When the crazy one came
She placed her finger on my forehead
And pushed on through
I woke up, face on fire
Spitting out diamonds
Thoroughly lost to logic
Craving her madness
– r. sakamoto
I have just had an extreme brush with rasicm. A boy came by, selling magazines. He’s twenty-four and underspoken, a good salesman to those who must believe in such things. He’s got a warner bros tie on and a packet in his hand with a list of the people he’s brought over “to his team”. It’s dark and cold, the sun driving under the horizon with a suddenness I’m not getting used to, so I invited him in for some cookies and bit of chat. The first thing I did was discard his sales pitch, break it over and over until he threw it away. That’s when he dropped his cover and became an amazed boy from Louisiana, stunned that a white girl was talking to him.
I hear about rasicm sometimes, when I’m in Canada, and my reaction is surprise. Surprise that it still exists as an issue, that people still regard skin colour as something to create differences over. Down here it is apparent in everything. The poor are the coloured, and the races don’t mingle. I am looked at strangely every time I take the bus, over and over I am the only pale face.
I kicked him out after half an hour, politely ejecting him from the premises, as his questions grew more personal in his confusion. “Have you ever been with a black man before?” That I might not only be a desperately lonely housewife is somehow unbelievable. I told him to come to Canada, as almost all the women there are fine with “that sort of thing”. I told him about globalfreeloaders and it was like a revelation. I think the poor boy is going to find a computer and get internet access for the first time in his life, just to keep up contact with me.
I wonder what I’m doing to these people.
I’m not a flaming liberal, but I feel like one here.