Boston
Prologue: London—
For whatever reason my parents are treating this trip as if I’m travelling to an active warzone. They’ve politely asked that I turn on find my iPhone so that they can keep tabs on me, and they’ve insisted I check in multiple times a day. In fact, I’m travelling to Boston for a literature conference; the first I’ve ever spoken at.
But first I’m stopping overnight in London to see my dear friend (Peter) Daniel Craddock. I’ve not seen nasty Dan since we went to Wales last summer, and I’ve missed the cheeky brummy.
Very quick side note: I’m currently eating a carbonara Neapolitan pizza by the Thames in the quaint town of Barnes, and a sweet little girl keeps thanking the waitress after every slice of pizza she eats. Perhaps there are some redeemable southerners.
A bit much, to be honest.
Anyway, I got the train from Stockport to Euston this around 12.30 today, and I arrived at 2.30. I’d thought it’d take a lot longer, but I think the explanation lies in the general bias exhibited towards London and the South by British infrastructure. I’m not complaining, though. On the journey I finished uploading my dissertation to this fresh new website, bringing it to about 90% completion. My goal was to have it be presentable before the conference so that if anyone asks about anything I’ve written I can direct them to it fairly easily. I also finished most of my itinerary, which is meticulously timed so that I can cram the entirety of the city and its surroundings into two days. At Euston, I grabbed a fairly disappointing, £5 baguette from upper crust because I was famished. Afterwards, I jumped on the bloody tube (which is still miraculously efficient) to Vauxhall, where I passed by Dan’s old uni accommodation, which sits opposite MI5 headquarters. From Vauxhall, I got the train to Barnes, where Dan currently lives.
Barnes is really quite beautiful. One of those British suburbs that has grown organically for centuries. You can tell that because the doors of its Thames-side houses are all 6 inches or so too short for me. I never imagined anywhere in London might have this much greenery, but on the walk from the station to the highstreet, I passed through wetlands, crossed a brook and found myself in a real, honest-to-god park full of those ducks you only see in nonstandard parks. You know, ones that aren’t mallards. I followed the high-street towards the Thames and then followed that for a while. Here, I was entertained briefly by a group of row boats passing by. For a second I thought it might’ve been the Oxbridge boat race, but then I realised that was a stupid thought that didn’t make any sense.
This brook was babbling. Big time.
That brings you all up to my present activity, which consists of sitting in a pizza place by the Thames called Base Face. My pizza was the special and cost £15. When I realised it was a white base, I quickly said I wanted to change my mind, but the pretty waitress insisted it was nice, so I caved. In all fairness it was very nice, but I think a tomato base is simply essential to a pizza. White sauce is far too rich, especially after eating a shitty baguette. I say that, but I have one slice left, which I’m obviously going to finish, so it can’t have been that bad. I’m also enjoying a glass of the house red, which was £5.50. Obviously both things were quite expensive, but absolutely everything is expensive at the moment, so I was pleasantly surprised to pay a price in Barnes that I’d begrudgingly pay in Manchester. In fact, I paid the same price at That Pizza Place in Heaton Moor a week ago. The quality and ambience were leagues better here.
The reason I’m eating pizza and sipping wine on my own is that Dan doesn’t get home from work until 5. It’s currently 4.23, so I’ll probably get a pint at a nearby pub to kill the rest of the time.
That is in fact what I’ve done, as I’m now sat in a pub called the coach and horses. On arrival, I said to the barmaid that I had a feeling I’d have a heart attack if I asked the price of any of the pints. I then asked the price of one: £7.15. I then said I was right, and asked her for the cheapest one. She didn’t seem amused in the slightest, and she kind of called my broke with her eyes. Southerners have a habit of doing that. Oh well, Dan will be here soon, and I have no doubt he’s vastly more broke than I am.
I’ve just been somewhat rudely informed that for a few years now, London bus drivers have operated a policy by which passengers don’t request a ticket, they simply tap a contactless pad and hope for the best. I swear they’ll do anything here to avoid talking to another human being. I’m on the bus, obviously, towards Hammersmith, where I’ll jump on the tube to Heathrow. It’s 6.53 and I left Dan’s house around 6.30, so I’ll recount what we got up to last night.
Dan arrived at the pub about five minutes after I bought my pint. We shared a manly hug, he ordered a pint, and we rotated outside to the beer garden. Dan has been working as a special needs teacher in Ladbroke Grove, a fairly rough area of London. The job is hilarious and rewarding, he says, but he’s tired almost all of the time, and he’s dead broke. This is especially irritating because his housemates are both from wealthy families and work well paid jobs; one in finance, one in probate law. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Unfortunately I didn’t have much to update him on as I really don’t do much at home. I mainly entertained him with some stories about Babak being problematic or complained about the average IQ at the café I work at back home. The main reason conversation wasn’t flowing quite as well as it usually does, however, is that Dan is sick as a dog. Last night, not only was he sick, but also tired from a long shift at work, so he looked as though the life had been drained out of him all evening. Even in this state, his natural charisma shines through, but he’s a little dazed at the best of times, so he sported a vacant stare for most of my visit.
After a pint we headed back to his house— which is right in the centre of Barnes— so that he could have dinner and lie down for a while. He pays a ludicrously cheap (for London) £750 in rent for a two floor flat in a gated block which he shares with his two aforementioned housemates. The block is quite pretty, white walls, a cherry blossom tree and a view of the neighbouring houses. To get into the house you have to slam your shoulder as hard as you can into the door, otherwise it won’t budge. Once inside, he collapsed on the sofa for a while and subjected me to watching modern family, which is extremely wank. It was here that a met his first housemate, Dylan, the one who works in Probate law. He’s short and slim, with flowy curtains and a kind of dry, cheeky monkey humour about him. Like Dan’s other housemate, Dylan is a mate he knew from football at Lancaster, so we had something in common. Mercifully, Dan turned off modern family after one episode so that we could play Black Ops 2 zombies, perhaps the best multiplayer gaming experience ever created. He has it for the Xbox 360, which is of course two generations old at this point and also inherently shit because it’s an Xbox, but I wasn’t complaining, I love that game. We played about 6 rounds of Mob of the Dead, then Dan paused it to make Dylan and himself dinner. In the meantime, I called American Airlines as the link they sent me to download my boarding pass is broken. It took the gentleman on the phone twenty minutes to figure out and inform me that the website was simply down, and I’d have to get my pass at the airport. He also spoke with this strange, overly friendly, zesty American accent, which wound me up more than it needed to.
The guys offered me food, but I was full from my pizza so I declined. Mid-meal, Dan’s other housemate, Joe, arrived home from work. On opening the door, he said something that I hear more than most people would expect: “fucking hell, you’re tall.” I agreed, then shook his hand. Dan told Joe he’s a cunt, and Joe insisted he was only a cunt on a bad day, before informing me that today had been a bad day. “Have either of you pedos got a rig?” he asked (a rig being a vape, of course). Both pedos, in fact, had a rig. (Mega side-note: I’m uploading this piece of writing from my café back home, and I just read that passage to Lucas, who chimed in with a brilliant observation: “You’d expect someone who calls it a rig to own a rig). Anyway, Joe agreed to come with us to the pub, and Dylan, who’s date for the evening had cancelled on him, agreed too.
We headed back to the Coach and Horses for a few more £6.15 pints of Pravha, served by the pretty but vaguely cold barmaid from earlier. In the beer garden, we found ourselves flanked by a group of rowdy middle-aged people, including one who told us he was a gypsy and kept asking if we had any drugs (we did not). They had a speaker from which they were blasting fairly loud music, but that wasn’t too much of a bother as it was mainly dad rock.
There’s currently a man looking at me funny on the tube. He’s sat across from me wearing somewhat scruffy clothes and keeps peering in my direction with no hint of a smile on his face. Before any of you get the wrong idea about my reasons for profiling the man, he’s white, but he is also a sus cunt and I hope he gets off soon. For now, I’m holding my phone extra tight.
Anyway, the people sat next to us in the pub had a horrible little yappy dog and I really can’t stand the sound of yapping. It goes through me in the same way that fire alarm beeps do; it makes me irrationally mad. So, I suggested we rotate to another booth that might be less noisy. We did as much, but found that the heat lamp didn’t work and were faced with the humiliating prospect of moving back to the original spot. Thankfully, the heat lamp in the next booth on was working, so we were saved from that shame.
The conversation was a little stunted as the whole house was ill and they’d all worked that day, which meant I had the most energy to steer and carry the conversation. I got fairly consistent laughs, which I was pleased about, and I think I made a good impression on his housemates. They certainly made a good impression on me, though I wasn’t surprised, as Dan has a way of attracting funny, intelligent people (myself being case-in-point). The only especially rogue thing I heard that evening was that Joe once wanked in a stable and that he usually can’t remember what happens after about 30 minutes of sex. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
After four pints, we headed home, where I set up my mattress for the evening and hit the hay as quickly as I could. My flight is at 10.05 today and I have to pick up my boarding pass beforehand, so I’m hoping to arrive around 8.45 to be safe. This morning, I said bye to a very groggy and still ill (he’d like that) Dan, then walked to Barnes bridge bus stop, where you found me earlier.
I’m now on the tube (the sus man is still here) and I’m fucking starving. I really should’ve bought a sandwich from Tesco, but what can you do? The man just calmly exited the train. Maybe he was frowning at me because of my chronic resting bitch face. Whatever.
I flew through Heathrow security and got my boarding pass no problem. Now I’m sat in terminal three at a restaurant called Spuntino, where I’m waiting to eat chicken and waffles with an oat cappuccino. Not a bad start to the day really.
Boston—
I’m on the plane now. For the first time in my life, I’ve been seated almost perfectly. At first, I was seated next to two sweet Middle Eastern ladies, which was all good, but they asked the flight attendant if they could move to some free seats nearby, giving me an entire row of three to myself. The only better option would be a seat on the opposite side of the plane between the two prettiest girls on the plane. Beggars can’t be choosers, though.
Oh for fucks sake. Some fat American prick has moved onto one of my seats. Now I can’t lie down. What a motherfucker. I know that, as a Brit, I can’t talk, but why is it that Americans are always trying to take shit that doesn’t belong to them.
Flying over a motorway in an aeroplane is a very strange sensation. You get the feeling you get when watching a motorway ordinarily, that feeling of insignificance that comes about when you realise each car is a person or family going about their lives entirely removed from anything you do. Sonder, it’s called. But you also get the feeling you get when you see a plane, which is effectively the same, though compounded by a general amazement that humans can fly. Right now, it’s as if I can feel the gaze (in the Lacanian sense) of the tiny people I’m gazing at, as they see me as a passenger on a plane going somewhere they’ll never know. It’s a good thing I’ve chosen to spend my life seeing as much as I can, because there’s really nothing else worth doing when you’re this small.
I’m around 4 hours into the flight, with 2 and a half to go. I’ve just finished watching Good Will Hunting for the first time, and before that The Nice Guys. The latter was brilliant, solid script, immensely charismatic performances from Me and Russel Crowe (also me, since he’s Maximus Decimus Meridius). The whole film, with its kind of neon noir vibe and 80s LA setting absolutely oozed cool. I’ll be downloading the personality of Ryan Gosling’s character for the foreseeable. The former was really incredible. I’m sure it doesn’t need to be said, as the film is fairly universally acclaimed, but I really loved it. Of course, having seen both the best scene in the film (“it’s not your fault”) on TikTok and Charlie’s impression in It’s Always Sunny, I’d effectively seen the whole thing. Nonetheless, I loved it. It felt important to watch it on the way to Boston so I can really understand why people feel the need to say “aye fack you” in a Boston accent so often. The score was great too, mainly due to my recently acquired love of Elliot Smith, who I believe wrote Miss Misery for the film.
Right, I’m midway through watching Girl, Interrupted and this stupid fucking airline has decided to not only play me a 5 minute unskippable instruction video on how to follow the signs to customs, but now also to give me a talk and show me another 5 minute video on how American Airlines is partnered with UNICEF to help children in need. They even had the cheek to say “I’m sure you’ve all seen the images on the news of suffering children.” Where do you think the most children in the world are suffering right now, American Airlines, you morally bankrupt cretins? And which nation is directly responsible for funding that suffering. Go fuck yourselves and your charity tax write off you slimy cunts. Of course the fat American next to me is giving a dollar, and of course he’s been drinking exclusively diet cokes all flight. Trump was right about one thing, at least.
I finished Girl, Interrupted a few minutes before landing. It’s also a great film; it’s kind of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest but about girls: same setting, same time period, same premise. Lisa is a less sympathetic McMurphy, Suzanne a racist Chief Bromden. In any case, I enjoyed it, but it reminded me why I thank the universe every day for not making me a girl. It seems awfully complicated.
Anyway, it’s 12 midday and we’ve landed. I’ve now been up for around 12 hours, so I presume I’m going to crash in the next 6. I think I’ll be getting a very large coffee once I arrive in the city. Boston is one of the prettier American cities I’ve been to. At least from above. The weather is really beautiful too, which helps. Gorgeous blue skies.
A lady sat next to me on the (free) bus into town has a coffee from New England Coffee, which reminds me that I am decidedly in New England. I’ve been to Connecticut before, but I was too young to decide the all important question: which is better, the new one, or the old one? Having arrived at my hotel, checked in, and been greeted by a stunning 21st floor view of the city, I can say confidently that New England is a terribly apt name. Boston resembles Manchester more than any other city I’ve seen in this country; full of red brick buildings, Victorian architecture and medium sized sky scrapers. It still has that decidedly American feel to it though: adverts on Taxis, shops with names like Trader Joes and a serious lack of inside voices. Oh and, of course, the size of things. I ordered a large Iced Latte from Dunkin, which originated in the city, and thus fucker is the size of my head. It’s really wild.
My stomach is rejecting the slop I’ve been feeding it since I arrived. The slop in question was a burger from Shake Shack, which was tasty but made my insides turn. I ate it during the hour and a half break between the end of my panel and the next presentation I was interested in seeing. I’ve been a very busy boy for the past twelve hours, so I’d better recount what I’ve been up to.
After the mega iced latte, I showered, then took a stroll through Fenway gardens to Fenway park, the home of the Boston Redsox. It’s very old and completely outclassed by nearly every premier league football stadium, but it has the undeniable charm of nostalgia. It’s big, iron and green, covered with signs advertising baseball cards and celebrating their multitudinous World Series wins. Of course the World Series only involves teams from around the US, but that’s awfully typical of America. What I found most interesting was that the Redsox won the World Series in 1916. You’d think another major world event might have prevented that from taking place, but I guess not.
Anyway, I continued on past Fenway park towards Boston common garden, freedom trail and the Northside, which are all in downtown Boston. I thought the walk would be around 30 minutes, so I strolled quite casually down a huge road called Commonwealth avenue. It’s very beautiful, flanked by red brick buildings on either side, and furnished with a two lines of trees sheltering a walking path all the way down the middle. Birds chirped and Bostonians honked their horns, while I became increasingly cold and it became increasingly apparent that the walk would take upwards of an hour. My phone was also very close to dying. All in all I was in a bad state.
Boston public garden and common are both gorgeous parks loaded with sites of historical importance. I saw a group of people sat on a little pier over a pond in the common; it was the kind of hangout / date spot you’d kill for. Freedom trail, which is a trail of such historical sites, begins in the garden.
However, given how cold and hungry I was, I elected to give the hour long trail a miss and power on to the Northside, Boston’s Little Italy. My walk took me past the state-government building, a giant example of brutalism done right.
I then moved through the bustling Boston public market– which seemed to sell exclusively fish and fruit– and onto Hannover street, the main strip of Italian restaurants.
I don’t really know why there was a full suit of armour chained to a pole in Little Italy, but I’m increasingly learning to stop asking questions and simply fuck with a raw-ass vibe when I encounter one.
Reddit suggested a place called Arya Trattoria would be the best restaurant to try, so I walked through its small, tucked away door, up its stairs and into the cozy, blue light-lit second floor setting. They seated me at the bar, where a lady next to me recommended I order the pistachio martini. I did so, along with a lobster gnocchi, both of which were fantastic. I polished them off quickly, then got chatting to the bartender, a bald, Brazilian Boston local called Flávio. Flávio was lovely, but he had some hot takes. He was pro gun carrying, which he felt helped prevent conflicts from arising, and he insisted that Seattle had gone to shit because it had, and I quote: “been taken over by retards.” He also told me that he agreed with a lot of the law in Texas, so in hindsight he might not have been as lovely as I thought, but I don’t know.
I asked for a few bar recommendations, ignored them all, and once again asked Reddit. Reddit suggested a dive bar called the corner café, which was a grotty Irish pub a few minutes from the restaurant. It cost $8 for a pint and the bartender looked like he wanted to kill me, but the beer was tasty and I didn’t mind the first part all that much. The main issue was that there was no one that seemed at all interesting in the bar, so once I’d finished my pint I moved onto Reddit’s next suggestion. This was a bar called Sullivan’s tap, known as the longest bar in Boston, and decorated with what appeared to be a signed endorsement by Neil Armstrong.
He called the bar “out of this world.” The beer here was also $8 dollars and fairly tasty, and the music was a great range of classic dad rock. However, the problem of the previous place persisted: no one cool.
Sullivan’s.
I moved on once more, this time to a bar that I won’t even deign to name, because the asshole bouncer refused to accept my British drivers license. Whatever, it looked shit anyway. My final resting place was called the Bell in Hand Tavern, and it claimed to be the oldest continuously serving bar in the US. It was wank, do not go. The pint cost me $13 and they played radio music all night. I left swiftly and got the tram home, quite fucked up at this point.
On my walk home, I encountered the Church of Christian Science and in my drunken state I confused it with Scientology. The Church was immense and grand in the way only a Cathedral or particularly significant Mosque can be. I was awestruck: how could the people of Boston stand this testament to the most obvious of religious scams holding such pride of place in their city. Now, the Church of Christian Science is fairly stupid too, but it’s not quite Scientology, so the whole thing was a little more comprehensible the next morning. Anyway, here’s a picture of the colossal monstrosity.
When I got back to my room, I drunkenly rehearsed my presentation, then got as early of a night as I could manage. I ended up getting around 5 hours sleep, as the jet lag made me wake up at 5 am. This wasn't ideal, but it did mean I could take my sweet time showering and grabbing a very shitty bagel from Dunkin' for breakfast.
It also meant I arrived early for something for the first time in my entire adult life. I arrived 30 minutes early, in fact, which meant that I coincided with the lady chairing the meeting. I recognised her from her e-mail profile picture, as I'd asked her for some advice in the build up. Her name is Katherine Johnstone, and she's a professor at The University of Stonybrook in New York. She's probably in her mid thirties and pretty in a way that puts you at ease immediately. She's also an expert on my beloved topic of surveillance capitalism. She gave me some advice on my talk and insisted that NeMLA is the most chilled literature conference there is. She also reassured me that almost everyone reads off a script when they present. The rest of the presenters came in sporadically for the next 30 minutes, and I introduced myself and my talk to all of them. They were all very sweet and clearly into the same kind of nerdy shit that I like. The best part, though, was that they treated me like a peer despite the fact that they were all professors and I'm a barista. Anyway, Katherine presented first, talking about a book whose name escapes me, but which is the sequel to a book called 'Goon Squad.' I'm honest-to-God dead fucking serious. That killed me. The next presenter focused on the ways people have made data more visible, like making a book out of the code for a PNG of an opossum. His talk was interesting and novel, though I can't say it has inspired me to look more into the topic. I do think his goal was simply to be interesting and novel, however, so he did a good job, I suppose. Halfway through his presentation my heart started pounding and my hands started to shake a little. It might've been the coffee and lack of sleep, but more likely it was the immensity of my nerves. When his presentation finished, I said I'd go next so I didn't have to shake for another 20 minutes. All in all, things went fairly well. I said everything I wanted to, the audience (a modest turnout of around 5 plus the other 3 presenters) seemed engaged and I hardly tripped over my words. I probably looked up from my script about once, but that's whatever. The next talk was about how data can cause abjection, as data on people is kind of them and not them, and it treats people as both a landscape (of data) and the thing traversing that landscape: it's neither here nor there. At the end of the panel, we complimented and questioned one another, then Katherine asked if I'd like to pick her brain for some PHD advice. Of course, I took her up on the offer, and she led me to the refreshment station for some coffee.
I'm picking this up from my dining table in Manchester, as I was so busy for the rest of the weekend that I couldn't find the time to keep my journal updated. I'm sorry if that makes this somewhat disingenuous, but ,luckily, I took some brief notes and plenty of pictures; my memory is also incredible, so do not fear.
Back to the plot: Katherine walked me to the refreshment station for some coffee. Now, the coffee served at the conference was Starbucks, which is an utterly ludicrous choice for a very liberal literature conference. If you don't know or you are reading this some time in the future (wishful thinking, I know), pro-Palestinian activists have urged people to boycott Starbucks due to it's percieved support of Israel. I was honestly quite surprised that no one said anything, but whatever. I figured that drinking their coffee is no issue if I'm not paying for it, so I had a cup, though it was an unnecessary moral conundrum. Woe is me, kids are dying, I know, I know. Anyway, Katherine and I sat down at a table with our immoral coffees and talked PHDs. She said that I shouldn't even consider doing one if it isn't funded, but that I'll almost certainly be funded. She also said she thinks I'm someone who should absolutely do a PHD. She said that I should apply to colleges based on both prestige and the relevance of faculty to my interests, and that it's worth buttering up a few professors so they might put in a good word for me. Her final bit of advice was to ask for letters of recommendation right now rather than wait until I'm applying, as it may be awkward to e-mail my professors in five years time. Katherine is lovely and said she'd have a read of the full version of my cyberpunk essay on this blog. Whether she actually does read it is a different question, but it made me feel like there was some point to putting all of this effort into BoVHM, which was nice.
She said goodbye and left me to grab some lunch before the next session. I opted for the shake shack in the mall connected to the hotel. Last summer I tried the smoke shack burger, which was delightful, so I picked that again, along with a vanilla milkshake. I polished the burger off quickly, then took the milkshake with me to the next presentation so that I could slurp it obnoxiously. The talk was on Black female vampires called sucouyants. In first year I did a project on Global vampire stories, so I was already acquainted with the soucouyant, though I didn't write on them and can't claim to be an expert. The soucouyant, the speaker explained, is a hag from Caribbean and African folklore that sheds its skin at night and flies around town in a ball of flames to drink the blood of children. Apparently this figure is appearing with increasing frequency in contemporary African-American fiction, and the talk examined why that might be. It was interesting, but honestly I think I could've done a better job. The speaker's points were fairly surface level: the soucouyant is a way to demonise Black women... Ok, duh... The soucouyant is a misunderstood figure... Right, ok. One audience member asked why Black people continue to tell stories that seem to demonise their own people, and the speaker really didn't have an answer. To me, one potential answer should be obvious anyone that has studied African American literature. Why would Black women tell their children stories of old Black women that suck the blood of infants? Repression, obviously. It's the result of repressing the traumatic legacy of the Black wet-nurse. During slavery, white women would force pregnant slaves to breast-feed their white children, leaving their own children malnourished. This traumatic fact is repressed in the collective unconscious of African-Americans, where it attaches itself to the soucouyant myth as it's direct opposite. That way, when the soucouyant myth is told, the repressed wet-nurse figure returns from its alienation in an uncanny form. I think I butchered my explanation a little, but I hope you understand what I'm getting at. In any case, there's clearly a link there, and the fact this speaker didn't make it is truly astounding to me.
The presentation was engaging enough, though, and if nothing else it showed me that being a major speaker at one of these conferences is a very realistic goal for me. Afterwards, I headed back into the main lobby to find that several final year undergrads at colleges from around New England had set up posters explaining their thesis research projects. The idea was that attendees of the conference would ask them questions about their thesis in order to point towards new research areas or potential flaws. I was feeling a little shy, so I had to walk a few laps of the lobby before plucking up the courage to speak to some of them. Obviously I was only interested in speaking to the cute girls, so I started with the first cute girl I could find. Her thesis was on how militant French secularism is damaging to French Muslims. Interesting enough. The next girl was talking about something boring that I forgot. Same with the one after that. The next girl, however, was using psychoanalytical theory to ask how important a sense of identity is to one's mental wellbeing. Now that had me hooked, as I love psychoanalysis and this girl evidently did too. She'd read some stuff I hadn't read, particularly a lot of Melanie Klein, while I'd read some stuff she hadn't, like Fanon. I we exchanged recommendations and I left her to talk to some other people, though I hoped we'd meet again later in the day as she was pretty and interesting. She said she was going to see her academic advisor's presentation once she was finished, so I started to plot and plan.
The next talk set of talks were at 3, then the final set were at 4.45. I decided to go to a talk at 3 then take 4.45 to 6.15 to shower and update this a little in the lobby, where I'd be sure to run into her. I went to a talk on biopolitics, which was fine but really not all that focused on biopolitics. It was more focused on Achille Mbembe's theory of necropolitics than anything Foucault had to say in my favourite ‘Society Must be Defended.’ Necropolitics is basically any politics that creates a imaginary enemy in order to justify placing a subsection of people in a state of suspended death, where they can be killed at any time; the war on terror is a fairly good example. One presentation in the panel talked about Filipino immigrant workers, another about how Afghanistan is designated a zone of perpetual conflict and death by its representation in Western media. The most interesting to me, though, was one about how trans people have been made the imaginary enemy of the Right and are now subjected to the perpetual threat of violent death. It was sad, but very eye opening as it really seems like trans people can be killed with near impunity, and people like J. K. Rowling are genuinely responsible for that.
Kind of a dripped-out mysterious stranger type look that I fucked with heavy.
After that cheery panel I took a shower, changed out of my conference outfit, which consisted of my black baggy cords, a white shirt, a black tie and my brown leather coat (very noir detective-esque), and into my clubbing outfit: beige baggy cords, a blue cotton polo and a grey sweater. I sat in the lobby in a very visible location and worked on this whilst the final talks of the day finished. Once they finished, I spotted the Lacan-lover walking over to me. She incredulously asked if I was still working, to which I responded that I was travel writing. She asked what about and I said... This. Then I asked her out for a drink. She smiled, said yes and gave me her Instagram. She walked off to get changed and I played it cool but I was physically shaking. What a dub, though. A few minutes later she came back to the lobby and we headed across the road to a bar that I'd been to the night before. It was absolutely packed and playing loud music, so we were practically shouting to one another about our various academic and cultural interests. She's at college in upstate New York, she speaks three languages and her name is Billie. The conversation flowed well in spite of the noise, and I was fairly optimistic about my prospects until she admitted that she was very tired and would have to go to bed soon, explicitly stating that she meant to sleep. I immediately took that as her not being interested, but in hindsight I'm not sure that I should've. I'm really not good at judging these things, and I'm always very careful to not apply anything that could be seen as pressure, but I think I'm a little overly cautious. I think that maybe if I'd encouraged her to stay for one more drink or even said she could chill in my room nearby it might've been more obvious that I was interested in her, but at the same time I wouldn't want her to feel uncomfortable so I really don't know. I'm still learning the rules of engagement.
She told me the hotel she was staying in was a twenty minute walk from the bar we were at, and I realised it was right next to the part of town I'd been planning to go for a drink in that night. So, I paid for our drinks and walked her back to the hostel as Boston's insane winds and spitting rain pelted us. On arrival, she told me to stay in touch and wished me a good night. All in all I wasn't mad that it didn't 'go anywhere' per se, as she was very nice to talk to and I enjoyed the time we spent together, so complaining would feel gross.
With that little chronicle over, I stepped into a bar next door to her hostel that seemed packed with people my age. I forgot the name, and even if I hadn't I wouldn't dream of giving it any unpaid publicity on the cultural mainstay that is bovhm.com. I say this because the bar's bouncer refused to let me in without an American passport. Not just any passport, an American passport. Clearly the bouncer was an idiot, but if that really is the bar's policy then it limits it's clientele to Americans that both have a passport and carry it around at all times. Bearing in mind that only 37% of the American population owns a passport, that policy would be utterly ludicrous. But whatever, my rejection from that shit hole bar was directly responsible for the best night I spent in Boston. Get excited gang.
I left the bar and walked to another down the road that reddit had referred me to. It was called Tam's and like almost evry other drinking establishment in Boston, it was Irish. Tam's is your quintessential American bar: Budweiser and Miller Lite merchandise everywhere, neon signs glaring from every bit of wall not taken up by pictures of celebrity visitors and local sports icons, and multiple giant TVs playing something related to the NBA.
Man, my description was uncannily accurate, huh?
I scanned the bar for someone interesting to talk to, but only managed to find an empty stool. I sat there and ordered an IPA like the white boy I am, then waited for whichever unfortunate soul I might feel confident enough to chat to. Three girls, one of them stunning, walked in after a while, then sat at the other end of the bar to me, where they began chatting away to the middle-aged bartender, who seemed to know them. He feigned disinterest, but this only made the girls more eager to loosen him up. In fact, it was obvious that he loved the attention; who wouldn't? After watching this unfold for a while, I moved seats to sit next to them and pretended it was so that I could order from the bar man. I got another IPA, complimented him on the bar's music playlist and then started drumming away at the bar to whatever was playing. This went on for about ten minutes and I was struggling to think of an excuse to chat with them until I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a red headed, middle-aged man in a green sports t-shirt. With an Irish lilt he asked me: "say, what's it like having a thick head of hair like that? Man I'd kill to have mine back." The Irish are outrageously talented conversationalists, and he'd soon got me waffling about football. Like so many Irishmen, he was called Michael (Mick) and he was a United fan (the rest are Liverpool fans called Patrick- I've met very few called Seamus) so he jokingly threatened to take me out back and rough me up when I admitted I supported City. "Nurlan," he said, patting his friend on the shoulder, "this young lad's a City fan. How about that Haaland, eh?" Nurlan was a tall Kazakh in his late thirties who seemed equally comfortable talking to strangers. They told me they'd met playing mixed gender 5-a-side football in Boston and had now been friends for years. Nurlan was in cybersecurity but Mick's job escapes me. Regardless, they were both evidently well-off as they happily bought my drinks for the rest of the night. They asked if, as a tall, handsome British man, I'd had much luck with the ladies thus far, and I admitted I hadn't. Like everyone else that I reveal that fact to, they were gobsmacked. They asked who I had my eye on in the bar and I told them about the girl next to me. Mick immediately stood up, walked over to her and asked her to play a game of guess the nationality. She accepted, then myself and Nurlan said a sentence each. She guessed Ireland for me, and when I told her she was wrong she asked me to say something else. Mick said that was cheating, and she insisted she'd only keep guessing if I said something else. Mick said that was fine and she'd have to resign herself to not knowing, then turned away. She sat back down. "She'll be back," he said, and winked at me. God the guy was a fucking guru.
Ten minutes or so later, I tapped the girl on the arm and asked if Tam's was their local boozer. She said yes, then begged me to tell her where I was from. I admitted I was from Manchester, then said how much Boston reminded me of home, before rambling about how great Manchester's music scene is. She agreed, but after talking to me for a few minutes she admitted she'd been ignoring her friend to talk to me and felt bad, so she turned away.
After that L, we moved from the bar to a table to accommodate a new arrival; a friend of the guys. I forget her name, but she was a pretty, thirty-something blonde that refereed college football games and lived in a penthouse suite overlooking Boston common. She was lovely and seemed just as keen as the guys to get me some action. This kind of thing happens a lot when I talk to older people. Its as if they like using me as an avatar to relive their youth. Unfortunately they don't realise that even though I've maxed out the charisma stat, I've also maxed out the autism stat, so they have to give me explicit, comprehensive commands rather than just "go talk to her." The guys bought me a few more beers and a few Baby Guinesses, so I plucked up the courage to approach the girls again. The guys (and the new girl) suggested I go over and say “do you mind if I borrow your friend for a minute?” So that's exactly what I did. "Yes, we do actually," said one of the girls. "Ok then, I suppose I'll just talk to her here," I responded, smiling. I told the cute girl she was beautiful and asked for her Instagram, explaining that I was only in town for another day and I'd love to take her out whilst I was there. The same girl was about to pipe up, but the pretty one cut her off, saying "I don't mind giving him my Instagram." As she was typing it into my phone, the goalkeeper asked me where I was from, and I chatted to her in the most friendly tone I could manage given how hostile she'd been. She warmed up and the cute girl gave me my phone back. I said thank you, then said I'd leave them to it. On my return I told the guys I'd got her Instagram and they seemed pleased enough. Unfortunately, when I messaged her the next day she ignored me, and I discovered yesterday (the day I got home to Manchester) that she'd blocked me. I love this gaaaaaaaaaaame.
By this point, we were all quite hammered, and the referee girl said she'd take Mick— who had certainly seen better days— home. This left me and Nurlan. I admitted I'd been planning to go to a club that night, and he said he'd take me. We headed outside and huddled under a shelter to avoid to heavy Boston rainfall while we devised a plan. Under this shelter, two girls overheard my accent and started fawning over me. They weren't exactly my type, which was a shame, but they were incredibly lovely and wanted nothing more than to here me talk about The Inbetweeners, which they knew an impressive amount about. They said I reminded them of Will, which is offensive but fairly accurate. They elected to join myself and Nurlan in heading to a nearby club, but when we arrived the bouncer said they weren't letting anyone else in, as it was closing in thirty minutes. At that moment, I saw something that blew my mind, something I'd only seen in films. Nurlan slipped the bouncer a hundred dollar bill, and he let us in. It was mind-blowing. Then, as if to band spread on us all even harder, he paid for each of our entry, which amounted to $40 each. Got that guy was balling.
The club itself was cool, lit up with strobes and full of young people having the time of their lives. This time, the girls bought our drinks as they evidently felt bad for Nurlan. I, however, did not care, and happily took another free drink. We entered the dance floor and started to dance to the hip-hop tracks the DJ was spinning. The DJ was fucking dreadful, unfortunately. He'd play a great song that everyone knew, get the crowd excited, let it run for thirty seconds and then mix it into another song before it got to the good bit. It was like that one limmy sketch 'stand your ground' (Limmy Teaches Techno | Limmy's Homemade Show | BBC Scotland) Check it out if you'd like a reference video for your imagination.
Thirty minutes passed quickly and, given my views on club-pulling, I decided I'd forgo any attempts to bust a move in a sense other than dancing. When the lights came on, everyone rushed to the front door to get taxis home, but the bouncer obviously remembered his bribe, grabbed us, and showed us out of the secret back door. I'm a firm believer than money can't buy happiness and I also don't agree with bribery, but that objectively did make me happy.
Outside the club, I drunkenly chatted to some Bostonians while deciding whether or not to keep partying. Daylight savings started that night, so it was suddenly 3 am, which made the prospect of staying out a little overwhelming. Had it been 2, I'd most likely have caved and gone to some dodgy cunt’s afters. Instead, I found a nearby street to piss on, took a goodbye hit from Nurlan's penjamin, gave all three of my co-clubbers a platonic kiss on the cheek, then got an uber home. I stumbled, cross-faded, through the lobby, into the elevator, down my hallway and into my room. There I collapsed into my cosy double bed, still buzzing with excitement at my little adventure.
The next day, I woke up at midday feeling like I'd been hit by two buses consecutively. Walking all day Friday, thinking all day Saturday and drinking all Saturday night had left me a hollow shell of a man. I drank a litre of water and doom scrolled for an hour in bed, knowing that every minute I spent there was a minute wasted, not exploring Concord and Cambridge as I'd planned. At 1pm, I willed myself to shower and put some clothes on. I went for my beige cords, a navy moncler polo and an argyle sweater vest (the top half of an outfit that made an appearance in Paris 2, for all you keen BoVHMers). Clearly another smoke shack burger/vanilla milkshake tag-team was the only suitable cure for this goliath hangover, so I swung by the mall, then made my way to a nearby tram station, looking to board one to North Station in— you guessed it— the North Side. I decided, given my subdued mood, that I spend the tram journey and upcoming train journey listening to some sombre music. I started with Elliot Smith because Good Will Hunting had perpetually linked him to Boston for me, and because Needle in The Hay had been- and indeed still is- playing on repeat in my head.
At North Station, I bought a return ticket then waited twenty minutes for the train to Concord. I bought a Fanta, as Fanta is infinitely better in the States due to the inclusion of high fructose corn syrup and loads of neon orange food colouring. I also hoped the sugar content might help cure the hangover a little. It did not, and I boarded the train with a niggling desire to lie across the tracks.
NOW MORE DELCIOUS!!! WHAT?????
The train carried me through New England suburbia for an hour, and I saw scenes I'm accustomed to seeing only in coming of age films. Baseball diamonds flanked by bleachers, high school football teams tossing the pigskin, picket fenced, white wood-beam houses with pristine lawns. Its all a little cheesy and contrived, but it really is quite idyllic. Somehow you feel as though the kids growing up here a doing it 'properly'; like they're experiencing everything a childhood should encompass. The highs and lows of high school football, to quote Riverdale.
I arrived in Concord at dead-on 3pm buzzing with as much excitement as I could muster. I think Concord was the place I was most keen to see. It was one of the earliest European settlements in North America, the place where the American Revolutionary war started and the home of four pillars of American literature: Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlett Letter), Louis-May Alcott (Little Women), Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature [see my essay on the self made in American Lietarture], Self-Reliance; the two seminal works of American Romanticism, for the uninitiated) and, my personal favourite, Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau is most famous for writing Walden, which I have referenced on a number of occasions throughout my blog posts, but he also wrote a famous anti-government, anti-war, anti-slavery essay called Civil Disobedience and a memoir called Where I Lived and What I Lived For. I fucking love Thoreau, if you couldn't tell. The guy was hilarious, articulate and just as utterly bemused by the modern world of his time as I am by ours. Walden is a short book that he wrote whilst living alone for two years, two months and two days by Walden Pond, a lake south of Concord, in a cabin that he built, eating only what he foraged, farmed and caught. He effectively urges people to follow in his footsteps by trying to 'live deliberately' rather than follow a path set out by society on the principle that it's the only one we can follow. Thoreau's prose is a little dense but the message is clear enough even in his action of moving to the cabin. The story features a little in his memoirs of course, but I mainly like their title. I think its beautifully succint and quite clever, so, as I may or may not have already said somewhere on this website, I will be naming my memoirs "Where I Lived and Why I Didn't Kill Myself," as an homage.
But back to the plot. I was also excited to visit concord because its the first settlement you enter when you follow the main story of Fallout 4, which is set in a post-nuclear war Massachusetts and is one of my favourite games ever. I was interested to see the town pre-nuclear war, as there's every chance it might have been my last opportunity to do so. Concord is the epitome of quaint, in that, although its as gigantic as most US towns, it *feels* like Heaton Moor, like somewhere everyone might know everyone else. It's charmingly aware of its historical significance, but its not tacky about it. Even the historical references peppered throughout the town are subtle enough. There's a few Thoreau streets, a few Emerson Avenues and the bike rental service is called Minute-Men bike share, a reference to the American militia soldiers willing to begin revolution against the British at a minute's notice. The minute-men is also the name of a group of vigilantes in the world of Fallout 4, which gave the whole thing even more of a novelty factor. Unfortunately the bike rental was closed. Preston Garvey and his fucking settlements.
During the brief walk from the train station to the centre of town, two things caught my eye. The first, an Asian family lead-walking their cats, was mundane absurd perfection. The second was a more sinister absurd; a whole garden had been taken up with miniature Israeli flags and the words 'we stand with Israel' plastered in huge letters across the fence. You wonder if a single resident of Concord has ever been to Israel, never mind the occupied territories, whether they've ever spoken to a Palestinian. I don't understand how so many people in the States have been convinced that they know enough about such a nuanced conflict to actively and physically declare allegiance to a nation they have absolutely nothing to do with. I suppose the same happened with Ukraine in the UK, but at least on the surface of it, it's significantly easier to sympathise with Ukraine as the invaded territory than it is with Israel as the invaders (unless we consider the festival attack an invasion, rather than a terror attack, but that'd really problematise the American position, now wouldn't it).
I stopped by Concord bookstore to buy a copy of Walden and Where I Lived, then set off on my expedition. My first port of call on the whistle stop tour of concord (I know I've mixed boat and train metaphors there but I don't care at all) was Sleepy Hollow Cemetary. Beyond having the most small-town, New England, puritan settler name conceivable, its also the final resting place of the four writers, so it was a must see. The cemetary was a fifteen minute walk away, so I assumed it'd be a quick in and out deal, but I was dead wrong. Like everything else in the States, the cemetary was ludicrously big, and it took another 15 minutes to walk across it to the aptly named Author's Ridge. I'll admit, seeing the gravestones made the whole thing worth it, especially since I got a picture of Thoreau's memoirs by his grave, almost completing the story. You know, 'where I lived' becomes 'where I died.' Of course, I don't think he died on that exact spot, it was probably somewhere called 'Thoreau Death House' or something (why would he go there? Is he stupid?) but you get the idea.
Next, I marched over to The Old Manse, a house built by Emerson's great grandfather from which he (the grandad) witnessed the first bullet fired in the revolutionary war.
The bullet was fired on a bridge a hundred metres North of the house called... Hmmmmmmmmmmm... I do wonder... Oh yeah the North Bridge. Fucking Americans and their overly literal names. I don't really know much about the Revolutionary War because I hate the idea that Britain was beaten by a bunch of cretins we rejected from our country, but it was still interesting to see the exact spot where the *Dark Timeline* of American global hegemony was set off.
As a side note, on the walk from Sleepy Hollow to The Old Manse, I spotted a small compost box with a picture on the side of it of a baby with a cross over it. It makes you wonder how many babies had to be composted for them to put that warning on there.
Anyway, these two stops took me around an hour, and the sun was supposed to set at 7, so I was in a bit of a rush. My next stop was Walden pond, which was a 90 minute walk away, so I elected to Uber instead. The drive took around ten minutes and I arrived feeling just refreshed enough to manage the hour-long walk around the lake to the now vacant site of Thoreau's cabin. I don't have much to say about the walk beyond the fact that it was peaceful, the lake is beautiful and I felt like I should've been having some more profound thoughts, but alas. I also facetimed my dear friend Meg, as she was on my American literature course in second year (where I first encountered Walden) and she'd asked me to send her some pictures when I got there. At the cabin site, I found a family exploring, with two young girls climbing on a pile of rocks. After reading a little information board, I discovered that they'd located the exact site of his cabin by excavating the land and finding the foundation of his chimney. I also realised that the pile of rocks had been left there one at a time by visitors as an ode to Thoreau's idea. Obviously I decided to go and find a stone of my own, so I headed to the water's edge and scanned the floor. I found a tiny pebble, but most of the stones had been taken. I also found a tree that had fallen into the lake. The bottom half still protruded out of the water and to the shore, so I hatched a little plan. I left my stone where I found it, then walked out onto the tree, sat cross legged and read the first chapter of Walden.
It's funny that Thoreau seemed to have all the same problems with society and its seeming automation back in the 19th century as I have with it now. Honestly I think it's a question of intelligence; most people go about their lives doing whatever comes up because they don't have the critical thinking to consider that it might actually be worth doing something else. I say all this as a literature student working in a café and starting a blog, so maybe I've no right to say I'm carving my own path.
Oh, another side note: there are train tracks right by the cabin site and seeing them triggered a primal desire in me to recreate the scene in every coming of age movie where they walk along the tracks, or maybe lie down on them. I hopped a very small fence, checked for oncoming trains, then walked over. I stood on the tracks very briefly, afraid that a train could come any second even though I couldn't hear one. I considered lying down, then turned my head to the right to find a very quiet train barrelling towards me. For some reason I felt a little humiliated, so I quickly hopped the fence again and went back to my more intellectual pursuits.
Well, after dropping my stone at Thoreau's cabin site, I decided it was about time to conclude my tour of Concord by stopping by the house where Alcott wrote and set Little Women. I haven't read little women because I'm a misogynist, so the house didn't have a great deal of significance to me. However, I feel as though I'll either read it or at least mention I've visited the house to impress a girl at some point, so it felt was worth it. I Ubered back into town via the house, grabbed a root beer and some Cheetos to stave off my growing hunger pangs, and sat at the train station for a while. It was fairly cold, and I'd realised a few hours before this that my sweater vest was really a poor call in terms of practicality, so I took cover in a shelter by the tracks. I sat on a bench and looked down to see, scrawled on the inside of the metal shelter: "I slept on this bench tonight. Rock bottom." How very uplifting.
The train took another hour to take me back to North station. I walked from there to a nearby tram stop and boarded one to Alewife (I deduced that this was probably the inspiration for the name of the first song on Clairo's album 'Immunity', which is a fun little call back to my first ever travel writing in Paris).
Alewife is a tram stop right next to Harvard square in Cambridge. The stop that I boarded the tram from seemed incredibly aesthetic to me, with its red and white colour scheme set against a black sky pierced by the light of Boston's sparsely populated skyline. The rickety Alewife tram grinding slowly to a halt was the icing on this goose-bump inducing cake.
At Harvard square, I decided it was best to eat before trekking through Harvard campus and down the main road to MIT, so I popped into a well-lit pizza joint on the corner. I ordered two huge slices of pepperoni for (I think) $5 each, which seemed steep at first, but they really filled a gap. They were also extremely tasty, with a crunchy base and perfect tomato sauce. I took a seat to eat them and scanned the room. The place was called Joe's... "as seen in Spiderman." At that point it all clicked. Peter Parker works for Joe's Pizza in Sam Raimi's trilogy (Pizza Time), but Joe's is famous enough in its own right. Supposedly it's THE place to get a slice of pizza in New York, and the original store has been run by Joe's family since the 70s. The walls of the shop are lined with polaroids of Joe greeting every celebrity you can imagine, along with excerpts from interviews in which they sing its praises. Tom Hardy even called it his favourite place to eat in New York. If the Harvard Square branch is anything to go by, I think the hype is deserved. People say that no matter what time of year, what time of day, what branch, who's working, the pizza is always exactly as good, with its uniquely crunchy base, as you'd expect it to be. Next time in New York I think it'll be my first stop.
By this point it was pitch black outside, which was a shame as I'd hoped to see Harvard Campus bustling with students in the mid afternoon, but I suppose I sacrificed that for the sake of my club misadventure the night before, so what can you do? I strolled over to the campus and imagined what it'd be liked packed with the dweebs that occupy it, since the only students I saw were two girls carrying their laundry back to their dorms. I guess that did make the place feel a little more alive. As I expected, it's nothing like as impressive as the oldest Universities in the UK, as its around 400 years younger, but it still has a grandeur that almost everywhere else in the States lacks. One building in particular was quite nice; red brick with white stone highlights, but it really wouldn't be out of place on Birmingham uni's campus, which is probably a testament to just how great our top universities look for the most part.
Harvard.
I left the campus and started my twenty minute walk to MIT down a road full to the brim with cute Asian restaurants (they know Cambridge's market well) and what Will Hunting might call a Haavad Baa (Harvard Bar, that is). The bar's were significantly more trendy than those in Boston, as is usually the case in areas dominated by bright students. Each one I passed seemed to be begging me to go in. They were full of young people and most had live music on. It wa really quite heart-breaking, but I knew I had to be up at 5 am the next day to make my flight, and I also knew I was beyond knackered. I resisted over an over until I saw one place loaded with goth women. I folded god damnit, I folded. I'm only human. I pushed the door open, had my ID checked and walked over to the bar. The bartender was really shit at his job and made no effort to engage me, so I got distracted by a second bouncer at the end of the room. I walked over and asked what was going on in the next room and he told me there was a metal concert downstairs, hence the Goth girls. How sick would it be to randomly watch a live metal concert in the basement of a bar in Harvard??? Quite, I imagine, but the tickets were $30 and my good sense overcame my desire, telling me I'd no doubt end up pulling an all-nighter if I stayed.
I dragged myself out of the bar without buying a drink and then pushed on towards MIT. MIT's most recognisable building is colossal, white, neo-classical Parthenon that blows the aura of Harvard out of the water. Harvard is classier of course, but MIT is run and populated by Maths nerds, so the fact that they've gone for a bigger=better approach is no surprise. There's also a cool little statue of a man thinking made out of metal numbers. That's all I have to say about MIT and Harvard, which is a shame as I'd really have liked to explore the suburbs of Cambridge so I could imagine what it might be like to be a professor at the two leading universities in the states (arguably the world). Maybe one day I won't have to imagine.
MIT.
MIT is a fifteen minute walk from my hotel. The two are separated by the Charles river, so I traversed a bridge, passing a few runners, in the dead of night. In the sixties an MIT student, Oliver Smoot, measured the bridge relative to his height by repeatedly lying down and marking one length of his body. As such, the bridge is marked with lines indicating how many Smoots into your journey you were. I think that says all you need to know about the kind of massive fucking virgins that attend MIT.
Back at my hotel, I hastily packed my bag, set out my clothes for the next day and then crashed as quickly as possible, knowing I'd be travelling from 5am Boston time to 12 am UK time (a total of 15 hours) the next day.
When I woke up I decided I'd thug it out, save money, and get the bus to Logan Airport rather than coughing up the money for an Uber. I walked to the bus stop outside the mall, bought my ticket online and was handed it by a man waiting there. The ticket also acted as a fast track through security, which felt like a nice reward for the aforementioned thugging. In reality, though, the fast track line was no quicker than the regular one, since, although it was much shorter, it was full of other people who'd taken the bus and it moved significantly slower than the regular line. There was also a man holding up the line for ten minutes because he couldn't speak English.
Once through, I contemplated where to grab breakfast and landed on a place called Wahlburgers. Now, call me a dunce, but I didn't make the connection at first and happily bought a bacon, egg, and cheese without considering whose pockets I might be lining. I put two and two together a few in bites after looking behind the tills to see a giant picture of none other than racial terror Mark Wahlberg and his Bostonian family. If you don't know, Marky Mark spent his youth in Boston hate crime-ing young black and elderly Vietnamese people. He even asked the state of Massachusetts for a pardon once he became famous, suggesting to me that he might not feel a great deal of remorse for any of it. Obviously if I'd clocked that I was funding Mr Wahlberg, I wouldn't have bought my breakfast from him, but I was very tired and not thinking straight. The bacon egg and cheese was really quite good, though.
On the plane home I finally watched Blade Runner 2049, which is utterly stunning and existentially heart-breaking for Ryan Gosling's protagonist, Agent K. It's also nearly three hours long, so by the end I gave in to my body and fell asleep on my tray table. When I woke up, I drank a free coffee, noting that the cup said: “caution: contents hot and refreshing.” In what situation would the latter be a problem? I asked myself (this seems like an odd thing for me to remember two days on, but I made specific note of it, because I found it quite funny). I also noted that: 'The muffin they’ve given me is from a company called “Otis Spunkmeyer.” This country is really quite silly.' The final thing of note that I consumed was a British Airways exclusive BrewDog beer called transatlantic IPA. It wasn't mind blowing or anything, but it was a neat touch for a gimp like me.
Epilogue: London again—
We touched down in London around 7pm, and I boarded a train from Heathrow to Paddington. This train cost £25 which is genuinely disgusting as it's the only way to get back into London. It was fairly quick though, and it allowed me to make it from Paddington to Euston in time to catch my 8.40 pm train back to Stockport with some time to spare, which I spent eating a burrito. On the train home, I wriggled around in my seat, trying over and over to get comfortable, while occasionally checking out my dishevelled, sleepy looking self in the window.
Boston is the best city I've seen in the states so far. Boston is to New York what Manchester is to London. It might lack the sights, the status and the glamour of the latter, but its so much more real. The people are charming, the bars are quaint, and its infinitely less busy. Oh, and the conference was pretty cool too. I'd love to visit again for Boston 2.
