Lullabies, Fairy Tales and Other Self-Delusions

Retalliation

2009-11-08T21:18:00.004-04:00

Dear Thirty-Three-Year-Old-Will,

Thanks plenty for your wonderful, prophetic letter. It’s not every day that people get letters from their future selves. In truth, it sort of freaked me out a little. I was in the middle of popping my zits and resenting my parents for not allowing me to be free when it materialised on my floral bedspread. I almost gouged out an eye, and for a brief moment I even stopped wishing evil on mum and dad.

You have neatly pointed out all my flaws for me. I am so grateful for that since, as you clearly seem to believe, I am a completely blind idiot who is too self-involved to even notice his own pathologies. Please stop me if I use any words you don’t understand, Future Self (I, as you may or may not remember, am an avid reader); I am aware that advanced age rots the brain cells, and obviously yours would be even more decayed due to the direct sun-exposure of your hairless scalp.

To speak plainly Future Self, I am entirely offended and affronted by your patronizing epistle. How dare you assume that you can speak to me in that manner? I can only assume that your regular approach to young people is one of condescension and pop-psych-inspired guile. You alternately berate me (using quite profane language) and encourage me. Is this a strategy that you use when dealing with adolescents? It’s very American, I must say: sort of a good-cop/bad-cop scenario, with the two personalities moulded together in one, substandard, thirty-three year old body. I assume your body is substandard because you mention physical fitness at least twice in your letter. You scathingly speak about my obsessions yet clearly you need to inspect your own value-system vis-á-vis corporeal self-image. Exactly how shallow have you become?

In short, Thirty-Three-Year-Old-Will, I wish to inform you that I whole-heartedly intend to ignore your little letter of “advice”. I am fully fed up of old people telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. I will say this, however: I will never stop giggling.

Please acquire some sort of a life and leave us young people to lead our own. Don't presume to tell me what to do, or who to be.

Regards,
Fifteen-Year-Old-Will

PS: Who’s to say that all the mistakes and mishaps which are happening, and which will happen, with me aren’t what make me into who you are eighteen years into the future?

Hindsight: That Bitch!

2009-11-03T23:42:00.004-04:00

Dear Fifteen-Year-Old-Will,

I was looking at some photos of you this evening, and I got to thinking. As teenagers go, you’re okay. You’ve got some issues, but I think all teenagers have those issues. Granted, your preoccupation with being liked is probably above the global average in terms of its obsessiveness and downright level of insanity, but overall you’re not as different as you think you are.

I can see from your photos that there are certain people who are very special to you. From what I can tell, every single one of these people will remain special. There’s perhaps only one of them who will fall by the wayside, but that’s not too big a deal since she’ll spend most of your teenaged years making you feel like shit anyway. Sometimes it’s best just to cut your losses.

I’d like to give you a few pieces of advice, if I may. I know, I know - teenagers never like to listen to advice, they want to make their own mistakes blah blah blah. You don’t need to take this advice, but these are a few things I’ve learned (some of them were quite difficult lessons to learn too). Just hear me out. I know you’re going to make your own decisions and your own mistakes, but there are few things you did well too. Anyway, here goes.

1. Do not, under any circumstances allow yourself to study Accounting, Economics and Law for A’ Levels. You’ll only be doing it because you think it’ll make you money, and you’re not particularly interested in those areas anyway. You’ll get miserable grades and disappoint everyone, most of all yourself (don’t even get me started on how huge a blow to your self-esteem it will be). Instead, I think you should explore the possibility of studying Literature, History, Geography and French. Four subjects may seem like a lot, but you’re a pretty smart guy. Plus, if you’re honest with yourself, these are your strong areas. Don’t discount Art or Photography either. Trust me.

2. Get involved. Don’t be lazy and wait for life to happen to you, because it won’t. I discovered that when I was in my early twenties and boy do I wish I’d known it when I was your age! Get out there and play some sports; it won’t kill you, and you may even enjoy it. Join a drama club. Just do something for fuck sake!

3. Understand two things. First, you have the potential to be a boss writer, but you need to explore it more. Don’t be afraid to publish your stuff, however godawful it may seem. It sucks to discover, in your thirties, that you could’ve spent more time seriously developing your writing rather than assing around, getting drunk and sleeping. Secondly, the stage is your friend. If you ever find yourself living in Jamaica, for whatever reason, get involved in the theatre and STAY THERE. I can’t emphasize this enough. That is where you need to be, and you don’t want to wait until Facebook is invented to realize that all your old friends from UDAS are involved in theatre in a big way, and that you could be right there with them, doing what you truly love. I’m just saying.

4. I’m fairly certain that the opportunity to pursue your MPhil in Literature will present itself even before your undergraduate years are over. Take it. Take the fucking scholarship, get a job and do it. If you don’t, you’ll more than likely find yourself in your early thirties debating the relative merits of a settled life versus doing a PhD and having to write a damn thesis. Again.

5. Be honest with the people you love. They will love you no matter what. This counts for your friends as much as it does for your family. Those who don’t love you are better off out of your life anyway. The important people will always stick around. Trust me.

6. The zits will not go away until you’re thirty. So stop squeezing the suckers because they’ll turn your pores into craters.

7. Get professional help for the whole hair-pulling thing. I’m almost 100% certain that you don’t want to go bald at twenty-three.

8. Take more chances with people. They won’t bite you, you know. Well, not unless you ask them to (chuckle). What I’m trying to say is that you’ll miss many great potential relationships if you keep so much to yourself and play it safe all the time. Everyone has to face rejection, and locking yourself off from people because you’re afraid of the possibility that they’ll snub you is surely no way to live your life. I, myself, have grown close to several people in my later life, who I knew peripherally in my younger life, and I wish I’d explored friendships with them when I was younger.

9. Watch what you eat, lard-ass. You have the Minors shape – the shape of your mother’s family. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself battling forever against a big belly and skinny limbs. So quit being a hungry-belly glutton and shape up, bitch! Put down the KFC chicken leg that I can see you wolfing down, pick up a goddamned carrot stick and get some muthafuckin’ exercise already! If you develop the habit of swimming every afternoon (you live on the beach after all) you’ll find that it will come as second nature when you’re an adult. Trying to develop these wonderful habits after thirty is extremely difficult since the bad habits are so ingrained.

10. Never, ever puff a cigarette. Ever.

11. Own your insanity. To hell with what people say – you be who you are, because who are is just bloody wonderful. Quit feeling guilty for not being who you think people want you to be. People just want you to be you, so get your whiny ass in gear and join the human race already! Damn teenagers and their damn insecurities.

12. Stop crying so much when you’re alone. It’s not as bad as you think. Everything will be okay in the long run; and even though you feel like you’re the scum of the Earth, that’s just the Church screwing with your head. You’re not bound to believe in the things that you’re told to believe in, especially since those beliefs keep making you feel like you’re going to Hell. You’re not.

13. You know how you like to giggle? Keep that.

Good luck and best wishes,

Thirty-Three-Year-Old-Will

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T10:56:00.005-04:00

Witch Hazel is one of my favourite Bugs Bunny characters, political incorrectness notwithstanding. ;-)

Grand Family Independence Lunch Celebration

2009-10-27T23:26:00.009-04:00

Today marks 30 years of Vincentian independence from British colonial rule. We’ve come so far, and accomplished so much in the last 30 years. To celebrate, my family had a luncheon. Instead of engaging in my usual verbosity, I’ve decided to simply list today’s menu.

_________________________________________

Appetizers:

Nothing. We can’t afford frivolities like quail’s eggs, snails and dainty salads, especially since the introduction of VAT on top of our already aggressive income tax. Tapas are from Spain, (i.e. almost the mother country) so are off limits despite the fact that they are made by people who speak Español (which we love).

Entrees (that’s a French word, and I’m not sure how we feel about them):

British Pig Roasted with a Thick Skin and Stiff Upper Lip (we ate this rather quickly since we wanted to get rid of it as completely as possible; we gave the dogs the bone)

Authentic Vincy Yard Fowl Sans Neck & Spine (easy to catch, kill and defeather)

Friendly Sides:

Turkish/Lebanese/Iranian Hot & Spicy Couscous Salad (because we’re all about the flavours of the Middle East)

Revolutionary Roasted & Basted Patatas Cubana (unfortunately, not harvested using our own tender hands), Sour Cream Optional

Simon Bolivar’s Eggy Empañada de Maíz (on loan)

Free Trade Seasoned Green Banana Souse (we almost forgot these in the fridge, but they made it out in time for us to have them for seconds)

CARICOM Steamed Vegetables (steamed separately and kept apart until the point of ingestion), Heavily Oiled

Ikea Zucchini (because we’re all about cheap substitutes for the real thing)

Wilted Green Salad dressed with Agent Orange (thanks to the developed world for this recipe)

Stuffed Full of Ourselves Mature Politician Stuffing (aged to perfection since youthful politicians tend to be altruistic, innocent and selfless)

Real Thick, Rich American Gravy to Smother All Over Everything Else Thereby Killing Any Authentic Flavours And Giving Everything a Hint of Heinz Tomato Ketchup (nuff said)

Just Desserts:

Rejected Banana Crumble (because we have a lot of bananas lying around these days; it’s not like anyone’s buying them up or anything)

Imported Melon Fruit Salad (bland, but expensive, colourful and prestigious)

Frisko® Vanilla Ice Cream

Bar Menu:

Tap Water (the safest in the world, but definitely tapped)

Pepsi and/or Coke (duh)

Coke Light (because we had 2 diabetics and slim ting me at the fete; plus using actual sugar as a sweetener is so 200 years ago)

Hairoun Mixers (for Granny, the quintessential patriot)

Chilly Chilean Wine (brand unimportant since all we need is generic alcohol to kill the pain)

Some Beer That Fell Off the Back of a Truck in Canouan/Mustique/Any of the Grenadines That Plays Host to the Rich and Famous

1 Dented Can of Hairoun Gold (left over from Carnival)

_________________________________________

Tomorrow morning I look forward to my independence indigestion.

And now, for your enjoyment and entertainment, an audio clip of 3-year-old Lila reciting the pledge of St. Vincent & the Grenadines. She only made one mistake!

Happy Independence SVG!

My Reactionary Irrationality Regarding Hair

2009-10-15T21:31:00.006-04:00

Some wounds need to be licked

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts about hair, and the debate about black women’s hair. Well, when I say I’ve been reading A LOT of posts, what I mean is that I’ve read two posts, but these two posts are by women who are very close to me, so that counts as a lot right? The debate about whether to wear her hair natural or processed is one of the oldest, most politically charged debates in the (post 1960’s?) history of black women. Remember the whole Joan Andrea Hutchinson debacle several years ago in Jamaica (in short, she was a television news presenter who wore a natural hair style and was widely criticized by the Jamaican public for looking unprofessional)?

Blah Bloh Blog, the unofficial slackness supervisor of the West Indian Twitter Army (#WITArmy) blogged about the good hair/bad hair dichotomy the other day (or re-blogged rather – she actually re-posted something that someone else re-posted from somewhere… or something. Re-blogging can be confusing at times. I blame sites like Twitter, tumblr and posterous for this new, potentially bewildering Internet craze). At the end of her re-blogging, she asked a question of Caribbean women: “do we really identify with our hair the way this article [i.e. the one she re-blogged] & [its] comments seem to suggest?”

Empath, my spirit sister and potential vigilante extraordinaire, blogged about her own hair, perceptions people have of it and some random Tyra Banks idiocy. Let’s try to get a handle on Empath here. I feel like we need to. Empath is relevant. She doesn’t really hold with trivialities and unimportant bullshit. This is not to say that she has no sense of humour; it’s just that she actually cares about stuff, and cares about things that matter. She worries about the state of the country, the escalating crime levels, the dirty politics, and the ineffective health care of SVG. She sees the importance in taking a stance on the style of her hair. And she has great hair. Empath’s hair is like Medusa’s snakes, without the creepiness. Her locks are long, sinuous, thick, uniform and tinted ever so slightly burgundy by the sun. Sometimes, I have unrealistic yet scary thoughts of her locks strangling her in sleep. Oh yeah, she likes comic books and graphic novels. She REALLY likes comic books and graphic novels. Like really (this is irrelevant, but intriguing to me).

Empath in her vigilante/crime-fighting costume; designed by me, inspired by various comic book hero(ine)s

Tonight I am fighting back against all the hair talk. Tonight, (or today, depending on when I decide to post this) I am here to say: ENOUGH! Stop the fuzzy insanity! There are people out there – poor, unfortunate people – who have (and this is the gods’ own truth) ABSOLUTELY NO HAIR WHATSOEVER! You people are arguing and discussing and theorizing and intellectualizing and bemoaning and whatever else, but what about the rest of us? What about those of us who have to scratch at our scalps to try to inveigle the tiniest bit of hair into revealing itself like a hostage emerging from a cave in the middle of a desert somewhere?

I began losing my hair at the tender age of 23. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I used to have a weird sort of OCD thing that started when I was 12. I would sit and twirl my hair around my fingers, getting it well knotted, then I’d yank it out. By the root. So I spent a lot of time as an adolescent with a bald patch right in the front of my head. I was, needless to say, the subject of much scorn and ridicule since I also had a terminally ingrown toenail that forced me to wear sandals all the time. I was a sandal-wearing, bald-patch-sporting, braces-flaunting adolescent. It was not pretty. Eventually I stopped though (with the hair pulling I mean), and my hair became my crowning glory (clichés be damned). By my final year of UWI, I had long, curly, golden-brown-blonde-reddish locks.

By the time I moved back to SVG, I was able to encourage the growth of dread locks. Unfortunately for me, my locks were not the fashionable, salon locks that we see everywhere today. No rented dreads for me. No, I had big, wutliss locks. Bongo-knatty we call them here. In fact, I sort of really only had one massive lock on the back of my head, and a few satellite locks that flocked around it as if worshipping it’s size and density. I did not purposely twist my hair to create these locks. I just stopped brushing or combing it. What the hell was I thinking?

I attribute my hair loss to the afore-mentioned dread lock (singular). It was so heavy it pulled on the roots of my hair, so I cut it. I cut it just in time for j’ouvert, then I bleached it and dyed it orange. That was the beginning of the end. I went from the guy with the gorgeous hair to this:

Me; a self-portrait without head hair, but with facial and uber-masculine chest hair.

As the artist’s rendering of me (above) clearly shows, I am now completely glabrous. A couple of weeks ago, one of my students actually put his fist on my head (I was seated, taking the register) and polished my scalp in an attempt to see his reflection. He made squeaking noises. I was horrified.

There have been many theories put forward by scientists and old wives as to why men go bald. Scientists say it has to do with a surplus of testosterone (extra-manly men tend to go bald). This accounts for the proliferation of men (like me) who are bald ONLY above the cheek. Everything under the pate is hirsute and pelt-like. My own hair growth, for example, extends from my eyebrows down to my toes. I actually have hair growing on my toe-knuckles (whatever they’re called). This scientific theory holds no water because Robert, my best bud, is even hairier than I am (if you can believe that) AND has a full head of thick, soft hair. The bastard. Plus, you can’t get more manly and gruff than him.

The old wives say various things. One of them says that baldness is inherited from the mother; the other says that it is inherited from the father. Below is a picture of my parents:

My parents (an impression). This is actually three bastardized "symbols" from Adobe Illustrator. I changed the clothes and hair/beard. Plus my father never drinks martinis - substitute that (in your head) with a beer. The dog looked funny so I included it.

Notice the most important thing here: neither of these people is bald. They both have wonderful, perhaps even superlative hair. So mash down that lie (a Jamaican PM used to say this, but I can’t remember which one).

My uncle Paul, Mum’s brother, is the only bald family member of whom I am currently aware (apart from my brother, whose hair-loss is as severe as mine, and started at around the same age). Uncle Paul used to do the comb-over until his daughters, Paula and Lisa, convinced him that the fashion is to shave your head clean in order to avoid teasing one or two wisps of floaty hair from one side of your scalp to the other, thereby looking like an idiot who is going bald. Uncle Paul now looks like Mahatma Gandhi, sans dhoti (but not sans other clothing… thankfully).

Uncle Paul? No, Silly! It's Mahatma Gandhi (sans dhoti).

I want to speak about one other bald comrade of mine. Cristobel has a rare disease that has caused her hair to fall out. I think it started some time in her fourth or final year of secondary school, and no one has ever adequately been able to tell her why. So anyway, she is my bald, bootylicious beeyatch and we have great fun making fun of people with hair. I can’t imagine her ever arguing with someone about the sociological implications of a straightening iron versus prickly pear and dread wax.

People who haven’t gone bald don’t know what it’s like. Voluntarily shaving your head for fashion is not the same as going bald genetically. I wish I had the luxury of being able to shave my head, secure in the knowledge that several weeks later I’d have a full head of hair once more. Doubtless, Cristobel wishes she didn’t have to wear that damned head wrap everywhere she goes in order to avoid the malefic stares of Joe Public and his wife, Malicia. As a misguided pretense at having hair, Uncle Paul spent years doing the comb over.

We miss our hair. We miss combing it, we miss washing it, we miss styling it. We miss going to the hair dresser, personal stylist, barber, lawn guy, our mother and saying: “just a little off the top, Scotty… and don’t skimp on the brilliantine!” I’d say we miss cleaning out our drains, but I don’t miss that since I really do have THAT much body hair that I still have to do it. I can’t speak for Cristobel in this regard.

So please, the next time you feel like clambering up onto your fleecy soapbox to pontificate about the socio-political status of your mane – about the historical bases for keeping your hair either natural or unnatural – remember us, the follicly challenged. Think about our plight. You know the old saying about complaining about your shoes until you meet a man who has none? Well we baldies fit into the category of the man with no shoes. We have no hair, and we did not choose this state of being. We have nothing to celebrate or argue over. What we have are shiny, squeaky, mirror-like scalps. We’re bald, we’re bare, we’ll never get used to it.

Dread By Design

Tsunami

2009-10-10T22:53:00.003-04:00

For the past month or so, SVG has been suffering from one of the most belligerent heat waves that I’ve ever experienced. My headaches, which had all but disappeared due to my quitting smoking and putting myself on a strict health regimen, are slowly becoming a constant irritant again. The other day, one of my students stripped off his shirt in class because the room where all my classes are held is a two by four plywood box that holds heat like a Pyrex dish. I allowed him to carry on simply because my own shirt was moulded to my body like I’d just been in a wet dress-shirt contest or similar. “Me skin hat” is a Vincentian Creole expression that goes further than just saying, “I feel hot”. It implies that the heat is so oppressive that your very skin feels as if it is peeling away from your flesh, the way an envelope peels open when it is steamed. This is the kind of heat we’re facing here.

In addition to the heat stifling us, the wind appears to have deserted us. Every day is still. The leaves do not blow, there are no cooling drafts to soothe the hot skin. It is as if the very island is waiting for something.

Thanks to Svein Overgaard, we now know exactly what’s going on. Svein is a Norwegian visionary who’s come to SVG to give us a most solemn warning. Apparently, by the end of the year, we will be struck by a tsunami of astronomic proportions. Luckily for us, God got to Svein just in time to tell him about this disaster. Svein boarded a plane to a country he’s never heard of before to warn us of our impending doom. I hope you heard me correctly. God spoke to Svein. I shan’t repeat that (although Svein persists in repeating his warnings). I’m not sure how many people are taking this prophet seriously. Obviously he made the newspapers – I mean it’s not every day we get Caucasian, non-Spiritual Baptist soothsayers in this country. Unfortunately, his credibility (for me) is slightly suspect due to the fact that he looks like he’s either been smoking some good weed, or is, in fact, hearing voices not dissimilar to those heard by people who need to be on regular anti-psychotic medication.

I will say this: Svein may be off his rocker, but I do think SVG is in for a couple tidal waves of the metaphoric sort. I’m not talking about the innovative social networking tool, Google Wave, which is currently being tested on a select number of lucky people (of which I am one). I am speaking about two waves that are drowning the country as I type: a political tsunami and a criminal tsunami.

I’m not going to spend too long talking about the political tsunami. I think I’ve made it clear in a couple of other, quite recent, posts that, in my completely ignorant opinion, the political situation in this country is absolutely messed up. When the red crowd is not tugging us one way, the yellow crowd is pulling us the other way. When we’re not being mamaguyed by one set of politrickans, we’re being bamboozled by the other set. Either way, politically, we’re fucked.

Perhaps this political tsunami is partially responsible for the next tidal wave I’m going to talk about. Surely, the economy of our poor, developing nation is responsible for it in a large way. The criminal tsunami that is crashing through SVG right now is perhaps the most devastating thing to happen to us since… well… ever.

I’ve spoken about the proliferation of rapes on this blog before. Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote about the armed rapist on the loose in my neighbourhood. Well, he struck again. Tonight. I was out at dinner when a neighbour came up to my table and told my landlord (who was at the other end of the table) all about it. It was almost the same scenario as last time: guy on the beach with girl, held up by fuckwit with a gun, guy dashed for a big stone with which to crush fuckwit’s head, fuckwit fires into the air (hitting nowhere). This time, one of Indian-Bay’ residents fired off a shot on hearing the fuckwit’s gunshot. The fuckwit ran off.

Drug-related crimes, from theft to murder, are rampant in this country. The officials keep trying to make it seem like everything is ok, but it blatantly is not. Of course, the domestic crimes are a whole other level of frequency and violence. Almost every week there are reports of domestic abuse, child abuse, negligence etc. Read Abeni’s blog, see how often she talks about one young woman or other being killed by her lover or ex-lover or stalker or whatever. In a population as small as ours, (less than half that of Barbados – which is roughly the same size as we are), this degree of criminal activity is absurd.

This week, we’ve added one more atrocity to the list of atrocities now being committed in Hairoun (the indigenous peoples’ name for SVG), the Land of the Blessed. Taking our cue from the criminal element in Trinidad & Tobago (we always take cues from either T&T or Jamacia), we can now boast our very first kidnapping.

This is making me so sick to speak about right now that I can barely go on.

According to the unsubstantiated stories that are currently circulating (I've heard nothing official yet), a young man, an A’ Level student, from a family that is no better off financially than many other people, was kidnapped on Thursday night. His kidnappers made monetary demands. It doesn’t seem as if they had the patience to wait for the money, because the young man’s body was discovered this afternoon.

How can I reasonably discuss something like this without completely breaking down? Whoever did this has not only sown the seeds of something that could tear a family apart, but they’ve also caused an entire nation to tremble in fear. How could you take a young man, full of promise, full of life, and deny him his potential? Aren’t these people sending a direct message to the country? Most of us have little faith in those who are supposed to protect us, so our fear will not go away. If this is the sort of country SVG is becoming, do I even want to have children? Would I be able to cope with the worry?

I have previously stated, quite openly, that I stridently oppose capital punishment. The more 2009 progresses, however, the more I feel like I need to change my stance. Before 2009, I felt that capital punishment could never be justified, but if the bastard who raped the women in my neighbourhood, on my beach, is ever caught then I want him dead. I want him dead and I want him tortured before being killed. He needs to go through what the women he has damaged have gone through. He needs to pay. So too for the people who have stolen the life from the young student. They should be allowed no mercy. Not only have they denied this young man his future, they have denied his family the joy of seeing him discover this future.

When I first heard about the kidnapping, chills went down my spine. Then, when I heard this afternoon that the young man’s body had been discovered, I felt like crying. I did not know this young man. He was a student at the college where I lecture, but I’d never encountered him. I do, however, know several hundred young men and women just like him. I work with them every day. Some of them are the children of friends, cousins etc. I worry about my students. Long ago, I planned (in my head) what I would do if one of my students were ever threatened in my presence. I actually give a shit about them – they’re not simply faces to me.

To hear that one of these young people has been kidnapped and murdered makes my blood boil. But I guess you already have that idea. How is this teenager's family ever supposed to heal from this? I imagine that they will spend the rest of their own lives wondering if they could’ve done anything. What gives anyone the right to cause this?

And still the island is hot. And still the wind does not blow. I wonder when we will feel some relief. Perhaps Svein’s tsunami may not actually be such a bad thing. Perhaps we need the cleansing that only vast amounts of water can bring. Maybe Svein himself will bless his tsunami before it hits, then we can all be drenched in the largest, holy water filled font in history.

The Proust Questionnaire

2009-10-02T23:33:00.005-04:00

I like this. When I do it, it makes me really think about some big things. It's also credited (well, the popularisation of it is) to Marcel Proust, so it smacks of psuedo-intellectualism, which I'm so all about. Vanity Fair uses it at the back of every issue - they interview a famous/relevant person. I guess it's a sort of highbrow parlour game. For posers.

But I like it.

Anyway, here it is. I don't think you're bound to answer every question. Lord knows I'm not answering every one of them on this blog. Feel free to re-post this. Or just sit there thinking about the stuff - some of it may even open your eyes to yourself.

The Proust Questionnaire

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Not being alone; never having to worry about people not getting me; never having to worry at all because I have nothing to worry about; plus not being alone.

2. What is your greatest fear?

Death.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Not knowing when to just shut up. Seriously. Like sometimes I want to smack myself and say "enough, you idiot".

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Apathy; especially when it comes to your fellow man.

5. Which living person do you most admire?

I honestly don't know. I want to say my parents though.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

Books.

7. What is your current state of mind?

Unsettled & possibly slightly paranoid (but not so sure about the latter).

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Chastity.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

a. To soften the blow;
b. If the truth is immaterial to the current reality.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

Big belly coupled with skinny limbs, bald head and no butt. Yes, I have serious body image issues.

11. Which living person do you most despise?

Not answering this one here. Suffice it to say that it's a type as much as it is at least 2 people.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

Loyalty.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Same as # 12.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

a. "No way!"
b. "Holy cow/crap/shit/fuck!"

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Secret.

16. When and where were you happiest?

2001/2003; London, UK.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

Words.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

The overwhelming desire to be liked/accepted.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

My academic stuff. Which hopefully isn't complete yet.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

I don't want to die, but if I did, I'd like to come back as someone indescribably wealthy and powerful. But not necessarily famous. Fuck my Marxist principles. I want money.

21. Where would you most like to live?

St. Vincent & the Grenadines. Most of the time.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

I honestly don't know. I think I could lose any of the things that I possess and still live a happy, content life. Perhaps my laptop?

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Being alone.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

Acting (theatre).

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

My ability to be so unassuming, non-threatening and open that you can't help but like me. Until, perhaps, you get to know me and I start to irritate the fuck out of you.

26. What do you most value in your friends?

Loyalty.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

There isn't enough room. Plus I find it difficult to have a favourite anything. Polarities and I don't do well together.

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

Oddly enough, this one is a secret.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

I don't.

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

People who stand up for what they believe (as long as what they believe is also what I believe - hah. If, for example, someone stands up for the belief that a certain religion is better than any other, then they're not really a hero to me. This is all highly subjective).

31. What are your favorite names?

The names of my godchildren. And my name too. :-P

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Disrespect.

33. What is your greatest regret?

Not being man enough to see it through, even though it would've meant never making my home in St. Vincent.

34. How would you like to die?

I don't. But if I must, painlessly and in close proximity to people who love me.

35. What is your motto?

Don't shoot 'till you see the whi... erm... wait... that's not it! Who the hell has a motto anymore? Actually, I do subscribe to the "live and let live" school of human relations.

Yes! We... Must?

2009-09-27T17:29:00.007-04:00

I was in Bequia last weekend with some friends. It was a lot of fun (despite the fact that I’m a teetotaler) and reminded me how much I love simple things like food, friends, shopping for food with friends and eating friendly foods (like charred barracuda, eggless omelette and sin-your-soul brownies).

This post, however, is not a nostalgic investigation into things either gastronomic or companionable (or both). After disembarking the ferry, on our way back home from Kingstown, we passed the building that used to be the Ju-c/Bottler’s building. Now I don’t usually go into Kingstown. I think I’ve stated elsewhere on this blog that Kingstown makes me claustrophobic and causes me to curl up into the foetal position while groaning nonsense about my mother. So I don’t know how long the building has been as it is. Here’s how it looks these days:

I present to you (what I assume is) the campaign headquarters for the proposed new constitution of St. Vincent & the Grenadines. Yes folks, our government, in its efforts to campaign for the new constitution, has totally revamped an entire building in Kingstown. It’s a pity they couldn’t do the same for sections of the hospital. Ah well, I suppose the focus these days is all on the constitution and on little else (a commenter on one of my previous posts said that his? her? Pol-Sci Lecturer at UWI called the proposed new constitution a political red herring – I leave you to interpret that as you will).

The inside of the building definitely seems to be a sort of political campaign ground zero: there are desks all over the place and a bank of telephones, Ed McMahon (mayherestinpeace) telethon-style. Most importantly, it’s all decked out in the national colours and its frontage is plastered with the propaganda machine’s latest slogan: “Yes! We Must!”.

This slogan is a work of both pure genius and unadulterated borrowing (I wanted to use the word “plagiarism” but thought that may be a bit strong). Not only does it subtly (hah) conjure thoughts of Barack Obama’s famous campaign slogan, “Yes, We Can”, it also suggests all the things that go along with Obama’s presidential campaign: thoughts of change, thoughts of a victorious underdog, thoughts of perseverance for a better way of life, thoughts of toppling a hegemonic regime. Couple this with our Prime Minister’s admonition to vote “yes” or never be able to look our grandchildren in the eye because we’re clearly upholding the colonial shackles that we (apparently) have hidden away under our beds and have been lovingly polishing for the past 30 years, and what we have here is psychological warfare as best waged by Caribbean Roman Catholic family matriarchs of Portuguese descent. Like my dead grandmother (and living mother – love you mum!).

Essentially, the government has decided to put us on a massive guilt trip. We "must" vote "yes" in the referendum on the proposed new constitution. According to my mother, to use words like “must” and “should” in a slogan like this is a form of shaming: it implies that to do anything other than what is being suggested is to demonize yourself. The idea apparently comes from conflict/resolution theory. In other words, a word such as “must” communicates that this is a necessity, and to repudiate a necessity is to let (in this case) everyone down. I trust my mother’s word on this because: 1. she has two degrees in psychology; 2. she is a counselor (retired); and 3. she is my very own Caribbean Roman Catholic family matriarch of Portuguese descent. So, she knows what she’s talking about!

What’s particularly disturbing about the “Yes! We Must!” slogan (for me) is the underdog, anti-hegemonic message. This disturbs me not because I want to keep us in thrall to our colonial mistress, but because the ruling government is never the underdog! The ruling government of any country is, by definition, the hegemony! We are being made to believe that the government of our country is like the poor-boy-makes-good while, in fact, they are the people in charge. Yes, the ruling party was the underdog two elections ago. Yes, the ruling party was, two elections ago, the scrappy little revolutionary body that would save us from the demon government of the time. But now? Come on! It is the nature of politics and government (in this region at any rate) that the revolutionaries become the orthodoxies.

Once you’re in charge, you become the hegemony. Once you’re in charge, you are no longer the revolutionary; you have become the establishment. To have an education or wellness “revolution” is absurd. I think that our current government spent so long as a reactionary, sometime revolutionary opposition (minority) party that they don’t seem to understand that they are actually in charge, and are no longer the de jure representatives of the disillusioned and powerless. Strike that; they know that they’re in charge (they’ve proven so time and again), but they seem to want the best of both worlds: they seem to want supremacy and to be anti-establishment, both at the same time.

It is unfortunate that we no longer seem to have a voice for the disillusioned and powerless in this country. Our options are exceedingly limited. But this is neither here nor there for this particular post which, as usual, I have let get away from me.

“Yes! We Must!”, as a slogan, is impressively simple, snappy and (given the times in which we live) evocative. It is also, however, unoriginal, condescending (to expect us to not comprehend it’s origins and intents) and shameless.

To top it all off, below is the opposition party’s version of “Yes! We Must!” Campaign Central:

Ok, they’re the opposition party and haven’t as much money to spend on a campaign of this nature as the government does. Still, a comparison between the picture directly above and the one near the top of this post will clearly show which side of this country’s political see-saw is resting on the ground, and which is supporting the child who’s dangling her feet in the air screaming to get off.

Beware The Indian-Bay Beach Rapist

2009-09-22T13:42:00.008-04:00

I heard the crack of a gunshot, so I got up to look out my window. Of course, the beach was all blackness. All I could see were the reflections of my neighbours’ lights on the water a little way up. All I could hear was the waves. Then, in a flash, I saw a of a pair of white shorts dart in front of my house and disappear behind the young, bushy almond tree growing in the spot where the run-off water gutter meets the beach.

I flicked on my outside light.

The person slowly peeped out from behind the tree and called my landlord’s name. My landlord used to live in my flat. He now lives upstairs. I phoned him up. He turned on his beach spotlight and called to the man behind the tree.

Here’s what we learned. The White Shorts man had been a little further up the beach (quite close to us actually) with two women. They were just hanging out. Out of nowhere, a masked gunman approached them, ordering White Shorts to kneel down while pointing the gun straight at his (WS’s) head. This guy then ordered the two women to perform fellatio on him. It was at this point that White Shorts, fearing for his life and the lives of his companions, took off down the beach. The gunman shot at him, but luckily missed. That was the gunshot that I’d heard.

White Shorts went up by my landlord where they called the police. The police arrived shortly after with White Shorts’ lady friends in tow. They appeared unharmed. Presumably, the gunman ran away when he realized that White Shorts was on his way to find help. I don’t have the full story yet. The police, apparently, did not bother to get out and look for the gunman. No comment.

Now here’s the really disturbing part of all this. A week ago, a twelve year old, homeless girl was hanging out on this same beach (but a little further up) at night, with an adult man. He thought she was at least fifteen (like that makes it any better). A masked gunman held them up and she was raped. A few months ago, a masked gunman raped a young woman on this beach. On the same night (but a few hours later), another young woman in the general area was raped by, you got it, a masked gunman. An acquaintance of mine was parked on the beach with his girlfriend the other night and they were attacked by someone who’s face they couldn’t see. They escaped, but only after the faceless person threw a rock into one of this guy’s car windows. This masked gunman is fast becoming a local fixture.

“Come to Indian-Bay Beach anytime after the sun sets! Our fully trained rapist will remind you why property values in this area are spiraling downward, and why the people who live here have converted their open-concept beach homes into cages and prisons! Don’t forget to bring your pepper spray, mace, or hand gun!”

I’m not even going to mention the double murder of two weeks ago.

So this is a general warning for anyone who lives on or near Indian-Bay Beach. Lock up your houses good and tight. Women MUST be on the alert at all times. Keep your children inside. Only go to the beach when the sun is shining and make sure you’re not the only one there. The sad, horrifying reality is that we are not safe.

Our neighbourhood, the place that I roamed as a child (as young as four or five years old) with my (equally young) friends no longer exists. There are chain-link fences topped with razor wire, there are seven-foot walls around homes that were once open to the wind. Everyone owns a gun. The dogs are not just for show or companionship. There is a rapist on the loose and he has a gun. If we look back far enough, we discover that he (and his friends – there is the possibility that there’s more than one of them, and that they’re in cahoots) have been operating on and around Indian-Bay Beach for a good few years.

I hate to say this about a place that I love so much, a place that is so much a part of my history, a part of who I am, but I would advise everyone to keep away from Indian-Bay Beach at night. I would advise hotels and guesthouses to let their guests know that they will be targets if they go anywhere near there after dark. Do not go there for any reason once the sun has gone down. You are not safe there.

You are not safe here.

SVG Does The Splits

2009-09-18T16:48:00.006-04:00

We have two political parties in SVG, the ULP (Unity Labour Party – they’re currently in power) and the NDP (New Democratic Party – they aren’t). Actually, we have three parties. There’s also the Green Party, but they’re sort of like the one-legged six-year-old who you pat on the head patronisingly and say, “it’s okay buddy, you’ll be just like Usain Bolt one day”, while hoping that he forgets about that promise when he becomes an adult, and realizes that life is harsh, cold and unforgiving of optimists.

Now, given that we have two (major) political parties, you’d think that they’d be fundamentally different based on ideological grounds. Not so. Not that you can see at any rate. You’d expect one party to be liberal, and the other conservative. You’d expect one party to be somewhat right wing, and the other somewhat left. You’d expect one party to be full of hippies and beatniks, and the other to comprise men in dark suits and women with tightly controlled hair. Instead, what we have are two parties that oppose each other only for the sake of opposition. They’re both pretty much conservative, but they also both lean slightly to the left (generally). I have lost faith in the hope that my political leaders have any sort of genuine ideology that goes beyond self-aggrandisement and/or pocket-lining.

This country is neatly split in two. We don’t really have racial tensions in SVG (not to the extent that these tensions exist elsewhere in the region); our classism is not as overt and all encompassing as it is elsewhere. I’m not saying that these things don’t exist in SVG, that would be blind of me, it’s just that they aren’t as pronounced as I’ve experienced them elsewhere. What we do have, however, is a finely delineated system of prejudices based on which political party you support. If you don’t openly support any party, then people make assumptions based on how often and how vociferously you criticize whichever party happens to be the one in power. Don’t even get me started on the political victimization that exists despite the denials of the powers-that-be.

I am fed up. I am fed up of every issue in this country becoming, or being treated as, a political issue. I am tired of having to watch what I say or risk being associated with a specific political party. I am tired of decisions being made that are motivated solely on the red versus yellow power struggle.

My Prime Minister once implied that people who disagree with the building of an international airport at Argyle are unpatriotic. My opposition leader is calling for a “no” vote on our proposed constitution for reasons that I have yet to fathom in any coherent manner. What gives anyone the right to challenge my love of country based on whether or not I agree with the placement of an airport? What gives anyone the authority to tell me how to vote, while not explaining to me, in language that I can understand, why it would be in my best interest to do so?

Now the two parties are launching campaigns… political campaigns… to try to convince Vincentians to vote either for or against the proposed new constitution. There should be nothing as exciting as the process involved in forming a new constitution for a young country like ours. We should all be gung-ho about being a part of this process. We should all be involved in and informed about everything that goes on. Instead, the proposed constitution has been thrust into the public relatively close to the time when it is to be voted on, and we’ve pretty much been told to either agree or disagree with it, wholesale.

It’s been published in the newspapers in its entirety (very good), but it has not been explained to the people of this country in an unbiased manner (not so good). Every explanation of the articles of this constitution has been tinged with bias based on either party affiliation or (in one case) religious belief. The ULP is pushing a “yes” vote, and everything they say about the constitution implies that it is the most stunning document of its kind ever to be produced. The NDP, on the other hand, is advocating a “no” vote, and is claiming that the existence of this new constitution will spell the beginning of the end of for freedoms and liberties in this country. The Constitution Review Committee, whether we want to acknowledge this or not, will push a “yes” vote because this is their baby. The Thusian Institute are pushing a “no” vote based on what is ultimately their ire over the denial of human rights as being God-given.

Anyone who supports the proposed new constitution is immediately classed as a dogmatic, deluded supporter of the ULP government; its opponents are treated as political dissidents who have nothing better to do. In fact, one of the members of the Constitutional Review Committee (I think the leader) implied in a public television appearance that we, the average, unwashed masses, should not even try to understand the workings of this nation-altering document, because we are not trained in constitutional law. We should simply accept his word, and the word of the government, that it is in our best interests. In other words: “fuck you, citizens of SVG, you are too ignorant to understand any of this, and you’ll probably use the paper it is printed on to wrap up salt fish anyway.” (The salt fish thing was actually said by a high-ranking government official; he was addressing a bunch of Trinis at the time).

So we’re pretty much left high and dry. The Thusians have done a creditable job in convincing many people that the proposed constitution, as it stands, is not in our best interests. They’re the only group that has explained things to us in as simple a manner as possible. Their main contention is that the proposed constitution does not make any of the rights granted to us “inalienable”. In other words (and in short), they contend that there’s a lack of security in the new constitution, and that our rights could be snatched away from us willy-nilly.

Here’s my problem with these guys. They’re coming from a place that is all religion. The Thusian Institute for Religious Liberty is a Seventh Day Adventist offshoot. They claim to be a human rights organization, but these human rights are clearly the ones that they feel are due to any clean-living believer in God. In other words, they’re not actually concerned with all the minority groups who are affected by human rights violations. The very first issue coming out of the constitution that made people raise eyebrows is the marriage issue; that is, the fact that marriage must be between a biological male and a biological female (essentially). This was the first issue to be debated. The Thusians were nowhere to be found in that debate. Clearly, their interest in human rights is only for a select few humans.

So we’re left with a decision to make. We, the populace of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, will very soon have to decide whether or not we want the proposed constitution. We’re not going to be allowed to vote on bits and pieces of the thing. Oh no, it’s either accept the entire document, or reject the entire document. If we accept it, we accept the wonderful along with the deplorable. If we reject it, we reject the horrendous along with the magnificent. The ULP implies that a “no” vote is a rejection of what it means to be Vincentian, the NDP implies that a “yes” vote is a vote for despotism and dictatorship. Neither of these things is actually true.

One thing is certain. The country is split on this issue, as it is on any other issue that the politicians have taken, twisted and made their own. I have only been a member of the Vincentian electorate for fifteen years, yet I am ready to throw in the towel. The politicians in this country have succeeded in making me entirely distrustful of their ilk. I have a few friends who’ve gone into politics. Some of them (a very select few) actually have some sort of ideology and concern for the future of this country. Others are doing it for what is clearly their own advancement. The ones who have actual beliefs and principles worry me. I’m afraid that they’re going to get caught up in the political games that are played every day in this country. My fear is that, eventually, these people will lose sight of their ideologies in favour of the paycheck, the power and/or the desire to be remembered. Isn’t that what happened to the two men who held (have held) the highest position in our land, for the longest time?

Please Enjoy My Epiphany

2009-09-11T22:30:00.005-04:00

It's amazing how attending the funeral of a close family member can remind you where you come from.

I can live on the beach or in a city all my life, but I still felt a stillness, a rightness, when I walked through the banana fields, along the dirt road and up into the graveyard toward the family plot. It's like a special kind of solitude stole over me this afternoon. It wrapped me in something visceral... something primal... something that is ingrained in my soul. I was surrounded by people and by sound, by family, by the paradox of mourning and celebration, by the smell of earth and goats, by two guitars and a quatro and a harmonica and the wailing joy of spirituals being sung in voices that Lorna Goodison called "flat hill country voice[s]". Yet I still felt solitude. I felt like the noise and music and humanity were part of the landscape, and the landscape was part of me.

Weird.

Tomorrow

2009-09-06T20:10:00.004-04:00

work

again

sigh

my motivation is flagging due to disproportionate input/output ratios
also due to lack of intellectual energy

what to do? what to do?

i have my new plans
i have my new schemes
i have my new direction

i know where i should be going this year

but i am disheartened by last year

i need an injection of positivity
i need to feel secure in my professional abilities once more
i need to make absolutely sure that i leave nothing to chance

BUT

i should remember that i am dealing with individuals who have
individual needs and strengths and weaknesses

i should remember that i cannot spoon feed or
force feed or
feed at all

i should remember my principles and philosophies

perhaps it's not going to be so bad after all

at least i've lost 14 pounds

now i should just go shave my face and head in preparation
for tomorrow

XXX Virgin Sluts of Goat Heaven & Other Titillating Web Searches

2009-08-30T23:10:00.005-04:00

Real life has been pretty heavy for me of late, so here’s something a little frivolous to steer my mind someplace light (and hopefully yours; especially if your days are a bit intense too).

I have this StatCounter thingy on my blog that does all sorts of intriguing things. It can tell me how many people have visited the site, which ones were there for the first time, where they came from, etc. In addition to all this (and more), it also keeps track of the keywords that people have been typing into Google and other search engines, which lead them to my blog. Tonight I’m going to take you deep inside the bowels of Lullabies, Fairy Tales and Other Self-Delusions. I’m giving you an unprecedented, never-before-experienced tour of my recent search engine keywords. Hold on to your virginity folks (well ok, there’re no virgins left, so hold on to your shame and regret instead) because the ride is about to being!

The Tame Searches

Guyana Gyal – Apparently, searching for Guyana Gyal’s blog has brought several people to my blog. This feels suspiciously like I’m riding on GG’s coattails. I’m fairly certain that she wears coats sometimes. Just to extend my use of clichés, she’s the star that I’ve apparently hitched my wagon to, albeit unknowingly. None of this talk of riding or wagon hitching is meant to be sexual in any way.

Lots of lullaby stuff – That’s not the actual search. It’s just that many of the searches are for stuff to do with lullabies: history of lullabies, short lullabies, lullabies about [insert weird thing here (one person actually searched for lullabies about incest)].

Apple Juice Sistren – No comment. My sister-in-law (commonly called the Sistren) doesn’t look like a box of apple juice. She doesn’t even smell like apples (she usually smells like a combination of the essential oils that she uses in making lotions and ointments – it’s soothing)! I will, however, say this: until he was about ten years old, my brother would drink nothing BUT apple juice. Do with that information as you will.

Lord of the Flies – I think I made this reference once, in one post (possibly twice). Surely there are many, many more pertinent websites than mine that deal with this novel. Of course, mine is probably the only one with a photograph of a roasted pig as well. Mmmmm… that was some tasty pig.

Tales of the Wills – To quote Internet chat room aficionados: WTF?

Caprine Brother – Ditto above. Also, do you think someone suspects that his/her brother is a goat? Do you think it’s Suzy from my post of a few weeks ago searching for a long lost family member?

The Political Searches

Argyle – I get tons of searches for stuff to do with Argyle, from updates, to searches for pictures. This doesn’t surprise me since, for people in the Vincentian diaspora, there’s precious little information available online.

SVG Constitution – People also get sent to my page when they type in a myriad of searches for the SVG constitution. Fair enough. I just hope they realize that I usually don’t have a fucking clue what I’m talking about when I try to be serious and/or relevant.

The Good Stuff

UWI Mona Sluts – Huh? How on Earth does this search land someone on my page? This one is actually a frequent search. Another variant is “Whores of University of the West Indies”. I get that a lot too. Interestingly, I never got any sluts or whores approaching me while I was at UWI. Not one. I did have a girl once say to me, “why don’t you like me? Is it because I’m a virgin?” when in reality she WAS a huge UWI Mona slut. I know she was because when I told all my friends about it half the guys said they’d slept with her. I anticipate, after this post is published, that more searches ending up on my page will contain “slut”, “whore” and now, “virgin”.

St. Vincent & the Grenadines Community College X-Rated – These people are obviously searching for a much more specific version of Girls Gone Wild. Fortunately, one of the entry and graduation requirements of the college is purity of body and soul, i.e., everyone at the college (including members of the faculty, administration and ancillary staff) is a sweet-mouthed virgin.

Self-Post Nudity – This search comes up A LOT! Keep searching pervs, you’ll never see nekkid pictures of me up here. You may see them elsewhere, but I’m fairly certain that I’ve not been photographed or videotaped doing anything that would put other, lesser men to shame.

Nude Thong of the Day –I don’t get it. You mean, as opposed to dressed thong of the day? Is it like a daily photograph of thongs cavorting au naturel? How can a thong be nude? I’m confused and baffled.

Beach Thong Children Shame – I can only assume that seeing someone in a thong has traumatized someone else’s child. It can be quite traumatizing. I’ve seen people in thongs and have had to go have a lie down to recover. Thongs are not pretty. And they are not sexy. But I’ve said this before, so I’ll shut up. PS – the words “nude” and “thong” are favourites of the search engine circuit it seems.

Nude Little Fairy – I’m not touching that one with my ten foot pole. All puns intended.

My Favourite

Little Thingy Inside a Woman – Wow. Can you imagine the results of this one? What is the little thingy? Is it a clitoris? Is it an early-stage foetus? Could it perhaps be a reference to inverted nipples? Is it possibly something psychological? Intuition? I don’t know. Nor do I know why that searcher ended up on my page. But every time I see it I laugh like a 1990’s teenager at a Wayans Brothers movie.

What searches carry people to your page?

The Other Side of Paradise

2009-08-22T22:32:00.006-04:00

I had no expectations when I started reading The Other Side of Paradise by Staceyann Chin. Actually, that’s a lie. I did expect something. I expected it to sound like her performance poetry; I expected her entire story to be brash and in-your-face and shocking. I expected to recognize the Staceyann I knew several years ago when she was a couple years above me at UWI. What I didn’t expect was a memoir that fleshed out the person I knew so briefly all those years ago. What I didn’t expect was language that moves across the page simply and unambiguously, language that reminds me of patties stuffed inside coco-bread. What I didn’t expect was something that, stylistically, is reminiscent of a conglomeration of women writers from across cultures, genres and political ideologies.

The novel is a typical bildungsroman. We get Staceyann’s growth and development starting from her (supposed possible) conception, through to her boarding the plane that would take her away from Jamaica and into the world. Along the way, we see her living in various places and circumstances; we meet the people who populated her life at various times, many of whom end up being cut out at some point. We see her struggles with her own personality, her intelligence, her poverty, her sexuality, her appearance, her ethnicity, her connections to other people. This novel is, more than anything else, a personal investigation into the author’s life. It’s almost as if Staceyann is trying to make coherent sense of her early life through writing it down. It’s clear that her life has been one of unanswered questions and lingering doubts – from her paternity to her acceptance by (and of) family, we see that nothing for Staceyann is ever certain.

This is where the novel leaves me in something of a quandary. I can’t decide if Staceyann is a victim, or her own agent. Certainly, by the novel’s close she has taken charge of her own life, but until that time she seems to be at the mercy of everyone around her. This, for me, contradicts the strong willed, self-assured personality that is evident in Staceyann from the first time we meet her.

Near the end of the prologue, Staceyann says, “[i]t tickles me to think that from my very first breath, everyone expected me to stop breathing. Against the odds, I surprised everybody.” This tension between people’s expectations of Staceyann, and her own actions/behaviour/successes is central to the novel, but it can also be contradictory at times. It is easy to see Staceyann Chin, the Victim; it is also easy to see her as the Survivor. However, within that victim/survivor dichotomy, there is also Staceyann Chin, her own Worst Enemy. It’s challenging to write a downtrodden character who we empathize with rather than pity, yet this is what Chin has done. She is a victim that we feel with, not that we feel for. When she gets into trouble as a child for her quick temper and willfulness, we don’t feel sorry for her. We understand exactly how and why she got into trouble, we almost expected the outcome; but we don’t ever feel sorry for her. Rather, we appreciate how she must be feeling. When she is exiled from her grandmother’s presence (a presence that we can’t help but think would always represent “home”) by her uncle’s wife, we know that, however unfair, cruel and mercenary the act is, it could’ve been avoided. Staceyann is the victim here, but she is a victim who is oddly (and unfairly) implicated in her own predicament.

My friend, Empath, has always had trouble with Caribbean women writers who deny their female characters any agency. She considers the figure of the Caribbean Woman as Victim to be a by-product of the popular Black American Woman as Victim. Essentially, she thinks that Caribbean characters who have no control over their lives are literary constructs that pander to an American market. I tend to agree with Empath here (to some extent), and, on first reading, was irritated by Staceyann’s constantly being bumped from demonized family member to demonized family member, with absolutely no control over her plight. That’s when I had to remind myself: this is a memoir. It is not fiction. This happened to someone. This sort of thing happens to people all the time. How many of my students have mothers who migrated and forgot them, and fathers who are completely absent? This is a typically Caribbean dilemma.

It is the nature of a first person narrative that we distrust the narrator to some degree. This is especially true in a memoir. In fact, Chin even hints that she’s taken some leeway with memory here. Again, in her prologue, she says that “… in the absence of the most basic facts, I have had to create my own story and, in many ways, set my own course. The story that follows is the journey I remember.” The Other Side of Paradise is Staceyann’s journey as she remembers it, not as other people may remember it. So if, at times, it seems as if she lacks agency, and is too much a victim, we should remember that, for a child, it is easy to be a victim. In Caribbean societies generally, children are the most victimized group of people.

Of course, in the last few chapters we see Staceyann still as a victim, this time the hapless victim of her own self-assurance and verve. The almost-rape scene in the bathroom is physically out of her control until she is able to convince (or bully/threaten) someone else to save her. It is an interesting point that, throughout the novel, she uses words for protection, justification and attack, rather than to express more tender feelings. So much of what we know about her affections and softer emotions is what she tells us directly, not what she says to other characters. It is almost as if she is so beaten down that she cannot express herself, so when she does, it all comes rushing out in an overwhelming deluge of passion.

The thing that actually struck me most about this novel is that it feels like an invocation. It feels like Staceyann is calling several women together and asking them to help her tell this story. I don’t mean to suggest that Staceyann has no authentic style. Far from it, I can hear echoes of her from fifteen years ago in her prose. I remember her accosting me under the UWI Mona Arts Faculty trees one day, grabbing both my hands, staring into my eyes and fervently declaiming, “ambidextrous… loving… with both hands…”. She went on to say more, but that’s all I remember. I feel this woman when I read the novel.

No, what I mean by invocation is that I sense resonances of other women, all of whose experiences make up a collective of some sort, in this novel. Staceyann’s bungled (and hilariously tragic) first attempt at masturbation in a pit toilet is almost Eve Ensleresque in its outcome: “When I finally collapse, shaking and picking pieces of roach legs off my hip and thigh, I know I am never going to look at my coco-bread again.” Her description of the countryside of her birth and early childhood takes me back to the poetry of Lorna Goodison; her investigation of family relationships, especially the bonds that (should?)(sometimes?) exist between women, is reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John; and there are even hints of Jane Austen in Staceyann’s concern for people. What I felt when reading this novel was something specifically woman, something that cannot be felt if I were reading a man’s memoir. It is this vague sensation of a universal feminine that I’m talking about when I say that the novel is an invocation.

I haven’t even mentioned something fundamental to this novel. Staceyann deals with her homosexuality so naturally, and in such a blasé manner that it’s easy to forget that it’s one of the major themes of this memoir. It is mentioned from very near the beginning of the book, though not explicitly. It crops up every now again. She never actually deals with it until very near the novel’s end. It seems almost like a natural part of her experience – we expected it. This is not a novel about her homosexuality; it is novel about her. She never agonizes over it because it is only one aspect of her self. It is rare for a Caribbean author to deal with something so contentious as sexuality and not make a big deal out of it. I think that this could very well go a long way to helping people in the region accept alternative sexualities. We got to know her, and in so doing we discovered something about her. Yes, it is her sexuality (and the near rape that her embracing/sharing of her sexuality inspired) that forced her to leave Jamaica, but it is not something that solely defines the Staceyann Chin of this memoir.

This is not the first time that someone I know has written a novel or even a memoir. However, for some reason, this is the first time that I’ve felt an actual connection with the protagonist. I didn’t know Staceyann particularly well at UWI. She was two years ahead of me, and we had only a couple friends in common. From the little I knew of her, I would never have guessed at her history.

I do have three distinct memories of Staceyann that have stayed with me since the mid 1990’s (I’ll be no more specific than that). I’ve already mentioned the grabbing and poetizing, but I also remember her speaking on the phone at a friend’s rented room, telling the person on the other end of the line that men always have erections, then grabbing my crotch and saying, “I bet you have one right now!” I didn’t actually. I was too scared. My ultimate memory of her is in the performance of selections from Kamau Braithwaite’s The Arrivants that a group of students did one year for Tallawah under the direction of Carolyn Allen. Staceyann talks about this very performance near the end of the novel. I remember being mesmerized by her and her co-performers, but especially by her, during this performance. She felt it, and it showed. Reading how it made her feel and marrying this to what I saw was an amazing experience for me.

After reading The Other Side of Paradise, I now wish that I knew Staceyann. I think we could’ve been friends, rather than passing acquaintances. Back then she intimidated me a bit. She was a very visible person and I couldn’t help but be slightly cowed by her bravado, brilliance and complete immersion in literature and performance (she performed more off stage than on). Simply put, I felt intellectually inadequate around her. Her story, her memoir, is completely engaging. Her writing drew me in, her characters are real and relatable (once you realize that they are memories tainted by childhood) and her struggles are an affirmation of success despite adversity (both externally motivated and inadvertently self-caused). When I saw Staceyann crying for Oprah a few years ago (I can’t find this damn clip) I thought, “fuck me, I know someone’s who’s cried on Oprah!” After reading her memoir, I realize that I don’t. Not really. Not at all.

Staceyann Chin

PETA, PETA, Pumpkin Eaters.

2009-08-20T22:26:00.000-04:00

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

Something Caprine

2009-08-14T23:31:00.005-04:00

This is going to be the shortest blog post I’ve ever written. My good friend... erm... let's call her Suzy... was in the throes of passion the other night. She and her boyfriend were doing unspeakably naked things to one another when they heard the boyfriend’s brother, who lives just across the way, calling to them.

Boyfriend’s Brother: Oye! Fred! (assumed name)

Boyfriend: Pant, pant, pant.

Suzy: Squeal, screech, groan (possibly meh-eh-ehh; you’ll see why in a little bit).

Boyfriend’s Brother: Oye! Fred!

Boyfriend: WHAT???!!!

Suzy [under her breath]: Goddamnit!

Boyfriend’s Brother: De goat like it hengin’! Ah hearin’ de goat like it ballin’!

The End.

Synopsis:

Suzy’s boyfriend’s brother thought that Suzy’s cries of ecstasy were the cries of a goat in distress.
Suzy was making enough noise that the entire valley heard her. Luckily she sounded enough like a goat being throttled that no one really understood what was happening.
Suzy may be a Capricorn. I shall have to call her and double check.

A Meditation on Oral Aluminum

2009-08-09T23:37:00.003-04:00

I seem to have been infected with a sort of intellectual torpor. I’m not certain why, but I do have my suspicions. I’m on vacation and have all the time in the world to blog. I also have so many things that I can blog about if I chose to. However, my brain seems to be on a go-slow. Every time I sit down and start typing, I lose interest. I find something else to do. I feel like I want to blame twitter. I spend a lot of my online time on twitter, or monitoring twitter. It’s difficult to actually write something substantial when every few minutes I feel the urge to say something witty and pointless in less than 140 characters.

So I have what I call online-social-networking-induced-blogger’s-block. It’s a relatively new phenomenon that I think is affecting bloggers in the region, as a driect result of joining twitter. I dithered over what to call this blockage actually. I wanted to call it writer’s block, but then I got to thinking. Is the stuff that I blog real writing? I don’t intend to demean or degrade any other bloggers’ writing; I’m just referring to my own. Are my posts bona fide enough to warrant using the term “writer’s block” when I find myself unable to update? Can a self-absorbed blogger, like me, even be called a writer? Am I being arrogant and puffed up by suggesting that I have writer’s block? These questions don’t need answering, I’m just thinking on my keyboard. Of course, everyone knows how much I crave validation, so if you feel like you want to tell me that I’m the best thing since Oscar Wilde please go right ahead.

I have a handy little book called “The Writer’s Block”. It’s actually a block. It contains a plethora of spark words, scenarios and other minor catalysts to help writers jump start their brain cells. I’ve never actually used this book myself, but I used to use it when I was teaching secondary school English. There are some great ideas for teaching creative writing, as well as for coming up with examination topics. Anyway, I said to myself, “fuck it; just open the frigging book at a random page and write that for a blog post”. And this is just what I have done. The page that I opened the book to had “orthodontics” written on one side, and a picture of a retainer on the other. This is my spark word apparently.

The first time I saw braces, they were in/on my friend Vanessa. This was back in the 1980’s and poor Vee’s braces involved a complicated metal apparatus that rested behind her neck and pulled her mouth into a manic grin not unlike that of Jack Nicholson’s Joker. I distinctly remember her looking sheepishly at me (I was staring quite rudely it seems) and saying, “it’sh brashesh”. I assumed that they were as painful, potentially disfiguring and dehumanizing as they looked. I wanted them. I wanted braces like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. Surely, Vee had to be extremely special and unique to warrant the necessity of braces! How amazing life would seem with shiny aluminum bars strapped to your neck!

As luck would have it, around the time that I morphed into an adolescent, braces had become the thing to have for teenagers of a certain social background in St. Vincent. All of a sudden, everyone’s child developed grotesquely gnarled and dysmorphic choppers. St. Vincent acquired it’s very first orthodontist. Well, we actually shared him with Barbados and St. Lucia. He was a roving orthodontist (as opposed to a raving orthopedist, who laughs psychopathically before correcting your unsightly b0ne deformity). I think he was based in Barbados, but one week a month he was here, and one week he was in St. Lucia. I think it was one week. It may have been only a day or two. At any rate, it was so short that all the braced teenagers were given time off school to go see him for our adjustments. I thought I was the most special person around. And cool? Wow. Nothing could be cooler than missing a day of school once a month and then walking around with a pained expression for three days (after an adjustment) while eating nothing but soup, soft cheese and bread soaked gravy. The only downside was that orthodontics had, by the time I’m referring to, evolved beyond headgear and pure metal. Mine were just strapped to my back teeth and held together with wire and rubber bands. I tried for years, and unsuccessfully, not to be too disappointed.

Interestingly enough, I really did have quite serious teeth issues. I’d sucked my thumb incessantly until the age of about ten or eleven (no comment from the penny section here please). My two front teeth (I’d say my top incisors, but I don’t want to show off my superior knowledge of denticular jargon) were about three times the size of the rest of my teeth, and they stuck out in a position parallel to the ground. In other words,they were horizontal. They didn’t grow down, they grew out. It was difficult to use these teeth as they would crush food rather than ripping it, like incisors are supposed to do.

I had a great aunt. Well I had several really, but I’m thinking of one in particular. Aunt Angela, my mother’s aunt. I think I only ever met her once, but I will remember her until my dying day. We were sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen, a room that I loved so much, and that always made me feel like I understood the meaning of the word “home”. Aunt Angela kept looking at me, pointing, and saying, “oh my he looks just like Bugs Bunny!” She taunted me. She teased me mercilessly, calling me Bugs Bunny in a funny little voice. Eventually I started crying and her sister, Aunt Iris (who I loved dearly, and who taught me how to foxtrot when I was sixteen because “every young man should know how to dance) eventually told her to shut up and leave me alone.

So you see, the teeth were in a pretty bad frickin’ state. The dentist had to remove six – SIX – of my permanent teeth to make room so that the rest could shift around properly in my mouth. By age eighteen I had six less teeth than the average adult. It’s less one more since I had a wisdom tooth removed. I am practically toothless really. I have to just about suck all my food through a straw.

I had braces for four years – from forms two to five. I then had a retainer that I was supposed to have worn for two further years, but lost after the first year. Conveniently. By then I was at Barbados Community College and braces were most definitely not cool. Plus, Aunty Arlene (mum’s sister this time… so not a great aunt, but an actual one) took one look at me when the braces came off and said, “I so fuckin vex! Watch how dat man fuck up yuh mout an gi’ you a mash mout! You did look so much better before!”

One thing you can say for my family is that we’re really honest. If you look like shit, we’ll tell you. God forbid I should ever need corrective plastic surgery. My aunts would probably band together to tell me that I was much handsomer before the horrendous lumps were removed from my face and scalp. I love them unto death though.

Eventually, my teeth shifted around again and came to some semblance of non-mash mouth order. In fact, by age twenty-seven I was able to attract a lover based on the state of my teeth alone! This is no lie. I was told, in a sexy, smoky Castilian accent, that I had the most perfect teeth. I then spent the next year and a half using those perfect teeth to nibble (and sometimes aggressively bite) something Madrilenian (with a soupçon of Moroccan). On the down side, every time I’m with my father and I bite into something hard or rip something with my teeth, he says, “boy I pay six thousan’ dollars for doze teet yuh know! Dem is some expensive teet in yuh mout!”

Gratuitous Picture of Jack Nicholson as the Joker

This blog post is dedicated to the Sistren, who (poor thing) is suffering through braces at age twenty-seven (twenty-six?). Better late than never, right?

Romance Novels & Three-Year-Old Princesses

2009-07-22T19:13:00.011-04:00

I was napping on someone’s bed recently (as one does when tired in someone else’s house) when I rolled over and came face to face with a swarthy, young gentleman in a blousy, white shirt who was clutching a virginal, blonde beauty in his arms (from behind). Her eyes were closed, and on her face was an expression of mingled anguish and ecstasy. He just looked predatory and mysterious.

The bed was my mother’s, and the lovers were on the cover of a book cunningly and creatively entitled: At The Argentinean Billionaire’s Bidding. An Amazon.com blurb of this potentially scintillating novel (if the cover is anything to go by) reads thusly:

Argentinean billionaire Alejandro D'Arienzo has fresh prey: heiress Tamsin Calthorpe. He sees her as a ravishing but spoiled beauty who destroyed his past—and he's ready to settle the score!

What Alejandro doesn't know is that Tamsin loved him, hiding her naïveté under the guise of willful sophistication. Now a talented designer, she's working hard to prove herself, despite her pedigree. But her credibility is in the hands of merciless Alejandro, who offers an ultimatum: her name in ruins, or her body in his bed….

Further investigation in the vicinity of mum’s beside table revealed the following cleverly titled narratives:

• Antonides’ Forbidden Wife

• The Mediterranean Billionaire’s Blackmail Bargain

• The Australian Millionaire’s Love Child

• The Sheikh’s Defiant Bride

• The Tycoon’s Very Personal Assistant

• Bedded For The Spaniard’s Pleasure

• A Night With The Society Playboy

• Capelli’s Captive Virgin

• The Greek’s Forced Bride

• The Spaniard’s Defiant Virgin

Now I don’t consider myself a literary snob. I’ll pretty much read anything that entertains me. I once quoted a character from a Terry Pratchett novel in an essay for one of my lecturers at UWI (I can’t recall the name of the course, but it was all about folktales and narratives). The essay was about the narratives of every day life and the quote was about the sexual proclivities of an emperor – he got off on stories. Not to brag, but I DID receive an A+ for that essay. The point is that I don’t hold my nose above Underdog Literature.

What gets me about these novels is their titles. I’m not going to argue that they’re crap reads or anything like that, because I’ve never read a Harlequin Romance (which all of these are, by the way). Plus, I think that escapism in any form is one of the primary functions of reading-for-entertainment. But the titles. I mean, honestly.

Almost every title implies that the man is hugely wealthy, swarthy (with the possible exception of the Australian one), and totally into ravishment. The women all seem to be either demure and unwilling, or defiant and virginal. Doesn’t this raise unrealistic expectations or notions of men, women and relationships?

I’m fairly certain that these books are aimed at women, so should men be worried? Isn’t it even the teensiest bit worrying that the models of masculinity and femininity presented in these stories are highly unrealistic, stylized and polarized? Do adolescent girls, when reading these novels, expect relationships to be all drama, electricity and ecstatic surrender? Because they’re not. Relationships are actually pretty boring and mundane unless your significant other forgets to take the mood stabilizers that the shrink recommended. Even the tired cliché about women and their menstrual cycle-induced mood swings aren’t particularly exciting, just scary as hell! [Just a note so that certain people don’t jump down my throat to rip off my testicles: I am fully aware that menstrual cramps are painful and potentially debilitating. I am also aware that many women actually DO suffer extreme alterations of mood and diet during their cycle. This does not mean that menstruation isn’t one of the most tired clichés ever used in relationships. Please direct all hate mail to williamjabbott@gmail.com. I prefer to keep my comments box full of light-hearted quips about bunny rabbits and rainbows.]

With this in mind, I propose the following Harlequin Romance titles. Some of these are specifically themed for our Caribbean reality, since I’m nothing if not all about cultural relevance. Perhaps some of the people who write these novels will see these and write a few stories based on real people, with real relationships:

• The Vincentian Sharecropper’s Overweight Market Vendor

• The Caribbean Con-Man’s Three Families

• The Vagrant’s Pregnant Crack-Head

• The Hidden Homosexual’s Frustrated Wife

• The Married Businessman’s Baby-Mamas (pluralisation necessary)

• The Politician’s Ambivalent Yet Upwardly Mobile Secretary

• The Grenadian’s Diabolically Dubious Fuck Buddy

• The American Tourist’s Gold Digger

• The Rastafarian’s Repressed Sistren

• The Van Driver’s Force-Ripe School Girl

I just had a thought – if anyone wants to contribute titles in the comment box feel free! Also, if you want to write make-believe blurbs for any of these go right ahead. Lord knows it’s all completely unreal anyway, and it could be fun/funny.

On a somewhat related note, Lila turned three last Saturday. How is that in any way related to cheesy romance novels, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Lila had a Princess Party. It was freakin’ hilarious!

We all had to work like donkeys to prepare for this grand event, no one more than Lila’s mother who organized, shopped, sewed, coloured, and printed... the works. We did everything from scratch. We built a castle façade for the front of the house, we decorated like crazy and some people even had roles to play (not me, thankfully). Sabrina, Lila’s ‘biggest’ and ‘favourite’ cousin played the older, more experienced princess. She crowned all the little princesses (boys not allowed to this fete! Well, except for Logan, but he was sort of a little mascot – the Iago of the court, if you will); she taught them how to walk, how to wave and generally how to be gracious. My own mother played the fairy godmother who appeared as if from nowhere (hah) to read a story (written and illustrated by Lila’s mother).

The little princesses were generally afraid, stunned, or completely disinterested (at first - they had a blast once they got going). It was great. They did all follow Sabrina around though, and they were more or less attentive to my mother’s story telling. There was a cake-decorating table where they were supposed to decorate two cupcakes to take home. Most of them doused the cupcakes in sprinkles and then ate them, or just licked the icing off and grinned. Then there was the fingernail-painting table. One little princess showed off her painted nails by showing us the palms of her hands. HILARIOUS I tell you.

Anyway, here are a few photos below from the day. Enjoy! ☺

Princess Lila

Princess Emma getting her nails done.

Princess Izzy Shakkin' Out.

Princess Sabrina the Ham.

Princess Lila paying close attention to the Fairy Godmother's story.

Prince Logan the Sensualist. Nomnomnom.

Bess Frenz. Princesses Lila & Saskia.

Lila's castle. Note to my twitter friends: see, I told you I was building castles in the air!

Decorating (ie, eating) the cupcakes. Princesses Saskia & Emma.

One prince, many princesses. Logan in his element.

Erm. Prince Logan in a whimsical moment.

"You hafta look at Uncle Wivee. Look. He's takin' a pikchure."

Sashing Princess Carese

Princess Lila: mmmmmmmmm... cupcakes!

Fairy Godmother/Queen of the Frogs

I said she was a princess. Not necessarily a lady. Princess Sabrina haisin' up she skyut.

The Little Princesses Lining Up Behind Princess Sabrina

Princess Sabrina

Ummm... I don't know who these people are. I'm assuming they're either court jesters or just plain idiots. [Moi, Miss Punny & Corporal Nasty - photo courtesy the Sistren]

Lila: 1 | iPhone: 0

2009-07-16T20:56:00.003-04:00

A few months ago, I was engaged in an online course on teaching effectiveness. One of the lessons was on technology in the classroom. We were pointed towards the following video as an example of the way children these days learn, and the kinds of things they are able to do. The point is that we, the intrepid teachers, need to be aware that our students’ level of technological knowledge exceeds our own, and at a much younger age. Here’s the video (for people without sound, don’t worry, there’s no sound in this!):

Amazing, eh?

That a two year old can not only figure this stuff out, but can understand what everything does, is truly mind blowing. This is the child of the future, and she’s here right now. The girl in the video is not alone. Most children are surrounded by technologies that never even existed ten years ago. Teachers need to be aware of that.

The beauty of the iPhone, in particular, is the app icons, ie, the little pictures that you press to do stuff (explanation included for the sake of my parents). It’s not surprising that a two year old can understand what to do. If you press a certain picture, then something specific happens. If you slide your finger across the screen, you can control what’s happening. The whole thing is both intuitive and simple.

Given all of the above, I’ve been letting Lila – my Goddaughter who turns three on Saturday – play around with my iPhone for the last several months. I’d turn it on for her and just let her fool around. She taught herself how to use the following apps: the iSwitchblade, the iZippo (these are the two most worrying ones, and the ones she likes best), the drawing app, the app for sending customized voice messages (she likes to hear the sample voices), the app that lets you control bursts of light, and three simple games. Everyone was amazed at how easily she learned these things and has gained control of them.

So I figured the iPhone was perfectly safe with little Miss Lila as long as she didn’t drop it. Yesterday she pressed a button and wiped off everything needed to make the phone work. One button, one press, RIP iPhone.

Now I don’t begrudge my beloved Goddaughter a single thing. It’s true that I am scornful and refuse to share a glass with her, but that’s not her, that’s me. I refuse to share my glass with anyone. That’s how people ingest backwash, other people’s crumbs and herpes simplex. And trust me, children under the age of thirteen deposit a lot of “stuff” in their drinking glasses. It’s ok if you’re the parent, but don’t expect me – Joe Schmo – to swallow you or your child’s leavings. I’ve seen Lila dip her bolognaise-covered kiddie spork into her glass of apple juice, swizzle it around, and then gulp the juice like it was the nectar of the gods. Eeeyuck.

The point of this is that I don’t begrudge the child the use of my phone. I can always get it fixed (there’s a two-week wait period during which I am forced to use my $40.00 special, but that’s ok). Here’s what’s irritating me and flabbergasting me all at once: how on Earth was the child able to wipe all the essential apps (like the phone app, the texting app, the iPod app, the camera, the contacts, the photos etc) while leaving the extraneous, frivolous apps behind?

This is what happened: she was playing the stick figure game (where you basically bash stick figures until they die and blood spills out – inappropriate but easily controlled). Then she wasn’t. She pressed something, I have no idea what, and the phone beeped. It then sent a message saying that it was resetting itself. When it was done, it had deleted all the essential apps, rendering the phone useless for all practical purposes.

Apple, I love you. Steve Jobs is my prophet. Your logo makes me tingle in my pants and get happy feelings running up and down my thighs. I have a saying that I say whenever I want to say stuff, “an Apple a day keeps the Blackberry away”. Well. I used to say that.

I don’t say that anymore because you guys let me down. Yes. I’m not afraid to say it. I blame you. I don’t blame myself for letting a toddler play with my expensive piece of technology. Bah! No, I blame you, Apple. I blame you for not making this tool abso-frickin-lutely perfect; so perfect, in fact, that a nearly-three year old could never hope to screw it up, short of dropping it from a great height.

But just so you know, I’m going to remain faithful to our relationship. I will not get a new, swanky phone! I refuse to bow to Blackberry pressures! I will get my iPhone repaired and keep on using it because I am confident that this will never happen again. Especially because Lila will surely not be playing with my phone ever again, or at least until she’s sixteen!

On Nudity, Thongs and One Unique Cock (not necessarily in that order)

2009-07-07T19:32:00.003-04:00

Posted after returning from Mayreau because I had no internet access.

Saturday, 4th July, 2009

It’s 5:15am and I am wide awake. The gods must be crazy.

I’m in Mayreau on the usual family escape from SVG carnival. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you a tedious blow by blow of this little vacation from the Vincentian metropolis (hah) like I did last year. The way I look at it, if you’ve read last year’s account (which is tedious to the extreme) then it’s probably given you a fair idea as to what’s happening this time around as well. There’s only so much to do on Mayreau.

The roosters have been crowing for about fifteen minutes. One of them seems to have a poultry speech impediment. Instead of going “cock-a-doodle-do” like all his counterparts, he’s going “cuh-caaaaaw-cuh” repeatedly. He’s the loudest of the lot by far, so either he’s proud of his accent or he doesn’t realize that he isn’t talking normal. Maybe he’s speaking a Mayreau dialect. Perhaps he’s originally from one of the French islands. Who knows. He’s the “one unique cock” mentioned in this post’s title, so you can drag your mind out of that gutter you degenerate perv!

Anyway, perhaps as a result of the cacophony of the early morning cocks, I am lying in bed musing on nudity. The nude. The state of being naked and unclothed. Don’t ask me why I’m thinking of this; I can only assume that it’s because I am rarely awake at this unrealistic hour and my brain is rebelling by floating into inappropriate territories.

I like being naked. I’m not ashamed to admit that, for me, being naked is natural and comfortable. I don’t get the whole naked taboo that society has placed on us. We are born naked (unless there’s been some freakish accident during conception and you were born in a top hat and tails, or a cocktail dress – in which case, I’d like to see a photo of the birth please). Technically, clothing exists to provide protection from the elements (and perhaps also from the occasional hungry, hungry caterpillar). Throughout the years, however, the more “civilized” we’ve become, the more cloth we’ve needed to cover our bits and pieces. Society judges the propriety of its denizens based on how much skin is covered, and in what areas.

Remember when showing a bit of neck, shoulder or ankle was considered risqué? Well ok, maybe none of us do, because none of us lived in Victorian England. Similarly, I’m fairly certain that none of us (immortals notwithstanding) remember the original purpose of a wimple. My point is that the pillars of civilization have always prided themselves on the unnecessary lengths of cloth that they’ve managed to drape over their cohorts. And all for the sake of respectability and decorum.

Look at toddlers – not babies who cannot walk or talk, but the ones between the ages of one and five, the ones who have awareness and complex thought processes. These little people generally love being naked. They’ll run around all day peeing on the floor if you let them (please note, I am not advocating mass peeing on floors – this is just a figure of speech). At some point, however, they get it in their heads that naked = bad. At first, they’ll do subversive things like lifting their skirts to show you their panties (in order to prove that they’re no longer wearing diapers). They might strip because they “feel too hot”. In some cases (quite often in fact) they’ll escape from a bath or shower and run smack dab into the midst of the people you’ve invited for dinner screaming, “I’m naked! I’m naked! Yay! Look at me!”

Small children prefer to be naked, that’s the bottom line. And it doesn’t ever concern them that they are, indeed, naked unless an adult points it out to them. From the time Lila learned to talk, she’d always remark on my habit of not wearing a shirt when at home. “No sirt for you, Uncle Wivee?” Little did she know that two minutes before her parents knocked on my door I was stone, stark naked. I never wear clothes when I’m at home. Unless, of course, the company I am in demands it. Sometimes the company that I’m in actually demands that I remove my clothes, but that’s neither here nor there in this current discussion.

My family was always very open about this sort of thing. Growing up, I saw my parents naked constantly. It was no big deal. They’ve become a bit more conservative in their attitude to being au naturel since they hit somewhere around forty, but they’re still really comfortable with their states of undress. As am I. Granted, I’m not going to wander around Kingstown in my birthday suit, but I don’t see why I can’t.

I saw my Venezuelan neighbours the other night at a poetry reading. We’ve never actually met, but I know they’re Venezuelan because of gossip and because I overheard them speaking Spanish at the Venezuelan embassy. They kept staring at me, whispering and laughing. I can only assume that they’ve been spying on me drifting around my flat without any clothes on and suddenly realized who I was. But you see, it really doesn’t matter to me. Except for a very few unfortunate cases, don’t we all have penises, vaginas, breasts and buttocks (not all on the same person obviously)?

We were having this discussion the other day on twitter, and one of my friends made the following observation (which was later echoed by several other people): “I associate being naked with sex. Hence, when I am naked for reasons other than sex, I get confused and disoriented”. Is this why people are so uncomfortable with nudity? Is it because it makes them (unconsciously) think of carnal pleasures and generalized ravishment? Why? Surely there’s an innocence and purity to nudity rather than something libidinous. The naked body has inspired art because of the beauty of it’s lines, the subtleties of skin colour and the exposure of self that it engenders. Not because it makes us think of boinking. Although I suppose, for adolescents and most men, that’s an optional extra.

Then, of course, there’s the idea that partial nudity is sexier than full nudity. The hint of things to come I suppose. The cake before we’ve licked off all the icing, so to speak. There’s a reason the word “dishabille” is so intriguing. So people have come up with all kinds of ways to cover themselves partially and in a sexy manner.

Apropos of the above, I don’t get thongs. The whole concept of shoving a piece of cloth up my ass and leaving it there all day long is something I find singularly unappealing. Whale tails should stay on whales. They are not sexy. If you are in the habit of wearing your thong whale tail style then you just look plain stupid.

I’ll admit that I’ve flirted with thongs. Well, with one thong at any rate. A friend of mine once gave me a box of “goodies” for Christmas. This little crate o’ sex contained an assortment of confections and apparatus all intended to fuel the pleasures of the flesh. Within the confines of this toothsome Pandora’s box were two articles of clothing – both thongs. I wore the leopard print one once. Well ok, I wore it twice: once because I thought I’d try it out in a sexy situation, and once because I’d not done my laundry and had no other clean underwear. The “sexy” time became an evening of fun and games (not in itself undesirable) and the lack of laundry day was just plain uncomfortable and idiotic. I felt like a white trash ho out trawling for johns. Not a pleasant feeling for a man. I cannot speak for the fairer sex.

The other thong in my little pleasure chest was a… erm… let’s just say that I called it my equine underwear. Sometimes I called it Dobby. It was a horse. It was a horse that went “neigh”. It was a fluffy horse, with googlie eyes, that fit like a sheath (with a string going up the butt crack for support) and went “neigh” every time you pressed its nose. And its nose was in a very sensitive spot. I think the majority of my male friends have tried this on at some point or other. Over their pants I mean. It’s not like we all had a little male bonding session focusing on my horse thong.

How would one wear such a thong any way? Surely the nose would press up against your jeans causing your crotch to neigh at inopportune times? Is one supposed to wear it in such a manner as to reveal it festively while surprising one’s wife/girlfriend/partner/boyfriend/lover/sporadic love buddy/favourite coworker/classroom full of students/doctor? Is it a Halloween costume gone awry? I have never figured this out. Dobby seems to have gone missing sometime over the past few years and my moving house twice. I suppose you could say that he’s gone to the glue factory.

I have no satisfactory way of ending this blog post. There’s no real conclusion to be drawn. So I shall end with a poem; one of my favourites:

The Naked and the Nude

For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.

Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.

The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman’s trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.

The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime nude!

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

WTF?

2009-07-02T14:28:00.002-04:00

So today I go to the post office to collect a package. There’s a little booth set up under the post office arcade: the Argyle International Airport Information booth. There’re brochures, a huge map, a television, and a couple of smiling, friendly people taking questions and so on. What’s the big deal, right? So ok, there’s a booth; that’s a good thing, right?

Of course it’s a good thing. Vincentians do need more information about the new airport. It’s marvelous that the government has set up this information point so people can find out more about such an immense, national undertaking. Of course, the actual information is watered-down for public consumption but, obviously, people only need to know certain things, and in simple language.

Here’s what upset me when I saw this. Oh yeah, did I mention that I am upset? I am, in fact, livid. Just to be clear, I am fit to be tied.

Where’s the information booth for matters pertaining to the Proposed Constitution of SVG 2009?

This airport is not scheduled to be completed for another two years (at least – this is what we’ve been told). The decision to build an international airport has already been made – the earthworks have begun. There’s no longer any real argument as to the future existence of this thing. The proposed Constitution, however, is not a done deal. The referendum vote is in what, two months? Three?

In order to gain access to a copy of the proposed Constitution, one has a few options:

drive to Campden Park, get a ticket, drive to town, present ticket to some bureaucrat, pay said bureaucrat, collect receipt, drive back to Campden Park, collect document (drive between town and Campden Park could be anywhere between 15 – 30 mins depending on traffic);

go to the government website and download in compartmentalized, highly inefficient pdf format;

be lucky enough to have entire pdf documented e-mailed to you via forward; or,

I don’t know, but there may be other options.

I have it on pdf, but it’s difficult to read because, well, reading anything for too long on my laptop screen makes my migraines act up. I’d like the actual hardcopy document, but have yet to do the whole yellow brick road collection dance. Printing the entire document will cost more than purchasing it.

If I want information on the new airport, I just need to pick up a convenient brochure at the centrally located booth. If, on the other hand, I want to get a hold of the proposed Constitution, or if I want information on it, I need to go through hell. Which is more immediate and important to this country right now? The extraordinarily well publicized (or propagandized) Argyle Airport, or the woefully under exposed Constitution?

The ramifications (both positive and negative) of a new airport are obvious and have been discussed in the public forum for several years now: boost in national revenue, increased tourism, ease of international travel, job creation, massive international debt, selling our collective souls etc etc.

The proposed Constitution, however, is not getting much official play. Yeah there’s the occasional edification programme on television – the language used being way above the heads of most people; and yeah there’ve been newspaper articles (rather, letters to the editor). But the government has been remarkably close-mouthed and secretive about the proposed Constitution. Apparently, concerned citizens have until July 11th to lodge any formal oppositions to the document. This date has not been widely publicized; it has been announced a mere handful of times on the radio. The announcements would’ve been easy to miss.

What are we left to conclude? Forgive me, what am I left to conclude? I know my brain does not always work in the most linear fashion, but doesn’t it strike anyone else as odd that the Argyle Airport, a project that is more or less a fait accompli, is getting public education play, while the proposed Constitution is basically being treated like an irksome piece of paper to be swept under the rug?

Let me put this another way. Am I to conclude that the makers of the constitution have their own agenda? Is it possible that the whole idea is to get it slipped in, under the public radar, so that it becomes a done deal before we even realize it? And who benefits most from this strategy?

I’m so much in favour of a new constitution, but the current proposed document has some flaws. It does not necessarily give us the rights that we should be expecting from a Republican Constitution. It purports to be a document that will help shape our new republic but, at the same time, restricts some of the rights expected from a republic. We do not, realistically, have enough time to properly study this document before we have to vote on it; in fact, one of the country’s three QCs publicly stated this some time ago. If a QC doesn’t have enough time to properly peruse the implications of the proposed Constitution, how on Earth am I, Mr. Johnny Public, supposed to be able to? Especially when its importance is being so downplayed in the mainstream?

What’s more important RIGHT NOW? Educating us about an airport, or educating us about something that will change the way our country is run forever?

Ball? Nope. Balls-Up? Yup.

2009-06-24T23:46:00.002-04:00

DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS POST ARE MINE, AND MINE ALONE, AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE SVGCC, OR ANY OF IT’S EMPLOYEES OR STUDENTS.

On Monday, the college where I teach had graduation. It was a star-studded affair, despite the fact that several of the stars (read: important people socially and politically) cancelled at the last minute, or simply chose not to show up. I know this for a fact because I am the one who designs the programme. And I had to keep changing it. At any rate, the graduation came off with much fanfare and the Christian Fellowship kids sang their hearts out like they’d just won Digicel Rising Stars (which they could definitely win because they’re miles ahead of all the previous winners. I could listen to these guys all the time).

Everything went well until the… erm… grad ball. As I understand it, several students were:
• dancing on the ceiling,
• throwing up in the car park,
• giggling at the pretty patterns floating between their fingers,
• attempting fisticuffs with the shrubbery,
• being admitted to the hospital in a barely copasetic state, or
• all of the above.

Here’s what happened (allegedly). This is not the official story, since I believe the official story has yet to be even discovered. In other words, don’t take this as gospel; but it’s probably close to gospel. Like a psalm maybe. Possibly a revelation. Voila, below:

A group of young, fun-seeking whippersnappers, for reasons known only to themselves, arrived at the ball in a butternut squash. They couldn’t afford the rental on an entire pumpkin. The reason they couldn’t afford the rental on a top class pumpkin is two-fold. Firstly, they had spent all their money on cake mix (or, possibly, a rather special sort of baker). Secondly, they spent the remainder of their money on a combination of marijuana and cocaine, which, when combined, mirror and amplify the behaviour of the more diverting, psychotropic drugs.

In other words, our heroes caused a confection to be baked that outshone all other confections available at the ball. They arrived at the ball with their stimulating chocolate cake. They apparently passed the thing around. Several people sampled their wares. Several of the several people who sampled what is known on the street as the “joy cake” were aware that what they were sampling was, indeed, laced with a combination of psychotropic narcotics. Several others were totally unaware and were simply happy to have some cake to eat. If I were there, I would’ve sampled quite a large piece of cake since I am a greedy pig who cannot resist free cake. But this is not about me, nor is it about my food-related, lamentable lack of will power.

Several students were admitted to the ER at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital. They were apparently suffering from narcotics poisoning (or similar). Those who weren’t admitted were only saved because they had systematically purged themselves at the event. Others simply had a good enough constitution (better than the SVG Proposed Constitution 2009 for sure – ok that was cheap, and not particularly clever, but I couldn’t resist) to deal with a massive amount of drugs coursing merrily through their blood streams. Perhaps they are old hands. Blood tests conducted by the highly efficient staff at the hospital revealed, almost instantaneously, the presence of BOTH cocaine and marijuana. It was the quickest blood testing in the history of this country’s medical establishment. Normally it takes weeks to get a result. Admittedly, I am usually testing for stds or diabetes (which are not as unrelated as you may think – both are caused by sweet ting) and not the presence of drugs. But still.

The bottom line is that someone, or someones, brought that cake to the ball. Other someones ate it – some knowing what it contained, others without any knowledge. It poisoned people. One report had a young man’s sight slowly going green before disappearing entirely. He was behind the wheel of his car at the time. It is a miracle that no one is dead. The whole debacle is reprehensible. But it gets worse!

“WHAT?!” you exclaim in barely concealed shock, “surely not, Will! Surely this is as low as it could possibly go! What could possibly be worse?!”

And here I shall take a slight tangential journey through the philosophical part of my mind. Bare with me. You always do. Correct my spelling if necessary.

The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College, Division of Arts, Sciences and General Studies, has a terrible reputation among the general populace of this country. The reason for this reputation is so complicated and messed up, that it may take a while for me to unravel its various threads. Its essence however, is this: We are an A’ level college, and people (ie, the general public) cannot decide whether the students who come here are young adults or simply old children.

When our students perform well they are lauded for their responsibility, commitment and dedication. The lecturers are rarely mentioned. When our students fuck up royally, the lecturers and administration are immediately blamed because we allow lawlessness and slackness to reign in our classrooms, and on our campus. So what do people want? Should we treat our students as adults? That is, should we allow them leeway to make ALL of their own decisions regarding stuff that is not in our control as lecturers? Should we treat our students as if they are children? Should we suspect their every motive? Should we disallow them responsibility and ownership of their own development as human beings?

By the time we get our students, they are (usually) age 16. It is a weird time. It is a weird age. They are like Britney Spears – no longer a girl, yet not quite a woman. Well. The girls are at any rate. I’m pretty sure the guys are no longer boys, yet not quite men. They are, in fact, boyz 2 men. I don’t think I ever taught Britney Spears though, because I would’ve told her to avoid shaving her… erm… head. But I digest. Moving along.

Essentially, we get the blame when our students:
• fail anything academically,
• under-perform in sports,
• decide to spend all day liming on the block – any block – take your pick, they can be found all over our great nation at any time during the day,
• find themselves splashed all over the internet in compromising (or just plain naked and pornographic) positions (both still and motion pictures),
• suffer from displays of public drunkenness, or any other public altered mental state,
• become premature parents, or
• just plain make a mess of things.

Now here’s my problem with us taking the blame for this. We receive these young people in an almost fully formed state. Their previous schools have shaped them, their parents/families have shaped them, their experiences have shaped them. How on god’s green earth do you expect us to re-shape them in two freaking years? The most we can hope to do is influence their academic behaviour. We don’t have time for much else.

I am a lecturer. This is what my job description says. My government-approved pay slip lists me as a LECTURER and not a teacher. What’s the point of this? Well… I lecture. Technically, my job is to walk into a classroom, spout my mouth off for 2:30 hrs, then leave. Discipline is not in my job description. Uniform violations are not in my job description. Policing the personal and sex lives of my students is not in my job description. When one of my students shows up in class with a baby bump, I congratulate her and then make sure that everything is ok at home. She is certainly old enough to know where babies come from, and she made a decision not to protect herself from this. Yes, I know there are sometimes extenuating circumstances, but I am generalizing for effect.

Of course, the reality is that I have to manage my classroom. For practical purposes, I am a teacher and not a lecturer. To lecture is to lose your students, so I rarely do it (and when I do, it is for short periods, followed by discussion and/or work). Even then, however, I am not in charge of the decisions that my almost-adult students make. I can try to guide, I can try to offer encouragement and advice. But I cannot, and should not, tell my students what they MUST do.

When I get my students they already believe certain things. If my students were taught that lying is an acceptable form of behaviour, then they will lie. If my students were taught that sex is a mercenary pastime, fun for all the family, then they will behave in a manner that reflects this. If my students observe their parents drinking, gambling, swearing, cheating on their spouses, deliberately absenting themselves from their families’ lives, wearing less clothing or more chunky jewelry than Li’l Kim and Fiddy Cent combined, going to church on Sunday morning while carousing on Sunday night, shirking responsibility, being impolite and downright piggish, or anything else, then they will accept this behaviour as the norm. As a result, they will see nothing wrong with behaving in that manner themselves.

The college does not create monsters. The college is not a place where sex demons and alcohol imps lurk around every corner waiting to waylay your unsuspecting, innocent child. Your children make decisions based on a decision-making process that YOU (and to a lesser degree their previous school) have taught them. If your daughter shows up in an e-mail, grinning from ear to ear while the rest of her is exposed for the world to see, then what role have YOU played in her moral upbringing? You may have told her that certain behaivour is unacceptable, but then has your own, observed behaviour borne out your admonitions?

At one notorious meeting, a parent (I assume) stood up and asked: “what is the college doing about girls in internet porn?” Ahmmmm… huh? Well, we were thinking of offering a course in cinematography or fine art film-making so that the quality of the porn would be up to scratch. Seriously. How the hell is that our problem? If you don’t want your daughters to be photographed or filmed while naked/involved in something sexual then teach them self-respect and let them know that sex does not equal love! Now sit down and don’t say anything again unless it’s sensible. I do not suffer fools very well.

Just as an aside, I want to say that the students who mess up are in the minority. The majority of students are “good kids” (and what’s that definition anyway?). Also, I wish we lived in a society that allowed people who mess up to redeem themselves. Unfortunately we don’t. We live in a society that points, laughs and judges, rather than forgiving, helping and moving on. Personally, I believe in forgiving and moving on. People mess up. This is called being human.

So all those people who have called in to the radio programmes, and who will be writing scathing articles in this week’s newspapers about the state of the college, based on the “joy cake” incident, please remember something very important. The SVGCC, DASGS does not organize or sanction graduation balls. We organize a ceremony, held during the day, usually between 9am and 12pm. Any other celebration is organized either by the students themselves, or some other 3rd party who has been contracted, by the students, to host a ball. It is not a college function. Consequently, there are no college-approved chaperones there. If you want chaperones, then why not enlist the help of these students’ parents and guardians?

In other words, please do not abdicate your parental responsibility to us. If you did not want your child to be at the ball without adult supervision, then you had one of two choices: either keep your child at home, or go to the ball yourself and supervise your child’s behaviour. If you chose to let your child go, and your child knowingly ingested a combination of marijuana and cocaine, then blame your child, and forgive him/her. Allow your child, who made an adult decision, to face the very adult consequences of that decision. Do not seek to place blame on anyone else. It would be misplaced blame. If, on the other hand, your child ate a piece of the “joy cake” in ignorance, then please do not point your finger at the college administration. This was not our fete. We had our graduation celebration earlier in the day, and the worst thing to come out of that was that we were all slightly bored (except for the singing).

And Queen Victoria Rejoiced

2009-06-14T10:28:00.007-04:00

[P]eople don’t like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.
– from Making Money by Terry Pratchett –

I was lying in bed reading when I came across the quote above. It got me thinking. There’s been a lot of hoop-la lately about two things: the proposed new constitution of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and gay rights. It seems that there’s nothing much else on the tips of peoples’ tongues and pens in SVG these days. I’m probably going to meander a bit here (as usual) because I’m thinking as I type, but eventually I’ll get around to why the quote got me thinking about these two things.

Last week, Paula David, a good friend of mine and one of SVG’s more respected lawyers (she’s honest, dedicated and intelligent – need I say more?), wrote an interesting letter to the papers. She was protesting clause 17(2) of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Constitution Bill 2009, which says that [t]he State shall protect marriage, which shall be a legal union only between a person who is biologically male at birth and a person who is biologically female at birth.

Paula makes some very serious points regarding this clause. She mentions the fact that the clause further cements homophobia in SVG because the problem now has added legal backing rather than being a purely socio-religious phenomenon for which Queen Victoria had a penchant. She speaks about the hypocrisy of the state protecting marriage in this way, while neglecting the major cause of marriage’s erosion –adultery. She mentions the twin fists of religion and minority control. Finally, she throws in the fact that some people are born without identifiable gender, thereby rendering these people unmarriageable under the new constitution.

The whole issue of gay rights has been one of hot debate here (independent of the constitution I mean). Almost every week there’s some letter or other in the paper either arguing for or against the rights of gay and lesbian people (we not really far enough along yet to argue anything bout transgendered people – let us wrap out heads around the gays first, nuh!). Usually the argument is against.

Paula’s letter seems to have generated some buzz. It’s been mentioned on the radio talk shows and a couple people have responded to it in this week’s papers. On Sunday last, there was an interesting discussion on a radio call-in programme. The four-person panel was made up of (if I remember correctly): the host (who’s a well-known lawyer), another famous Vincy legal eagle, the resident tutor of our UWI Open Campus (and our foremost Vincy historian) and a first-year-going-to-second-year student at Cave Hill (I know for a fact that she’s a straight A student because she’s my best friend’s niece, my past student, and also a good friend – she tells me her grades). I think there may have been one more person, but I can’t really remember.

From the sound of it, the panel all thought this particular clause was unworthy of being in the constitution. They looked at it from the legal and historical angles. How can the law proscribe the behaviour of consenting adults? How can the law “protect” something that is essentially a religious convention? A couple of the panelists approached the matter from a human rights angle.

The majority of the people who called in to the show were all in huge favour of the clause. Big surprise, right? The PM actually called in at one point (and sort of hijacked the programme for about half an hour to weigh in on the issue). He said something really important. He mentioned that he disagreed with Sabrina (the UWI student) on some of her views (actually his opinion was rather Roman Catholic – love the sinner, not the sin; and definitely legislate against the sin), but he also said that her thinking bears investigation since it may represent the views of the younger generation. And who’s going to be affected most by the new constitution anyway? Not the younger people?

And this is where I have my biggest problem with this clause and the fact that it is included in the new constitution. Historically, we’ve inherited several laws from Victorian England; the sodomy laws are among this lot. Isn’t the whole purpose of a new constitution to free us of such unsophisticated fragments of our flawed colonial past? I mean the very culture that first made these laws has since abandoned them. We, instead of doing similar, are making them more stringent.

Our government is always reminding us that we’re a modern, post-colonial society. I agree wholeheartedly. But isn’t it a bit antediluvian and colonial to make the lives of minority groups harder rather than easier by pointing out their subordinate status in a document as august as a constitution? I haven’t actually read the thing yet, by the way, so it may, possibly, say something positive elsewhere about sexuality and human rights, but I don’t know. I have to get a copy.

What happens to the generations that will follow us if their values do change? Yes, the new constitution can be amended; but why start off in so restrictive a manner that these amendments will become necessary? Haven’t we learned from the rest of the world? Instead of using this stellar opportunity to free up our laws on a more human rights basis, we are using it to cement the restrictions on an underground minority. As Paula says in her letter, the message being sent by clause 17(2) of the new constitution is that gays and lesbians are second-class citizens, undeserving of the same rights and privileges of everyone else. How can we, in a country that is supposedly in the process of development, treat people with such flagrant disregard?

Here’s the mental image I had when reading the quote from the beginning of this post. I thought of sheep and wolves. The flock of sheep will allow a lone wolf to systematically decimate its ranks. But if the sheep, in a fit of righteous ire, decided to band together, couldn’t they all turn on the wolf, and trample and bite it to smithereens? Follow my fragmentary logic here (and I realize that this analogy can just as easily be used against my theory as for it).

What if, and this is just a whim, what if the gays and lesbians of SVG were to band together and come out of their closets? What if they all decided to take to the streets and march in protest of the discrimination they face every day? Would we ridicule them? Would we point and laugh before throwing stones at them? Would they all lose their jobs and their standing in society? Or rather, would we, despite our heterosexual moral superiority, all of a sudden realize that they exist and are here for good, and need recognition and protection? Would the furor soon die down once we realize that our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters etc etc etc were marching in that parade?

I know this is merely speculation since I don’t think Vincentians – gay, straight or enamoured of livestock – will ever really band together in sufficient numbers to protest anything. Not and get results at any rate.

On a related note, another clause in the new constitution allows for religious leaders to hold political office. Apparently. Huh? Whatever happened to separation of church and state? If we have religious leaders in parliament, are we not then allowing people with a morality bias (and a congregation to placate) to dictate our lives? Doesn’t this lead us down the path of theocracy rather than democracy? But that’s a matter for another post I think. This one has already gone on too long, and I want to include Paula’s letter so you can read it for yourselves – it’s a brilliant piece of writing (better than mine for sure).

________________________________________________________

Paula’s letter:

The following is a reproduction of clause 17(2) of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Constitution Bill 2009: "The State shall protect marriage, which shall be a legal union only between a person who is biologically male at birth and a person who is biologically female at birth".

So it’s come to this: we are so proud of our homophobia that we want to enshrine it in our Constitution. I will probably be talking to the wind, but for whatever its worth, here goes.

I am writing because I don’t trust myself to speak. This development is so upsetting that I fear I may become at best, incoherent and at worst, abusive.

The would be framers of a Constitution worthy of our soon to be ennobled Caribbean civilization wish to keep us permanently mired in the state of being an intolerant, unkind, backwater. The professed intention of clause 17(2) is the protection of marriage. How that intention can be furthered by a constitutional provision is anybody’s guess. I cannot fathom how it can be, but I am willing to be steered in the right direction by those more perceptive than myself.

Marriage is worthy of protection. It is quite possible that it is in particular need of protection in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Our divorce rate is staggering. I often marvel at the fact that Caribbean sociologists consistently posit that marriage is relatively rare in our communities. If we aren’t getting married, who are all those people crowding the gallery of the Court House every Friday, waiting for the hearing of their divorces?

I have a not insignificant divorce practice. I, therefore, have some knowledge of the threats to marriage in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. A major threat to marriage in our society is adultery. It is certainly the cause of a disproportionate number of divorces here. The noble framers of our Constitution bill have not seen it fit to attempt to curb the behaviour of the adulterers in our society. Instead, they’ve chosen to attack the gay community. Did they sing “Boom Bye Bye” after they said their obligatory commencement prayer at the beginning of each meeting? Okay, I’m becoming abusive. See why I can’t talk?

Are the framers of the Constitution bill unaware that a significant number of gays in this society are men married to women? Are they unaware that this phenomenon exists because “stigma and discrimination” (thank you HIV awareness campaigners, I’m sure you won’t resent my borrowing of your catch phrase) forces these men to seek the cover of a socially acceptable domestic arrangement? Are they aware of how harmful these arrangements can be to both parties to a marriage and any children they may have? Don’t they know any man who lives the lie of a marriage he cannot find fulfillment in? Are they so blissfully ignorant that they have never heard of a woman who struggles to cope with the knowledge of her husband’s homosexuality; or worse, a wife who is completely unaware of her husband’s true sexual orientation until she learns of it in a very unpleasant way?

Or maybe they know and they just don’t care. The tragedy of this is that I have a nagging suspicion that the inclusion of this clause was motivated by nothing more significant than empty posturing; that it is no more than infantile attention seeking behaviour. They want it to make BBC Caribbean news. They want their 15 minutes of fame. Of course, part of the motivation most certainly is pandering to the church; the same thing that motivates Caribbean politicians to have “visiting relationships” (read Enid Clarke’s “My Mother Who Fathered Me” if you’re unfamiliar with the phrase) with various churches.

Or maybe each society needs a vulnerable community that it can beat up with impunity. Maybe it is an incurable feature of the human condition. Apartheid South Africa beat up blacks. Hitler beat up Jews. Israel beats up Palestinians. White America beats up black America. Jamaicans beat up gays. Vincentians are proposing to trump the Jamaicans.

Which brings me to my next point; how can we, the sons and daughters of slaves, bring ourselves to discriminate against any group of persons because of something they cannot help and which in the grand scheme of things is utterly insignificant? Just as we cannot help being black and just as our blackness in the grand scheme of things is utterly insignificant, so too, gays cannot help being gay and in the grand scheme of things their sexuality is utterly insignificant. I suspect that this is where the Bible thumpers will start jumping up and down. If you’re going to repeat to me the arguments I read in our local papers every week don’t bother. I’ve heard them; they’re lame. The judges’ findings of fact are not consistent with the evidence.

There are gay doctors, lawyers, street sweepers, musicians, bankers, business people and gardeners all over our society leading productive lives; each doing his or her own part to ensure that the wheels of this society keep on turning. How dare anyone attempt to accord them second class citizenship and try to enshrine it in our Constitution? How dare anyone send a message to every little gay boy and every little lesbian girl that “You are a thing apart. You are a thing unacceptable. You are a thing unworthy”?

I will end by inviting the worthy framers of our Constitution bill to consider the effect of clause 17(2) on persons who are born intersex. You have made it clear that you intend to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Do you also intend to discriminate against persons whose gender may not be capable of determination at birth?

Paula E. David

Hypothetical Conversation About Being A Cracker

2009-05-31T10:06:00.004-04:00

Hypothetical Question-Asking Person (HQAP): What’s it like to be white?

Me: Huh? What you mean?

HQAP: White. You know: honkey, cracker, pale-face, whitey-bajan-penny-ah-pung, G. I. Joe, red-man, yellow-man, clear skin, fair, pinkins… you know. White.

Me: Are you for real?

HQAP: Duh.

Me: I dunno. Haven’t thought about it in over ten years. Actually, I’m kinda over all that race shit. I’d like to think I’m just a person.

HQAP: Ok. Whatever. But what’s it like to be a white Vincentian?

Me: What’s it like to be a black Vincentian?

HQAP: Eh? It’s like… well… just normal.

Me: Yeah. Me too.

HQAP: Um. Really? You don’t feel any different?

Me: Only when people make an issue out of it. Otherwise it’s just… you know… normal. One time in class one of my students made a white joke and I was like, “HELLO! White man standing right here!” And they all laughed and one of them said: “Eh? Sah you not white!”

HQAP: But you’re blatantly white. I mean, if you were any whiter I’d need shades from the glare.

Me: I know, right? Shut up… So anyway, apparently you’re not really white-white if you’re born here and have the accent and know about our culture and so on. Some guy once called me an inside-out-roast-breadfruit.

HQAP: So what are you, then?

Me: Just… I dunno… Just fair-skin.

HQAP: So you don’t feel superior or different?

Me: Oh I always feel superior. But that’s ‘cos I’m smarter than the average bear, not because I’m white. Plus I’m prettier than the average bear. So that makes me feel good.

HQAP: The average bear?

Me: Yogi Bear reference. God you’re so young.

HQAP: But seriously.

Me: Sigh. I just feel like me. Skin colour doesn’t really enter into the equation unless you want it to, unless you force it in there.

HQAP: So you never had any problems? Never felt, in yourself, that you were different?

Me: Like I said, not unless people made me feel that way. Like if they brought it up. But it doesn’t actually affect me in any way, anymore. I just brush it off and move on with my typically Vincentian life.

HQAP: Ah. So it DID used to bother you then. At some point.

Me: When I moved to Barbados to do A’Levels I noticed that all the white people hung out with each other, the black people with each other, the Indians with each other etc etc etc. This is a broad generalization, ‘cos there were also class issues. It was a bit of a culture shock actually. We don’t really have that sort of segregation in St. Vincent. My mother claims that I called home crying about it because my friends wouldn’t lime with each other and I didn’t fit in. I have no recollection of that, but Mum swears it’s the truth. Whatever.

HQAP: So being white WAS a problem for you, then.

Me: Nope. Being white wasn’t the problem. Being Vincentian, and living and going to school in a country that was segregated along racial lines was the problem. We’re not really used to that here. Bajans will tell you that this doesn’t exist. Maybe it doesn’t anymore. But 17 years ago it did. If I went to Harbour Lights (then we called it Harbour Whites) or Sandy Bank with certain friends, then other friends wouldn’t be there. The reverse was true when I went to Reggae Lounge or After Dark. I don’t really remember hanging out with my Indian friends outside school.

HQAP: Wow. So the problem wasn’t your whiteness then?

Me: Nah. It was that I didn’t understand that my whiteness was an issue. It was a whole different story in Jamaica, though; especially at UWI. There I was like an oddity. I think I must’ve seen maybe two, three white people on that campus, students I mean, in the whole three years there. Everyone loved me. And I think only part of it was my sparkling personality and superlative good looks. They loved me because I was white and yet I was down-to-earth. Like they expected me to be all superior and haughty and shit. I had a friend who once told me that she’d made up her mind to dislike me at first because of my skin colour. Then she changed her mind once she got to know me. It actually became kind of a pain in the ass after a while. People expected me to be certain things because of my skin colour. I guess that’s how it is in Jamaica. I even had a lecturer who would refer to me as the “small island white boy”. And there was another lecturer who, whenever he spoke about slavery and Europeans, would glare at me and almost seem to be silently challenging me to apologise. Idiot. Everyone would look at me when he did it too, so I wasn’t imagining it.

HQAP: So that was difficult for you?

Me: It was. Then I dealt with it. I became outspokenly white. I was in the drama society and I’d do monologues about being a white Caribbean man. I’d write short stories and poetry for Creative Writing class with Prof. Morris that bemoaned the whole situation. It was all very arty and literature-scholary. Eventually people got it and started treating me like a real person rather than some sort of strangely exalted duppy. And I think that’s the last time I ever really thought about it until you brought it up. God I haven’t really thought about this stuff in years.

HQAP: Oh. Well sorry.

Me: No it’s ok. You just want to know. I get that. You’re around the same age I was when I was thinking about these things. Perhaps it’s something we go through. Who knows.

HQAP: So that’s it? That’s all she wrote?

Me: Yup. Nowadays I just live my life the best way I know how. Maybe other people have had different experiences. I have a few ex-pat friends (well two really) and I’m pretty sure their experience is more racially charged. But I suspect that’s as much due to their foreign-ness and cultural practices – like being on time – as their skin colour. But yeah, if you want a different perspective, ask around. This is just my experience. You should ask mixed heritage people too. My cousin has a black dad and a white mum. She once told me that she’s black in the states and white here. Go figure.

HQAP: Well thanks for talking to me.

Me: No problem. I think that this helped me realize that I’m no longer concerned with this stuff. That it’s no longer a problem for me. It’s amazing how things can just fade and you don’t even recognize it.

_______________________________________________

A few weeks ago, one of my super-students (past student now, actually – but they’ll always be my students ☺) asked me to do a sort of request post. He wanted to know what my experience is as a white Vincentian.

The above is actually the third manifestation of this post. The first version was quite prosaic, and very academic and philosophical; it basically hung off of a framework of anecdotal experiences from myself and people I know. But it lacked something. What it lacked was any genuine concern with what I was writing. I worked on it for about two weeks before realizing that it just didn’t sound like me. I read it for my cousin, Bops, and told her how it felt like pulling teeth to write it, and she told me the most obvious thing.

She said, “Wivee (that’s my childhood nickname), it’s boring and you’re not into it because you’re over all that. You dealt with it at UWI remember? (She was at the Edna Manley College when I was at UWI – so we overlapped in JA) You got over all that shit long ago.”

She was right. I was over it. I am over it. So I decided that I’d reproduce a monologue I’d done while at UWI that had gone over really well – a monologue about what it feels like to be white and Caribbean. I edited the monologue a bit (for language mainly) and then wrote a short something to accompany it. That’s when I realized that the monologue does not describe how I feel now; it describes how I felt 13/14 years ago. So that wouldn’t work.

I was still agonizing over this post, because I wanted to be up to the challenge of doing a request. So this third draft, if you will, is what I’ve decided to post. The voices of HQAP and Me sound identical. That’s because it’s all taking place in my head. Plus I’m too lazy to try to recreate Javal’s (he’s the student who requested the post - and, theoretically, he's HQAP) voice. He’s actually much more erudite and well-spoken than I could ever hope to be. Plus he knows plenty big words. And he knows how to use them in every day conversation too.

In other, completely unrelated news, I found a few grey hairs in my beard. I thought I’d never have to face that since I went bald ten years ago. I forgot about the facial hair. Perhaps I’ll take up drinking again; anything to kill the pain of getting older and closer to the grave. Sigh.

Quickie

2009-05-20T17:24:00.005-04:00

My internet connection was massively screwed. I called my old arch-nemesis, Sour Lime. The agent was amazingly patient, instructive and professional. She sounded like she'd had a long day; her voice was tired, but she didn't let this affect our session one little bit. I, against my better judgment, am horribly impressed and elated.

I never thought I'd say this, but kudos to Sour Lime! Perhaps the exclamation point is unnecessary, but I'm truly dazzled by this brilliant, unexpected display. I lauded the agent - thanked her for her patience etc. I felt like inviting her out to dinner to celebrate. Unfortunately I could not, and cannot, remember her name. But her voice was sultry despite (possibly because of) her vocal fatigue.

My heart feels all warm and fuzzy. God, I'm such an inconstant person. I am potentially bi-polar when it comes to corporate bullshit, but for this post, and this post alone, I shall rename Sour Lime, Sweet Lime Juice.