The Fever Dream

“No but it is great in America, it’s America. What do you mean you didn’t like America? But you had a good time, so you love America. I don’t understand.” said my mom with tones of regret, melancholy and worry. I could swear that one more “it’s unlivable and cultureless” from my mouth would have made her cry, something I would avoid at the cost of never drinking Gin Tonic again – big price. Why? Why does a woman of really respectful intelligence, charisma, irony, and critical thinking suddenly become so little and submissive in the face of the empire? Did going to America once in the early 1990s (I wish I could specify the year but can only say 1991-1993 because, upon asking, I could only learn that my mom went “When Bush was president and said that thing he said about taxes”*) really stain her opinion for life? But that is impossible, at least that is what I tell myself, because I want to think that I was raised by an informed and reflective woman (I was, I swear to the Lord, look at my proper manner). There has to be a higher power controlling her. I know it because I also feel its gripping my shoulders. I want to see, and maybe let you see too, how this higher power is higher and why a power, why it is so spiritual and why I am a slave to it despite the struggles I take upon myself in the form of rolling my eyes when I hear an American accent on the street each time**.

The sadness of leaving the US attacked me on the plane. “I will probably go to Marshalls” says Drew Barrymore to Adam Sandler in “The Wedding Singer”. Tears flow to my eyes. I frown. What now? What is wrong? I realize that I am not crying, surprisingly, because I have to watch two people in love with each other on the airplane screen. My longing for human touch, romance, love has been overcome. I have a different lover now, one that can live inside of my head forever, one that will never reject or cheat me, because I am wired not to allow it.

I grow increasingly anxious as I realize that with each second, I am being transported away from the place where all (for sure too many) of my cultural references were ready to use. And because I was born in 2004, I live, breathe, eat cultural references. Being 15 minutes away from shelves stuffed with Chili and Lime tortilla chips and Peanut Butter dark chocolate cups was probably the highest I will get in life. My identity is in itself a cultural reference, I navigate in a pulp, in a fiction. I am a void that has been filled by the angel wing graffiti in LA (what was that, I ask), the sugar cookie with pink frosting and sprinkles, the Dance Competition in Houston Texas that a youtuber who would use Clean and Clear was attending in 2015, a juul, a house fully carpeted with white fluff that converse were allowed to stomp on. I am those things. Each sentence that comes out of my mouth is nothing but a cutout collage glued very badly on a thin piece of paper.

Sure, I am also rosół, Słoń Dominik, kompot, Zachęta, pasztet, kolędy, Świat według Kiepskich, the 1940 building with a grimy staircase and the flat on its second floor with the painting by the grandparents’ friend, the old Russian cutlery from the 100-year-old cabinet. But that I am not in the same overwhelming and uncontrollable way. That is not what I chose, that is what I was born into and what I felt (and subconsciously probably still feel) was inferior. It feels secondary in the era of hyperglobalization.

At a young age, my grandparents were one of my main media suppliers, or so they tried to be. Old Polish cartoons would be playing on the TV while I would enjoy, or rather simply ingest because I did not know of the pursue of enjoyment, whatever meat and potatoes my grandma would put before me after I ate my rosół (yes, I am cringing because I could simply say chicken noodle soup but that is not the same thing and I would lose my point and a part of me if I used that phrase).

When I was falling asleep under one of those thick and itchy blankets, brown or blue-colored, with some horse-like but unidentifiable pattern on it, nursery rhymes that have not seen the stars and stripes were read to me. I feel now that I was secluded then, wrapped in that thick blanket. That was not the real world. One can no longer live in the real world if realness is not the American fakeness. It was a reality of the past that I would not last in. Then, total lockdown could only save me from falling into the arms of the western giant. Not even that. America was already too closely watching me through the 3rd floor window of the building in Stare Bojary. A click away was the real world. Channel 25, not 24, was where I would find the origins that were not mine, but that would welcome me and lead me through life.

From the crib, America had been already trying to seduce me. She came alive in my room through the ponies, the dolls, that I saw other kids play with in kindergarten and that a whisper was telling me I needed to beg my mom for. Playing with them, I was stroking voodoos. And maybe, at first, I had no idea that Scooby Doo was not a dog from Poland, nor would I consider the nationality of anybody, including a dog. Not until I started registering the oddity of spaces and food concoctions on the TV screen, recognizing them as different from what I was surrounded by. Why don’t we eat triple cheeseburgers with fries and mozzarella sticks?

And then came the fish fingers. Then, the Nesquik Duo cereal. And finally, I pressed the button that set off the bomb, but not much alarm – Disney Channel. I watched High School Musical only once, red with embarrassment knowing that my mom could hear the dialogue. “Why would you watch this? It’s stupid. You’re better than that. Read something.” But I wasn’t better, and I never will be. You cannot live away from America, no matter how many seas separate you from it, no matter how badly you try to elevate yourself beyond its context. It is too late because you already saw a Rihanna music video playing in the back of that restaurant on the Baltic seaside. I cannot ever be better than the best of me, and the best of me is what will be understood anywhere – an Americanized English speaker.

Democratically speaking, because democracy is obviously the gold standard, my best will be achieved through speaking American, making an intellectual take on Andy Warhol and knowing what Area 51 is. I am paradoxically always there, in one of the 50 states, but never there. So the moment I started gaining any awareness of where I was at 10 years old, I also began to realize where I was not. I was not where the people from the TV screen started increasingly originating from. But I would be there one day, I promised myself.

My primary school friend used to live in the perfectly square apartment building with 7 floors, an elevator and a white kitchen. Oh how happy I was when we moved down the street, 2014 it was, and the doors weren’t wooden and brown anymore. I mean they were still wooden but at least they were white, our bathroom had a shower with a silver-colored handle, and I never stepped foot in the bathtub that had the most beautifully crafted legs in the shape of dragons. That was one of my wins. I was watching Dance Moms on my iPad Mini. I was a mile closer to my heaven on earth where my hair would be blown by a stronger wind, the same sweet wind that carried the smell of beer. Not some lame polish crafted one, but a golden Bud Light.

That iPad was America’s hand reaching to me, long nails pressing into my skin, a voice whispering tales of jealousy. Aren’t you sad that your grocery store doesn’t have Lucky Charms? Oh Wanda, this Mac and Cheese is delicious; don’t you want a bite too?

I had to go. I had to.

Each year I would long for Christmas. That was when America and I would exchange the most intimate kisses. Huge cheese pizzas (why not call it Margherita?). The Christmas lights on that huge house were shining more brightly than any streetlamp on any street in Warsaw. The songs, all in English, that when I would finally come to understand the lyrics of, the extasy of understanding the words. That was my crack. The frozen dinner. The suburbia. The bland, gray, void – the exotic.

And then I went. Doesn’t matter what happened. I talked to much already. But now, that I am sitting on my bed in Warsaw, I feel robbed. I don’t ever want to go back, but all I want to do is go back.

*Upon further research I learned that Johnny Carson was about to quit the Tonight Show, which points to year 1991/1992. After we looked it up my mom confidently said – oh so 20 years ago! I had to remind her that I am her 20 years ago, and was Definitely not born in America, but in Warsaw in 2004. Anyway.

**Cultural imperialism has been gone over by many people on a much different level of wisdom and experience than my 20 year old white self from Warsaw, but maybe not that many 20 year old Polish white girls have gone over it (yes, I have an individuality complex.) So maybe I do have something to say. If you read the following and conclude that I am reiterating the obvious, I will not argue with you. But because I cannot escape my fate, I will still make it feel like I need to use my right to speak –  the 1stamendment, correct?