The Country Music Taxi

December 17th found me in the backseat of a taxi cab at 3:00 in the morning. I was headed to the airport. My eyes were blurry from lack of sleep and my spine lacked the strength to produce little more than a slouch against the black vinyl seat. I had a very full suitcase in the trunk and was constantly checking my travel document holder to make sure that my passport hadn't suddenly evaporated into thin air.

I was headed back to the U.S. for a month, and I hadn't been back in five months. I was feeling all kinds of contradictory emotions that had created a fibrous knot in my stomach. I was excited about coming home, seeing friends and family, decorating the Christmas tree, and snuggling with my boyfriend. I was nervous, though, that all of these familiar things would somehow look suddenly alien to me. I worried that the landscape of home would seem startlingly foreign after I had trained my gaze to glide effortlessly along the horizons of Southeast Asia. I worried that English would sound harsh and brutal after my ears had grown so accustomed to the salty song of Thai--a language that ebbs and flows without any sharp corners or jolting syllables. I worried that my tongue would be lonely without spice and rice and coconut ice cream and lychee martinis.

I sighed heavily and the taxi driver looked me over in the rear view mirror before asking the standard question: "Where you from?" And I gave him the standard answer: "The United States of America" (I've found that if you just say "United States," about half of the people don't know what you are talking about; if you say "America," the other half has no idea what you are talking about. I just found that it's easier to give the whole answer). "Oh! America! I love America! I wan' go to America!" I smiled and nodded, wondering if I would have been able to make the same statement with such ardor at that particular moment in time. We talked a little bit about George Bush, and I mentioned that I didn't like him. At all. Not even a little bit. I think he was surprised by this--in Thailand, it is an absolute taboo and cardinal sin to utter a negative word about any of the members of the royal family. And here I was, standing firmly on my soap box (or rather, slouching on my soap box) and calling my president "bad." After a puzzled silence, he looked at me once again in the rear view mirror and said "I have something you like."

He popped in a tape and turned the volume all the way up. Out of the fuzzy speakers came a country song with an incredibly lively beat and some lyrics about Texarkana. He started tapping the steering wheel before moving his hand to his denim-covered thigh and full on slapping his leg to the beat. We drove by gigantic billboards reading "Long Live the King" that were plastered with pictures of Thailand's beloved monarch. Behind me was Bangkok, with its stray dogs and street vendors and tuk tuks and gentle pace. I was listening to country music and two cultures seemed to blend and dissolve together and nourish one another in the pink belly of that taxi. And I found this unexpected splash of English to be comforting and familiar and not at all out of place.

The fibrous knot in my stomach began to unwind and stretch stretch stretch. Daylight began to hang at the edge of the horizon, making the boundary between land and sky fluid and impermanent. I joined the taxi driver in tapping to the beat of the song and grinned the whole rest of the way to the airport.