This Land is Your Land

Words by Rose Finn

I’ve been interested in sex and politics since I was 17; when Bush Jr. was reelected, and I started taking birth control. A year later, I was accepted to the University of British Columbia. I knew this would be my ticket out of America’s regressive politics and conservative attitude towards sex.

My first two weeks of college in Vancouver were an unsettling blur of going to bars, taking shots off of my dorm mate’s
stomach, kissing strangers and waking up a knotted pile in my bed every morning. I wanted to meet new friends who were more than hung over memories, but everyone seemed so inaccessible. I’d strike up conversations with people in the cafeteria and in my classes, and they’d stay focused on their food and books. I’d sometimes pretend to smoke a cigarette with the smokers even though I didn’t smoke, in the attempt to make someone bite onto my conversational bait.

After I finished my first year, I didn’t have any friends, I wasn’t any closer to knowing what I wanted to study, and I’d failed the one subject I’d wanted to major in. But I wasn’t ready to give up my dreams of immigrating to a country with universal health coverage, intelligent people, and hot Canadian tail.

The following weekend, I called a girl I’d met in class, and she was eager to include me in her circle. I soon found myself walking down the street in my new friend’s vintage nightie, purple tasseled boots, and more gold jewelry than the entire “Jersey Shore” cast. I had no idea where we were going, but I didn’t care— and it was only partly because of the circulating whiskey.

We arrived at the Canadian Cultural Centre, packed with hundreds of people. A live Gypsy Carnival band serenaded us
as we walked in. Vendors sold chocolate; some with magic mushrooms, some with almonds. Twenty people were atop a giant Twister board. We walked into the main room to find tents set up for petting and spanking.

I soon learned I was at a political party campaigning for a 30-hour work week. I saw one of the campaign managers sashaying through a conga line, and it suddenly hit me: I was in a very different country.

Vancouver venues always seemed to host some event involving middle aged people in drag, nearly naked and rolling
on drug cocktails. It appeared to me that Vancouver’s sex and drug culture was for the rich, middle-aged crowd.

Though these sex-dominated events, I couldn’t help but notice that sex, or the pursuit of it, wasn’t happening anywhere else. I never witnessed people hitting on each other. Canadian men ignored me at bars, school, and my coffee shop job. Any time I’d make a joke or point out one of their cute characteristics, they’d respond, “Well, have a good day, eh?” and scurry away.

I bought new clothes and deodorant that wasn’t for men. I pierced my nose. I tried changing my state of mind; be aloof, be vulnerable, be a dick. After none of these attitudes made any difference in the amount of penis I was (not) seeing, I gave up. And that didn’t work, either. I felt hopeless, like Alice in Wonder-where-the-dick-is-land.

I needed to get my mind off of my urgent need to bone, so I started following the US Presidential election.  I went to a bar at our student union to watch the debates, where I found fellow Americans to commiserate with about the frustration of being in Canada at such an exciting time in America. For the first time in months, I felt passionate about something, and a sense of camaraderie that I hadn’t felt since I’d seen my entire high school dressed in black, the day Bush Jr. got reelected. And I was getting hit on for the first time in months, by Americans. I was surrounded by people
that cared about seeing a change in the US as much as I did, and I felt alive.

On November 4, 2008, I went out to a bar comprised largely of Vietnam War dodgers. The bar was full of excitement. I answered calls from my cousins in Philly and Chicago, from my friend in Manhattan, from my dad in Portland. My cousin shouted, “I’m riding around on a fire truck, and it’s going off. I think that’s illegal, but I don’t even care!”
My dad left me a voicemail: “Mom and I are running back and forth with a huge crowd of people in the street. It’s polite anarchy!”

As my friends and I made our way back home through downtown Vancouver, we expected people to mirror our uproar, but the streets were silent. No one cared that America just elected its first black president. As we shouted “Obama won!” the only people that responded to our glee said, “So? Same shit, different leader.”

Feeling alienated and alone, I decided that night that Canadians sucked.

I came to Vancouver for a more open culture, and found a more guarded one. Vancouver’s attitude towards sex was only liberal during that one time per month that the average Vancouverite had sex. And politically, many Canadians seemed apathetic, unless there was Ecstasy involved.

November 4, 2008 was the beginning of my most horrifying realization: I am American.

The second issue theme of F
is “I am an American.” We’re
looking for pitches, articles, es-
says, illustrations, photography
and other words on this theme.
Find our submission guidelines
at www.fthemagazine.com.