High school can be a troubling time. Perhaps it was more so for my parents then for me, made evident after my father cracked open his retirement piggy-bank and threw seven thousand dollars at an American Field Service (AFS) exchange company. Admittedly, I was difficult in that my closet's color palet was a dark in general and my friends, attitude and music matched. That I was quiet, withdrawn, and lost in my own thoughts and actions was to be expected. Right? Apparently having a black clad and permanently pale child moping around the house was not considered a good time for anyone. Honestly, I could have been a lot worse considering that I did not smoke, drink, or break curfew. My grades were just immaculate enough to hint at a social life, while still giving the impression of being hard working. It was not that my parents expected too much, it was that I was void of personality and never considered others before myself. They felt that they had to expand my horizons if I was going to be a productive member of society. Thus, Mom and Dad grimly signed on the dotted line in their checkbooks and AFS’ permission slips, praying that their darkling would come back human.
Soon after arriving in Slovakia, the furthest place my parents could kick me, I discovered that I had desires rather than the commands of others to be fulfilled. Would the road less traveled be straight and sinful, or narrow and curving? It would seem that for a time it would curve. Curve to the bar and all the glories that alcohol could provide. So much for the decree of parents and their silly rules. Instead, the wonder of intoxication would replace the need for school and its strict regulations, until, after only three months, I was a very happy alcoholic. Alas, my parent’s plan did not backfire completely. Visions of their depressing teen returning from home clad in pastels and fluent in faraway languages never did come to fruition, but slowly something did change. Instead of bursting from a chrysalis due to simple immersion in a new culture or life, it was from withdrawing further into anything written in English. Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men were thrown hastily in the corner, however, for an overly thumbed paperback written by Orson Scott Card called Speaker for the Dead.
It is not uncommon for exchange students to group together rather than spread out amongst the population, which strangely lead to the lending of books. While sitting in a smoke-filled bar in Kosice, the second largest city in Slovakia, my friends and I lounged in plush horseshoe booths awaiting our blissfully inexpensive drinks. The group of Australians that were scheduled to leave was having their final hurrah, and because of a distinct lack of baggage space, one of them unloaded many books on me to share with the others after I had burned through them. These were the small, nice things we would do for one another. Usually we would wait silently while the money for the bill was going around so that the attention would not be on the fact that the person next to us was paying for our drinks. Who cares? It’s only two dollars American anyway. We, the young Gods who sat while the other students stood when the teachers arrived in the classrooms, refused our seats on the bus to the old lady with a work-hunched back, and laughed as we handed out cigarettes to children. We were too good to respect our elders or the young. Our little group was what Emile Chartier, the French philosopher, feared when he said, “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.” We only had one thought, and it revolved around the self.
It took me some time to work my way through my pile of books. Most of this was spent during that brief few hours that I was home watching my host family clean their small flat while I sat on what used to be my host sister’s bed and read. When I first started reading Speaker for the Dead, I was mostly just interested in its futuristic setting, and how a person could live for generations, playing the ultimate avoidance dance of spending large portions of time moving at light speed. However, this was only a small portion of the book. To give a brief synopsis, it was about a man who traveled the universe speaking at people’s funerals. Not just the flowery, untrue garbage people spew out of political correctness and guilt, but about the person: what they did, why they did what they did, and what happened in their lives to make them act in such a way. For the first time, I began to realize that everyone has a different set of cause and effect reactions that make them behave in the manner they do. I realize how simple that sounds. That one person has some kind of reason or experience that shapes who they are. Having someone tell the truth about your life as you lived it was also enticing. I dreamt of that kind of understanding. Being a teenager is to feel isolated from understanding and for me this was amplified by being sent on foreign exchange. It wasn’t until later that I really opened my eyes to the rest of the world, but that to proved to be quite an adventure.
A few weeks later, I found myself awakening from my self-indulgent haze while sitting in a café. I should have been in class, but as per usual, I had skipped to smoke and drink coffee and write letters to my dark friends from home. At a table not too far from me was a small group of men all nicely tailored in suits so obviously Italian, and shoes so nicely polished, with another group of men who were so obviously their body guards. This was a small group of the Slovakian Mafia, quite prevalent in this café. It was owned and operated by their organization and was always frequented by the BMW’s and Mercedes that would otherwise never be seen in such a poor country. Nice clothes were one thing, but cars were expensive to the point that it would be cheaper to buy a car from America and ship it, than to purchase in country. No joke.
One of them, a swarthy balding man, gave me a wink. I started writing with a vengeance. Didn’t he know how important I was that I shouldn’t have to be bothered by the advances of the ancient? Apparently not. Soon, he was smoothing his few strands of hair in a mirror by his table, and moved to sit pompously across from me. With a flurry of Slovak, he began his flirtatious chess game with me, the eighteen-year-old infant. I tried to slow his progress by bluntly telling him in English that I didn’t speak Slovak. This did nothing but fuel the fire. He could speak English better than I could. He was German and spoke several languages better than I spoke the one. I hastily reached for my parachute of smokes. Could they save my nerves this time? Fat chance, but a nice try.
The formalities of names came and went, and all that remained was his voice, chuntering on about the weather and good places to go shopping. He moved next to him spending time with me, and how we should do so more often. I’m sure I turned a slightly paler shade of green, because he changed the subject to how everyone hates Germans. To emphasize this, he told me a little story, prompted by my choice in poison.
“What is that? Davidoff? That is a great brand of cigarettes. Did you hear about what happened to that family? Their children were kidnapped and held for ransom by some terrorists. I think they were killed, but I am unsure whether or not the money was paid.” His story felt like the foretelling of my possible future and rang inside my head. Get out! Get me out of here! It seemed like his chipper little anecdote was intended to not only frighten and intimidate, but also remind me of my place as a (infant) woman. Roughly an hour later, I managed to point out to him that I was expected elsewhere, but was not quick enough to escape without his phone number and a, “you should call me soon. We can have dinner.”
The bizarre aspect of this meeting was that I was suddenly aware that there was a definite issue with the role that the Mafia played in Slovakian life. They were everywhere. Not just, “I really don’t want to see this person today” so you run into them, everywhere, but ants everywhere. The men with their bodyguards would stop to talk to me, so noticeably American (?!) while waiting to cross the street, winking at me on the bus, or sitting under the yellow umbrellas of the Mafia café. One time I saw one of them with his girlfriend-for-hire in matching Adidas track suits, so drunk that he did a somersault on the dance floor before coming over to me for a chat. His woman laughed at him and even his bodyguard was embarrassed to the point of shading his eyes. He was too drunk to notice. Lucky for them.
This reminded me of the Speaker for the Dead in another way. The other component to the story was that there was an alien race that was randomly killing the scientists who were supposedly their friends. What wasn’t understood by the humans was that in the alien race breeding was impossible without dying first. These creatures germinated like plants after they died and it was considered a great honor to be killed in this fashion. I, like the humans in the story, had closed myself off to the possibility that there could be experiences outside my own understanding that shaped a chain reaction of actions. To explain, I was under the impression in my “overly experienced” youth that if I hadn’t heard or seen it before, “it” just didn’t happen. Changing this self-inflated opinion wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. The Mafia really helped me open my eyes. Thanks.
The truth of the matter was that they ran the country. Literally. The country’s leader had just left, shipping himself and his family to America for political asylum. The man who took over was as crooked as an Englishman’s teeth. He spent the entire country’s money on shutting down organizations that he thought were against him until, not long after I left, the hospitals, schools, and military were all out of commission. The skinheads seemed to be in on the havoc, as well. There was a skinhead convention the day I got flashed in the park. While this strange blond man beat off to me on the bus/chariot-of-escape, another man had the shit kicked out of him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I apparently didn’t have good timing either.
It was like the world had opened up and sucked me in. I was no longer a God, but a tiny speck in a turbulent sea. Things were going on around me that I had no control over. People were different from me in more than a, “don’t wear those shoes with that belt”, kind of way. Until I had read Speaker for the Dead, I had no idea that anything could happen in my bubble that didn’t have something to do with me personally. It was a sobering moment in a year of absolute drunkenness. My liver was pleased, but I wasn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. I still had fun, still drank and smoked my days away. I skipped three months of school in a row, only making an appearance to check my email and have lunch, and was forced to forge a note proving that I would, in fact, deserve the diploma I would soon receive. Doesn’t life experience count for something? I should graduate just for that alone! But something had changed. I couldn’t blindly walk around pretending that I was above the political hot-potato that the government was feverishly trying to pass. One night, I forgot, and found myself randomly in another lip-lock with a strange guy who turned out to be a skinhead. He didn’t speak English, but his buddy did. He told me not to be afraid because they were good skinheads who were “only fascist.” I, in my infinite and intoxicated wisdom, decided to have an argument with them about that topic and was forced to leave in a hurry. While hustling to my favorite cab company, it occurred to me that that may have been a poor choice. Luckily, those "only" fascist skinheads didn’t like beating-up (white) women. I think they were trying to frighten me more than anything. It worked.
I wish I could say that this was one of the few times when my color and gender had gotten me out of a bad situation. Actually, it usually caused the situation. But I was still fairly pasty when I took my turn at leaving my year-long vacation. My parents came to retrieve me from the airport and seemed grayer than before, prematurely aged by my letters of drinking and fun, and were shocked to see me roll into the terminal with blond hair rather than brown, a new facial piercing and a screaming teal Australian surf-board tee-shirt. Perhaps their efforts hadn’t been in vain? Or was their nightmare realized?
My coming home party wasn’t supposed to include most of my darker friends, but did anyway. I decided that the details of the attendants were unimportant. While Mother set up my Slovakian purchased items showcase style, I snuck them in. I sat huddled and smoking in a circle with them, regaling the startled masses with stories of the Mafia, running from skinheads, and booze booze booze. I spoke! A lot! I used bad language, and spat! Mother was most displeased. Father was trying to be diplomatic about the whole affair, and my friends were frozen in fascination. Most importantly and strangely, I was more likely to ask about others and be understanding about their stories of the daily grind. See. I have a soul after all. Who knew? I think that in a way, I was worried that if I had died in any one of those strange experiences, what would people have said about me? What kind of review would I have gotten? What could I say for other people? Why did they act out in the ways they did and how did it effect others? What would the Speaker for the Dead say at my funeral? I did however, take more than a bad liver back with me. Deep in my bags were a few books that I couldn’t do without. It seems ironic that the reason for my great enlightenment was because of a story about a different kind of eulogy.
