London Calling

Everyone in Hawai‘i faces the question of moving away at some point—and the sharp pangs of alienation from island, self and ‘ohana. But if landing in the still-swinging capital of the British Empire brings its own pains, as Jessica Machado writes in this excerpt from Local: A Memoir (Little A, January 2023), the nights are made for the joyful, if temporary, obliteration of her life’s most pressing questions.

---

On the cold January afternoon when the dozen of us students from Hawai‘i arrived, the study-abroad program had arranged a tour of downtown London.

We all met at the station near our school and hopped on the Tube, each of us gazing in different directions, pointing out the sexy ads or studying the map of all the color-coded train lines. When we ascended the station and were greeted by the bright lights and roundabout chaos of Piccadilly Circus, I felt an excitement in my chest like I had never known.

People in smart coats skittered across the street, dodg ing us wide-eyed kids who were stalled in the middle of the sidewalk, both overdressed and underdressed in whatever layers we’d been able to scrounge up in Hawai‘i. The neon iconography of Coca-Cola and Sanyo wrapped around the corners of buildings. Cabs and delivery trucks zoomed out from every nook of the five-way intersection. Among all the modern flash towered ornate Edwardian-era monstrosities adorned with domes, arches, and pillars. A bronze fountain at the center of it all tied the whole scene together. I loved the sensory overload. I knew right then and there I was a city girl.

But over the next week, I had a harder time enjoying all the new experiences I was thrust into—trips to the theater, the National Gallery, Buckingham Palace. My mind started to race. I missed Isaac; I missed my chicken katsu plate lunch; I missed my three hundred channels of crappy American television. I could not ground my mind in the present.

I called my mom several times a day with new ideas for how I could fix my uneasiness. Maybe I could use my spending money to fly Isaac over here, I suggested. I could give up my shared room in my homestay, and he and I could rent a flat together. That way, I wouldn’t be giving up, just moving my life in London closer to normal, I told her. When my plans hit a roadblock—Isaac was disinterested in uprooting his life—I called my mother, threatening to come home. Nothing I did would quell my anxiety.

My mother called the head of the exchange program at the university. “Being away from the islands can be a big adjustment for a local kid,” the coordinator at UH told her. “They are used to having ‘ohana around and orienting themselves with the knowledge that the mountains and ocean are always on either side. Being in a big city, with people not making eye contact, focused on their own stuff, can take getting used to,” the coordinator said.

But as the days went on, I didn’t get used to it. I couldn’t find a way to feel more at ease. And though we never addressed it, my mom surely remembered the oversensitive kid who had cried “fire” in the movie theater.

After nothing else worked, my mom put in a call to my dad. As much as my dad was the one who fixed things, I had avoided calling him because he hated hysterics. (“Crying doesn’t work on me,” he’d once yelled, which had only made me cry more.) And I knew if I had talked to Shellee, she would have just reported everything to him.

True to form, when my dad finally called, he did not hesitate to force some perspective. “Do you know what I was doing wen I was your age, Jessica? Do you have any idea? I wasn’t on my parents’ dime prancing around Europe. My ass was being dragged to Vietnam. I fought in a war. A war, Jessica. Do you think I wanted to go dere? Do you think I had fun? Am I supposed to feel sorry for you because you have it rough in England?”

His words were almost logical enough to shake some sense into me. But as much as I knew I was acting ridiculous, as much as I wanted to chill out, I felt like I had no control over my brain. As I sat in my homestay’s hallway, cradling the communal phone, my face was wet with snot and tears.

“But, Dad, I feel so alone,” I told him.

“Alone? Let me let you in on a secret, Jessica: all you have in life is yourself.”

His words stung. They felt scary, and they felt anti-‘ohana, but they also felt true. I’d remember them again and again.

For the next few days, I stopped myself from picking up the phone when my mind started hopscotching through worries. My neighbors across the hall, students from Michigan, no doubt had picked up that I was depressed and asked one night if I wanted to go to a club with them. I threw on my coat.

The place ended up being less like a stylish European disco and more like a glorified sports bar. The TVs mounted on the walls played soccer highlights, and in the middle of the room was a dropped dance floor. Brit- pop and sappy American hits blared from loudspeakers, but most of the crowd—pale, boisterous guys—were fixated on the muted TV screens. It was not a club I would’ve chosen, but at that point, I was barely making choices. The noise, the elbows brushing past me, the movement of my hand to my mouth were enough to keep me busy.

Unable to hear what anyone was saying, my housemates and I just kept passing our pints around our little group to sample. We sipped chocolate stouts, chugged ciders. After about three or four beers, we were all on the dance floor, singing along to that horribly catchy Chumbawamba tune, a song I’d hated on the radio at home but rang in my ears in glory. “I get knocked out, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.” Bodies were jammed all around me; the strobe light caught my face. I swayed my arms over my head, closed my eyes, and realized, right then and there, I felt pretty damn good. My anxiety, for the moment, had disappeared.

While I drank every now and then before I’d left for London, I formed a steady habit of partying while I was there. I danced at the Limelight, where we smashed into guys during the Prodigy’s punchy “Firestarter” and American rock staples like Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I saw bands I loved, like Erasure, the Misfits, and the Toasters. Some nights ended with exchanged numbers and jokes made on street corners; others with drunk-buying postcards and mock-singing Spice Girls songs on my slog home.

You never knew what you were going to get when you set out with a to-go cup of cider and jumped on the Tube—and that anticipation was the greatest high. London was just like the ’80s hair-metal videos had promised.

---

Copyright © 2023 Jessica Machado, from Local: A Memoir, (Little A, January 2023). Excerpt published by permission.

Image by Lachlan Gowen.