Last writes

25 month 2003, 857 words

If ever I was brought to court to face charges of, say, possession of dangerous dimples, I could not be tried by a jury of my peers. This is because, as a 40-year-old Trinidadian writer with naturally curly hair, I don't got no peers. And, occasionally, I lose my grammar too.

Of course, I understand that, legally speaking, one's peers are simply other citizens who have equal rights. However, if you are poor and dark-skinned, the police will not only give you rights, but a few lefts as well. And, if you have oodles of money, this gives you more rights than ordinary citizens: or so Judge Herbert Volney and Chief Magistrate Sherman MacNicholls seem to believe. But, in the wider sense, I view myself as peerless.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this state. On the one hand, I have no peer pressure, which means I feel no obligation to fit in with other writers. Thus, I don't speak as though I eat green fig every night, I don't believe alcohol is one of the five food groups, and I feel no temptation to grow my forehead. On the other hand, having peers is important for a writer, especially when you want to borrow money. The banks certainly won't lend you any, for they do not view writing as a stable profession. Apart from the dangers of aphasia, Alzheimer's and appalling asses in authority, fiction-writing doesn't pay much: unless you write speeches for politicians. But then any extra income must be spent on psychiatric therapy and Pepto-Bismol.

There are, of course, a few other novelists in the country, such as Earl Lovelace, Michael Anthony and Merle Hodge. But they're all much older than me, so I can't relate to them, unless my great-grandmother pulled a horn nobody told me about (and, given my naturally curly hair and the curve of my backside, this is entirely possible). The only Trinidadian novelist of my generation is Roslyn Carrington, but Roslyn writes romantic fiction so I doubt we could have a literary conversation without me giggling. I find I feel more affinity to those 20-something journalists, such as Suszannah Clarke and Kayode James and Sateesh Maharaj, who already display a certain mastery of prose. But that may only be because my non-receding hairline gives me delusions of youth (and I avoid looking at my rapidly increasing white hairs).

There are other professional writers in the country who aren't novelists. But I can't really consider any of them peers, either. Tony Deyal is funny, and writes punny too. B.C. Pires's irreverence paved the way for me to write satire in the newspapers, which I couldn't do on my own since I don't come from a wealthy business family or look white. And Keith Smith, though not a fiction-writer, is a true storyteller. But none of them has naturally curly hair, save Raymond Ramcharitar, and that's only on his back.

Years ago, Tony did have curly hair and a dashiki. But the hair was permed and the dashiki borrowed. BC's hair once was wavy but, like Samson's strength, his irreverence was apparently in his follicles, since both have lately declined. And Keith's hair has long since vanished, although his writing talent, which has grown over the years, may well reside in his stomach.

So there aren't any real writers around for me to relate to, although there are quite a number of imaginary ones: not imagined by me, but by themselves, which is about the only imaginative work these individuals do. All of them are always imagining writing books, but never actually doing it. Others imagine that they're writing immortal prose, when what they're really writing is immoral prose: really bad. And such persons make life more difficult for me, because the main advantage of peers is that they force you to write better. Whereas I have only two main drives in writing well: to insult politicians and to impress young women in low-rider jeans. (I accomplish the former pretty effectively and the latter not at all.)

Yet, although it would be nice to have peers, I cannot in good conscience encourage anyone to pursue a career as a writer. For one thing, you never stop working. Reading alone will keep you at your desk for hours, hence the reason so many writers resemble some kind of corbeau. And a writer is the only professional who is working when they're just looking at the ceiling. Even if the actual writing is done quickly, you're always wondering how to turn actual events into prose. Your girlfriend may not appreciate this, especially in the middle of sex.

However, if you have naturally curly hair, you would be able to cope and you might even keep your spouse. And, if you do your work well, you would gain the respect of people whose respect is worth having: on which note, let me end this final column by thanking all those Express readers who have dropped me a line every so often. It is that which, more than anything else, encourages me to go on, although I will now be going on in another newspaper.