Angry Queer Somali Boy by Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali

Author:Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Regina Press
Published: 2019-07-03T21:16:20+00:00

Gentrification of the Mind

C.W. Jefferys was a cultural wasteland to me and departing for downtown seemed like an exit visa. I escaped the vast distances, the empty spaces, and the quiet suffering. I got away from the pervasive blackness. Before C.W. Jefferys, I hadn’t attended a black majority school and when I arrived there, I couldn’t wrap my head around no longer enjoying token status. In the Netherlands, I had crafted an identity that required being alien, distant, and exotic.

Ryerson could help me recapture that lost identity. I paraded around and wore my feigned exoticism like a peacock. I was delighted by white faces expressing shock, horror, and amazement at my experiences. I wanted to be unique and none of my West Indian friends gave me that. Time to get it from bougie white bitches instead.

The beginning of every school year at Ryerson was marked by something called Frosh Week. It helped new students become more familiar with each other, the staff, and the campus. I beheld white faces that couldn’t stop smiling. Despite my desire, I was distressed at the thought of being the only black student in my class. Thankfully, I spotted another black face, and I went over to introduce myself.

Move from me. Battyboy.

I joined a game of duck, duck, goose. This type of corniness marked my entire career at this school. I got up and left. I couldn’t take the forced happiness and constant smiling. I went to my part-time job to conduct market research with Canadians, coast to coast.

The campus was a mishmash of architectural styles. There was the social realism of the Depression and the Brutalism of the post-war period. Between these two horrid styles stood solitary Victorian and Edwardian buildings, usually housing student organizations.

The Urban Planning School was on the fourth floor of the Library Building. It was a hideous Brutalist building that made me feel inconsequential and small. Flyover walkways connected it to Kerr Hall, where most of our lectures took place. The school was named after Egerton Ryerson, the founder of the Ontario public school system. I didn’t know this at the time, but he was an enthusiastic supporter of residential schools. In such schools, Indigenous children were sexually abused and stripped of their cultural heritage. This system claimed the lives of thousands of Indigenous children.

Away from the prying eyes of family, I transformed my exterior. Gone were the baggy clothes that drowned my bony frame. I wore tighter jeans, flowing shirts, and coats that weren’t emblazoned with an American sports team.

The call centre I worked at gave us gift cards to the Eaton Centre, the giant mall near Ryerson. I took the $50 and $100 gift cards and headed straight for the sales racks of fancy stores. Not the type of fancy stores that line Toronto’s ritzy Mink Mile, but the upscale versions of the garbage retailers that dotted suburban plazas.

I was determined not to let anything stop my transformation into a visible homosexual. I went so far as to utter that truth to one of my classmates.

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