It Occurs to Me That I Am America

by Richard Russo

  When Bobby arrived on campus at the beginning of September he was shocked by how hot it still was outside; he’d never known anything like it. He was impressed by the large squirrels bounding about. He thought it was strange the houses were built of wood (fire hazard) and had no walls between their lawns and he found the food served in the cafeteria nearly inedible. Soon he discovered a little Italian restaurant with a fake brick facade and, inside, watery paintings of Naples and Vesuvius behind niches filled with white plastic busts of Roman emperors. That’s where he ate lunch and dinner, though he disliked the large portions and the inevitable sides of spaghetti. They also had the curious custom of serving a lemon peel with espresso. And the old unshaved waiter was friendly but could speak only Neapolitan.

  The first few days Bobby was unbearably lonely. He was used to going out every night with a “fine group” of ten or twenty to one of the restaurants near the Pantheon. In Rome he spent the afternoons on the phone putting together that evening’s group. He liked going everywhere en bande because that meant they could play musical chairs and you were never trapped with a bore. He was also used to cracking jokes and making funny sound effects that kept everyone amused. Here, in America, he was afraid to leave his room, and his chubby roommate, George Thomas from Alabama, slept all the time and smelled of Clearasil.

  Then one day he heard two students speaking Italian and he jumped in with “Come mai! ” (“How can that be?”) and they lit up, too, and soon they were fast friends and he was driving them around in his vintage Cinquecento. They were both from Bergamo and knew Roman kids he knew. It was such a relief to speak his own language! They dressed well and didn’t wear jeans or have fat asses.

  He invited them to his Italian restaurant, which he described as “kitsch,” and they brought along an extra girl for him, though they didn’t say that. The girl, Rebecca, was very short but had big breasts and she could sort of speak Italian since she was “majoring” in Italian but “minoring” in something else, something to do with women, and had spent a summer in Perugia. She was fearless about speaking Tuscan and always smiled her way broadly through her linguistic faults and hesitations. They admired her for that.

  She was a little too sure of herself and had learned almost to shout “Dai! ” or “Dai, Bobby,” which meant something like “Get off it” in English, as she explained. She said it so often that American customers looked at her with a queasy grin as if she might actually be homicidal.

  When they were alone, just to be nice he offered to get them a hotel room (he couldn’t take her to his dorm since George was sure to be there asleep).

  “A hotel room?” she said in English. “What for?”

  He stretched and said with a smile, “I feel like a little blow job.”

  She said, “How horrible! I don’t feel safe with you.”

  “Not safe? What do you mean?”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “A blow job”—un pompino—“is very friendly, isn’t it?”

  “But I haven’t agreed to that. We haven’t discussed it. I have lots of issues with nonconsensual sex.”

  Bobby (crushed): “I thought you’d like it.”

  He’d imagined he was doing Rebecca a favor with her big butt under a dark skirt and her beginner’s Italian and the way she shouted “Dai! ” When he didn’t want to fuck a girl but wanted to be generous with his body, he’d let her suck him off while he watched porno on his phone.

  Since he didn’t know many Italian speakers, he invited Rebecca out again in spite of her mysterious scruples. She suggested a Thai place on I-95 but he couldn’t eat such spicy food and they ended up returning to his favorite Italian restaurant. Unfortunately, they started talking politics. “I don’t see what’s so bad with Trump. Berlusconi is no better and lots of my Roman friends have dads who wear ankle monitors.” He had to mime ankle monitor since neither knew it in the other language.

  “But aren’t your parents liberal? Everyone at Brown is liberal. I mean, sure, they might own some iffy stocks that exploit Asian workers, but basically they’re liberal.”

  Bobby wasn’t sure what liberale meant, but wasn’t that the neofascist, pro-Catholic party that used to be led by Gianfranco Fini? They had studied that in high school. “I don’t think the liberals exist anymore, but yes, my parents are liberal, they’re very Catholic and had an audience with the German pope.”

  Now it was Rebecca’s turn to look confused. She shrugged and screamed, “Dai, Bobby, how can you say Trump is okay? He’s anti-gay, at least I think he’s anti-gay, and he only pretends to be religious but knows nothing about the Bible and he’s surrounded by Wall Street crooks.”

  Bobby couldn’t grasp her point. He wasn’t exactly anti-gay and he’d even fooled around with a handsome swimming star in Puglia, a guy, but they had both been discreet; no reason to emphasize your temporary vices. And didn’t everyone pretend to be religious and observe only their Easter duties? Like everyone at Brown pretended to be bisexual? He wasn’t sure what crook meant in English (they seemed to have settled down in English) but Wall Street, that was good, wasn’t it? Rich guys? Big shots? “So what if he’s anti-gay? I’m not gay.”

  “You’re not very sensitive. I mean about these sensitive issues.”

  He put his beautiful hands on the table, as if they were all aces. Surely they were sensitive. They usually won any argument. He smiled. “How about that hotel room? Have you changed your mind?”

  “Dai, no means no! I’m afraid of sex if the guy is aggressive. I don’t feel safe with you.”

  “We could have real sex, not just a blow job, if you want.” He didn’t know how to be more accommodating.

  “But you’re a big guy. You might rape me. I’m very afraid,” and she rattled around with a pill box and swallowed three pink pills.

  “You like to get high, I see. I have some good marijuana.”

  “I am not getting high, as you put it. These are prescription meds. I need them to stay sane. Several of my friends are on mood stabilizers. Some have OD’d. One is in rehab. I’m seeing a therapist. I’m afraid of you.”

  “But why exactly?” He had never frightened anyone before; he couldn’t help preening over it slightly.

  “What if you wanted to rape me? You’re a big man—two hundred pounds?”

  He couldn’t convert that into kilos and just shrugged.

  Over saltimbocca at their kitsch restaurant, he asked politely, “Are you interested in real politics, like equal pay for equal work or no more nukes, or just these lifestyle . . .”—he trotted out his new word—“issues?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like Ms. for Miss, things like that, marijuana freedom?”

  “But those are the real issues of our day. By the way, this veal tastes great. I used to be a gluten-free vegan till last week, but I felt I needed my strength to fend off men here on campus.”

  “Are you interested in emigrants drowning or things like the husband’s turn to do the dishes?”

  “Both! I’m concerned by all of it.”

  “Babies drowning off Lampedusa the same as Ms. or Miss?” He was genuinely puzzled.

  They argued right through the panna cotta, then he drove her home in silence. As she got out she pecked him on the cheek and said, “That’s not a come-on but just out of friendship.” He wondered why they never split the bill if she was so friendly.

  The next time they got together she told him about her “work.” “For my senior thesis I’m looking at body modifications.”

  “Tattoos? How about when you get older and they start to sag?”

  “No, silly, like gold bars in tits, penis extenders, chastity cages, clitoris modifiers, castration—”

  “Ouch!” he said. “You’ve actually castrated men?”

  “I do not participate in the subject’s genital choices; I just record them.”

  “Photos?”

  “Would you like to see some?”

  “Why not?”


  Brown really was the home of freaks. Maybe he should have gone to Villanova, though he’d heard they had a black statue of Our Lady sitting beside a pile of aborted fetuses. Were all Americans crazy?

  When he saw Camilla, the Italian girl, the next day on campus (he was heading to his course on the music of Bartók), he asked her to meet him in an hour for a coffee.

  She was only ten minutes late. As soon as she sat down, she asked, “How’s it going with Rebecca?”

  He puffed his cheeks out and said, “Buh! She showed me some of her photos of clitoridectomies.”

  “I didn’t know she was into African studies.”

  “It’s for her minor in women’s studies.”

  “Oh.”

  “She won’t have sex because she says she’s afraid of me.”

  “She just says that to get pills out of her shrink.”

  “I thought as much. Mannaggia! These Americans are crazy.”

  Camilla thought about it and said, “No, they just want to have an identity, which is a problem if you’re a rich white girl like Rebecca. Everything over here is organized by identity politics.”

  “Rich?”

  “Like you. Not a billionaire.”

  “But if she’s rich why doesn’t she like Trump?”

  “It’s not chic. It’s like all those rich people in our grandparents’ generation, the Brigate Rosse kidnapping bankers.”

  “Well, I want to be chic. Are only leftists chic?”

  “Yes, but you can’t want real social change. No one at Brown talks about class. They all pretend to be middle class. Comunque—anyway—most of them are very rich.”

  “If you’re chic at Brown, what do you believe?”

  “First and foremost, you’re for transexuals’ rights. No one actually knows one.”

  “Hermaphrodites?”

  “No, men who’ve become women.”

  “My parents knew someone like that in London who married a lord and opened a restaurant.”

  “Then, you should like Native Americans.”

  “Native . . .”

  “Indians.” She held her hand to her mouth and made a battle whoop. “Whoo-whoo-whoo. No one knows any of them, either.”

  “Are blacks chic, too?”

  “Very. But don’t mention they’re poor. You want to have a race analysis, not a class analysis.”

  “And all this stuff about gender?”

  “Oh, you should study that next semester. It’s impossible to understand it unless you’ve studied it. Like trigonometry. But it’s essential. Tell Rebecca you’re studying it and she might feel safe with you.”

  On their next date at Napoli, Bobby was determined to seduce Rebecca. Her odd resistance to him made her more desirable. He wouldn’t even look at porn on his laptop as he fucked her. Was she very hairy, he wondered? He could always fantasize about Ginevra, the model he’d met on Capri.

  “I’ve learned so much from you,” Bobby said smoothly.

  “Really? Like what?” She melted and smiled.

  “You’ve taught me how sex must be consensual. Otherwise it’s rape.”

  Her little smile reminded him of the Mona Lisa’s. “What else?”

  “How we are all androgynes. I had sex with a man in Puglia.”

  “Excellent! You know many people here at Brown identify as nonsexual?”

  “I don’t have an identity,” Bobby said mournfully. “I’m American but Italian—I feel like a . . . a hollow man.”

  “Don’t let people tell you that! That’s outrageous! You’re a very real, very dear man and I esteem you very much. I can see how you’ve been persecuted, as an Italo-American. Please don’t think I’m denying your oppression.”

  Half an hour later they’d checked into the hotel. Rebecca had never realized the male organ—unmodified—could come in such a large size. She imagined few women could accommodate it, which must be a real problem for him. A deformity. She was determined not to say anything, to be accepting and to act as if nothing were abnormal.

  EDMUND WHITE has written novels, short stories, biographies, memoirs, travel books, collections of reviews, plays—and five poems! He lives in New York with his husband, the writer Michael Carroll.

  Anthony D. Romero

  Executive Director

  Dear Reader,

  When I went to bed on the night of November 8, 2016, I knew I would be waking up to the fight of our lives. The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States presented an unprecedented threat to our rights and liberties. His administration’s policies on immigration, voting, criminal justice, and LGBT and reproductive rights threaten to erode the freedoms that define much of what it means to be American.

  As we prepared to challenge the administration’s policies in the courts, millions came out to the streets to join the fight. Overnight, a new commitment to civic engagement was born. People joined women’s marches across the country. They gathered en masse at the nation’s airports when the president attempted to impose a Muslim ban. Among them were some of the finest writers and artists of our time. Their contributions and commitment to this struggle is displayed on these pages.

  Literature and art have always framed our approach to the world. Stories can shape our attitudes toward race, class, gender, and identity. They offer us perspectives on the reality we experience, allow us into communities we don’t know or understand, and force us to confront truths that we may not want to acknowledge. In a country that can seem like it’s been divided into two separate worlds, each side unable to speak to or understand the other, stories have the power to bridge our divisions. Narrative has the power to broaden our appreciation of our shared identity as Americans.

  America is unlike any other place on earth—a melding of people from the world over, a history of lofty ideals, and a commitment to realizing those ideals, even if it is through lurching progress, with intermittent setbacks and broken promises along the way. Progress comes only when we demand it and when we refuse to allow America’s reality to fall short of its ideals. And I believe that as Americans, it is both our birthright and our responsibility to do so.

  I am reminded of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s book, The Disuniting of America, in which he observed: “What has held the American people together in the absence of a common ethnic origin has been precisely a common adherence to ideals of democracy and human rights that, too often transgressed in practice, forever goad us to narrow the gap between practice and principle.”

  At a time when the Trump administration is trying to redefine and limit what it means to be American, the artists and writers in this book are taking back that narrative. Through these stories, they reveal America’s promise, failings, contradictions, and complexity. And they ask a question that has been central to the American experience for generations: How should we carry out the struggle to perfect this union?

  Anthony D. Romero

  Executive Director

  American Civil Liberties Union

  Blackout

  Digital and mezzotint print

  JANE KENT makes prints, paintings, and artists’ books. Working with text and image, she has been producing an ongoing artists’ book project begun in 1994. Her works are in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Rare Book Division and the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress; the Spencer Collection, New York Public Library; Beinecke Library, Yale University; and the Prints Collection, Word & Image Department, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others. Fellowships and awards include the National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Artists’ Fellowship; the Barbara and Thomas Putnam Fellowship, the MacDowell Colony; and Yaddo Artists’ Fellowship. She is Professor of Art in Department of Art and Art History, University of Vermont.

  Scenes from Late Paradise: Stupidity

  Late America

  Oil on linen (both)

  ERIC FISCHL is an internationally acclaimed American painter and sculptor. His artwork is represented in many
distinguished museums throughout the world as well as prestigious private and corporate collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the Musée Beaubourg in Paris, the PaineWebber Collection, and many others. Fischl has collaborated with other artists and authors, including E. L. Doctorow, Allen Ginsberg, Jamaica Kincaid, Jerry Saltz, and Frederic Tuten. His extraordinary achievements throughout his career have made him one of the most influential figurative painters of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He is a Fellow at both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Science, and a Senior Critic and board member at the New York Academy of Art. He lives and works in Sag Harbor, New York, with his wife, the painter April Gornik.

  Politics

  Pen and ink

  ROZ CHAST has established herself as one of our greatest artistic chroniclers of the anxieties, superstitions, furies, insecurities, and surreal imaginings of modern life. She is the author of more than a dozen books for adults, including Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a New York Times 2014 Best Book of the Year, a National Book Award Finalist, winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize, and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the first time a graphic novel received the prize for autobiography. Chast is also the author of numerous books for children, including Around the Clock, Too Busy Marco, and its sequel, Marco Goes to School. When she was twenty-four, The New Yorker added her to their roster and has published her work continuously ever since. Chast has provided cartoons and illustrations for nearly fifty magazines and journals and has received numerous awards, including honorary degrees from Pratt Institute and the Art Institute of Boston; was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013; and has received the Reuben Award from the National Cartoon Society in 2015 as well as the Heinz Award for her body of work. Her new book is Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York.