The answer: assimilation. Always, the pressure is there. Assimilate, assimilate… Dissolve yourself into the melting pot. And then flow out, pour into the mould. Bend your bones until they splinter and crack and you fit. Force yourself into their form. Assimilate, they say it, encouraging. Then frowning. Then again and again. And always there, quiet, beneath the urging language of tolerance and cohesion – disappear! Melt into London’s multicultural soup. Not like Lou. Not here. Not into this.
I have lived life by the principle that when I face a problem, I must work to find an action I can take to overcome it; or accommodate it; or forge a new path around it; excavate the ground beneath it, even. This is how I’ve been prepared. This is how we prepare ourselves, teach our children to approach this place of obstacle after obstacle. Work twice as hard. Be twice as good. And always, assimilate.
Because they watch （us）。 They’re taught how to, from school. They are taught to view our bodies （selves） as objects. They learn an MEDC/LEDC divide as geography – unquestionable as mountains, oceans and other natural phenomena. Without whys or wherefores, or the ruthless arrows of European imperialism tearing across the world map. At its most fundamental: the nameless, faceless, unidentified （black） bodies, displayed, packed, and chained, side-by-side head-to-toe, into an inky-illustrated ship. Conditions unfit for animals. In perpetuity, they’re shown these pictures, over and over in classrooms again. Until it becomes axiom; that continuous line from object,
to us.
And then, they look:
Fig 1.
He’s not shy about it. He stands there, legs apart, in rubber-soled shoes and a cheap suit. Watching. Just two metres away. His eyes, expectant, hold on to your body, his fingertips tap at a two-way radio. The deafening static of his suspicion builds as he trails you through the aisles. He stays a few strides behind you, wherever you go. Your movements are calm and deliberate, but you feel your pulse pound in your neck. You should look right at him. Confront him. Demand a reason, at least. But you can’t.
You know you can’t.
A buzzing in your bag startles you. You hesitate, nearly ignore it. But then pull yourself together. Say, come on, and fish the phone out from your bag. Feel the crackle of his attention down your neck and along your arm, through your palm and into your fingers as they fold around smooth plastic and your thumb slides up.
Hello? says a disembodied voice.
He’s watching, watching watching.
Fig 2.
Outside the corner shop, over the road from your secondary school, there’s often a queue of girls waiting. A shop assistant – turned bouncer for the after-school rush – stood at the door. Two at a time, get in line, one-in-oneout, he intoned, as if reciting from a holy text. But then he’d wave in two or three girls who hadn’t bothered with the queue. Schoolgirls with cherry’d lips, clumpy black eyelashes, and blonde hair that fell in limp curls about their shoulders, he waved them in. Then he glared at the queue, told it to keep the noise down.
Fig 3.
New York Sunday night, London Saturday morning. You fly the round trip regularly for work. But the attendant stops you. At Heath-row, Sunday afternoon, the attendant lunges into your path before you can reach the business desk. Places a firm hand against your upper arm. The attendant’s fingers – who knows what else they’ve touched? – now press into the soft, grey wool of your coat. You look down at this hand on your body; at the flecks of dirt beneath its fingernails, the pale hairs sprouting from its clammy skin. And then its owner, the attendant, points and speaks loudly, as though you won’t understand, says: Regular check-in is over there.
The attendant won’t acknowledge your ticket, no, just waves you over to the long queue. It winds back and forth, penned in between ropes, all the way to the regular check-in desk. The attendant says: Yes, there’s your line, over there.
Fig 4.
Walking from the library back to college one evening, you spot them huddled on the bridge. Faces lit sickly-green by their phones. A couple have bikes, one girl leans over the side, spitting into the river below. Talking slows, as you approach, they twist and turn their attention towards
you keep your pace. Left foot, then right. Keep your head down, keep going. There is no back, or even forwards; realize this. There’s only through it, endlessly, treading it. This hostile environment. This hostile life. And then, that word – that close-sesame word that imbues even kids on a bridge with the wealth and stature of this great, British empire; its architecture, its walls, statues loom magnificent on every side – that word the spitting girl spits at you, before spraying more saliva through her teeth. Rips into silence, not water, this time