Yankees suck.

I am an American in a foreign land.

I want Bob Dylan and a cold Budweiser with a fresh pack of Marlboro Reds. I wanna light one of them babies with my cheap Bic lighter. The yellow one that commemorates 50 years of the Daytona 500. The Great American Race.

I want McDonalds, or maybe Taco Bell, with a sweaty soft brownie in plastic wrap and a Dunkin Donuts small iced coffee - EXTRA cream EXTRA sugar - to wash it all down and pep me up at the same time 'cause, man, I gotta BE somewhere.

I want a cowboy with knuckles cracked by the wind, dirt on those hard hands, in love with a knife that has 20 different uses. I want his busted pickup truck growling up a dirt road. Park that thing in the yellow grass, baby. No one's coming by any time soon. Didn't you hear? This is the wild, wild west. So do what you want. And what I want is Born to Run in my ear as my back scrapes the vinyl seats and my head hits the door again and again. Kiss these American thighs, you hard rugged individual. Give me a Fuck Yeah, call me Darlin'. My cowboy's hand covers my mouth and I think, Good, I wanna taste that American soil. Sow that American seed, honey.

And Yes, I am sayin' that bein' abroad makes me wanna fuck like hell to The Boss's music. Wanna fight about it?

I buy things like it's somebody's business. 'Cause it is. It's my business to buy from your business. You got a problem with that?

Pretty girls are everywhere.
Rock stars are everywhere.
Pretty girls are everywhere.
Rock stars are everywhere.

HEY, I'm walkin' HEA.

I want a white 1976 Cadillac Eldorado with the cherry red interior an' you bet your ass them horns are gonna be on that front there. Fly that flag an' cruise 90 MILES PER HOUR down that Highway, smokin' a ci-gar an' wearin' my grampaw's aviators. 'Cause you know he loved that shit an' so do I.

I want easy free TV.
I want easy free TV.
I want easy free TV.
I want it my way, god damn it !

Gimme some big titties, a big steak, a handle o' Jim Beam Rye. Don't need nothin' else 'cept maybe my truck an' my cigarettes. Oh an' my credit card.


I am an American in a foreign land. I walk straight and with purpose. When I open my mouth to speak, I wonder how I sound to them. To the students and bartenders and owners of shops. I wonder if I sound slow and stupid, like a Burger King cow. But my speech is better than the boy from Montana. My tongue is quick to adapt and rhythms I've never allowed are beginning to flow out of me. Scotland's particular stresses and mannerisms. Poetical ramblings in the style of some drunken Irish bard. Ways to say something quickly so maybe they won't know where I'm from. But who am I kidding?

I stop at an espresso cart on the side of the street mid-morning. The sign next to it reads, "Try something different!" I wait in line for half a minute before I can no longer stand the circumstances. From a radio within the cart, behind the British server who doles out Earl Greys and Welsh mineral water, blasts a country song that is from and about the Good Ol' U.S.of.A. The refrain consists of something about how We Ain't Never Gonna Change, how the singer thought about traveling abroad and then said Forget It. I left, feeling humiliated in a line of strangers. Especially since all I really wanted to order was an Americano.