“What are you looking at you Willie, you batty boy” that word echoed in my head. It has been 5 years since the trauma of what happened to me which was too much to recall. The words “batty” “poof” and “gay were too much for me to sink in. It gets me down at times. But not all the time. I drift into another realm where I am loved and accepted. Now I’m standing on behind a Blackfriars bridge. In my mind I am ready to end it all. To end all the guilt I endured for being a weak link. To end all the confusion I am enduring by spit of words that came from my tormentors mouth, from the flashback words of my tormentors. To run away from my past and by jumping into the thames below me will make it happen, so I can sleep and dream forever in a world where I am free and is my own word. But what was holding me back is my body. I can feel my feet stuck on the concrete like I was superglue to a canvas underneath my feet stained with colours of both confusion and hope. Hope for these bullying thoughts to stop playing in my head. I just wanted to forget about it but I couldn’t. Just before I start to jump, something tells me to look at my right and there I see, is a short petite woman looked like a Barbie doll walking along the same path as me. My mind says just wait till she goes past. I wanted to give her a look telling her to hurry up walking so I can escape. Escape into my daydreams forever and able to embrace the life I wanted to have in paradise. Her sharp brown eyes ask me questions asking why I am doing over that bridge? Is there anything bothering you? I would convert into a timid suppressed child like I always was very afraid to answer questions in response to be shouted at or most of all the time, be laughed at like it was me at school. I cannot bare for that to happen again. I knew those were not asking me questions it was my head that made my eyes in my mind that we asking me question. As she approached towards me I turned to look at her, giving her a faint smile. A smile to hide my secret intention to end my life and make my escape to my own little peaceful world.
“Good afternoon officer” I managed to spit into a sentence. I was such a fool for saying that. She gently nod her head and smiled the reply: “Good morning sir, you have a nice day”. I stare at her seeping past me and watch her camouflage down into the scenery. Then those scenes. Those disturbing scenes start to reply my mind. “ Eat this you black poof” A blood angry voice screams. I was on the floor. My knees were on the hard cold concrete. Rubbing friction against my knees. I could feel them desperately wanting to break into frustrated fractures. I tried to keep my balance but the overpowering stench driving to instinctively repel away to the ground. The overpowering stench was from a mass of dog excrement resting onto the white strong hands covered in a latex glove. I clenched my jaw shut trying not to open my mouth and the smell. That strong unpleasant stench insulted every part of my nostril. I can see it going towards my mouth. My mouth remained close tight.
“Eat it, Eat this you fucking black poof” the voice screamed again. This time more angrily like it’s going to lose the patience. His mouth was the volcano. I looked at the voice of the person who was screaming me with the lava that burns my every temple of my forehead. It was a dark shadow figure of a white boy, with an angry facial structure. Angry brown eyes and fair brown hair which looks like blonde by the change of contrasting sun in the sky. I wanted to peer at the sun shining back me with its crystal like beam, telling me to come, wanting to be released from this body, this powerless body I was in, which was surrounded by white pastry youths like a pack of wolves ready one by one to bite a piece of physical flesh. Goading like a pack of hyenas egging with the ring leader to make me eat a fectal matter into my dry, frightened mouth. I stay stood where I was. The ringleader began to lose his patience with me as I still muted with the word no ready to pump out of my mouth. But I didn’t want to piss him off. Then I wanted to piss him off so he’ll get tired. I begin to feel his hand groping a piece of my solid spongy mass of my afro squeezing for me to scream with my mouth wide open by the pain, as my mouth was remained shut with all the will power I have shove my head to the ground as he continued to bellow my mouth the soft lump of brown mass surrounded by a mountain of flies
Then the sharp revolting smell of excrement hit my nostrils. I wanted to panic, become an animal to fend myself and leer at them as if I wanted to bite them. I wanted them to feel my rage though the animalistic glare. But I was frozen, frozen and helpless and surrounded by laughter, goading and taunts: “You haven’t had lunch so here’s your lunch eat it you black fucking Paki!” I can feel the frustration and rage coming from his throat. I felt the heat of his red face which was red as an angry lobster.
I was ready to accept my fate. I begin to feel I didn’t care anymore. I could myself slipping out of my body. I wasn’t Wilson anymore. In the physical side I was still Wilson. I was my soul of Wilson. I was free. All I could see in front of me was my physical body surround by the animals. My school uniform covered in mud and I could still see my face covered in a mess of blood and bruises. My lips swell with blood and making a surreal look pleading them to stop and at the same time, just put the shit in my mouth to get it over with. My head still physically pulled back by the authority bully of the group descending his open palm with fectal matter into my mouth. I wasn’t there to stop them. I wasn’t there to scream or push the bullies away. I wasn’t there to say anything. If I do, they won’t hear me or laugh nor challenge me to a fight like they always do when I was in my physical reality. In his mind, he wanted someone there for him. Someone pleading them to stop, screaming at the boys to leave him alone otherwise they threaten to call the police. He was all alone in his vulnerability, which turned against him.
“Do it, do it do it” All the gang goading.
Then all of the sudden, I saw myself closing his eyes wanting to run away to a surrealist form of reality. Wanting to watch himself being humiliated and intimidated by the laughing and goading wolves chanting their master to finish the deed. The deed which was beyond the minds of my peer group. I started to magnetically squeeze my eyes shut and felt myself slipping back to that powerless figure on his knees. The minute I opened my eyes I was back to that person. I was on my knees back on the damp ruthless concrete and the resume of my head being pulled back with my mouth wide open restrained by the pulling of my afro feeling the same burning sensation as if he wants to pull out the mass of my hair he was holding wanting to her a ripping sound wanting me to leave in pain. My eyes were diverted into looking into the sky wanting the sky to pick me up, or plague me with watery showers to neutralise the thirst of frustration when the cronies stole my lunch money or come to school gates with empty pockets or my face covered in bruises after a daily beating or my blazer covered in the graffiti taunts of “Black Bastard”, “Nigger”, “Street Monkey”, “Poof” “Paki”, “Batty boy”, “Spearchucker”, “Jungle bunny” and the chants of “Go back to the zoo” or “Go back to the jungles” in big degrading white chalk. Everyday seems like yesterday. When people say to me: “move forward, the past is gone, you’re not that kid anymore. You cannot go back to it”. When I was standing on that bridge, I wasn’t that kid anymore. I was becoming something different but I won’t here as someone different. I would be someone different in my own word or someone different in these so- called parallel universes where my history, my biography would be different. Only God will decide my biography, deciding who will be, what kind of family I’ll be born into, what culture, the environment I assimilate into. I mean what kind of vegetable or fruit would be mixed into a salad bowl? My skin colour was considered to be the main reason of expulsion from the salad bowl or rejected from the melting pot. I still stand with my feet remaining glued on the cold concrete patterned with holes, dried on chewing gum decayed into black like dirt on a clothing, dirt is what my colour tells me. I am waiting for a flashback spit into my mind, the name calling that broke my spirit. Wanting the same pain of my broken spirit back at school, to come back to haunt around a thousand times to throb my mind and body with a push, the courage to go for it. It doesn’t come but it comes as a weak feeble useless meaning. Then unexpectantly, “Paki” in a loud strong burst came into my mind throbbing every nerve in my brain screaming repeatedly a one thousand times like a CD spinning continuously in a CD player screaming Paki along the back up taunts of “gayboy”, “poof”, faggot, nigger”. I began to have that courage, the courage I was waiting for to actually run away leaving behind those horrible words and the environment that was making me go back to. I am finally leaving by jumping into the water that was calling me to come home…………………………
Phil the Writer's Block 