Philadelphia

“We have to study somewhere else,” Andres said. “They are, how you say…. All the people on the street are coming here for Octoberfest—in the back yard.”

Andres and I trade off tutoring sessions twice a week: one day he helps me with my Spanish, the next time I help him with his English. English lessons are usually at the house he stays at with his host family, in West Philly, and we study in the back yard when the weather is nice.

“Octoberfest; is it a big holiday here?” Andres asked.

“No, not really,” I laugh. “It is big with college students. In the United States it is really just a holiday to drink beer.”

We worked through the second chapter of Andres’ workbook on English idioms. Today it was to “take after” someone, “at all” (as in “I don’t like Italian food at all”), to “take turns” and “go to pieces.” As usual, we alternated our attention between the material in the book and discussions about language, travel and culture.

Partway through our lesson, an older woman (the neighbor from across the street) came over to see Andres’ host mother. As she walked up the steps on to porch she misjudged the height of the last step and tripped, grabbing the railing and falling to one knee. Andre (and I) both got up quickly to help her, with Andres coming over and (attempting to) support her arm while she got back to her feet. She was a little flustered but okay, and after she goes into the house Andres and I sit back down to study.

“Did you hear what she said?” Andres quietly asked me. “When I went over to help her, she said ‘Don’t touch me.’”

I didn’t hear her say that, and told him.

“Why did she say that?” he asked.

“It probably wasn’t you,” I reassured him. “It was probably her. When you’re in the United States and something like that happens,” I sighed, “you should probably say first, ‘Can I help you up?’”

“Can I help you up,” he practiced.

The day’s English lesson became a discussion on the cultural difference on touching others in Latin America vs. the United States. I talked about how, in the U.S.—especially in the Northeast—we have difficulty with touching.

“You see how men do it, yes?” I mined the hyper-masculine handshake, half-embrace and shoulder pat. “It is very… ritualized? Formal.”

“Yes, I have seen,” he said, and I (tried to) put into words our difficulty with showing affection with touch. I gave him my opinion; how I think in the U.S. we sexualize everything and don’t know how to separate friendly affection with sexual affection.

“In Colombia, it is different. With my friends, we are always….”  he mimed shoulder squeezing and affectionate pats, and draping arms over each other’s shoulders, leaning on each other. He mentioned meeting the sister of one of his teachers on the subway: he’s from Colombia; she’s from Venezuela.

“I met her, and it is like…” He mines kissing her on each check. He pauses, looking at his hands. “I miss it so much, and I never know,” he said, with a mixture exasperation and sadness. “It is, how do you say…. a needed… a necessary….”

“A necessity,” I said

“Yes!” he agreed.

We went back to English idioms, occasionally revisiting our conversation about cultural differences between here and his home country. At the end, as I was packing up my things, I said—knowing he wouldn’t understand—many of our problems with sex and drinking comes from the Puritans.

“Puritans?” he asked.

“The people who came over and founded our country,” I said, knowing that oversimplified things a bit.

“Ah yes, Puritanical!” he said. I was surprised he knew the word.

“We are told sex and drinking is bad, where in other countries people start to drink when they are young—and they think, ‘It’s just sex.’ We aren’t allowed to drink here until we are 21—so we don’t know how to drink,” I said. "In New Orleans they know how to drink—the people that live there. But when other people visit, they are peeing in the street and throwing up on people’s porches.”

Andres laughed, understanding what I was saying—at least superficially.

And this is why we celebrate Octoberfest, I thought, as I hopped on my bike.