Lack of culture is a culture all its own

So, I'm on a date the other day. (It's a stretch, I know. But go with me here.)

The girl looks nice. In fact, the girl looks gorgeous. So, the looks aren't a problem. Yet, the conversation is not going well. Why, you ask?

It's a matter of culture shock.

But not the kind you think.

Normally, when you hear about "culture shock", it's from pampered white folks that take some missionary trip to Third World countries and can't believe the poverty. You know: "Look honey! The sewers here in Kerblackistan are running right down the middle of the street!" That kind of culture shock.

Well, I wasn't undergoing that variety of culture shock. I was on the other end: talking to this gorgeous girl and feeling immensely inferior.

For goodness sake, she wanted to meet for lunch in downtown Clayton. Clayton?

This was the first bad sign. Christ, I can't even afford a bowl of soup in most of the restaurants there. My home's value down here in Swampeast Missouri wouldn't even buy half a condo in that neighborhood. When I lived in south St. Louis, I only went to Clayton when I had to, for job interviews and such. Generally, I kept myself in more down-to-earth places as The Hill, Soulard, and various south City dives. (Although not a native of south City, I was an Honorary Hoosier for a number of years.)

When I got down to Clayton for the date, I couldn't even find a parking spot. What's up with that? In southeast Missouri, and most of the St. Louis area, acres and acres of free parking are the norm. This irritated me.

Finally, I found a public parking lot, fed all the change I had into the machine (which wasn't much), met the girl at the Starbucks, slobbered over the gorgeous girl, bought some more change to feed into the parking meter, walked a block back to the car with said gorgeous girl in tow, and fed the meter some more money.

So far, so good. Until we actually ate lunch.

She picked a pizza place. But not any pizza place. A high dollar pizza joint. The menu was full of fancy sounding pizzas I couldn't even pronounce; I searched in vain for something familiar, like "Supreme", or "Pagliai's Special." Couldn't find it. So we settled on some froo-froo thing called "Salsiccia." It looked like it had meat on it, so I was cool with that. The small pizza was something around $15.00, which would buy enough Ramen noodles to last a month.

The pizza wasn't the big shocker. The salad, for another six bucks or so, was.

The salad was the fanciest damned thing I've ever seen, divvied up into four different sections. Lettuce, fancy cheese that I couldn't pronounce, mystery substance, meat, and a tomato slice or two. I didn't even know how to eat it. Most times, when I get a salad, it's hog-trough style at Ryan's or some other buffet: lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, eggs, bacon bits, and smothered in ranch dressing. What the hell was this abomination of a salad on my plate?

The girl handled all this with considerable aplomb. She came to this place all the time. She knew the neighborhood. She even knew what the mystery substance on the salad was. Classy girl.

The soda she even ordered was classy. It was some sort of Italian bottled soda that I couldn't pronounce. I ordered a Coke. I knew better than to ask if they had Stag beer. This wasn't that kind of place.

The conversation that ensued convinced me even more that I was in over my head.

Turns out, not only did she like to hang out in Clayton, but she lived in the Central West End. Both of those places, as I recollect from living in St. Louis, are chock full of artsy-fartsy types, random metrosexuals, and depressed poet types. In a nutshell, not a place I really want to be. I'm from Slobobia. Give me Sauget over the Central West End any day.

She attended a very high priced college that costs almost as much per year as I make. To make matters worse, she was setting off all sorts of "perpetual student" alarms, as she was nearly my age and figured on not getting out for a few more years at least. Having been out of school for a number of years now, I can't imagine still being there.

A feeling of impending doom started to come over me. I knew where this conversation was heading.

But we weren't to the breaking point yet. Though I suspected I was far too big of a Vulgarian for a uppity girl like this, we weren't quite there yet. So, I asked her what she did for fun.

The answer: Attending lectures, art exhibits, concerts, and dancing in clubs.

Well, needless to say, I didn't have a good response to that. I don't always like being lectured, because I kind of have one of those "I already know everything" sort of attitudes. This "badditude" is what inspired me to graduate from school and get the heck out of there as quick as I could.

I don't much like most art exhibits, as a lot of art today is meaningless, abstract crap. (I will make exceptions for nudes, for obvious reasons. I blame testosterone.)

I don't dance in clubs, because I don't much like either dancing or clubs. I like bars. Preferably cheesy, smoky dumps with cheap draft beer and jukeboxes full of classic rock. "Play some Skynyrd, man!"

It was clear that this kind of classy girl could never appreciate the finer points of lowbrow culture: beer, barbecue, football, driving like a maniac, hooting, hollering, shooting things just for fun, and finding creative new uses for cuss words. There's just no way. I couldn't imagine asking this girl: "So, who's your favorite porn star?" Or, "Hey, let's go to the demolition derby!" She needed an beta male art freak, a goateed depressed poet, or a random metrosexual. We had nothing in common.

But then, she sealed the deal. She delivered what I was fearing was coming all along out of an artsy-fartsy, uppity, froo-froo, perpetual student type: a liberal rant yammering on and on about how evil President Bush was. Not only that, but how we needed to pull out of Iraq immediately, blah blah blah, ripped straight from the pages of her anti-war professors' lecture notes.

Call me a Vulgarian if you must, but I have absolutely no problem with bombing countries that really, really deserve it. While I disagree with Bush on a great many things, pulling out of Iraq isn't only a na*ve idea, it's unrealistic. If we did pull out, the first thing many of these liberal protestor types would do is blame the president for being "insensitive". "How could he leave those poor people like that?" they'd sob, while reaching for the bong.

Eh. Forget this. I may be lowbrow, but lack of culture is a culture all its own.