Hey look! Dude!
I lift my head up from my lunch to see my best friend, JGo we'll call him, eating a burrito. A splotch of refried beans has fallen on his tan brown skin.
Look at this, dude. I'm bleeding.
I remember learning American history in seventh grade, and being absolutely appalled that a nation of people that did such horrendous things to others could be associated with me simply by how I look. I remember being proud that I was from Canada, where the slaves went to be freed, where the only good white people were left. I don't remember when I finally read that discrimination happened just as much in Canada as it did in the United States, but I remember feeling kind of sick about it. Had I really been that... pathetic?
I mean, I might as well be a member of the Aryan race. I am
blonde hair no denying that;
blue eyes no actually I have green eyes, and sometime hazel eyes, I mean it depends on the shirt I wear, so really it doesn't count;
heterosexual but I'm sensitive to everyone, I can totally empathize with homosexuality, I told JGo I loved him once and he thought I meant in a romantic way, in a sexual way, and that was the downfall of our friendship, so really I understand, see? I understand how it feels to be misunderstood;
Protestant though I no longer consider myself any one denomination of Christianity and am sick of church politics;
a quarter German, a half Dutch, and another quarter Scottish-English-French, etc- Look, I am a cocktail of Caucasian conquest, the dominatrix of the world, the writer of history, the great Pater, the parternalistic oppressor. Tomorrow belongs to me.
But I'm from Canada. No one takes us seriously, not in the United States. I'm just a joke, to everyone. How can I be a part of this evil dominating force when no one takes me seriously?
JGo, I think I've figured out something about myself. I am fifteen.
"Yeah?"
I think I've got an Asian girl fetish.
Laugh. "What?"
I think I just really like Asian girls. They are the sexiest thing in the world to me.
"Dude, I like ‘em creamy white and chubby. Nothing like a guilty fuck from a white girl."
That's a terrible thing to say.
"What? Hispanics can't mix with white girls, is that what you're saying?"
Oh shut up. No. But you can't think that all chubby white girls would feel guilty about having sex. That just seems wrong to think, doesn't it? You don't believe that, eh?
In dopey Canadian voice, "Oh, I dunno, eh? Yuh think all Asian girls are pretty, dontchya know eh? Isn't that just as racist, eh?"
Okay first off, not all Canadians say "eh" all the time, or even say it like that, and Canadians don't talk like Minnesotans, and I don't think all Asian girls are pretty, I just find myself more than often attracted physically to Asian girls. And what is it with you anyway, JGo? You're whiter than me, ya coconut. You fucking a white girl wouldn't be anything special at all.
"Heh, that's what you think."
When I am cut open, I bleed maple syrup. I am also fantastic at hockey, and watch it as rabidly as my American friends watch football. I am extremely polite, incredibly provincial, and leave my doors unlocked because no one in Canada ever steals anything. I also have seven thousand guns, but I've never shot anyone before. I say "bore-oh," and "oat," not "oot," and "to-more-oh." To-more-oh belongs to me?
You know one day JGo and I were walking to school from our bus stop with this very attractive, exceedingly stupid Californian blonde girl, and I actually convinced her that Canada's electricity was run by penguins sliding around on icy turnstiles. We had her going the whole way from the stop to the entrance into school before she realized we were joking. Canadians have TV too, you know.
JGo tells me one day that he really hates his race. He really hates how they're all trying to get into his country illegally, making a bad name for all Hispanics, especially his family, who did it right, who did it legally. He hates how they're all fruit pickers and house cleaners. He thinks it's demeaning. The fucking wetbacks. He calls himself a coconut, brown on the outside, white on the inside, and lets everyone else call him that too. Funny, I thought everyone's insides were red.
I am Ernst Ludwig, ze Cherman Nazi in Cabaret, set in 1930's Berlin, who at the beginning of the play is insidiously charming, a real nice guy, giving Cliff, the American, played by JGo, a place to stay and a way of making money until suddenly, at the end of Act I, he reveals himself to be violently prejudiced against Cliff's Jewish friend who is supposed to be getting married. Drama invariably ensues.
My girlfriend at the time, a Japanese/Italian/entirely American named Courtney, is a Kit Kat Club dancer, clad in sexy clothing and dancing in the so-called club when Sally Bowles, Cliff's love interest, decides to sing. Backstage we'd always flirt, and kiss, and I'd wrap her up in my badass trench coat and tell her what a great job she was doing out there, dancing her heart out.
I'd sometimes joke backstage too with our stage manager, Daniel, a big guy, really into his religion, head of his Jewish youth group. I had co-stage-managed the previous show with him, and we both had helped build the set, like we always do.
So we're doing our tech rehearsal, and emotions are running high. Nothing is going right, as it never does during tech. Daniel is going crazy trying to coordinate all the set changes, with half of his crew always missing, half of his crew not knowing what they're doing. It was quite a mess, and everyone was getting pissed off because we had been rehearsing for nearly four hours and were just now getting to the Act I Finale. So finally, at the end of Act One, an Aryan prostitute and I sing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" in protest of the Jewish man's wedding, and acting as Ernst I do my best to fill my heart with the purest hatred possible, funneling it into this shuddering rage that bursts at the last part of the song,
the morning will come when the world IS MINE
Tomorrow belongs to me (zig heil!)
I don't remember why I went straight to Courtney after the song, but I wrapped her up again in my big costume coat, very happy to see her after the emotional drain of that scene, and then Sher comes whipping by, bumping the scenery into us as he rushes past to deal with something else. "Hey, easy Dan! Watch where you move that thing, you almost hit Courtney!"
"Not now, you fuckhead." Daniel stops, and turns toward me. "Not now, okay? You just go back to your sick little mixed race relationship and go fuck each other. Do not fuck with me. Not today. Not today."
"Excuse me?! EXCUSE ME?!" All pretenses of backstage whispering are cast aside. All separation between character and actor for one horrifying moment disappears. "What the fuck are you talking about you—"
"It's okay, leave it alone," Courtney grabs me, pushing me back, smothering the words "fucking Jew" that were teetering on the tip of my tongue.
"No, it's not okay," I push her aside. "Sher, don't you ever talk about me and Courtney that way, you hear me? Don't you ever fucking talk about her like that, you get me?"
"Don't fucking do this man. Not today." We are inches from each other's face.
Apparently Daniel's particular flavour of Jewish faith does not agree with interracial couples. My dad tells me this at home that night. It's a cultural thing. Just one specific minority group thinking one specific minority thing. He didn't mean it, my dad seems to say.
"Take it easy, man," JGo places a hand on my shoulder backstage. "Let's go into the green room. We've got to go change anyway."
I am in the front seat of a van filled with fifteen kids, driving back from Mexico where we had spent a week building houses, and we are now approaching the border. JGo is a few seats behind me. The border patrol man is a large, intimidating, clean-cut red-blooded American. He asks for all of our IDs. I pass along my Alien Registration Card (yes, I am an alien, beware!!!), which proves that I have a green card and am a legal resident of the United States. "Everyone American in there?" He peers over at JGo.
"Yep," my pastor answers. The agent hands me all our IDs. "All American. Oh, and one Canadian."
The border patrol agent laughs out loud, and with a final wave passes us through the border. I think he thought my pastor was joking, to help lighten up the mood. Must've been the funniest thing he'd heard all day.
If you prick us, do we not bleed? Shylock, can I hear that bit again? I don't think everyone was listening. And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?! Wait a minute, Shylock, just hold on a sec, no, no!-