When Two Worlds Collide

A friend laments being "male-bonded"--slapped on the arm and called "Bro," and/or offered non-sequiturial comments about women's asses by men he doesn't know, simply because he and they have the same chromosomal makeup. My friend attributes these behaviors to something he calls "bro culture." He experiences them as manipulative, stereotyping  and intrusive on a variety of levels. Talking about a recent episode in a restaurant, he said, "The waiter and this other guy were male-bonding me, and they just wouldn't stop. I felt like they were doing it to get a bigger tip."

 The restaurant episode had a surprise ending. My friend reported, "I was ordering my food, and they were male-bonding me the whole time--and I was wishing they'd stop--and then I sat down and took off my coat and hat, and then they just...stopped! All of a sudden, they completely ignored me." He was baffled, but happy.

After a moment of appreciating the silence, he realized what had happened. It had been Hat Day at the middle school where he teaches. He'd forgotten to wear a holiday hat, but had made do by tying the ribbon from a student's gift into a floppy green bow around his head. At the restaurant, after the surprise relief from being male-bonded, he realized he'd forgotten to take the ribbon out of his hair. Delightedly, he told me, "I must have looked like a total queen. They'll probably never bother me again."

He and I laughed at the story, but agreed that it's troubling, to say the least. Along with the more obvious stereotyping it involves, the story raises questions about what it means to define, belong to or shun a culture. Problematic, indeed. My friend said, "I'm beginning to think 'culture' is like a pile of sand." It's hard to define and contain, with boundaries that keep slipping away. And it's very hard to talk about, or to try to define, without stereotyping or somehow overgeneralizing. ("Bro culture" is, of course, a stereotype.)

I also think culture is like dialect; we manage more than one, often without thinking about it. I told the green-ribbon story to another friend, whose gentle, empathetic nature is  about as far from bro culture as a person can get. She's very familiar with this culture, though, because she's engaged to a member of it. "What's that like?" I asked her. "It's like a totally different world, sometimes," she said. She described the process of getting to know her fiance as "A lot of translation."

Maybe I think too much about communication, but I see all of it as translation. Always.  We all come from different worlds and speak different languages. "After all," my empathetic friend said, when I complained that people assume cultural similarity because of geographic proximity, "My brother and I grew up in the same house, and it's like we're from different worlds."

I grew up in America, the melting pot. I'm the child of a mixed marriage between two people who, although they both grew up on the northeast coast of this country, might as well have come from different planets. I used to embrace what I call the culture of liminality--the "I don't belong anywhere" culture. Then I realized it's not much of a stretch to flip the ideas of "nowhere" and "everywhere."

When cultural sand grains slip from one pile into anther, I feel I benefit. I might feel differently if I had a strong cultural identity, but as it is I'm drawn to mixes. I think that's why I'm charmed by the Welsh Cajun band Cajuns Denbo. Those who know more about Cajun and zydeco music than I do say this band isn't great, musically, but I like their spirit. You can listen  to the entirety of their album Stompio here, on grooveshark. In honor of my green-beribbboned friend's victory over male-bonding, I'd like to suggest that you start with the track "Cajun Cwins." ("Cwins" is the Welsh spelling of "queens.")

All the mixing reminds me of bibimbap, a dish of mixed ingredients, mixed together, and a way that I mix food from another culture into my own. I learned to make bibimbap from Maangchi. As she explains in her video recipe, "bibim" means "mix" in Korean, and "bap" means "rice." Bibimbap is a mix of stuff mixed with rice. The recipe looks complicated, like it's going to take forever, but each ingredient is easy and quick to prepare. (Kosari has to soak overnight and then undergo a lengthy boiling process, but I don't make it at home. I dislike the strong odor it emits while it's boiling.) While I sometimes follow Maangchi's recipes exactly, as she advises, I often innovate, probably because of low cultural boundaries. At least bibimbap is traditionally variable; the dish originated as a way to use up leftover side dishes, I believe.

This time, I made bibimbap with fresh shitake mushrooms, baby bok choi sauteed with garlic, soybean sprouts, egg, and a small beet that I cut into matchsticks and microwaved for a minute.

Mixing, like everything else, is, well, mixed, and not foolproof. When things unmix and translation fails, we get those moments of "I've been working with/friends with/playing soccer with/living with/married to/etc. this person for [however long] and right now they're a complete stranger to me." For those moments, there's always a bit of 90s musical melodrama and motion sickness.