The Cronut and the American Nightmare

I don't think I'm meant for first class. Sitting in the front row I feel like the bearer of bad news for each person that passes.

¨Coach again, sorry. Move it down the line.¨

Do I make eye contact or not? Or do I give that face that loosely translates to "Well, bud, if you would have just gone that extra mile, maybe tried just a liiiiiitle bit harder, you'd be sitting here too."

In reality I'm just riding someone else's coattails. My family flies a lot for work and has miles saved up so they decided to make my momentary return to the United States as opulent as possible. As I sat there in 1C trading sips of bourbon with bites of my bountiful breakfast, I thought how I couldn´t tell any of my Salvadoran neighbors even a little bit about any of this. 

Salvadorans have this mentality that's sort of like social version of object permanence. If I was sick one time and politely declined one of Niña Maria's tamales de gallina, she will most certainly never offer me them again because clearly I hate tamales, especially hers. In a similar way, if I go to the United States and just so happen to go boating, stay in a resort, get a massage, and fly around in a helicopter (!!!), that must be what the American experience is. Always and forever. 

The closest I came to culture shock was repeatedly pulling out a $5 bill at the register and being surprised when the cashier asked for more.  In the brief time I was in San Francisco, I marveled at the lines. San Francisco is Disneyland, with lines around the corner for things as simple as a donut. Excuse me, cronut. You end up spending more time waiting for something cool to happen then you do actually experiencing it.

But it's not about the destination, it's the journey, man...

It's saturating even more. Soon everyone will be looking for condos in the North Bay.

Oakland is already fucked. Correction: Oakland has been fucked, just in a different way. When my brother drove me to his apartment I thought it was part of an elaborate joke. Corner, after corner completely boarded up and trashed. It looked like someone decided to sweep out every crack den in a ten mile radius and just left it there. I begun to question who in the car lived in a third world country. 

Is this America?

But three deadbolts and flight of stairs later I was on a couch, connected to wifi again. The rottweilers incessantly barking the only reminder of my true surroundings. 

I guess that this is America. It's easy to forget when in first class or in a small Salvadoran town where everyone believes that America's streets are paved with gold. I really wish that people from my community could make that drive with my brother and me. To see their faces as we'd drift farther and farther from the corners lined with patient customers and closer and closer to the corners lined with the dirty fucking truth. So they could see that there's not just the American Dream. Right down the road is the American Nightmare.