Dear Diary, April 8th — I’ve Been Taken Captive To England

Thanks to my dad’s dumb-ass research sabbatical

Dear Diary,

In case you haven’t been informed, I’ve been exiled to the Land of Tea and Futbal because my dad is a frickin’ Charles Dicken’s scholar. You remember, Dickens is the author of Great Expectations with that dumb orphan named Pip. Well, my dad is doing research on Dickens for his sabbatical as a professor.

Well, diary, here we are in London…

My dad found out we’d been reading Great Expectations in what the English call Year 10 (sophomore year), and he was telling me all about how it’s a bildungsroman novel during breakfast before school a few days ago.

Like I really cared. But I laughed at the bill… dungs … roman part.

I think it was my first laugh in the UK.

Everything is different here, and I don’t know what’s going on all the time.

I’m depressed. There is this kid everyone calls Angry Kid. He was taking me around and introducing me to all of his friends. He was getting me to say all these British slang words. I didn’t know what I was saying, but it reminded of what my brother Michael L Butler and I did with that Romania chick Adelina Vasile and how English Beat Sally Prag would always get so pissed off at both of us.

Well, now I know how poor Adalina felt. I feel like the butt of so many jokes.

I don’t even want to mention the words Angry Kid had me say in my first week at school because they are so crude. I’m pretty sure they’re vulgar words, and I didn’t feel like had a choice on what to say because I’m the new American kid.

I was going to ask my dad what they meant, but there is a neighbor kid a year younger than me, and he blushed when he told me what they meant. The only one I feel comfortable saying is bollocks which means balls and/or nonsense.

Cultural learning

I don’t think this is what my dad meant when he told me we were moving for a year, and it would be a great opportunity to learn about another culture. He went on for a while about how we see everything through an American lens.

Oh, yeah, diary. Back to my conversation with my crazy dad this morning.

“You laughed at dung,” my dad said. “The excrement of animals. Poop.”

Then he explained that a bildungsroman means is a coming-of-age story.

“Great,” I said. “That will help me a lot in reading Great Expectations.”

“The story takes place in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century,” he went on, ignoring my sarcasm, “and it has many great scenes like when Pip is accosted in a graveyard by an escaped convict named Abel Magwitch.”

I was about to say it’s like when Huck & Tom see Injun Joe stab Dr. Robinson — and he blames it on Muff Potter — in the graveyard in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Huck & Tom are the only ones who can save poor Muff Potter.

But I didn’t want to sound like I was becoming literary like my dad, and he’d probably get all caught up in comparing the two novels, and then somehow it would turn into a conversation comparing British and American literature.

“That’s a crazy name for a character,” I said. “It’s kind of like some of the names for streets in London that this kid was telling me about in school today.”

“What streets did he tell you about?”

“Cockbush Avenue and Cock Hill. He also told me there are towns called Bitchfield, Booty Lane, Bushygap, Penistone, Dick’s Mount, and Wetwang.”

“You’re probably wondering why the British have such odd names for towns?”

And it was the longest, most interesting conversation my dad and I have ever had. I won’t bother you with details, but my dad said the British people are united in their love of a good rude place name… and he told me about towns called Titty Hill, Crotch Crescent, and a few Big Baller Michael Burg, MD (AKA Medium Michael Burg) would love such as Sandy Balls and Green Balls.

Anyway, back to my shitty life

I feel like I need an interpreter just to make it through the day with all the cultural differences. We supposedly speak the same language, but there are so many different words they use here. Where is Sally Prag when you need her?

I got so much time on my hands on the weekends. I’ve been thinking about the whole Butt Owner mystery is … and it’s not me. Ha, ha. I wouldn’t say I’ve never mooned anyone. People are saying it was Rodrigo S-C because he has a mole on his ass, according to what Janet Meisel and Anjali Joshi have said.

But … who notices a mole on a butt when they’re getting mooned? I’ve been mooned, and I don’t take that close of a look … to notice the details. My dad is always talking about good writers notice the details everyone else doesn’t see.

I guess this means Janet and Anjali will grow up to become writers … and Kristine Laco too because she saw the mole on Rodrigo’s butt when his shorts dropped at Reuben Salsa’s pool party. That’s what I heard before we moved.

I wonder if anyone at any school even misses me and my whoopie cushion. I guess my brother and I will surprise everyone when we come back next year for my junior year after my dad’s sabbatical year is finally over after a year.

The Mystery Ass

I figure by then they will have solved the whole Mystery Ass … I mean, it can’t or shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s basically got to be anyone who hangs out with Gaurav Jain, right? You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out, but the only problem is that G bounces around from one group to the next.

One day he is trying to hang with KiKi Walter, but I think she shooed him away because I saw her talking to BichoDoMato, and the next day he’s trying to flirt (unsuccessfully) with Susan McCorkindale, and then he’s hanging around the smart kids Preeti Ramachandran (I wonder if he has a crush on her), Bernice Puzon and Drashti Shroff. He probably likes all three of them.

G supposedly told Drashti, Bernice, and Pretti who it was … there it is. G knows who it is. They just need to hold his balls to the fire to get him to tell.

Poor guy, he’s trying so hard to be liked, but he is a funny guy. I know, he’d like the names of the streets and towns in England, and I’m probably trying hard like him to fit in with different groups here at my lame-ass new school.

So, diary, that’s where I’m at…

One last thing is freakin’ me out bigtime. You see, there is this girl who sits next to me in my Maths class (that’s what they call it). And she is a Punk Rocker. Bleach blond hair, black leather jacket, a spikey collar around her neck, and our teacher told us he had eye surgery and can’t see very well.

“Don’t do anything you’re not supposed to do the next few days,” he says.

He’s got an eye patch over his left eye, and the guy looks like Captain Jack.

Of course, people have been sneaking out of class and bringing Fish & Chips back from a pub down the street … I heard someone’s dad owns it … and oh, the day Mr. Cochrane (seriously, that’s his name) says he can’t see well, this girl looks me straight in the eye and takes off her bra in a nonchalant way.

She stuffs it into the pocket of her jacket and smiles kinda seductively at me.

And then there is this other girl calling me at home … I don’t even know how she got my phone number … but she wants to meet me at the 876 call number in the library, and the punk rock girl slid me a note to meet behind the library.

So I’m supposed to meet one girl before school and the other girl at lunch … I wish Smillew Rahcuef were around to give me some “girl advice.” I know he must have learned something from his two-week relationship with Kristine.

This is a work of fiction, but parts are true and become fictionalized. So I guess this makes it part fiction, part memoir. Have fun figuring out the true parts.

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