THIS is America?!! - A European Expat in the USA (eBook)

The Comforts of Home

On his first Saturday in America, Kai Regenbogen has been invited to the home of his "Company Buddy", Big Jim Macintyre.

"How'd ya' like ta' come by tomorrow afternoon and see how real Americans live, right up close and personal?", is the way Big Jim phrased the invitation the day before in the office. He had a big smile on his face, and he was already leaning forward a bit, ready to give Kai a slap on the back of the shoulders and flood him with a hearty "Yeeeaaaaa!" right after the acceptance, which is exactly what followed.

While the invitation is not exactly required by "Corporate Policy", it is mentioned near the top of the list in the "Good Ideas!" memo that is sent when a worker is about to begin upon his "new journey" of being a "Company Buddy" (and that "journey" definitely looks good on one's record when bonuses are discussed in the "Employee Review" each year).

As Kai pulls up to the curb on Saturday in his moderately-sized green hybrid, he sees Big Jim out on the front lawn. Jim is wearing shorts that go half-way down his legs, his T-shirt hanging loose over his stomach, and he is tugging at a garden hose, scowling defiantly at the place where it is caught on one of the stepping stones that lead around the house.

As Kai closes his car door and walks up the driveway, Big Jim's contracted facial features suddenly morph into those of a welcoming party host, his eyes expanding and his mouth opening wide, like a thick toad trying to catch flies.

"Hey, dude! You made it!", as if a great challenge has been overcome and Kia's great times are only now about to begin.

Jim throws down the loops of the garden hose. It's a complicated release, like freeing one's fingers from molasses, and he frowns angrily at the adversarial hose once again until he is free of its insolent grasp.

"Welcome to my castle!", Big Jim says, putting his arm around his guest's shoulder and walking with him to the front door (Jim had been sweating a bit from the garden work, and Kai can feel it through his shirt).

It's a somewhat large house, or rather, it's laid out to look somewhat larger than it actually is: there are various rooms, piled one upon the other like boxes, with some protruding forward and some recessed, like the contours of a fat woman in a thin dress.

Kai tries to place the architectural style in his mind: supporting the overhang above the front entrance with its Antebellum flair, there is a simplified version of two classic Greek columns, with swirling rococo decorations at the base and head, as well as gothic ornamentation around the windows. It looks like a "Greatest Hits" pop collection of architectural history.

"Did you design the house?", Kai asks tentatively.

"No, it was built when the rest of the development was put in", Jim says. "But it's a beaut, ain't it?"

The German expat isn't sure whether the house is actually "abeut" or not "abeut", so he looks at the foundation to check that it's level, and then he says, "Yes, it seems to be."

Big Jim releases the hearty laugh that he had been holding in for whatever response would come.

As they come closer to the front door, Kai notices a discolored patch on one of the columns. Seeing his guest notice the flaw, Big Jim says, "Oh, that's just a little accident we had here a while back."

It turns out that one day a few months ago, Big Jim had let his son, Bart, celebrate his 15th birthday by letting him drive the family Sports Utility Vehicle around the block a couple of times. After the boy backed into the driveway following the adventure, his father turned to him from the passenger seat and said, "Not bad, son. Soon you'll be cartin' a whole buncha girls around with ya' in this thing", and the boy smiled at his father – but the boy's foot slipped off the break, and the giant vehicle lurched backwards like a wild bull into the house front, leaving a thick gouge in one of the columns.

Jim leaves some of the details out when recounting the story, but he ends by saying, "Pretty bad ding. Had to patch it up myself with some new paint."

He is smiling as he nods his head up and down, looking from the patch to his new buddy and then back again – clearly quite proud of his skills as a craftsman, in spite of the color difference. "You could see all the way through the Styrofoam," he says.

'Styrofoam?', the German visitor thinks, as an image of his own home from childhood suddenly surges to mind: it was a solid little red brick house, like the responsible one of the three little pigs would build. In the fairy tale, there is of course a house built of straw, and another of sticks, but there is no mention of any house made of Styrofoam.

The host guides his guest through the entrance with his hand on his upper back, much like American politicians do to visiting heads of state in news videos – which might be where Jim got the idea from in the first place.

As they enter, Kai notices the aroma of baking, tainted with the smell of something having been recently burnt.

Distracted by the aroma, he is completely unsuspecting as he suddenly hears a vociferous "BAWF!" in front of him and feels the two thick paws on his chest, shoving him off balance from sheer force of weight.

"DOWN, Rock!, DOWN!!", Big Jim shouts domineeringly at the black-and-brown Rottweiler that has just lunged at the guest. "SIT!", Jim shouts threateningly into the animals face, with an index finger raised firmly in warning. "I said SIT!!"

And the Rottweiler whimpers and paces back and forth before settling into a tenuous posture on its haunches, at which Jim breaks into a big smile as he roughly scrubs the top of the dog's thick head and says, "GOOD dog, Rock. GOOD dog!".

Big Jim turns to Kai, who is nervously uncertain of just how much control his host has upon his powerful, rambunctious minion, and whether or not he himself will suddenly be pounced upon again by the corpulent animal with no warning.

"Don't worry, Rock's OK. He wouldn't hurt a fly", Jim says, noticing his guest's anxious appearance. Then, the host crouches down to his pet and rubs his hand quickly, back and forth, across the dog's head again and says, "Would, ya', Rock? Huh?", in answer to which the dog just gapes his mouth and lets his heavy pink tongue unfurl and flap around, loose and uncontrolled.

Kai notices how moist the inside of the dog's mouth is, and he can't stop staring at the pointy teeth projecting solidly from among the dark, black lining of the gums.

From his crouched position beside the dog, Jim looks up with a concerned look at Kai, and then shouts up at his guests' face without looking away, "Hon, why doncha let Rock out in the backyard for a while?"

"You bet!", Jim's wife, Wendy, calls out, stepping in front of the breakfast bar. Then, she yells at the dog "Rock! Commere, boy. How 'bout goin' intathe yard for a while, hey boy?"

And she snaps her fingers several times at the dog's eye level, at which the dog leaps like a tripped spring and rotates, lunging from its meaty haunches as if in hot pursuit as Wendy opens the sliding glass door, quickly steps out of the way of the galloping beast, and then slides the door shut with a loud "Flump!" once the dog has passed through.

Wendy smiles at her husband.

"Thanks, hon", Jim says. Then, to his guest, he adds, "Rock's got a lotta energy", shaking his head from side to side, in amazement at the tremendous amount of energy the dog possesses.

For the first time, Kai has a chance to take a look at his surroundings.

Without stepping any further into the house from where they entered, they are already well into the "Great Room", a euphemism for the single room consisting of entrance hall, living room, kitchen, breakfast bar, and dining area that is so common in modern American homes. If the rooms were partitioned from each other, their congested size would be stifling. Liberated from their boundaries as they are, though, they seem, together, somehow larger than they actually are.

As for furnishing, the room looks like page six from an IKEA catalog: everything is brand new, without a single sign of wear, and nothing is outdated. It looks like the couch, television and easy chair are replaced regularly, once a new trend hits the market.

Kai wonders how such luxury can be afforded on the salaries from the company.

In place of artwork on the walls, there are photographs of the family members, including one of Big Jim and his son holding up a fish in a row boat, as well as a shot of the entire family – Jim and his wife with their son and daughter – in the stands of a football game, with Jim standing up and screaming fiercely as he raises aloft his giant, electric-green foam sports-fan-finger.

The photos are next to a window on the left, through which Kai can see directly into the bedroom of the house next door, which is only a few feet away: the neighbors are installing a set of shelves above the bed this afternoon.

"So, you're finally here, Kai!", Wendy says. She says it as if she had been looking forward to his arrival all morning, even though he arrived punctually at the agreed time.

She rushes to the breakfast bar and reaches behind a bowl filled with plastic fruit and a few artificial flowers. She picks up a plastic serving plate from the counter, and holds it up before herself as she walks towards him, like a child raising something aloft for everyone to see.

It's a plate of cookies. They're a little dark, but still warm.

"I just made them myself!", Wendy spurts out gleefully.

Behind her, on the kitchen counter, Kai can see the wrapper from...