1982

by Jian Ghomeshi

  My father was a highly regarded engineer who had done his schooling in Iran and the UK, but people didn’t always think that, because he had a heavy accent. When you have an accent you are sometimes considered dumb. At least, that was the case in 1982. Then again, it also depended on the accent. If you had a French accent from France, you would be thought to be sexy in 1982. And if you had a strong German accent, like our neighbour Mr. Muller, you might be mistaken as gruff. English accents were considered cool, but I wasn’t really aware of that when we first came to Canada and I was eight and spoke like a Londoner. I just knew I wanted to lose my accent so I would fit in.

  But maybe the worst and most misunderstood accent was the Middle Eastern one. If you had a Middle Eastern accent in 1982, you might be thought to be dumb or confused or to have a natural facility for explosives. This hasn’t completely changed over the last three decades, but people seem to have more reference points for brown people now. My mother had less of an accent than my father, and she was much whiter, but it was clear she was from somewhere far away, too. The fact that there were very few immigrants in our part of Thornhill at the time meant assumptions were made about my father and our family because we were Middle Eastern. For instance, the red lamp incident might really have been about contrasting ideas, but it got presented as my father not understanding “Canadian culture.” I didn’t know about the roots of stuff like this at the time. I just resented my family for being different and my father for his accent.

  On another occasion we had gotten squirrels caught in our attic and my father had tried various methods to shoo them out. There were lots of squirrels in Thornhill in the ’80s. It was like a squirrel epidemic at times. In the spring of 1981, when there had been a few squirrels living inside our attic for months and nothing had worked to shoo them out, my father and I had gone to a local Home Hardware store. My father had the idea that we might find a cage or trap to catch the squirrels so he could take them and release them somewhere away from our home. The point was to try to liberate the attic without harming the squirrels. When my father asked the guy in the baseball cap behind the counter about a trap of this kind, the man wagged his finger and said he wouldn’t help us.

  “We don’t eat squirrels in this country,” the guy behind the counter said.

  I remember sensing my father’s disappointment when the man accused us of eating squirrels. I saw his shoulders slump a bit, and then he motioned to me for us to leave. It all happened quickly. The man in the baseball cap probably had no idea how tasty Persian food like my mother’s ghormeh sabzi was and that we wouldn’t be so desperate as to eat squirrels. But that didn’t matter. I was angry with my father. I was angry that he had a heavy accent and that people thought he was stupid. I wished I wasn’t Iranian, even though I’d only known Iranians—or Persians, you can use either word—to be kind and loving and generous family-oriented people. I wondered why my father had not yelled at the guy or punched him like a tough dad would. I told my father he should have said something. My father replied, “Don’t leesen to this man. There ees no point fighting with heem. He did not understand very well.” My father was usually graceful in these situations. Just like the oscillating sprinkler. But sometimes I wished he would be more like the impulse sprinkler.

  I was different in all the wrong ways in Thornhill in 1982. Rather than looking and acting like Bowie—which would be impossible, because then I’d be too cool to be seen in Thornhill—I was often distinguished from others because I was Persian. There were no other Iranians in Thornhill in the early ’80s. None. Or almost none, anyway. And this is ironic, because the place is now teeming with Persians who’ve settled there and constructed a mini “Tehranto” just minutes from where I grew up. But they weren’t there when I was young. Not when I needed them.

  Beyond assumptions based on accents, the dearth of Iranians meant people didn’t understand anything about our background. After Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the tumultuous events of the early ’80s there, people were still quite confused about who and what we were. This went beyond racism. Sometimes it was just confusion.

  One day, Annie McMillan from down the street asked me about our ethnic background. I wanted her to like me, because she wore tight, faded jeans and would always tan the way pretty girls did. Annie was two years older than me and she was quite tall. She saw me playing road hockey alone and crossed the street and came straight towards me. I was excited that Annie wanted to speak to me. Then, after saying hello, she asked me if my family were Arabs. She didn’t say it in a mean way. In fact, she said it in the way a pretty girl with a tan does when she’s being nice.

  “Are you guys Arabs?”

  There was a genuine curiosity in her tone. I thought Annie might think we were exotic, the way Freddie Mercury was exotic in his spandex and moustache when he was onstage during the “Live Killers” tour with Queen. But I wasn’t sure if she thought it would be a good or bad thing for us to be Arabs. So I decided to tell her the truth. We were not.

  “No, we’re Persians. Iranians. Like, from Iran,” I said. There was an awkward pause and Annie looked a bit puzzled. I decided to continue. “It’s in the Middle East. That’s where my parents come from. But I’m not from Iran. I mean, I was born in London. Like, in the UK. But we’re Iranian.”

  I tried to explain this as comprehensively as I could to cover all the bases. And I thought if I let her know I was born in England it might make me better in her eyes. She had pretty brown bangs and she could flip her hair like Kristy McNichol. And she had a very nice tan.

  “Oh, okay,” she said. “So, you’re like Arabs, though?” “Well, no. Iran is a separate country and the people are actually Aryans. That’s our race. Aryans.” I didn’t know what that part about Aryans meant, but I had heard my uncle saying something similar. And I knew the point was that we were different from Arabs.

  “So, are you from Arabia, then?”

  “No. Iran. We’re not Arabs. Like I said. We’re not Arabs … at all.”

  Annie still looked puzzled. It was clear she would not be able to get her head around this.

  “But your food is like Arab food, right?”

  It went on like that.

  This was not Annie’s fault. She simply hadn’t met any other Iranians. And she probably didn’t know any Arabs. I always wondered what she was thinking of when she asked about “Arab food,” but she probably didn’t know either. And besides, she had tight jeans and she was very pretty. She had a nice tan. And Annie was like a lot of Thornhill: pretty straight ahead and relatively confused about what and who my family were.

  Thornhill was certainly safe in 1982. It was clean and wellkept and what is often professionally called “livable.” Kids would play on our street well into the night and there was never much concern about that. We generally left our houses unlocked and trusted our neighbours. But here again was another reason Thornhill lacked credibility. There were no dark alleys where gangs roved and ran cocaine importation businesses the way they did in Scarface. There were no “crackwhore” streets or red-light districts (well, except for our porch before my father changed the lamps). And even when a lot of the kids did drugs or drank behind the Golden Star restaurant or near the ravine, it was all still relatively harmless. Safe suburbs are the best places for raising kids, except for the kids who think they don’t want to be safe. While Bowie was being spotted in the cesspools of underground society, Thornhill was pretty squeaky clean.

  I wish I could say that this was nostalgia. I wish I could say that Thornhill has since devolved into a dangerous ’hood filled with hookers and crime-ridden back alleys. I wish I could tell you that my old stomping grounds have become bloodied and busted. That would be cred. But I can’t. While Thornhill is a much more diverse and urban place than it was three decades ago, it still has a reputation as a nice burgh for upper-middle-class families to settle in. A recent survey of crime in Canada found that the region in which Thornhill is located is still one of the safest in the nation
. So the Bowie who appears in the “Ashes to Ashes” video would still likely be unwelcome.

  But there were some variations in different parts of Thornhill in the ’80s. And one of the ways this played out was in the marked distinction between the two main high schools: Thornhill SS and Thornlea SS. Our family lived in the zone that required me to go to Thornhill SS. It was generally considered a tougher school with a lower academic standard. It was more “old Thornhill.” That meant less cool. My friend Toke told me that Thornhill SS was also more of a rocker school. His brother, Mitch, had gone there, and Mitch wore a leather jacket and listened to Black Sabbath.

  Thornlea SS, on the other hand, was literally on the other side of a bridge. It had first been constructed in the 1960s as an open-learning experimental liberal school with socialist principles. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I knew Thornlea was still considered cool. It was no longer experimental, but it was a more diverse place with greater breadth of courses and had a more racially integrated student body. It was known for its growing academic prowess and, most important, for its focus on fine arts. This was also cool.

  My sister had successfully petitioned to transfer to Thornlea SS in 1979, because she was interested in theatre and because it seemed more glamorous than going to the “old Thornhill” school, which was closer to us geographically. With my growing affinity for theatre and music, I also petitioned to follow in my sister’s footsteps. I got accepted into Thornlea, and in 1982 I started there in Grade 9. Going to Thornlea would become the biggest decision ever to affect my future. It was at Thornlea where I first became New Wave. It was at Thornlea where I started on my path to be Bowie. And, most important, Thornlea is where I met Wendy.

  2

  “ARAIBAN KNIGHTS” – SIOUX SIE AND THE BANSHEES

  Wendy was like Bowie. Inasmuch as a diminutive sixteenyear-old blond girl from Thornhill could be like Bowie. To those who just didn’t understand, she probably wasn’t much like Bowie. But she had shoulder pads. And she smoked. And when she smoked, she held the cigarette between her index finger and her thumb like she was holding a joint. That’s the way Bowie did it.

  And Wendy had that early ’80s short haircut with the long straight bit in the front. It was totally David Sylvian. David Sylvian was the lead singer of the band Japan, and he had dyed-blond hair that was long in the front and short in the back. He was very serious. He would flip his hair back sometimes, but usually it was parted on the side and covered one of his eyes. And that’s the way Wendy had her hair, too. And David Sylvian got that from David Bowie. So, you see, Wendy was exactly like Bowie. And she was punk. Or, no, she was New Wave. Wait. No. Punk. Okay, I’m still not sure which. But she was almost seventeen. And she barely spoke to me. In fact, she barely looked at me. Wendy was my dream girl. Female Bowie.

  You probably know what I mean when I say that Wendy was cool. Or you think you do. You probably have an idea of what cool is. But there’s a subversive trick to cool. Cool can be fleeting. And what is cool in your head this minute might not be cool in a couple of years from now. It will stop being cool if it lacks substance, or if it has too much substance, or if it is a substance. It might also stop being cool if it becomes too popular. Pop success is often at odds with cool. But then, if you hang on, you’ll be cool again in a couple of decades. Longevity is another trick. Cool can change.

  Remember vinyl? Vinyl records were cool when Zeppelin put out In Through the Out Door in 1979. That album was so cool it had a few different jacket sleeves that you could colour. Then vinyl became near extinct as people started collecting CDs and throwing out their ELO albums. In the mid-’80s, vinyl records were seen as antiquated and inferior. Then, fifteen years later, everyone got iPods. And after a while, some people got tired of their music only coming out of tiny plastic rectangles with a digital list of songs. These people yearned for large black discs of music that they could scratch. And so now, vinyl is cool again.

  The same is true of eggs. When I was a little kid in the 1970s, my mother would make me eat lots of eggs. My mother would say that eggs were an important part of the daily diet. Then, in the ’80s and ’90s, my mother started instructing me to stay away from eggs because of cholesterol or fat or bird flu or something. She was not alone in this capricious attitude towards eggs. Eggs became so uncool that people started to eat only the white bits. Some people went even further than that. In the ’90s, some people resorted to eating fake stand-in eggs with funny names—anything to avoid real eggs. But cool can change. And now my mother thinks I should eat eggs again. They provide protein, she says. Even Starbucks sells eggs, in elaborate Starbucks packaging. And Starbucks is cool. Or wait, no, Starbucks isn’t cool. But it was once cool. And eggs were cool and then not cool—and then cool again. Just like Joan Jett. Totally like Joan Jett.

  I have made a short list (or shortlist) of things that were cool and then not cool and now are cool again:

  vinyl

  eggs

  cigars

  SNL

  Joan Jett

  As you can see, this short list demonstrates that our idea of cool can change. But not Wendy. I knew Wendy would always be cool.

  Wendy went to my high school, Thornlea SS. She was an older woman. She was already in Grade 11. She was totally New Wave. Or punk. I was still fourteen and in the midst of a rapid transition from acoustic-guitar-wielding folkie—and ethnically inappropriate “Ebony and Ivory” duet singer—to aspiring New Romantic. I had been gradually building my black wardrobe for months to accomplish this mission. My skinny legs looked even skinnier in black pants. I had started dyeing and gelling my hair. Actually, I had started dyeing and gelling and then blow-drying and gelling (again) my hair. The colour of my hair would change every few weeks. It was alternately jet black or highlighted with blond streaks or, in one ill-fated stint, rusty orange. I had not yet discovered crimping. That was a year or two away.

  Of course, I did all this hair business without the blessing of my very professional Iranian father.

  “Why you are wearing your hair like thees? You are wanting your hair to be orange like thees?”

  My dad’s thick Iranian accent would get a bit thicker when he was upset. His tactic was to ask questions to demonstrate his displeasure.

  “You are thinking it ees looking good, thees orange hair?” “That’s the way cool people do it now, Dad. They colour their hair and use gel.” My replies had an appropriate teenage tone of exhaustion.

  “Why you don’t want to wear new clothes?”

  My father would always continue to the next question if he didn’t get a good answer to the first. He was usually exasperated with the whole thing before we even started talking. Sometimes, he would deeply exhale when he saw me with a new hair colour. That’s when I knew he was going to ask a question to demonstrate his displeasure. I was exasperated, too. We were man and boy pre-emptively tired of the same conversation.

  “Vintage clothing is cool, Dad. Everyone knows that.” “You are wanting to look like beggar?”

  It went on like that.

  My dad would ask these kinds of questions because he really didn’t understand. For example, it was obvious he didn’t understand the haircuts or sartorial splendour of the Human League and Kajagoogoo. Well, okay, most people probably never understood the band Kajagoogoo. Or why they used that name. But that included my dad. He didn’t understand that being New Romantic often meant dressing in exaggerated counter-sexual or androgynous clothing. And he definitely didn’t understand my growing affinity for second-hand stores. He didn’t come to North America for his son to dress in used clothing.

  My mother, on the other hand, would not ask any questions. She just made statements. She would state facts.

  “Oh, you’ve decided to put the black pointy boots on again. Those are the ones you got from the second-hand market at the Palais Royale last month. You’ve decided to wear those boots a lot.”

  See? That’s an example of three very factual sentences. My
mother had devised a cunning way of expressing her negative opinions by simply stating facts. I would later learn that this is called passive-aggressive. But at the time I had no idea anyone else had this ability. I just knew that my mother would calmly say these things like she was reading out the details of a court case. She would speak them slowly to allow the stenographer to keep up.

  Sometimes my mother would helpfully point out facts about others, too. She did this to draw a comparison for the sake of underscoring an idea.

  “You know, that Chris from across the street doesn’t dye his hair. He has a very nice haircut. He looks like Mark Hamill.”

  This was my mother’s way of expressing disapproval of me. She wanted me to wear more normal shoes and be more like That Chris, who was around my age and lived across the street. My mother figured if I were more like That Chris, I would somehow fit in and not get teased or something. She seemed to overlook the minor detail that my name was Jian and I was the only ethnic kid on the street, other than the Olsons. And the Olsons were black. And black wasn’t really ethnic.

  My mother never expressed her disapproval directly. She was generally very polite. And, ultimately, she may have known her efforts would be futile. Even if I’d wanted to, I could never actually be Chris. That Chris. He was physically bigger than me and had straight blond hair. It was like Wendy’s hair. Except That Chris didn’t look like Bowie. But That Chris did mow the lawn.

  “Oh, look, that Chris is mowing the lawn again.”

  This was another statement of fact from my mother. She would say this as if That Chris deserved a medal or an extra cup of Laura Secord chocolate pudding. And, yes, That Chris was mowing the lawn. Actually, he seemed to be in a perpetual state of mowing the lawn. That is, when he wasn’t watering the lawn. I became convinced That Chris took such meticulous care of his family’s lawn with the sole intention of reminding my parents that they had a son with pointy shoes who was less attentive to the yard. Chris would go on to own a profitable landscaping business after high school. That Chris had a nice haircut. Just like Mark Hamill.