Gray (Sample)

I am not black, in fact, I’m sick of being told that I have to identify as a preconceived, prejudice, archaic social stereotype. People far more intelligent than me would tell you I’m black. If you saw me in the street, you would probably tell me I’m black. But that’s not my problem. Sure, my biological father and his father are from West Africa. My mother and her mother are from the Caribbean, and I’m proud of them. I’m proud of my ancestors, my heritage, our history and our culture. But you can be damn sure I don’t wake up every morning making lifestyle decisions because of the pigment of my skin. I’ve been talking to a friend of mine for years about the difference between being a human being and a puddle of acrylic paint. She gets it now. I’ve even managed to convince her that she’s not white either. She’s a lot happier. 

I know our opinions may differ, but I don’t give the slightest fraction of fucks what you think. Race isn’t the issue. It’s mental health that makes the world a dangerous place. I’ve been told I’m too black, I’ve been told I’m not black enough. I been laughed at, humiliated, celebrated, emasculated. I’ve cheated death, I’ve attempted suicide, but the only reason I’m still here, is the reason I’m telling the story. 

I’m going to share things that might not be easy for you to share with others. But if this story resonates with you, it may just help you to find the freedom I have found through, what I consider to be, THE TRUTH! Not because I’m black, but because you think I am.

I’d start at the beginning but it’s not that interesting. Instead, join me in my prison cell, staring down at my bloody knuckles. I’m shaking, not because I’m angry, not because I’m cold. If this is the ‘out of body’ experience people talk about, once is more than enough. Every footstep that clicks and pops past that huge cell door, echoes like fireworks all around me. I know how I got here, but not really why. Why I even went out, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I’m fucked. This is my life, over. All that effort, sitting in classes, doing shitty jobs, helping everybody who ever needed me. The pathetic culmination of my life’s work is crying and shaking in a jail cell. 

I guess that’s pretty much how it felt to be wrongly convicted, but I was guilty as hell. I hit my brother so hard, I felt his soul leave his body before he hit the ground. Or was it mine? Something changed. I used to think it was him or me, but it turns out, it was neither of us. We hadn’t changed. If anything, we had gotten closer. So close, I ended up punching him in the face.

“Stupid nigga,” he cried.

I froze. I stared into his eyes like I had him on strings. Not so much in anger but disbelief. I wanted to see if he really meant it, but there wasn’t enough time. I’d been patient for years, kicked up and down the street, taunted at the back of the classroom. I heard whispers in empty hallways. I couldn’t sleep, and when I did, I woke up in puddles of sweat and piss. I was always so relieved to have escaped the nightmare, and terrified of falling back to sleep. I just couldn’t hold on any longer, my patience was spent. If it wasn’t him, it would have been some other fucking idiot. But there I stood, toe to toe with my b,g brother. Still, calm, and silent. The sound it made when I hit him was nauseating. Although I’d defended myself before, I don’t think I’d hit someone so well before then. Mum was half way up the stairs before I’d taken my next breath. I don’t know what she saw when she looked into my eyes. But the fear I saw in her’s was unrecognisable. She glanced down at James quicker than I could blink, only to stare back at me. Neither of us could find the words. I knew she had heard what James said, but at the same time, she didn’t understand. It wasn’t anger that drove me to hit him, it was nineteen straight years of loaded, locked and aimed frustration. I had been called worse frequently and never batted an eye. But James was my brother. 

I don’t know what came over me. Perhaps it was the fact that I felt in control of the situation. But for some strange reason I crouched down beside him. James was shaking, trying catch his breath. He was holding his face, but I could already see the damage I had done. Even that didn’t faze me. His bruises were nothing compared to pain I had endured trying to sustain my silence.

“I’m not a fucking nigger, James,” I told him as he turned his eyes to mine. Now, I was usually softly spoken, but in this instance, the tone of my voice bore a stark contrast to the roaring conflict that filled the hallway a few seconds earlier. On reflection, I scared the shit out of myself, so I can only begin to imagine how James must have felt. 

“I’m sorry,” he slurred, struggling to open his mouth.

I wanted to say so much more, I had an entire monologue running through my mind at that very moment. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t tell my brother how I felt, I couldn’t let my mother hear the pleads of a guilty man. It felt like I was stood behind myself, like a third person shooter. I watched myself walk past my mum, down the stairs past my dad. And as I closed the door behind me and walked out into the street, for the first time in nineteen years, I was homeless.

Up until I threw myself off that bridge, my life had been a quiet place. I was adopted by, what you might call, a white couple, when I was only a few months old. I grew up with two brothers and three sisters, quite poor, but in a nice neighbourhood and a big enough home to accommodate us all. I’m certain that I’ve subconsciously suppressed much of my early childhood. But I do recall I highlight reel of events from time to time. Inevitably I quickly acknowled the difference between myself and the rest of the family. My earliest memory of this would be a conversation between myself and my oldest sister, Linda. I don’t remember what we were doing, but I do remember that her question took me by surprise. 

“What does it feel like, having black skin?” she asked me. 

I can only assume that, being a teenager, Linda had already discussed this topic with others before myself. Still, it turns out she had not expected my answer.

“How should I know?” I replied, without breaking concentration on whatever imaginative scenario I was immersed in.

I don’t remember how I felt in that moment, but I do remember what I thought. Either Linda felt sorry for me because she assumed I was too  young to understand, or she couldn’t bring herself to follow up her question because she assumed I was uncomfortable giving my true answer. Regardless, she said nothing, and left the room only moments later. I knew what she meant, but I didn’t have an answer. I know what I wished I had said, but I was five years old.

Years later we were sitting at the dining table, celebrating my dad’s birthday. Dad, Harold, sat at the head of the table, almost in the doorway to the kitchen. I sat in the middle seat, pushed back against the wall, between my brothers. James, my oldest brother sat to my right, and Edward, who is only two years older than me, sat to my left. We always sat in the same places, even to this day. I later learned that we were organised so that our parents could reach out and backhand the naughtiest of us, but that’s a matter of opinion. My three sisters sat opposite, Linda, Zoe, and Alex, in descending age order respectively. Alex loved to sit next to dad so that she could steal her favourite part of every meal from his plate. Mum, Christine, barely sat down to eat. She was always prepping, cooking, serving or cleaning up. We would take it in turns to wash pots with dad after dinner, but even then, mum would rush around putting things away or making desserts. Our voices echoed up the stairs while we sang happy birthday. People were alway surprised to see our dining table out in the hallway. We didn’t have much choice. To fit us all around the table, it had to be extended. While I’m sure mum and dad discussed buying a smaller table, it never happened. My brother’s had the dining room as their bedroom, so we just made it work.

“What’s this?” asked James, slicing into his cake with his dinner fork. 

“I made the icing first and ran out of coco powder,” said Mum, wrestling Dad’s plate out of Alex’s greasy grasp.

I was already scoffing my slice, oblivious to subtext of Jame’s issue. As I turned to him, he was already smirking and sniggering at Linda, who quickly hid her smile behind her hand as she set eyes on me. Just as fast she turned her attention to her plate. Now, normally I would attempt to keep up with their jokes. Even if I didn’t understand, I could piece things together well enough to know when to laugh, or when to pretend I wasn’t paying attention.

“What?” I asked, confused as to why they were both attempting not to look at me. “What’s funny?”

James glanced at Linda before leaning towards me and glancing down at the cake. “Doesn’t that look familiar?” he said.

At this point, I’m pretty sure if my dad wasn’t preoccupied calming Alex down, he would have been all ears. But only Edward and Zoe were listening in.

I looked down at the remains of my cake slice. Sure it wasn’t as good as Mum’s usual chocolate cake, but it tasted nice, it was soft and a little crumbly, exactly how I liked my cakes to be.

“What?” I asked, absolutely perplexed, assuming I had missed part of the joke.

“It’s black on the outside and white on the inside,” whispered James, “like you.”

At that moment I fell deaf. I could see Linda spitting out her cake in laughter, I could see my dad raising his objections, I could see Alex crying in defiance. But all I could hear was the cold, still absence of comprehension. This wasn’t the first time. The best way I can explaining this feeling is to compare it to a car crash. It’s the moment just after the crash, which most people think is just before. But it’s the moment that your body does everything it can to protect itself, forcing your perception of time to shift, slowing down the world around you for a short lived moment of superhuman sense. This was the first time it had happened in the safety of my own home, in a warm comfortable seat, surrounded by the people who love me. 

As my senses returned, I felt numb. It felt like I was wearing blurred sunglasses, and I had ear plugs in. I sat at the table in silence. Once they had all left, Mum came and sat with me. I could see my dad lingering on the other side of the kitchen door. I wasn’t sure if they heard what James had said. I don’t remember what it was that my mum said to me. I don’t remember how long we spoke. This is where this snapshot ends, me, in tears, confused. Afraid of the worry in my mother’s eyes. 

If you’re thinking ‘James deserved to get punched in the face years later,’ he didn’t. Now, it wasn’t the last time he teased me, nor was it the first. The best thing about sibling relationships is; that you get to rebuild them after they fall apart, especially when you’re young and dumb. Friends, however, can be much more unforgiving.

Having spent the first fifteen years of my life trying to come to terms with my many flaws and limitations, the next few years would be a consequence of just that. I believed that the colour of my skin had nothing to do with my inability to concentrate, my attraction to beautiful women twice my age, or my addiction to flavourful foods, loud music, cheap brandy and strong weed. Still, the outside world continued to bombard me with evidence to advocate the contrary. Unfortunately most people were buying it. 

Secondary school was amazing. I did my best between all the distractions. But my life in school was very different to my life outside of school. On Fridays I would pack extra clothes in my bag and head straight to football field after school. We’d have few drinks and end up falling all over the place, but I soon became tired of the streets. Before long I was in nightclubs, four, maybe five times a week. This is when I met Marie. 

Like most of my friends, Marie went to school in the small town next to the little village where I grew up. Kids from the countryside and kids form the inner city would be placed in Greenbank Academy. It was a huge school, so they were forced to accommodate kids from outside the town. I didn’t really notice Marie until I saw her that night. I was stumbling out of Principality, a pretentious and quite misleading name for nightclub of its calibre. It was full of secondary school kids for god sake. We bump into each other and start talking. I made excuses for not knowing anything about her despite being in two of her classes. She told me that people outside my circle thought I was scary and unapproachable. We were so drunk, neither of us know how we ended up in bed together. We didn’t get much sleep, but we never had sex. All I know is; a drunken conversation hasn’t lasted that long since. Early the next morning I was rudely awoken by her father, who had, of course, presumed the very worst. While Marie attempted to convince him that we hadn’t even thought about making him a grandfather, I proceeded to fall down the stairs, almost knocking Marie’s mum off her feet. 

After all the time I had spent pondering the various issues, circumstances and revelations related to race, racism, psychology, adoption, politics, and everything in between, it seems quite unbelievable that it took fifteen years for me to actually have a conversation about the way I felt. I didn’t plan for it, but Marie had just told me something I truly wish I had never had to hear. As usual, we began talking shit just to deal with the unwelcome reality. But we soon arrived at the topic of my childhood.

“How the fuck could you not know you were black?” asked Marie, giggling through her nose.

“I was a toddler,” I said, “How was I supposed to understand that I was different when I was always looking through my eyes at them!”

“What, was it like a creepy novel or something?” asked Marie, “Did your parents hide all the mirrors and never let you leave the house?”

“I was just surrounded by white people,” I said, licking the glue and twisting the joint, sticking the paper down. “I didn’t think they were white, and i didn’t think I was black, I just brushed my teeth, went to school, played with toys and watched cartoons.”

“I guess,” said Marie, “But how did it feel, to know you were different, to know that people saw you as different.”

“You know what… It was never like that. I never felt different. My family was and is my family, regardless of my skin… their skin.”

“Your skin, foreskin,” said Marie, a huge grin across her face. I’m going to leave out a lot of our conversation because most of it was grotesque. We had a way of coping with things, that became almost an endearing and comforting blanket of vulgar language. The more controversial or offensive we could be, the happier we would feel. After a few minutes of what I will call ‘trashy talking,’ we arrived at the subject of my parents. I may have been unprepared for what followed, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

“Do you know your real parents?” asked Marie.

Now, my answer to this question was not all of my own making. After a succession of, what we will call, incidents, none of which my mum will probably ever forget, I was taken to a group for ‘troubled’ children. It wasn’t just adopted ‘black’ kids, we were all very different, yet we seemed to have similar issues. Apparently my incredible porn collection was not a collection befitting of a balanced individual. The theft, the underage sex, the drinking and the underage driving may have also been a factor. But given that I was doing quite well in school, it did come as quite a shock to me that my mum thought it necessary for me to join these sessions. It was in these sessions that I gave birth to an idea that I still hold dear to this day! That is; ‘there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“I live with my real parents,” I replied.

“You know what I mean,” said Marie, “Your biological parents.”

“How the fuck has it took you so long to ask me this?” I thought out loud.

“I thought I’d asked you before and I’d forgot,” said Marie.

“I know my dad,” I said, “My dad has been around for the whole thing, once a year or something. My mum is supposed to be all fucked up on drugs and shit, so we’ve never met!”

I took a long drag on the joint. The members crackled as the paper singed its way towards my fingers. I passed it over. We would only take a single drag each, lighting the joint each time. I wasn’t like we smoked all the time, we didn’t even smoke that much. Just a small join between the two of us would get us high for the rest of the day.

“Are you and Melanie still fucking?” asked Marie.

I couldn’t work out if was asking because she didn’t know, or she was asking because she knew. Usually a question with an obvious answer would only lead to ‘trashy talk,’ so I didn’t hesitate to answer.

“I don’t know,” I said, “We haven’t seen each other for a couple of weeks so…”

“She’s adopted,” said Marie, holding the her breath and passing back the joint before blowing out a small plume of smoke. “You didn’t know?”

“No,” I said, as my heart pounded in my throat. “How do you know?”

“She told me,” said Marie, with a patronising shake of her head. “Do you talk before you fuck?”

“Of course we talk,” I said, screwing up my face in phoney distain, “After we fuck!”

Marie and I laughed together, but I meant what I said. We did talk. Melanie was like me in many ways. We were both trying to establish our own identity, unsure of what that truly meant. While I was being lied to, Melanie was busy lying. We were both trying to protect ourselves in fear of being found out. Because if people knew who we really were, we truly believed we would lose everything. It was an inescapable anxiety that no matter how much we denied, we were ultimately consumed by it. Knowing that we both felt the same way, somehow made the sex just so good. We wanted to spend time together, but we had convinced ourselves that we couldn’t go public. Sneaking around was our foreplay, even in school we would make faces and gestures that only we would understand. We would lie in each others arms, drowning in deep conversations until one of us fell asleep or had to go home. Maybe we could have grown old together, eventually worked out all our shit together. When Melanie died, I couldn’t even be at her funeral. Only Marie knew that we even knew each other. I doubt my grief would have gone unnoticed or been understood had I had been there. Still, I got to say goodbye, to Melanie, and the pieces of me that died with her.

Having spent my entire life up to that point suppressing much of which I didn’t understand, death was just another subject I quite effortlessly disregarded. It wasn’t that I was fearless, quite the contrary. I was terrified of what death would mean, what death would leave behind. It was more about what others would say, what others would thin k and feel in my wake that scared me most. It was always about them, because I had never acknowledged the power I had given away. The value I had forced into the opinions of others. This was the subconscious rhetoric that relentlessly manipulated my will. They had forced me to tell these lies. They had stopped me from saying goodbye. They had stolen all that could have been. But they only existed on the inside. How fitting that I had to be broken to let them out.

I left Marie’s that night, hoping that Melanie would call. I had convinced myself that if she wasn’t calling me, things must be good. I figured that because it was pain that brought us together, perhaps it was something good keeping us apart.

The Thursday after the funeral, I was sat in that fucking plastic chair, listening to Aden talk about his dad. Suddenly a thought crossed my mind like a demon passing an open doorway. ‘I shouldn’t be here. There’s nothing wrong with my life. My life is good. My dad doesn’t beat me, my mum isn’t jumping into bed with my friends. I haven’t been raped, I don’t have a drinking problem, a drug addiction. What the fuck am I doing here?’

“Graham? Where-ya going?” asked Tim, the group counsellor.

“Fuck you,” I said, closing the door behind me.

You’re probably thinking that my language was unnecessary given that Tim was, in fact, specifically there to help us. But what I didn’t tell you; is that Tim wasn’t helping me at all. Sure, he’d eloquently pull the wool over my parents eyes when they collected me, but prior to the sessions, let’s say, Tim revealed his true colours.

Because I would head to counselling straight from school, I’d always arrive early, and be forced to listen to my walkman in the worlds brightest waiting room you have ever fucking seen. On what I think was my eleventh week, I was late, and by the time I got there, the waiting room was full. Needing a piss after my long ass walk, I go to the toilet to find people queuing. Being desperate for a piss, I thought I’d just go outside and piss up the wall. So I went through the fire exit in the hallway, the one that the staff used to go outside to smoke prior to the sessions. I walk outside and what do I see, but Tim, with his tongue fully inserted in the mouth of a girl my age. I can only assume Tim was in his fifties, I mean, he tried but from the neck up he was fucking fifty something. Tim knew he was fucked from the moment he saw me. From that moment on, Tim thought he was my best friend. In fact, I would go as far to say Tim was my little bitch. He knew he’d have to keep me on side to avoid losing his job and being arrested. This made him unbearably honest. Turns out Tim became a counsellor because he was pretty fucked up himself, he probably still is.

I could see the relief in Tim’s eyes for that brief moment before I closed the door. I know he knew I wasn’t coming back.

I really meant what I said to myself that day. The problem is, I believed it. I had convinced myself that all the worst things that I could remember about my life were a direct result of my relationships with other people. I didn’t have an issue, it was always other people that had an issue with me. My new found conviction in my beliefs gave me strength, but that strength was about to come at a cost.