Kendall Defoe, Please Stand Up

This is my response to Kayleigh Fraser's Get to Know Me #Challenge:

I really do not want to do this.

I hesitated for a very long time before writing this. I have read many of your other entries and noted the highs and lows in all of your lives. I thought that would make it easier for me to come up with a list of ten things about myself that you may want to know (or at least ten things that won’t make the average Vocalist feel bad about their own lives).

And yet…I hesitated.

I am sitting in a café on a Saturday night, ear buds in and playing Earth, Wind and Fire’s “That’s the Way of the World” (thank you for the links, Rick Henry Christopher). I was carrying my laptop with me today, with some vague hope that I would find the time and the inclination to do this. There are so many things on my mind this month that I felt I had plenty of excuses to avoid this.

Sadly, no…

So, here I am, with Maurice White and Co. explaining just how the world works and I cannot escape the fact that he is absolutely right. “That’s just the way of the world…,” they sing. Indeed.

So, here goes…

1. First-generation West Indian born: My parents came from the island of Dominica in 1970 and I was born a few years later. I don’t make too much of this, except for the fact that I am getting old and I am still impressed that they made such a move. My family had a few relatives here, and people helped each other out when they were apartment and job hunting, but it was still a great challenge for them and one that I can never repay (my mother’s stories about her first year in Canada are worth a separate piece).

2. Violent father shaped me: I had a father who was not a Baby Boomer. He and my mother were a part of what I later learned is called the Silent Generation. Things were not spoken of; incidents and issues remained unraised. And that is perhaps why I bore the brunt of the abuse my father hurled at me and my older brother (another story of another life that deserves its own piece). I remember once being beaten with a steak at lunch time because I could not finish it (I remember it not just for the pain – he cut me behind one of my ears – but because I had to go to school in the afternoon). It was near Hallowe’en and I was wearing a costume…and I lied when asked about the blood (said that I passed too low under a tree branch near our home when coming to school; should have said it was a part of the costume). Amazed that I told no one what happened (Hallowe’en and the mask metaphor work here); amazed that I could get through the other things he did. He would stand in the doorway (my ajar bedroom door) not move for a moment, jump out at me to give me a scare…and then berate me for being a coward, comparing me to people in my family that I had not met who would never get scared like that. Now, if he had just beaten me up, or did other things that left me scared (and scarred) that would have been enough. Instead, it was the psychological abuse that lingers. I kept this to myself, even after he died in hospital on the day he was to be released after nearly recovering from a heart attack (December 23, 1983 – insert psychological issue here). I coped with this by eating too much and my body showed it. But I did not talk about it, until I finally knew I could. My mother suspected something was going on (right, thanks a lot), and told me that my father had been the victim of his own abusive parent as a child (his mother). And if you are wondering if this makes me feel some sympathy for him…no, it does not. I had to see a psychiatrist in graduate school and write a long letter to him that left me shaking with rage (literally, I was full of tremors). But I was lucky in one regard:

3. An early love of books: I really do not know where it came from. We had no literature in the house – I have already written a little about this – and my father was the main book buyer (I mentioned the split dictionary and atlas, but I also found some interesting political literature – Mao’s Little Red Book and a well-read biography of Adolph Hitler, something I would not make much of…until I found a wrench in our garage one day with a swastika scratched into the handle). My mother was the one who read to me, let me go to the library by myself, and encouraged me to read and write whenever I could (“If you can’t sleep, write” – wise words). Without her, I would have not made it, and she remains my best critic.

4. Constant moves in the same city: We moved out of the apartments we were living in and found townhouses, semi-detached homes, and finally the house that my mother and stepfather currently live in. Again, I do not make much of this except for the fact that I was constantly leaving friends and acquaintances behind. I did often attend the same schools, but that did not help me develop relationships. My true friends were the kids I knew who were not in my school's academic stream and made me feel that life was more than just violence and the avoidance of it. It changed the way I looked at my environment and perhaps gave me a taste for travel that was just waiting to develop.

5. The travel talk: We often went home to see family when I was a child. My father and mother were determined to make sure that I never forgot where I came from (bullies and comments from certain adults made sure that this was impossible – again, another article is deserved). But, when I went back to Dominica, I got so ill that my father said that I would never go back there. So, I have memories of Aruba and Curacao (I had relatives who moved and lived around these islands in the Caribbean), but I know nothing about Dominica except the nostalgia of my older relatives and the comments of the younger ones who felt that I would not survive there. Apart from those trips, I was sent to England in 1988 to see relatives (another piece covers this over several articles) and we travelled with a friend of the family to California in 1984 or ’85 (again, covered by me). I had been to New York to see relatives in Queens and Manhattan (the only city that made me feel that, as a child, if I fell down on the sidewalk, I would be instantly crushed by human traffic), but I never thought that the land of Hollywood, sunshine and the Beach Boys would be the place where I would almost be killed (again, read about the gun that was pointed at me by the man who invited us into our home). And despite all of that, I still want to travel again…

6. Academically challenged: Okay, that sounds like I was a terrible student. I was, but only the subjects that I chose to force feed myself. I think that this was the period in my life when I felt the closest to throwing myself off a cliff or under a bus. I was “streamed” (awkward term, but that is what they still call it) into the advanced group from elementary school into high school. That meant that I was given more challenging material than most of my classmates and given a false sense of what I could do academically (see, the title does make sense). English literature and languages? I soared, especially when I referenced books that were either unofficially banned (Catholic high school; fill in that blank) or not on a course list (the rumour that I read the dictionary was especially pleasing, since it was mostly true). Math and science? A very different story; a very sad and painful one. I just could not follow that map. And after we moved on to problem-solving, I thought that everyone was speaking a foreign language (I still think that it is wrong to include the alphabet in a math equation). Now, guess what I wanted to be when I was a child? A scientist. Imagine how hard it was to give that up. I was in my first year of university before I had the insight that maybe I would not be working in any lab that was not devoted to language and literature. Again, I have covered my epiphany on this page (Jon Stewart’s “Moments of Zen” seem appropriate), and I would not change that hard road for the easy one that I could have picked. Knowing your limitations is very important.

7. My love lifeless: This is an appropriate moment to talk about my nonexistent love life. It did not escape the attention of family and friends that I did not date. Some rumours of homosexuality were soon quashed when I was found looking at some late-night channels with sex comedies from the 1970s and I had to explain to the same people why I enjoyed them (again, a lot of Silent Generation angst there). And I thought that they would understand why I did not date: a fat, antisocial West Indian kid who somehow managed to work from the age of fourteen and yet still had no money, who was into indie music when everyone else liked heavy metal and the worst years of Samantha Fox and Tiffany (or should that be “year”?), who liked the library more than the gym, who could list all of the best films of Fellini and Kurosawa, and was asked to the prom by a girl…who eventually dumped him there in front of everyone (even people who did not really like me expressed sympathy), was not someone who was going to look favorably on the whole dating scene. And I better quash something else while I can: I am not an incel. I could date if I wanted to. A change in diet, a routine of yoga, running and exercise, and the willingness to put my phone down and actually talk to people helped me to avoid that dangerous error of blaming women for who I am. I am just not interested in a relationship, and will probably never have one again. There have been too many signs that I was meant to be alone, and I got the message.

8. Tokyo Gai-jin: Ah, the land of the rising yen. I think that living in Japan helped me the most with my writing habits. I bought a journal before heading out there (was already an on-and-off chronicler of my dull life), and I made notes of everything I saw, heard, felt and experienced. Teaching ESL through companies and with private students gave a portrait of the lives of people whom I would have otherwise only read about in books. And I also fell – shut up – in love. This was not with a student, but with a young woman who saw me looking over a menu at a restaurant that had a shared table for diners (ah, the Peppermint Café). I could speak some Japanese, but suddenly felt compelled to ask for some help. We were a couple for a while, until I went home for a wedding – I had promised to come back – and she disappeared from my life. Never saw or heard from her again and I could not find out what happened to her. I do blame myself for this one. Otherwise, I really did enjoy my time there. I often think that I should have never left because of…

9. Montreal: This city, my adopted home, has become the site of some of my best and worst moments. First, I got accepted to McGill after my return home from Japan, an event that excited my mother more than me (she was happy I would attend the same university as a Trudeau). Then, I discovered just how social the social life is in this city (festivals take place all year, no matter what the weather or mood of the city may be). But with all of the sunshine came the rain. I was once robbed by a thief who intended to rob a roommate (see my piece “The Good Thief” for more information). I have lived without hydro power after my roommates abandoned me with a bill for the electricity that no one wanted to cover. I also spent a lot of time trying to find work that would not just be contractual…and I have still failed in this regard. Most of the colleagues I had at school left after graduating, and I live on my own now (the idea of more roommates in my life seems very unappealing for some reason). And I will say this here and now: I would rather be poor in Montreal than rich in any other part of this country, including my hometown’s rather loud neighbour. I just got into a huge fight with my brother over the benefits of being a Torontonian (a city he never lived in, interestingly enough) and I think that this is where I belong, poor French and all.

10. The final point: I will turn fifty this month. That is all.

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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