The first thing I learned was how to tune out and ignore everything and everyone. It was my survival technique. My mind would wonder off to distant realities, and the more life leveraged to weigh me down the farther my mind escaped. I spent whole weeks of class time staring at the ceiling, completely unaware of the people around me, or that anyone expected anything of me, or that I was considered a problem because of it. In retrospect, I think the more of a problem I was for my teachers, the more my mind fled and the larger my imagination became. Punishment and detention merely meant more time play in my own head.
Life knew how to apply it's pressures in many ways. I was often reproached for not being more responsive, or attentive, or interested, but I had all the dangers of life in a depressed urban jungle to contend with. It was the 1980's and the recession had hit the poor and people of color the hardest, and I lived right in the middle of a neighborhood defined by both. Crack cocaine had become an epidemic, shootings and gang violence was a daily occurence, and getting on the fast road to success and money in my neighborhood meant joining in. Of course, it would have been silly for some skinny, spacy white kid, wearing an oversized parka, and carrying a revolver in his pocket, to be standing on a street corner, where people were shot on a daily basis, waiting to sell crack to whoever passed by. I guess it makes sense I wasn't offered the job, but even though that's what my friends did, I didn't go asking for the job either. I was contented to be poor, probably because I didn't think about it. I was fine playing games or staring off into space.
Even when the reality of it all crashed into me like a semi truck rolling over a child's toy, I still managed to avert my mind. When I was mugged, even though I was harmless to anyone, I still managed to stare back and stand my ground. I took a few punches to the face but I saw kids who had no reason to be afraid of me walk away in defeat after I refused to empty my pockets.
I was too small, and I couldn't fight anyway, but to my surprize I found that there is power in a simple stare. I stared down kids who were older and larger than me, kids who I couldn't have possibly been a threat to. I saw other kids being mugged, they cried and hid their head. Even if I got punched square on the jaw I looked them right in the eyes and declared defiantly, "no!"
Once when I was walking through the Sunnydale projects, a kid snatched my skateboard and ran into the project courtyard. The courtyards are like a Roman coliseum when a fight breaks out. Heads pop out of windows, people come swarming in from all directions, everyone chanting “fuck him up, fuck him up, fuck him up.” He had a good six inches and fifty pounds on me but I stood in front of him and looked him in his eyes, and he handed me my skateboard back.
I think my closest friend at the time noticed this in me. From our sparing and the video games we played he must have known that I lacked any kind of killer instinct, and yet when it came time to start his career as a crack dealer it was me he came to for backup. He handed me a gun, and we walked across the street to the mother's house of the drug lord who claimed the Double Rock projects as his domain. I, the skinny white kid wearing a winter coat in the summer and carrying the revolver in his jacket pocket, stayed in the living room with the drug lord's entourage. I remember the cross and what looked like decorative cloth table-mats on the mantle, the tacky brown sofa and matching love seat, both covered in plastic, and the three black men who were all much older and larger than me. I suppose my friend brought me to keep an eye on them. I've seen lots of movies since then depicting drug deals, both parties trailing large numbers of sweaty, muscular men carrying assult rifles. I guess life isn't always like the movies.
It wasn't just day dreaming when under pressure, and it certainly wasn't any kind of fearlessness, but somehow my mind was buffeted from the moment. There was a certain feeling I had, and in that moment I knew that somehow I was detached, somehow my brain was separated from my body and even though my legs might shake and my palms might sweat, my mind was in a strange and abstract space. I could stare right at someone in the most intense and hectic moments, and either they thought I was some kind of fearless insane badass, or else I just wasn't worth the bother. Someone could yell in my face or threaten to kill me, and for all I was concerned they might as well have been handing me a rubicks cube.
Come to think of it, perhaps all I was waiting for was something really interesting to come along. Not that I'm some kind of genius, but I think my life really lacked the kind of stimulation that could rival what I could give myself. I say this because from time to time I would snap out of my dreaming and get really excited about something and do a really good job on it. I could stare out the window all week and then ace the quiz. Not all the time, but enough that I could coast through school.
I already mentioned that this was a blessing and a curse, but lest you think my experiences where without their truely terrible moments, let me provide you with some more detail. One day when I was playing basketball by myself on the Grattan Elementary playground I was cofronted by three girls who must have had it in for me. A side effect of detachment is that you are a very poor judge of character, and so such subtlties were beyond me. They stopped underneath the net I was shooting for and stared at me.
The tall one said, "You can't play here. We're gonna jump rope here."
I walked to the next hoop and shot the ball. It bounced off the backboard, missing the hoop entirely and skittered away. I chased after the ball and picked it up. When I returned to shoot again I saw the same three girls standing under that net.
The tall one spoke again, "You can't be here, this is our court."
Looking back on that moment thirty years later, it seems to me that children share a secret world - a world below language. It is the same world that animals live in. Emotion and thought are intertwined. There are no words there. Like an imaginary amphibian whose life on an artist's desk is divided between living half in sketches, scattered about, and half curled up under the lamp, children live half above language and half below it. They can dive below the surface, following emotional currents that connect us all. Submerged in this world the three girls loomed like a submarine in the distance, their engines set to ramming speed, their course set for collision, and beyond them I could sense something much larger: a titanic monster roamed the depths.
I threw the ball. It sliced up while curling backwards, slotting perfectly into a trajectory for the hoop. I knew the shot was perfect before it left my hand. It did not touch the rim and made only a muffled slap as it brushed through the net. It hit the tallest girl on the head.
The three girls yelled. Within seconds an army formed around me. Every black kid on the playground ran towards me, rushing up like a tsunami of screaming voices. I was surrounded. A foot hit me in the back. My head whipped back. I fell forward and, as if falling into icy water, my chest locked shut and I struggled to inhale. While I was down on the ground they took turns walking on my back. Shame swelled inside until I began to suffocate.
I came up. I turned in place, trying to identify who knocked me down. Another kick hit me in the back and I went down again. Again they took turns walking on me. Again and again I stood up, and again and again I was knocked down.
In a recurring dream I used to have, I stand at the end of a pier. The pier rattles and shakes as Godzilla emerges from the bay. He steps on land and lays waste to the city. Each stomp of his foot makes an earthquake that topples buildings for miles in every direction.
With the shaking, the pier starts to disintegrate. I run back towards land, towards Godzilla, hoping to get off the pier before it crumbles and falls into the water. My bicycle lies on the ground. I get on it and ride through bouncing debris and between his massive feet as they kick and scatter the city to rubble. I ride over a bridge that I do not recognize. On the other side the road has a steep downward slope. I squeeze as hard as I can on the brakes but the bicycle only goes faster. At the bottom of the hill the road stops at a cliff. There is no guard rail to stop me. I go over the edge. For the rest of the dream there is only falling.