Privacy Concerns

"I'm your biggest fan

I'll follow you until you love me

Papa, paparazzi"

Lady Gaga

So far, any attempts I have made to blend in since I've gotten to Sri Lanka have been less than successful.  This is certainly owing to the fact that I'm the only white person for a few miles in any direction, and I'm not exactly living in the most multi-cultural metropolis on the planet.  Add in a dash or two of me crashing at the place in which I work and my private little "Eric Fort" is essentially reduced to the confines of my bedroom.  Just so I'm clear about this right up front, it's not like I want to be ignored all the time.  I mean, I like attention as much as the next guy, but sometimes you want to be able to feel invisible for a little while, you know?  

This is not to say Sri Lankans are not absolutely lovely people and extremely welcoming of me into their country - they absolutely are and they absolutely have been.  In fact, the vast majority of the attention that I'm receiving is of a very friendly and positive nature.  Kids waving from school buses, people stopping to say "good morning" and show off their English a bit, and the like.  For the most part I smile back and give a wave or make a face at the little kid eying me from the nearby tuk-tuk.

Sometimes though, I want none of it. Perhaps this is the New Yorker in me rearing its pompous head, but there are definitely days where I just want to get my lunch and not engage with the pleasantries.  I'm used to the almost crushing anonymity provided by swimming through the sea of self-interested Manhattanites for the past few years and it is going to take more than a couple weeks to wash that attitude off of me. 

Aside from the occasional attack of the grumpies, there are some other more systemic concerns that play into my daily struggle to run and hide.  For instance, I really want to figure out how the hell cricket works, and when I walk past the nearby athletic pitch, sometimes I stop to check out what the local school team is up to in order to learn.  Were I a local Lankan this might to the untrained eye appear to merely be whimsical love of sport, but when I'm hanging out by the fence wondering 'what's the deal with that guy in the middle of the field who looks like he's having a seizure every time he throws the ball,' I feel like a 50 year old lecher eating a hot dog and clapping along to a Little League match that his kid isn't playing in.  I might as well just buy a van at that point and troll around the neighborhood giving out candy.  So I walk on, having learned nothing of the ways of the cricket.

This fear is only compounded by the fact that there's a goddam school right next to my building and from what I can tell, any kids on the second floor or higher can pretty much see directly into my bedroom.  Luckily, god decided in all his wisdom to make me a little bit short and the windows in here a little bit tall, so you can only really see my fat white face bobbing around the room as I go about my morning routine.  Showering, however, is just about the scariest part of my day because I'm forced to hide behind my wall making sure at no point to move into line of sight.   As anyone who has ever lived with me knows, I'm a huge fan of 'towel time', which is exactly what it sounds like - I sit around in my towel for like twenty minutes while catching up on my favorite fantasy sports teams (you'll be happy to know that my fraternity league team, the Smitten Wittens, is turning around an otherwise abysmal season).  Towel time has sadly gone the way of the dodo.

All in all though, I think I'm adjusting pretty well to the change.  I pretty much figured coming in that Panadura, Sri Lanka was going to be a teensy bit different than the East Village, NYC.  The level of comfort that I have in smiling at strangers and throwing out the errant "hullo" to passers-by who I catch taking in an extra-long glimpse of the Feldman Show is increasing on a daily basis.  I'm becoming quite adept at sneaking in and out of my room in the mornings post-shower and hiding my shame from the rest of the universe.  And I've gotten quite good at striking up random and meaningful conversations with strangers who just want to know what country I'm from.  As long as I can still stomp around like a miserable bastard on my occasional off-day, I suppose I'm going to be alright.