1982 (16 page)

ethnic

punk

naked

late

non-white

As you can see, my mother worried about many of the potential ways I might acquit myself when I was fourteen. For example, as I’ve noted, she did not want me to leave the house naked. But I could control that. I could put on a winter coat if I had to. Unfortunately for my mother, I couldn’t control the final item on that list. No matter how many ways my mother tried to deny this reality, I wasn’t white. I’ve always had a brownish tint to my skin. And this was why I was “Blackie” in England. And this was why I couldn’t properly be New Wave. And this was why it was hard to look like Bowie. Bowie almost never had a tan. He was pale. Super pale. So was Wendy. And so were the goths that listened to Bauhaus. And so were the members of Duran Duran.

By the time I was in Grade 9 and had fully embarked on my New Wave transformation, I hated that I was brown and that I had a funny name and that my family was Iranian and that I had a huge nose and that people made terrorist jokes. But I also found it difficult that my mother wanted me to deny all those differences. It was as if my mother never wanted to fully accept the way I appeared. It doubtless came from an instinct to
protect. But I was never going to have the complexion she had. I took after my father. He was brown. And I couldn’t change the colour of my skin, even if it would make life easier for me.

Besides, in case I ever forgot I was brown, I’d get reminders of it from other kids. Even if I was no longer being called Blackie, I had to deal with some unsavoury substitutes. I would learn about other names I might be called during my time as a hockey player.

Hockey was a game I always loved playing. It is a sport I still obsessively watch. Being a hockey fan is a constitutional requirement of being a citizen in Canada. Or at least, it should be. It’s like drinking tea in England or eating food that is high in saturated fats in the USA. It is part of who we are. As soon as my family arrived in Canada in the mid-’70s, I became a hockey fan. I got Toronto Maple Leaf Darryl Sittler’s autograph at Ontario Place in 1979. He wore number 27 and he was my favourite. He signed my autograph book, “Darryl Sittler #27.” There was another blond guy that signed my book, too, that day. I didn’t really recognize him, but since other kids were getting him to sign things, I did as well. He turned out to be Wayne Gretzky. Later on, I pretended I had known that all along. I had Gretzky’s autograph just before he really became Gretzky and broke every hockey record and married a blond Hollywood actress and started to do car ads.

I could rhyme off stats about hockey when I was a kid and had no shortage of enthusiasm. But playing hockey on ice didn’t always produce the friendliest of memories for me. Much of that had to do with Jim Muffan. Muffan wasn’t very nice. And in the change room for our Thornhill house league hockey team, Jim Muffan made no bones about identifying me
as being different. On a few occasions he called me a Paki. I don’t think he meant it in an affectionate way, either. Not like the way people may now call each other “homie.” It wasn’t exactly a celebratory experience for me. I was quite sure the whole team hated me. Muffan set the standard in the locker room. And it didn’t help that I was a lousy hockey player.

By Grade 9, I had become one of the lousiest players in our Thornhill house league. I’m not being modest. I was truly lousy. I was certainly one of the least talented on my team. And I got worse as I got older. When I was eight, and I started playing hockey after arriving from England, I was in the middle of the pack as far as ability went. I wasn’t bad. But as we got older and other guys got much bigger, the fact that I was an average skater became a liability. I had trouble evading body checks. As competitive as I was, in due time I was getting clobbered on the ice. I was the kid that got confined to the bench for the final three minutes of the game to prevent the other team from scoring. There was nothing more demeaning than knowing you were not getting called out on the ice because the coach thought you weren’t good enough. Even my parents recognized how deficient I was, and they didn’t totally understand the game. My mother once said, “I see they don’t put you on the ice in the third period.” That was a fact. My mother spoke in facts. Mind you, sports weren’t all negative for me. My revenge would come with soccer in the summer. I was a big goal scorer and usually one of the fastest and best players on the team. But that was summer. In wintertime, playing hockey became an albatross. And a couple of kids made it about the colour of my skin. That was another way I understood I was different.

Jim Muffan was one of the bigger players on our team in 1981–1982, and he sometimes wore the coveted C on his chest. That meant he was captain. All the other kids wanted to be respected by Jim Muffan and laughed at his jokes in the locker room. Often they were dirty jokes. He was tall and had short brown hair and a grimace on his face most of the time when he wasn’t telling jokes. He had muscles like a Grade 11 kid, even though he was only a Grade 9 kid. Muffan ruled the roost, and it was apparent early in the season that he’d decided he didn’t like me. On one occasion on the ice, he looked at me after a stoppage in play and said, “You should go back where you fucking came from.” That didn’t seem the kind of thing you were supposed to say to a teammate. And I deduced that he probably didn’t mean he wanted me to return to my house in Thornhill. Or London. Then, after another game where I was less than spectacular on the ice, Muffan looked directly at me across the locker room and said, making sure to speak loud enough for everyone to hear him, “Why are you even playing hockey, Paki? You’re a stupid Paki.”

I knew this had to do with how lousy I was. But it didn’t help that I was an immigrant. And I wasn’t just a Paki, but a stupid one, too. It never made sense that being less than a star at hockey made me stupid. I was a good deal smarter than Muffan in classes at Thornlea. But that didn’t matter. If you looked different, you needed to at least know how to play well. There was another brown guy on the team, but no one called him racist names. His name was Randeep and he had much darker skin. But he was an excellent player who scored lots of goals. He was a team hero. So he was considered acceptable. But I was a Paki. I didn’t ever bother explaining to Muffan that
Persians were not from Pakistan. I was ethnic, no matter what my mother said. By the winter of 1982, I had played my final season on the ice.

The truth is, as much as I adored hockey, I knew it wasn’t my future to be a player anyhow. If I were going to star in any sport it would be soccer. I had always been a big fan of Arsenal from the English Premier League. And soccer leagues in Canada were full of immigrant kids, so I was a good player and one that didn’t look out of place. But I was more artsy in general, and I had aspirations to be a rock singer. I wanted to be Bowie. Bowie didn’t mess around with hockey sticks and pucks on ice. No one in New Wave did. And there weren’t any Persian heroes playing hockey. And my dream girl, Wendy, didn’t seem to care that much about athletes. And most important, unlike in hockey, in rock music there was one shining example of an ethnic counterpart I could aspire to: Freddie Mercury.

Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen and he was a killer vocalist. He was one of the greatest rock singers of all time. He was also Iranian. Well, that’s not true. He was Zoroastrian. But Zoroastrianism has its roots in Persia. And the technicalities didn’t ultimately matter, because Iranians claimed Freddie Mercury as their own. Not very many others knew Freddie Mercury was Persian. Even now, most people couldn’t tell you that. They might consider him British. Or European. Or exotic. But we always knew the truth. Iranian. And when I was nine, my cool older cousin Farid, who lived in America, had given me an eight-track tape of the double album
Live Killers
. It was the first proper album I owned. Farid looked intently into my eyes and delivered an important message upon handing over the eight-track: “You must become a fan of this
music. This band is called Queen. The lead singer of this band is Freddie Mercury. He is the best. And he is Persian.”

It was a moment of great pride. And Freddie Mercury would be a hero of mine thereafter.

As I hit my early teens, I began collecting Queen albums and trying to emulate Freddie Mercury. When I turned twelve, I had a birthday party at my house and put the first side of the new Queen album
The Game
on repeat on my turntable. Toke and Dana Verner and a few other kids attended the party. We pumped our fists to the catchy new song “Another One Bites the Dust.” We had no idea that some Queen purists considered this a sellout “disco pop” turn for the band. We revelled in
The Game
. And Toke always approved of Freddie Mercury as well. “Dat guy Freddie … ee’s great!”

There were few musical things Queen did that I didn’t love. But 1981 brought an event that would never find its parallel in music history. Not for me. In 1981, Freddie Mercury and Queen released a new song called “Under Pressure.” And if new Queen material wasn’t reason for excitement enough, the song was a duet with Bowie. My fantasy musical worlds collided. Bowie. And Queen. This could not have come closer to a personal paradise. It was as if the song were written and performed for me. Legend has it that Bowie had dropped into a Queen recording session in 1981 with the intention of singing backups on another song, and then they collectively wrote and recorded “Under Pressure.” Many of the vocal parts were improvised, and the whole thing was done in one day. The results were remarkable. It was an avalanche of creative splendour all happening in one simple tune. There was Bowie and Freddie Mercury and amazing hooks and passion and an anthemic refrain. “Under
Pressure” became my theme in 1982. It lived on my turntable, but I carried it with me in my head everywhere.