When I decided to leave London behind for a year to study abroad in California all I heard in the months before I left was something akin to the following:
"Mate! I mean seriously mate, America is like one big tumble dryer full of pussy, it's going to be coming at you from all different directions, I mean you are literally going to be drowning in pussy. I once used to know this guy right, and he went to California right, and then one day right, this women just gave him a blowjob in the street because he was wearing an England rugby shirt."
Now, I want to swiftly move past the notion of drowning in a tumble dryer to address the issue that this semi-fictional quote does in fact summarize quite nicely the British understanding of having an accent in America; that being, that it allows you to pretty much get with any girl at any time in any place.
The Accent (A) at a time (t) in a place (p) = PUSSY (P!).
Now the truth of the matter is this; the having of (A) is at first quite a luxury. It acts as a conversation starter if nothing else and is, on a level somewhat below that of sporadic street fellatio, quite an admired feature. To most this would seem to be a rather positive thing right? Well my deer chums, frankly it isn't all that. It isn't for example, 'hella sick bro', nor is it, 'dank' as my American friends would have me believe; in all honesty it's just quite nice. I shall explain.
My first point is this; most Californian girls (well most Berkeley girls) are very aware that most Californian girls view the English accent as attractive, this is, as you will soon see, a bit of a problem. They (without merit) presume that I expect to be able to sleep with them and, as such, they take up a particularly defensive stance from the get-go, this, as you may have rightly presumed, makes the accent somewhat redundant in regard to it's assumed power, or to stay with the previous metaphor - the tumble dryer, in such instances, becomes a little chilly.
I shall turn to my second point; I have found that the most entertaining junctures with the accent around campus and at parties are those wherein a girl believes the accent to be fraudulent; statements along the lines of, 'so where did that accent come from?' 'Nice try', and 'fuck you dickhead', have become both increasingly common and thoroughly enjoyable. Initially this disillusioned me, however I have grown to enjoy these moments as I find that it offers me the delightful position of A. knowing that I am completely correct and B. knowing that the girl in question is both an idiot and a bitch. In such instances I find it socially acceptable to be a bit of a dick for a decent period of time as she clearly isn't a good person and is therefore deserving of any form of wrath that I feel inclined to bring upon her.
It has come to the point where I find myself yearning for conversation that doesn't begin with the phrase 'Oh my god, do you have an accent?' or any of its equally obnoxious and evil counterparts. In the beginning, I admit, it was rather fun and for a while I even played up to it. - I had two very simple ways to do this: firstly I would find things that were slightly different to things in England and then I would talk about that thing all the time, for example, 'I have to be 21 to drink, that is not like where it is that I am from, I'm from England by the way, where are you from?'. The second way to exploit it was as follows; when a friend had some food, and I wanted some of that food, I would just explain to them how we don't have said food in England and every time they will offer it to you. Also, based on the fact that most Californians don't know anything about British culture this can work even with things like burgers and ice cream, and to my surprise this even worked when I explained to them exactly what it was that I was doing.
For the foreseeable future then I shall try to enjoy the perks that come with the foreign accent but I shall do it in a way that does not misrepresent its power. Too many horseshit stories have been fed back across the Atlantic (for the American readers, that's the big ocean between Europe and North America) which has resulted in most British people being just as misunderstood about American culture as the majority of American people are about British culture, which, based on my experiences is not a great thing.
It is then a complete fallacy to say that the having of an accent is anything akin to a tumble dryer full of pussy, if it is like anything at all I would say that it is similar to a slowly paced conveyer belt that occasionally has pussy on it, and that this pussy is by its very nature irrationally skeptical about the adventitious. The truth it seems isn't always that pretty but is often quite wordy.