America and Its Ass: A History
America really wanted to be there for Iranians protesting the results of their 2009 election. It did. It liked the idea of being there, and it seemed like the right thing to do. But sometimes America loses its King of Pop and it forgets about other things, like Iran, and everything else that ever happened, or continues to happen during the mourning period of Michael Jackson’s death. Fans in other countries were upset, too, but no one really cares about the rest of the world. They’re a blur. They speak English all wrong, if at all.
I am America, but worse. I wasn’t paying attention to Iran or the KOP’s death: I was thinking about my ass. After a year at a desk job and an apartment with no strong light and no full-length mirror, I had put on ten pounds, and my ass was enormous. These are the sorts of things America worries about. When not worrying about its ass, America is rubbing lotion onto its dry elbows or is turning in its bed because it woke up to pee one hour before its alarm went off, and it knows it has to get up for its soul-numbing desk job, so it cannot fall back asleep. America drinks a lot of coffee and dies a little every day.
I, America, like to stare at myself in the mirror a lot. Me, I think, it’s me! How glorious! I wasn’t sure why we’d invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, but more pressing was the question of when and how my ass had decided to take over the back half of my body. Hell, for a long time I didn’t even know Iraq and Afghanistan were two separate countries, but I did know that my eyebrows were supposed to be two separate things and that it was time to pluck my unibrow. There are a lot of hairy situations in the world, but sometimes America’s own face is hairy, and America needs to take care of that first.
America might not even get around to caring about politics until she lands a soul-numbing office job and has to fill her time with something, lest she cry herself into a red, white and stupor. Red, white and cubicle. Dead, white and blue. America’s boss had a habit of looking over America’s shoulder to make sure she wasn’t reading anything not work-related, so she read the news. See, America had gotten a temp job as an editor at a Jewish orthodox magazine. And while she primarily wrote lifestyle articles, like her popular, “How to Dress Modestly Sexy: Just Because You Can’t Show Your Ankles Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Still Be Seductive,” she wrote about news sometimes as well. She followed her assignments to write in praise of Republican policy and against socialized health care. She developed a strong gag reflex.
And so it happened gradually: America ran on the elliptical twenty minutes per day, got her expanding ass situation under control, and began to look out into the world. She was excited by politics and economics. She still didn’t understand banks, but she took interest in a slew of other things. “Go ahead,” she said, “talk to me about Barak Obama! Talk to me about Iraq and Afghanistan, which are two separate countries! Weapons of mass destruction, construction in New Orleans. Serbia, Bosnia, Americans in Dubai. Gay marriage. Israel. Gays in Israel!” Naturally, the topic of Israel got thrown around quite a bit at the Jewish orthodox magazine offices. Soon America learned that if she so much as mentioned Palestine, her boss would go on about the Arab-Israeli conflict for hours. He was a propaganda-spouting moron but it gave her eyes a break. The rocket’s red glare, and bombs bursting in air, had nothing on eight hours of computer screen light.
Come to think of it, this is probably how America got so nearsighted.
As America grew confident in her knowledge of current events, she began to argue. One day she argued with Steven, her boss’s religious, conservative son, for two whole hours about Israeli foreign policy and got so angry she had to leave the room. Once outside, she remembered that this was a man who did not believe in dinosaurs.
“You do not believe in dinosaurs,” America told Steven.
Steven offered to show America a video called Why Dinosaurs Couldn’t Have Existed. “The evidence,” said Steven, “is irrefutable.”
America didn’t like the idea of irrefutable evidence. She preferred confidence, which she got a lot of from listening to NPR. She directly quoted the radio hosts, who were intellectual and sounded very handsome. When her boss wasn’t looking over her shoulder, America would Google the names of the radio hosts and sometimes she was pleasantly surprised to learn the host in question looked precisely as she had imagined him to look. Other times the host in question was Garrison Keiller. He really threw her for a loop.
Increasingly confident, America began to talk quite a lot. Often, America would start to say something she felt was important but forget where she was headed in the middle of her second sentence, and went on talking anyhow. Half the things America said was meaningless. But she did have a smart, new haircut and lovely ass. Even the boss’s son, Steven, would admit to that last part.
At first America loved the attention. People trusted her hair and the sound of her voice. When an argument sprang up in the office, America was there to snuff the flame. All was well and good—kosher, even—until one particular Monday. America’s coworker, Susan, brought up the topic of multiple wives, which Steven’s sect of Judaism condoned, and which Steven, too, condoned.
“I’m not even sure how you got yourself one wife,” said Susan.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” replied Steven.
America flew over and within seconds, was there to mediate the conflict.
“Everyone is entitled to have his own beliefs,” said America, “even if they are a little bit ridiculous. Let’s just enjoy this Monday, shall we?”
America gave Steven a friendly pat on the shoulder but he mistook it for slight aggression and the volume escalated and before America knew it, she had referred to the Jews as “you people.” It was an accident. America had always enjoyed friendly relations with Jewish people, had worked with them for years now.
“Surely you know it was an accident,” America told Steven. “I respect you, and all people. I am deeply sorry for my remarks.”
Steven did not forgive America, and shortly after, the rest of the office began its shift toward a mood that one could safely call un-American. Once a helpful flame-snuffer, she was now accused of being an instigator. What’s more, she was tired of hearing about the Middle East, tired of irrefutable evidence, tired, even, of NPR. She was tired of trimming her bangs for people who couldn’t even recognize that she was only trying to help, was only looking out for the best interest of everyone else. An instigator!
That was it. She quit her job at the magazine. She needed a break, something less political.
America’s sister got her a part-time job, observing potheads at the drug abuse research center she worked for. Every three minutes a buzzer sounded, and America would record what each of the study participants were doing. She loved the busyness of her mind. The study itself was not altogether interesting: something about marijuana withdrawal, which America was pretty sure did not really exist.
That’s where America was during the 2011 Egyptian protests: in a small office writing, “Participant three is complaining about being given the end piece of bread. Says he’s ‘vexed.’” She watched the protests on the office computer and she paid attention, until participant 3 asked for a new piece of bread for his sandwich. She got up and brought him a fresh piece, a plump one, from the middle. She thought about her ass: it had been weeks since she’d been to the gym, and she caught a glimpse of it the other day in the mirror. So America put the protests on pause and googled “exercises to tone butt.” Then she added the word “quickly,” because America, for all her beauty, was also quite impatient.
- March 9 2011 | 1 Notes - Comments - Read More →
