You Don't Know Me

If he was shot in your areas would that mean that you shot him? No man. That is just stupidness. But Mr Prosecutor thinks it does and makes a big thing out of it. But that’s just a thing he’s got over me innit. He can say anything and it sounds proper bad. But when you look at it, it’s just bollocks. Sorry Your Honour, it just slipped out. What I mean is if I could say it like the way he can say it, the prosecution, you would be saying ‘this is just a rubbish evidence’. What, I was living there and so was the dead boy? Is that an actual evidence that means something? That don’t mean shit. Come on, yeah?

Then look at the second evidence. I was seen walking past the victim and that I said to him, ‘You’re waste man’. To the prosecution, and to everyone else that’s been watching too many movies, that is supposed to be evidence. That is supposed to be me saying that the victim is a dead man. Like I’m some Mafia guy in an American film. Ha! Sorry, jury. Sorry if you knew what I knew and you grew up where I grew up you’d be laughing too. On the streets in London that means something else. Mr Prosecutor wouldn’t know that because he’s not from the streets. Not the real streets, the kind of streets I know, the kind of streets where people shoot each other. Actually maybe that’s a bad example but you know what I mean. He’s on a different level. I’m not saying that as a bad thing. It’s just the truth. If I was going to one of his shooting parties or whatever, I wouldn’t know what their words mean. When I hear the word ‘estate’ I think of a car with a long boot or maybe a council block. He probably thinks of a house in the country, you get me? We are from different worlds, me and him. I don’t wish I lived in his world but I wish he spent a day in mine. Waste man!

Let me tell you about waste man. When I was about eleven I went to a new school. It wasn’t the local state school, it was some next school a mile away because they didn’t have room in my nearest one. It was one of them old seventies boxes that they must have thought looked cool at one time but by the time I got there it just looked like a falling-down block of flats. It had green panels, I remember that, with big square windows in between them. There was a yard that went all the way around where all us kids used to play at break time, with a railing round the outside to stop the kids spilling out into the road. That was it. Basically, it was like the most space they could make with the least money and wide open like a desert so there was nowhere anyone could hide.

There was this one place though. It was this fire escape kind of thing which ran down the side of the building in square spirals and under the last run of steps there was a like a well, you could call it. If you followed it all the way down it led to a locked metal door into some basement thing where the caretaker probably wanked himself off or whatever. That place, that was what we called ‘the Spit’. It was one place you did not ever want to be.

Anyway you move ends and it’s like moving into a different country. I moved and it was like I was in some war zone. In my first school it was maybe fifty per cent black. This place though, rah, it was like I had moved into BNP central. There was only like eight or nine non-whites in the whole school. It was like my eyes had suddenly gone from colour to black and white. And the kids, man! There was some proper racist shit going down there, trust me. Sorry Judge, I know what you said before about the swearing but it was, ‘Nigger this, coon that, black bastard that.’ Whatever though. That was just what it was. Some shit you got to just live with.

I learned to tune it out as much as I could. But I won’t lie to you, there was times when I had to bust a few faces. There’s only a certain amount a person can take before he snaps. I didn’t like to fight back all that much. Because apart from anything else it made me feel like every black dude who ever fought Rocky in them films. Everyone was always hoping that I would get my head kicked in. Mainly I just styled my way through as much of the shit as I could. If I could avoid a front-up, I would. You got to remember I was prettier than most of them boys so I had more to lose innit! Eventually though, after a few fights where I did a bit of damage, most people knew to leave me alone. People don’t just want to pick fights that they can win. They want to pick fights that they can win easily. And if that’s your thing then it ain’t me you’re looking for.

Anyway there was this one boy, Curt, one of the only other black boys at the school. He was this big fat dopey kind of kid. He was like a type of boy you could say anything to and he would just give you this drooly grin. Didn’t matter what you said to him and it didn’t matter that the boy even at that age was the size of a house, he would just smile straight at you. And I don’t mean you could say just anything to him like call him a fat c—, sorry Judge.