Poor Little Black Boy From The Ghetto

I was born in Confederate Memorial Hospital in Shreveport Louisiana in 1960, my birth certificate listed my race as “colored” to this day I find that hilarious. My parents had seven children, five girls and two boys. My earliest memories were of us children being terrifified and dreading the arrival of my father in the evening. We scrambled to hide all the knives in the house. My father would usually come home falling down drunk and tear the house apart breaking things and then he would start in on my mother hitting and slapping her around. One night my Mother waited for his arrival as usual but that time she had concealed a butcher knife to protect herself from his beating that time ,she had enough. That was the last time my father hit my mother. She devorced him shortly after that. So he went home t his parents, leaving my Mother to support seven children on her own without any finacial support from him. My Mother only having an 8th grade education worked low paying jobs . My Mother signed up for the food stamp program when it was just beginning. We saw it as something wonderful, my Mother could buy us the cerial we saw advertised on tv and fresh fruit that she afford before and we were very grateful for the assistance from the govoerment. My family moved to Houston Texas when I was six, we lived in an all black area of town, and went to a segregated all black school. I was kind of a strange child. I was an effeminate child very outgoing, talked excessivly,always asking questions about things and had a very big imagination. I could amuse myself for hours sitting in a hole in the ground, or I would tie a string to the back of my pants and pretend I had a tail. I told my sisters I wanted to be a ballet dancer when I grew up and practiced on my own ,I would leave home and people thought I looked really cute with my big brown eyes and curly hair they would give me things like candy and ice cream. By the age of 6 some thing happened to me that completely changed me, to this day I don’t know what brought about this change in me. I became a very shy, scared child who would not talk. And then the name calling  started first by my sisters names like punk, sissy, faggot, and then from the other children in the neighborhood and even some of the adults. My older brother didn’t want anything to do with me he was popular and saw me as an embarressment to him, the only time he he took an interest in me is when I was about 8, he begin to molest me on a regular basis, it was painful with my lack of self asteem I told myself I don’t matter anyway and I was grateful that he was at least paying some attention to me. this went off and on for a few years.  I pretended I didn’t care when my sisters called me names but their words really hurt me they felt like someone was sticking knives into my stomach. It was some years later when one of my sisters realized she was hurting me with her words. And since I didn’t talk very much and came off as kind of strange they labeled me slow and retarded. My teachers in school said I couldn’t keep up with the class, it never occured to them that my vision was so poor I couldn’t see the black board, my sister taught me at home things like to write and other things at home that I couldn’t learn in school because of my poor eyesight. I was teased ansd taunted just walking down the street and I believed I deserved it because I didn’t matter. I believed that even God would’nt waste his time with a worthless nothing like me and he couldn’t love me.I belived my Mother was unhappy and would be better of if I wasn’t there, the way she disiplined us would be considered child abuse today, she often used extention cords and draw painful bloody welts all over your back and arms. She would come  home from work a go on what my sister called”the war path” and scream and yell a lot. I believe I derive a lot of my negativity from my Mother, she was unhappy and it made me feel guilty for being born. I believed I was destended to be alone my whole life ,no one would want  to marry me. We moved to the city projects by the time I was 11. The residents there were mostly black with some hispanics. I grew into sort of a nerd. the non-stop teasing and taunting continued there . I dreaded leaving the house. My escape were books and tv, I could not deal with my bleak surroundings. It felt like someone had made a huge mistake I didn’t belong there. I just didn’t fit. The people there mostly black seemed to derive a great deal of pleasure putting each other down, and tearing down each other, it was like they were their own worse enimies. Rather than trying to offer a better life than they had for their children, they instilled in them that this is what you should expect out of life, and so their children became the absent fathers and the unwed welfare Mothers that their parents were. Going to prison or jail was accepted as just a normal part of life. By the time I was 14 I  was of the opion that the way the people around me spoke made them sound  ignorant compared to the way they spoke on tv,also many times it is difficult to express a certain feeling or thought because the words are not there in ebonics, so I chose to speak proper english, and I of course caught hell for that.They told me “I must think I’m white to speak that way, like I was some sort of trator to the race. I loved old black and white films and musicals. I secretly bought Barbra Streisand records and listened  to her for hours in my room.because I couldnt deal with my surroundings I had convinced myself that black people pocessed something I didn’t know what it was that I lacked,because I could not relate to them, I just didn’t “get them” and believed they were right there really was something wrong with me. By the time I was 16 is when I first recall bouts of major depression to the point where I begin to seriously consider suicide. This was also the time I realized that I was gay. Than a change came and I began to rebel, I got an after school job and for the first was exposed to openly gay people,and met people that were  kind to me for the first time in my life. Thanks to PBS television I had been exposed to things  like different cultures,different people and the arts, and began to believe that there was a world out beyond the fences that surrounded the projects and others around me just couldn’t see it. And one day a  life changing thought I realized that there really wasn’t anything wrong with me it was these people around me who were really screwed up. I resolved to get the hell out of those projects and away from those people anyway I could and never come back and I did.