self-less ever truly replace self-ish in my approach to collecting souls to feed my hunger? Where do I find such a soul to quench my insatiable appetites and not become the one being drained?
Once again, more questions than answers. And the looming weekend always provides random people to placate my thirst. Wouldn't it be grand to find another vampire like myself and search the globe for souls to consume? Imagine the chaos if one became two...
Yes, dearest of diaries, insomniacs dream too.
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