Without Flag, Without Country

I stopped writing when the problems confronting me in the mirror were murkier than I had a vocabulary for. Nothing prepared me; no previous coverage. The reading lists at Broward Community College were base, television too insensitive, and newspapers tip-toed around the subject.

Race.

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume? -"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T.S. Eliot.

I was 16 years old and in an identity crises so overwhelming, my pen ran dry. Even today it putters and pats out ink erratically like a smoker's cough. Even today I'm at a loss at how to confront myself.

My English was as sharp as a razor's edge, my skin as pale as porcelain, and my hair curt short to hide the wavy, thick wild. My look betrayed nothing. I wore band shirts and listened to punk. My friends were all white.

I wish that could be the end of the story - that's who I was. Just a teenager, just who I was and nothing more. But then came the state standardized tests. There were bubbles, asking philosophical questions. Male/Female? Well I'll just go by genitalia for that one... Grade? Easy... Race?

Race?

Um..well...I stumbled. How fucking old was I? How could this issue have not yet been settled?

Race? Well, what are my options?
Latina? I don't speak Latin and I've never been to Rome.
Hispanic? I don't even know what that means! Sounds like a cocktail.
White? I...I guess... that's my skin color... so yes, yes I'm white. Right?

It was the most difficult question on the test. I began to sweat. All I wanted in the world was for this not to be a Scantron test, so I could simplify it all by writing:
I'm a 2nd generation immigrant. My father's Cuban, my mother's Colombian. So just leave me alone about this stuff already.

But of course, it didn't end there; when the world finds a wound on your flesh it loves to pick and pick...
There was nothing I hated more than when some stereotype just off the plane from Tackyville, Colombia dropped her jaw, chewing gum stuck to teeth and in plain view, and said,
"Oomygawww, I didn't know you speak Spanish!"
"Yeah well considering I'm Cuban-Colombian, I should."
"No way! You're Spanish?"
"No, I'm not from Spain. I said I'm Cuban-Colombian."
"Yeah yeah you know what I mean. You don't seem it."

And that's the part that stabbed me every time. I don't seem it? I wasn't playing the role. I didn't have the big loop earings you could stick a fist through. I didn't have the necklace with my name written in cursive gold. I hated those - I know what my own name is, and if someone else needs to know it, they can ask. I didn't wear the tight Brazilian jeans one size too small, showing off the excessive Latina thighs. I didn't listen to Raggaeton - fucking horrendous, talentless, disgusting, shitty, uncreative, repetitive, music.

The world was confused. What was it do with me? Like if I wasn't some tacky stereotype, I gave up all rights to my heritage. As if the richness of Cuban music, the mysticism of Santeria, and the independence revolutions of South America all came down to me pouring 30 pounds of gel into my hair and an entire bottle of mascara on my eyes.

Where was I to stand, straddling both worlds, accepted fully in neither? My white friends didn't understand why I ate so many black beans and rice, why my mother spoke a foreign language in front of them, why I grew up with my grandmother. In the middle school court yard, where everyone wore a patch on their backpack to clearly indicate what country they stood for, and at lunch divided among nationalist lines, no one could grasp why I withheld myself. Those middle school peanut-butter sandwiches I packed were eaten with resentment for the entire concept of flags.

What good is a flag? It just a cloth that indicates physical boundaries. That piece of territory is meaningless. What's that piece of cloth ever done for you? It's something you're born into; your love for it is completely disingenuous,
I'd say.
They'd roll their eyes and continue chewing their gum.
I've always had a hard time connecting.

Now there I was, 16 years old, hating flags, listening to bands like Stiff Little Fingers and Sham 69 and Crass, and the whole world is telling me to choose:
I could either change my wardrobe and personality and retain my claim to my Cuban-Colombian heritage and history
or I could just cross camps and have my race match my interests.
One. or the Other.
No middle ground. No Buena Vista Social Club without Daddy Yankee. No Gabriel Garcia Marquez without telenovellas.

Is there a Spanish word for "Uncle Tom?"
Perhaps Tia Tom fits.

And where I turned to books for consolation, I found emptiness, an utter dearth on the subject. Where were all the 2nd generation immigrants of the world? Why did none turn to literary means, didn't they know there are millions of them, looking for help?
So I looked around the lush campus of Broward Community College. Maybe my assumptions were wrong; maybe there weren't millions looking for help. There they were - the 2nd generation, all lumped evenly into their camps. They had all made the choice, long ago. It was just I, standing there, in front of a mirror, straddling two worlds, comfortable in none. Not white, not Hispanic. Not really American, especially not in these patriotic, post 9/11 times. Not actually Cuban, nor Colombian. A woman without flag, without country to call home.

And when my father listened to Guantanamera, I wondered if I had the right to shed a tear.

It is only now that I've learned how to properly resent a world that would question my blood and skin; that would put conditions on listening to the words of Marti.

The Dream's Dead, Boys

Sometimes, late at night, when too much coffee or one too many cigarettes keep me up, when insomnia lurks in the back of my eyelids, haunting me with tasks left undone, I turn over and stare at my computer. It glows white in the darkness, and on the cover dances the images of half-empty word documents, scribbled notes in the text pad, barely coherent ideas.

I wonder where I went wrong. Where I gave up on the dream.

When I was young and idealistic I told myself I'd be a writer. I'd read Gingsberg, Orwell, Burroughs, Thompson, Rimbaud, and my heart filled with jealousy - jealousy, the prime mover of my whole being - and I said, I too will write. It will be like all the romantic stories: I'll move to New York, go to school, impress the teachers with my pure talent and crass attitude, drop out to travel on a motorcycle, be dirt poor, work as a waitress, and by famous and published by 22. Complete stardom and mobs of fans by 25, at the latest. Stumble into a rock band, reach Jim Morrison-proportion, change the entire concept of poetry and fucking and death. Tragic motorcycle and drug-induced death by 27, like all the greats.

Where did it die? When did I give up? When did the blank page beat me to submission, to a hopeless inertia?

I've mulled over this question for ages, along with self-pitying tears and woes of "I shall be no Poe, I shall be no Rimbaud."

Was it the pressure? All my high school teachers gazed at my with a starry-eyed look and told me of the talent I had. Sometimes I could hear their internal thoughts, "this will be the one I reach, this will be the one that makes 30 years of this shitty public school job worth it." Maybe it was the razor lace of my parent's encouraging words: Writing? Well you damn well better become famous. We didn't come into this country and claw ourselves up from the dirt, sacrificing our health to earn a buck to put a fancy name on your degree just so you can type pretty words and earn an hourly wage.

Maybe I got into the drugs too soon (was that part supposed to come later?). Maybe I lost sight of myself. Maybe the idea of people reading my work is still so terrifying as to paralyze my fingers over the keyboard.

Or, most terrifying of all, maybe it just wasn't in Miss Cleo's cards.

One of the first happy memories I can remember was receiving an empty notebook as a present, and drawing on every inch of every page. When they asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I said an artist. I wanted to draw forever.

My parents said nope. My art teacher rolled her cart around to my elementary school desk, slammed down a piece of newspaper paper and after a few of my proudest scribbles, said "I have no idea what that is." I was told to re-do assignments.

Now when I pick up a drawing pencil to paper, I feel like I'm trying to write down my deepest urges and darkest desires in Swahili.

Perhaps I only turned to writing in the first place as my only means of capturing those intense colors my retinas register: the bright red and the dark blue and the image of a yellow balloon bobbing on top of the ocean waves as the sun breaks over them. Just another means to tie down that balloon and tell the world it's there.

But I stuck to writing for so long, that it had to have been in the cards, even if temporarily. So what stopped me?

I think back.
Way back.
And remember the time when I put the pen down, when I stopped trying to finish those documents.
And as I recall,
it was just about the time... when I looked in the mirror, and realized

I had forgotten I wasn't white.