New York
America is supposed to be the can-do society, where you can order up pizza at three o’clock in the morning and refinance your mortgage with one click of a mouse. Don’t you believe it. Our local pizza parlour only opens when it feels like it. More to the point, negotiating a mortgage requires the applicant to enter a dreamlike state in which the nightmare of Pandora’s Box, represented by one’s credit rating, is countered only by the constant repetition of the realtor’s mantra: H-ome …H-ome. And then, when you are finally approved and ready to proceed, ‘closing’ drags on for so long that by the time it arrives it’s already time to think about inheritance tax. Seven different lawyers, representing every conceivable interest, had to be assembled before our most recent deal, involving a two-bedroom apartment, went through. Just getting the seven to turn up in the same place at the same time was a triumph of organisation. Imperial America is an intensely bureaucratic country, where everything has to be signed for in triplicate and half the population is permanently on hold. Bring back the three-martini lunch, I say.
The price of Liberty is eternal fingerprinting. I have had my dabs taken on at least seven occasions, in three different states, since moving to America in 2001. Fingerprints are permanent and unique to each individual. That is why they are so useful in establishing identity. They are also supposed to be on a nationwide computer network, available to the Immigration Service, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, FBI and police. When I point this out to each successive official preparing to ‘do’ me again, they look at me as if I were some kind of mental defective. ‘Just relax your hands.
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