True Story...

When I'm back home in the states, I get a lot of questions about Turkey. Most often, a pretty flaccid, "so, how is Turkey?" Sometimes, people ask me about the food, or the lifestyle, politics, safety, terrorism or my worries about it.

Very occasionally, I get asked about the people. I always answer the same thing, which is, that I find the people here to be similar to people back home. Of course, conditions are different, there's culture and history and language to consider, but at the end of the day, I've found a life with friends, here in Turkey, consistent with that I have in the USA.

This story should illustrate my point. I wasn't there, but since returning to Istanbul last Sunday, I've been appraised of the situation by the parties involved and one eye-witness. Next time someone asks about people in Turkey, I'll tell them this (I have concealed the names to protect the intoxicated)...

Last Friday there was a party, which I would have no doubt attended, had I been in the city. My room mate was celebrating his 26th birthday. T, a friend from my Ultimate team, was celebrating his new job. Another Turkish friend was having a housewarming party, at her house. To set the scene, you must understand that Turkish apartments don't come equipped with a refrigerator or an oven, and nothing had been moved in, save a card table and chairs. Sparse conditions at best.

As my room mate put it, "there wasn't even salt or lemon for the Tequila."

The three friends and the larger group, eight people total, sat together around the table, drinking and talking. This was a pre-party, before heading out to the bars in Taksim.

It was three parties in one, so the pre-party was looong, and T drank about three times as much as he probably should have. He is also a very enthusiastic story teller. Three hours into the party, the mix of alcohols (Tequila, Absinthe, and who knows what else) combined with his wild gesticulating... poorly.

In mid sentence, T stuck his head under the table and spewed vomitus onto the floor.

In Turkey, taking off ones shoes upon entering a house is a nearly universal practice (the logic is sound, considering some of the things I've stepped in here). Generally, they stay by the door, in some kind of cupboard. I was once robbed by a con man, who came to our apartment pretending to a solicitor, and even he took off his shoes before coming in (that story some other time).

There are exceptional cases, though, and this was one. The apartment was still pretty dirty with the sort of dusts that go along with moving, and so all the guests in attendance were still wearing their shoes, as small bits of T's dinner prepared to ricochet off the floor towards them.

Everyone, that is, except my room mate, who had taken his off to be more comfortable.

T is a smart guy, and when his head dipped below the surface of the table, he knew what was about to happen. Quick thinking, a keen eye, and fast hands saved the day. T grabbed my room mates shoes and proceeded to fill them "to the brim" with puke, surfacing from beneath the table to continue his story.

It's hard not to notice a person vomiting at a small party (as I know all too well), and the detail was not lost upon my room mate. The argument that followed went something like this:

RM: "You asshole! Why did you throw up in my shoes?"
T: "Why did you leave your shoes in the living room?"
RM: "What do you mean?"
T: "If you hadn't left them in the living room, I wouldn't have thrown up in them!"
RM: "You asshole! I can leave my shoes in the living room, that doesn't mean you, or anyone, has the right to throw up in them."
T: "If you leave your shoes where they don't belong, I think I do have the right to throw up into them."

And so on.

The shoes were eventually cleaned out, and the party continued. There was the lingering problem of what to do when they left to go dancing in Taksim, and my room mate was sly about preparing for it. He was already wearing one of T's shoes when everyone else began getting ready to leave.

A wrestling match ensued, in which T managed to regain his other shoe and put it on, basically bringing the situation to a stalemate. Oceania and Eurasia, it seemed, were going to have to try diplomacy.

There was a long argument, my room mate insisting that T surrender the shoe, and wear his wet, smelly ones instead. T fell back on the strength of his logic, that the situation was indeed unfortunate, but that he wasn't personally responsible as the shoes should have been by the door, and not in the living room.

With diplomacy failing, and half the party leaving to go on ahead, a truly brave sole stepped forward and demanded that they both shut up, take one of his own shoes each, and he would wear the soggy, smelly shoes.

S, wore the shoes out of the house, and half the walk Taksim. At some point though, with my room mate and T still arguing, the discomfort of the wet shoes, and the knowledge that the contents of a stomach had recently found a home there, S reasoned he should get his own shoes back. Reluctantly, T and my room mate each took a barf shoe.

When my room mate woke up, the following morning, with a hangover that kept him vomiting "until after dinner", there was one brown Adidas tennis shoe and one white Adidas tennis shoe, kicked haphazardly onto the floor of his room.

The point of this was just to say, on any given day of the week, the same absurd behavior can be expected from my very American friends and myself. If there exists a place, where the people don't do hilariously stupid crap... well, I'll do what I can to avoid going there.

Cheers to all my friends, who've gotten it, all this time.