After all, my life was not that bad (1996)

Tuesday 14 May, 1996. My will power lets me down, yesterday I did’nt go to work because I was supposed to have a blood test but I did not attend to it either. This morning, it is the same story and on top of it, it’s raining which makes me feel less and less wanting to go to work under this rain freezing my bones. Also I just smoked an african  spliff  and I don’t feel like moving neither for work or for the blood test which in any case would not change anything. In fact it has no importance !  If I have to die tomorrow or even today, after all I would have had a good life. There are people unhappier than me, I have had the chance to be born in a large family. I have had the chance to go to several private schools. I was lucky to have a black father and a white mother. I was lucky because, at a very young age, I have travelled to the four corners of France with my parents. I was lucky to have brothers and sisters whom took some beating  in my place. I had the chance at 12 years old to go for the first time to Martinique, country of my father where I was doubly happy because I was away from the french metropolitan private schools. I was lucky to have a father who worked in a bank in the great capital Paris.

Later on, I have had the opportunity to rebel and  do as I pleased. I have been able to manage to get around on my own. I have been through moments of real hardships of money and identity and existence. I had the chance and not the shame to sleep with men, sometimes for money or just to feel loved and for a bit of attention. I was lucky to meet varied people in my life, whom made me discover other forms of art : painting, music,  singing, african dances, writing, sport. I was lucky to have had a perfect body, to know it and to show it. I have been lucky to make true friends to whom I could confide in my joys and my sorrows and rely on them. Somewhat, I have also been lucky to go to prison because I can talk about it and there I could see where my ideal was, in prison or out of it. I was lucky to meet men whom have really loved me and vice versa, to hear comforting words  and to receive gestures that heal. I have been able to have various jobs, some as voluntary worker and some renumerated.

Voluntary work : child minding, dog sitting, make bread and croissants, comfort brokenhearts, be in various charitable organizations (Me homeless) bringing bread and cakes but also respect to all the people around me (I mean the poor), or care for and love all sorts of creatures, big or small, beautiful or ugly, nice or nasty, domestic or wild.

Renumerated work : plumber, barman, prostitute, stable boy, model, leaflets distribution, gardener, musician, decorator, stage manager of a short film, red coat in school holiday camps, lady’s hairdresser, country veterinary assistant, picker (grapes, apples, sugar canes), work in forests and more I will not mention.

Today and for the last three years I travel to the other side of the Atlantic, I have people  I love very much and that I would not denigrate for no one and for nothing in the world. I am working part-time, I play the music I like, I am trying to respect equally all people and it’s not easy. I love a girl or rather the souvenir of having sat on a plane for 3 hours only, next to a girl smoking cigarettes after cigarettes, talking about our lives and wishes, ending by an exchange of addresses. I have been smoking for quite a long time, I had some laughs with this disgusting healing grass, good for man and animals, sometimes a killer for those who smoke it without understanding that it is not just a drug to eat or sleep or laugh like an idiot telling the others the effect the drug has on them. They talk of seeing pink elephants. They say it’s cool, as soon as they see a film on TV they want to do the same on the street. They say that they smoke to forget, they say it helps them to live, but for me it just makes me laugh.