America, You Sexy Bitch (30 page)

After a musical video send-off from the one, the only, Dolly Parton, we all file out through the packed gift shop. People are snapping up all sorts of souvenirs: dish towels, plates, candies. There are no Yakov paintings for sale here, which I’m sure is a disappointment to everybody.

Outside, as we wait for the cab, we stand beside a family of Southerners. One of them, a boy around fifteen, stares at something on the sidewalk. It’s sort of long and black and thin. And it’s writhing. The boy pokes at it with his foot.

“What is it?” a family member asks.

“I think it’s a worm.”

“That’s not a worm. It’s a snake.”

“It’s a worm.”

“It’s a snake.”

Within a couple minutes, there are probably half a dozen people staring at this poor thing debating its worminess.

“It’s a worm.”

“Ah don’t think so, Marcus. Look, it’s trappin’ at her.” (I don’t know what “trappin’” means.)

“Get away from there, stupid. I’m not takin’ you to the hospital!”

The conversation with Marcus continues for several minutes. Grandma waddles over and says definitively: “That is a snake.”

Meghan is now standing beside everybody else staring at the thing and interjects, “I think it’s a baby snake.”

Marcus pokes at it with his finger and his mother screams, “Don’t, stupid!”

Whether it’s a snake or a worm is never determined, but I have to say, the whole conversation with the family and Stupid Marcus is just as entertaining as the show we just saw, which is to say
very
entertaining. For the record: I think it was a worm. I don’t know if this is Real America or not, but tonight, a little buzzed, a little bloody, it’s
my
America, and I love it.

 

Meghan
: Ultimately, Branson has given me more than I ever bargained for. My first legitimate quarter-life crisis at Yakov Smirnoff’s is more than any woman could bargain for. I am pleased that Michael thinks I am going to end up more like Dolly Parton than Yakov as I get older. I mean, if Yakov is the worst-case scenario, Dolly is best. And let’s be fair here, it is probably a lot more fun being Yakov Smirnoff than I am giving him credit for.

When people describe the “happy, content, Middle America,” Branson is the first place I will think of from now on. It’s clean, it’s family friendly, it’s a really great time and a fun vacation destination. Seriously, I mean it. I ended up having just as interesting an experience in Branson as I did in Las Vegas.

As we finish up our last night in Branson and end up drinking yet more Bud Lights and singing random songs yet once again, it all starts feeling like a little family. This book, these people—Michael, Stephie, and Cousin John—we are all on this weird, crazy trip together in the dead of summer and none of it feels accidental. I think we are all starting to feel like we are on a mission together. At the end of the night, Michael bashes his knee into a snare drum as he steps onstage to join the band and sing. Stephie and I laugh so hard tears start rolling down my cheeks. Just good clean fun. Good clean fun in Branson, Missouri.

What a country.

 

 

 

Meghan:
If you do not believe in climate change, or that our planet is in any way having extreme weather issues at all, I suggest you take a road trip in an RV without substantial air-conditioning across the South next summer. This summer isn’t just hot, it is steamy. It is muggy. I am sweaty to the point where the underwire of my bra is soaked with sweat by midmorning. I am from Arizona and have a high tolerance for heat; however, the heat is so oppressive this summer it is bordering on tragically funny.

Michael, Stephie, and I are all constantly perspiring—many days Michael has visible sweat stains everywhere on his T-shirts. Makeup seems more and more pointless because it just comes off halfway through the day. Stephie’s cheeks are an adorable rosy red pretty much the entire time. And Cousin John, forget it. That boy is just glistening from morning to night, are ya’ kidding me? It is absurd. Any decorum regarding any of us attempting to look presentable has officially gone out the window as we crawl deeper into the South.

Though let’s be honest, Michael doesn’t care about looking presentable when he goes on late-night television shows, let alone while cross-country touring in an RV. But I am now following his slovenly lead, rewearing my clothes, or more specifically, the same pair of jean shorts with rotating tank tops. Part of me likes it. There’s something liberating about giving up on caring about one’s personal appearance. I resisted as long as I could but it is absolutely egregiously,
gnarly
hot. Memphis in July may just be the peak point of heat saturation.

 

Michael:
We arrive in Memphis after about a six-hour drive from Branson. Meghan’s big idea was to stay at the Heartbreak Hotel, right across the street from Graceland. For weeks, she’s been after Stephie to make sure we’re booked there. Yes, yes, Stephie assures her. Meghan insists it’s going to be amazing. As we get close, though, she is having second thoughts.

“It might be a dump,” she says. “Sorry.”

And it kind of is. Not North-Little-Rock-Red-Roof-Inn dumpy, but not that much better. The small lobby is all purple and gold, and a couple of blown-out TVs play old Elvis movies. Cousin John seems particularly transfixed by
Blue Hawaii,
in which the King sings and surfs while sixties hottie Joan Blackman shakes her coconuts at him. There’s Elvis stuff everywhere. There’s an Elvis gift shop, Elvis music plays nonstop, and the hotel bar is called, of course, the Jungle Room. It’s almost as bad as Yakov’s gift shop. Despite their best efforts to disguise it with memorabilia, the whole place is dingy and beat up, more Fat Elvis than Thin. I can deal with it for a night if it makes Meggy Mac happy.

She looks around and says, “Gross.”

So nobody’s going to be happy. Whatevs.

We’re visiting two Tennessee towns, the black one and the white one. Memphis and Nashville. Memphis is the blues. Nashville is country. Yes, Elvis lived in Memphis, but he was more of a black performer than a white one. That’s why so many black people hate him: he stole his whole act from them. To quote the great Chuck D.: “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me.”

Black-white racial tension is an impossible, unbridgeable fact of being American. It just is, and pretending otherwise is delusional. There’s nothing mysterious about its cause: white people enslaved black people for a few hundred years. That’s a difficult speed bump to cross on the road to racial harmony.

Most Americans like to think of themselves as open-minded, tolerant, and free of bigotry. I think most Americans are full of shit. I include myself in that statement.

First of all, I always have racial awareness. If I meet an African American, my first conscious thought of that person is his/her race. The thought is unbidden and unwelcome, but it’s there. I notice a person’s race before I notice anything else, even before their boobs! Second, I tense up when I meet black people. The tension is due, I think, to a special social phobia, the fear of doing or saying the wrong thing. Which, of course, I have done.

A perfect example: I once hung out at a restaurant with the former New York Knick Charles Smith. Smith was a six-foot-ten power forward during the Knicks’ 1990s heyday. At that time, I zealously followed the team and was thrilled to meet the guy. I had a vague memory of Smith being involved in the NBA Player’s Association and asked him about his time there. He told me that, yes, he had been a regional representative, which led to me ask if he’d ever considered getting into broadcasting because during those times when I’d seen him speaking for the Player’s Association, I’d found him to be very “articulate.”

As soon as the word fell out of my mouth, I wanted to run. “Articulate” is one of those loaded words white people patronizingly deploy as backhanded compliments to blacks, as if a person’s skin color would make them less likely to be able to string together a thoughtful sentence. Charles graciously ignored the remark and continued to engage me for a few more minutes, after which I ran into the public restroom and gave myself a swirly.

Of course I didn’t mean anything: he
was
articulate. But my fear of falling into those sorts of rhetorical potholes feed that tension I have, the fear of doing something wrong or insensitive, and, underneath it all, the fear that I might be an actual bigot.

As a result of this tension, I find myself overcompensating around African Americans, being deliberately kinder and more giving of my time than I would with whites. If a black dude wants to hang out with me after a show, for example, I am far more likely to do that than I would be with a white dude. Honestly, I’m not that friendly: I don’t want to hang out with
anybody
after a show, but
when a black guy shows me some approval, my heart does joyous backflips. Isn’t that just as racist as feeling the opposite?

Call it “white guilt,” call it whatever, but it’s there and I hate it. I suspect African Americans experience this tension too, although I have never spoken with any about it. Race is the most difficult topic for us to discuss as Americans, harder to talk about than politics, money, or religion, because it cuts to the core of who we are, the foundational, unkept promise of America: that all men are created equal. No they’re not. Not here.

White guilt is maddening because I feel implicated for crimes I had nothing to do with. None of my ancestors even arrived in America before the twentieth century. Yet I still feel lingering guilt for slavery. Hell, I feel guilt for Columbus! Why is that? Why do we drag the sins of our forefathers around with us like Marley’s chains? At least I’m not German. I have no idea how they deal with that.

 

Meghan:
It was my bright idea to stay at the Heartbreak Hotel right across the street from Graceland in Memphis. My good friend Piper recommended it. She’s an Elvis superfan to the point where she paid five thousand dollars for a lifelike Elvis ceramic statue that now sits in her living room. On different holidays she dresses Elvis in matching festive décor. She also has a line from an Elvis song, “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” and the date of her wedding anniversary tattooed on her forearm.

I have been to Graceland numerous times throughout my life, but I have never stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel. It was Piper’s excitement over the heart-shaped pool that made me insist we stay there. I mean, a heart-shaped pool; who wouldn’t want that?

To put it nicely, the Heartbreak Hotel could use a facelift. It’s pretty run-down. I was expecting more of a Disneyland Hotel experience: sparkly and clean with shiny gold ceramic floors shaped like a gold album and Elvis impersonators greeting you in the lobby. No such luck. The Heartbreak Hotel is basically your average motel with a cool purple-velvet couch in the lobby, Elvis movies playing on an old television, and, yes, a heart-shaped pool.

My room is a little run-down as well, but there are pictures of Elvis hanging above my bed and working air-conditioning, so I’m not going to complain. I guess I had just gotten spoiled staying at the Chateau in Branson.

We all check in and go into our routines—shower, check email, possibly tweet, change clothes (which at this point means a non-sweaty tank top); Michael puts on his Crocs, Stephie calls her fiancé, and we all meet back in the lobby. There is rarely any time for anything else. It’s like taking a break in your bunk at camp, with no chance to actually wind down.

There’s been a lot of talk from Michael about Memphis being “the black” city we’re visiting in Tennessee. Yes, from my experience, Memphis is more culturally diverse than a lot of cities we have visited and, yes, there are a lot of black people here, but I’m surprised that it’s something Michael keeps talking about and obsessing over.

That said, it’s crazy to think that it’s only in the last sixty years that the civil rights movement took place, resulting in the election of the first black president in 2008. This is the thing: talking about race makes me uncomfortable. I don’t mean in the “I want to turn the other cheek and pretend racism doesn’t exist” way. I mean in the “I think it is still, even today, an incredibly loaded and sensitive subject.”

Have I had any real experience with racism? The only thing I can claim fully is that my little sister, Bridget, was adopted from Bangladesh in 1991, and her skin color is a lot darker than mine. I barely have any memories that come before Bridget’s arrival. As clichéd as this may sound, I truly have never seen her skin color as any kind of barrier or even really that much of an issue. In fact, the only time I can recall being specifically aware of it was when we went shopping for baby dolls as little girls and my mother bought Bridget several dolls of different skin colors to play with. And there was a time once when we were at a hair salon and I asked someone to get my sister and they came back saying they didn’t see her, and I had to clarify that we do not look alike and that she has black
hair. Stuff like that, but nothing that was ever a hugely large incident growing up.

I don’t even know how to properly explain this other than my mother says that when she brought Bridget home we just accepted her as our sister. The only questions seemed to deal with Mom’s stomach not getting bigger. Bridget and I shared a room growing up, and we loved and fought as all sisters do. We used to play tricks on my brothers and fight over who had to get up earlier to use the shower first because we also shared a bathroom. I would tease her for having such tiny hands and she’d tease me about being so short. We would have dance-offs in our room and sing along to the Cranberries. Normal sister stuff.

There is no way to explain it other than Bridget is my sister, she’s always been my sister, and I believe God brought her to my mother and us as the final missing piece in our family. I love my sister in every way, and I simply cannot imagine my life without her. She is my partner in crime, the equalizer against my two brothers. She is a piece of me and I of her. I always get angry when anyone makes her race an issue and, of course, from time to time people have.