Americans

20 July 2022

I spent my weekend in Paris at a musical festival.

As a Brit, I know to keep my voice down, speak French wherever possible and generally stay out of the way of the French. I, like many Brits before me, am in a country that isn’t mine. Unlike Brits of the past, I’m not looting it for all its worth, I’m just here to see Megan Thee Stallion.

The French are relatively loud and obnoxious. Famously rude and to the point, they have no qualms about cutting lines, pushing through a crowd, or voting for a Nazi. However, I must reiterate; I’m in their country, so I suck it up and repeat “c’est okay” as they shove past me to get a better view. Don’t get me wrong, it fucks me off, but I’m a passive aggressive, socially awkward, beta male with terrible French, so what am I going to do about it?

There’s one nation, however, who simply don’t care about all this socially constructed nonsense: the Americans.

There are groups of them dotted around the festival, and you can see them coming from a mile away. They’re social tornados that rip through crowds of unsuspecting Europeans. The vibe changes when you’re next to a group of Americans. No one is louder or less polite.

As I was waiting to see Megan Thee Stallion, I was stood next to a group of 19 year old girls from the USA. They were, and this isn’t malapropism, literally yelling at each other as everyone in a 10 metre radius looked on, bewildered.

How on earth these people don’t pick up on social cues I don’t know. But yelling at each other, vocal fry and all, about which drugs they’ve done, people they know from home and where they want to visit. One of them mentioned going to the Alps later in the year, I feel like I should alert the Swiss government for fear of avalanches. It was like listening to Red Scare through one of Godspeed You! Black Emperors amplifiers. It triggered my fucking fight or flight – I hate them.

My dad always used to say, “hate is a strong word”, but it is far from strong enough to express my feelings towards these people.

Another older American man found his way over to them, like a fly to shit, and started hitting on them. Lapping it up, they start a conversation and, almost thankfully, at this point I go into sensory overload. The the sun is beaming down on me, I’m thirsty, I’m sweating like Patrick Bateman over Paul Allen’s business card as I try and roll a cigarette. My brain checks back in to hear the man ask what drugs they’ve done.

“Never take molly unless it’s pink” he says. Okay, I guess that advice is okay, I’m not an active user to MDMA so I know very little about that shit. He’s just looking out for her probably. “Never touch heroin”. No shit, mate. I doubt these 19-year-old kids were about to go and inject skag in the porta-loos but go off. He went on to say that cocaine was fine, but crack wasn’t. What do you think crack is?

As an adult, should you be recommending this to a bunch of first-time festival going kids who have never touched coke? No. I’d vouch for no.

Do I really give a shit about all this? No of course not. I couldn’t care less. Drug chats wind me up, yes but it was more down to the fact that it was coming out of the mouths of the most irritating, loud, vexatious Americans. Am I xenophobic? Probably.

David Bowie was afraid of Americans. He also consumed nothing but peppers and milk for a year so I’m not sure he was a model judge of character.