An American sits alone in a Starbucks coffee shop, looking deep in thought while he types onto his laptop. He muses over his homesickness, and what a different world he has found himself in. One, if one were to make assumptions without actually thinking them over, would assume that a country which spoke English, used something called “the dollar,” drove cars, and talked on cell phones, wouldn’t be that different from America. “It’s not like I’m going to communist Russia or sub-Saharan Africa,” he had told himself.
As he sipped his Americano (which ironically he hadn’t tried until he got to Australia, and didn’t particularly enjoy) he looked out the window. He hadn’t been to this part of Sydney yet, and he was fascinated with the skyscrapers that seemed to go on forever. He hated those moments which seemed to come from a sappy “small town farm girl Julia Roberts goes to the big city” movie, but he couldn’t avoid them. He did feel like less of a tourist on the ride over on the bus however. They had passed through streets he had been on; and he had seen stores he recognized. This made him feel slightly more confident on the matter of whether or not he could make it on his own in a foreign country, a matter he often argued with himself.
He actually far more than recognized some of the streets he had crossed on the trip here. As the bus drove through Oxford Street he saw the spot where he had watched the Mardi gras parade the week before that. He remembered being amazed at the amount of people. His amazement came partially from the fact that he was from a town of 800, and he was standing among a half million. More than that however, he was amazed that a half a million people would come out to see a gay pride parade. In Sydney, the “Mardi gras” parade was actually a massive pride parade, and he never seen such support for a group of people who, in the country he came from, were largely looked upon as “different.” Even the street itself made him realize just how much more accepting life was here. To have a street full of gay friendly establishments, gay clubs, and stores centered on gay people’s needs, was mind-blowing, coming from a town where no one would dare fly a rainbow flag. Later, from an Australian friend, he had learned that the owners of the gay clubs had chosen to be located on the same street, it was not that the city had even placed them there.
This lead him to begin thinking about how different people in Sydney actually viewed being gay. It was normal here to just ask someone you had recently met if they were gay or straight. Not only was this not seen as rude, it was necessary, because no one assumed you were gay or straight simply from judging how you acted, or looked, or spoke.
As the bus passed through an upscale shopping district, they had passed multiple boutiques displaying clothing which, while normal-place here, to him seemed radical. This lead him to thinking about how people dressed back home. He finally made the connection that many of the guys back home who had the guts to wear “alternative clothing,” mainly lower cut shirts, skinnier jeans, or anything else flamboyant, were often the ones who people started rumors about. He almost laughed out loud when he thought that if any of those “gay boys” (most of whom weren’t actually gay) were walking on a city street of Sydney they wouldn’t be discernable from the crowd. This thought that unlike at home, you could actually wear, or act however you wanted, without being labeled as “gay” or “girly” was extremely refreshing and exhilarating.
He began to think more about what being abroad really meant for him. He realized that he had been given freedom far more important than just being able to wear whatever he wanted. When he had stepped off the plane at Sydney airport, he had known almost no one. In many senses of the word “life,” he had started a new one. He had made new friends, gotten a new place to live, started classes at a new university, and picked up new life patterns. To go with this life, without thinking he had taken the parts of himself he wanted, and left behind the parts he didn’t like. No one knew him for the person they had met freshman year, or the person they had grown up with, they knew him for the American who lived in Sydney for the semester. With this ability to “put his best face forward,” he felt the most open and accepting of himself that he had felt in a long time.
He also realized that going to live in a completely foreign culture had not only allowed him to pick and choose the pieces of him he liked, it had taught him a lot about himself. He had learned the good, like the fact that he really could make it on his own. Or that he really was likeable enough to make completely new friends when he needed to. He also learned some of the bad, like he cared far too much about what people thought of him, and he really was addicted to his blackberry.
He went for several weeks with this new exhilaration. Feeling comfortable with yourself is the best way that one can go through life. This feeling that he could do whatever he wanted, and be who he wanted, should have been with him for his entire life. Sadly, it took moving across the world to figure that out, but luckily that’s what he had done. In fact, nothing really brought him down from this nirvana, until he was riding the bus to a St. Patrick’s Day cruise. This being a holiday largely celebrated by Americans, and the cruise being sponsored by the study abroad program at his university, the bus was full of American exchange students. As they passed through Oxford Street he heard one boy say to another “you know you could always ditch this cruise and go to a gay club.” His sarcastic voice had cut deep reminding our American from the coffee shop that once the semester was over he would be going back to the life he had lead before, surrounded by a population which can often be far from accepting of anything different.
The remark however, had also given him resolve. He reasoned that upon going home, he would decide again which parts of himself to get off the plane with. He would definitely try and keep this new feeling that he should just be himself regardless of the opinions of others. He would also be taking home the realization that the loud American view that they are always right, difference is bad, and its acceptable to speak negatively of others for your own please, was far from true. For now, he would enjoy the time in the paradise that was his new life in Sydney. He also needed to finish his Americano, as Starbucks was closing.
