Exit. Stage Left.

I’m fair-skinned at best. And blonde. But not the​ Aryan tanned-Adonis t​ype. Most of my freckles have been too shy to join up. Got that Irish tan. That Kiwi tan. That sweet, sweet, ruddy pallor. Chances are good I’m whiter than you.

Easily sunburnt, I could pass for Swiss or Swedish. I’ve been shouted at in Danish by people who think I’m ignoring them. But this isn’t about that. At least, I think it’s not. It’s about being slightly, but definitely, pink.

Imagine being the colour of cotton candy or pink marshmallows. I appear strawberry-flavoured. It’s a hard thing to complain about, I’m clearly delicious. People can tell when I’m getting worked up, angry, or embarrassed. You can see my frustrations. You can see if I’m drunk. It’s obvious when I blush.

‘He’s turning red! Look at him!’

Which used to make me further embarrassed, less prone to speaking out or being too vulnerable or emotional in public.

Both my parents are redheads. Dad was coppery-blonde. Mum’s hair was auburn red like an Irish Setter. Dad still calls her ‘Rust’. Her great-grandmother Inez was born on Long Hope, in the Orkney Islands a way north of Scotland. She had such pale blue eyes they photographed as white. Startling. Ghostly. I read it happens when generations live by the sea. There’s a touch of something Viking or Celtic about it. Makes me think of distant islands, all in a chain ... the cold sparkling shores of Oban. The windswept Shetlands. Uist, Benbecula, Barra, Rùm. The Outer Hebrides. The Northern Isles.

Inez had a cousin, Abraham, who one day was washed from the black rocks while fishing. Never to be seen again.​

Dad’s colouring is something else, something from Northern Ireland and tin miners in Cornwall. Along the Devon coast. Penzance. Fair-skinned, fair-haired, rosy-cheeked. There’s a connection to Lille, to Île-de-France and Brittany. Perhaps a touch Norman.

In New Zealand I grew up mostly with white kids around me. Not as pink or pale, but still white. My blondeness, my rosy shade, it works in your favour as a child. Growing up in the 1980s I looked angelic apparently. Cherubic even. Blue-eyed. A Milkybar kid. Heavy on the milk. Innocent. Cute. A golden boy.

‘You could get away with anything with a face like that.’

A poster child for some utopian dream I didn’t understand, you feel special. You feel ‘good’ somehow, but you haven’t done anything to deserve it. Something from the communal psyche gets ascribed to you and you don’t know why. It sits uneasily.

I’ve seen pictures of myself from back then. My chin tilted up, beaming. A bowl cut that reflects so much light it causes lens flares on the camera. I am the blondest, pinkest kid in every school photo, as if I’ve been picked out with a limelight. Overexposed.

Jeanette, who cuts my hair, says people would kill for the colour.

‘Definitely platinum,’ she says, measuring it with her fingers.

‘It’ll go dark one day. Dirty blonde,’ says another. ‘That’s what it does.’

*​

In the summer of 1991 the Mongrel Mob had a New Year’s party in the public domain opposite my parents’ bach. Short on bathrooms, they politely knocked on the door. For a few days they’d come over in two or threes. While waiting they’d sit on the couch with dad and I and watch the Gulf War on TV.

It was the first televised war, cameras on Tomahawk cruise missiles showed black and white crosshairs flying down the streets of Kuwait. They zoom down alleyways, around corners, towards non-descript doors. Almost a video game, it was war by remote. Exotic. Across distant seas. But, for the first time, brought close up, fed straight into homes. Unlike anything before it, it made for a weird kind of reality show. The consequences couldn’t have been higher.

I got so familiar with the gang being in and out of the bach that one hot day, seeing them riding along the beachfront - past the surf life-saving tower, a mass of chromed bikes, tattoos and black leather - I pedalled my red BMX into the centre of the group. For a few minutes they let me ride among them. People laughed. I thought it was funny. It could have gone another way. A little blonde anomaly amidst all that formidable metal gleaming in the summer sun. I was grinning ear to ear, proud as punch.

*​

As I got older the way I looked got trickier. It seemed to pick up baggage as it rolled out into the world. My pink hue was less cute, it’s effect riskier and more complex.

At high school there’s usually a nickname for the blonde kid: ‘Snowy’, ‘Bluey’, ‘Old Man.’ Old before your time. My brothers had theirs. The oldest probably got the worst: ’Petit Couchon.’ Little Pig. The tradition at my school was to use the specific name of a real, blonde and pale kid from a decade earlier: ‘John Boore’. I’d never known him but he hadn’t been much liked; resentful at being singled out. That’s the way it goes though, the more you rail against a nickname the more it sticks. The urge to find a pigeonhole, to box up, name and categorise a person is universal. Like the mythical Bed of Procrustes, whatever there is about you that doesn’t fit will just gets abbreviated.

The names for pale kids had a pejorative element. You just knew, somehow, in terms of status on the social ladder that being this luminous shade was no advantage. Tanned skin speaks of health, holidays, pleasure. Too pale was the opposite. A Boo Radley. That kid in ​Sixteen Candles​. Pale in comparison. It situates you on the edge of the crowd. Casper the Friendly Ghost. Reclusive. A milquetoast. Fauntleroy. Bookish. Effete. Cloistered.

The visibility made me self-conscious. You reflect more light. You attract attention and make an easy target. It’s a peculiarity. Like being very tall. People can pick you out in a crowd. You get called out for it.

‘You’re not an albino,’ one girl says. Slowly. After some consideration. Before turning her attention to another boy.

I can tell you about the embarrassment. I didn’t like mirrors. I wanted to fit in. When I was thirteen, I put a bottle of tanning lotion all over my legs and headed out to town to show them off. Thought that was cool.

Plus, that choir boy look is a thing apparently. As a kid I’d been lured away, once or twice, while playing at a park, before mum could locate me. As a teen I’d get the odd, sudden, hand on the knee under a table. A breathy, hushed whisper. A friend’s step dad pushing porn and beer at you, asking when you’ll come over by yourself. At university I’d be regularly propositioned if out late at night. Caught a bit off guard, I’d be stopped and furtively questioned.

‘You alone? Where are you going?’

But, like I say, who am I to complain? People have much worse to contend with. Like the Pink Panther on Saturday morning cartoons, or Snaggle-Puss with his tuxedo collar and fancy cuffs, you learnt a certain footwork. You learn to make light of it, to make light of being light. With avoidance humour, almost theatrical, you dance around the subject. Head off script. Do your best to step around a subject that might leave you easily categorized or written off. Remove yourself as a target. Make it appear natural. Let the conversation move onward. Exit. Stage left.

*​

Once, when I was fourteen, at a petrol station in the town where I grew up, I stood on the forecourt waiting for a friend inside, when a ute rolled up. Three, maybe four, teenagers were on the back. Older than me. Bigger than me. While the driver filled up they nodded in my direction. I didn’t know why. I looked at my feet and wished my friend would hurry.

One of the boys stood up, still facing me. He extended his arm. Just above shoulder height. Then they all stood and did the same. Arms out. Palms down.

They kept looking. Waiting for me to respond.

*​

MTV was established and became a massive screen presence through the early 1990s. Breakdancing was the height of coolness. When a music video wanted to show it had credibility or flair, when the beat dropped and the chorus peaked, for a few seconds breakdancers would appear, flipping, spinning and worming across neon, graffiti-sprayed stage sets.

I immediately got out every available book on the subject from our very small town library. I would cycle thirty minutes to get there, then return with my precious cargo to sit under the dining table and read. Large format hardbacks had sequences of black and white photos showing how to do the robot. I would warm a cushion in front of the heater to practice my head spins on. In the living room I’d push back the couch and coffee table and break away. I had my own piece of cardboard. I would put on shows for family members. I should be ashamed.

At the wedding reception of an uncle, who lived on the Kāpiti coast, a hired crew of breakdancers tapped me on the shoulder and brought me on stage. We did the wave. The robot. I wormed. I spun, briefly, on my back. Paraparaumu Town Hall rocked that night, unlikely to have ever beheld such questionably-rad acrobatics. I’d worn shiny ski-pants in preparation. I had on a headband and fingerless gloves.

It felt good being the centre of attention but generally I had to fight my own tendency to want to overcompensate and appear fancier than I was; fresher, smarter, worldlier, more interesting. I often wanted to reinforce or explain my uniqueness, to double-down on a perception I thought already existed. Which made dating a bit weird. I sometimes wanted to adopt a louder, more intriguing persona. It took different forms. More cultured perhaps? Somehow removed from status games.

When social media became a thing I was shy of photos. On dates I’d want to stay away from beaches. Avoid the midday sun.

I could get paranoid. That Italian girlfriend who confides she has a thing for blondes and whose bookshelves are filled with the works of Oriana Fallaci, an impressive but also mildly-fascistic journalist who once described Islam as a ‘pool that never purifies.’ The Iranian girl who calls you ‘White Walker.’ Half-jokingly. Half-resigned.

Twice I’ve been on dates where guys nearby have leaned in to chat with whomever I’m with.

‘You with this guy?’

A slight guffaw.

For a moment that feeling of inadequacy passes through me. Timeless. Cold in my gut like ice-water. Like being told to go home or get back in your channel. Breathe. Relax. Laugh it off. Whoever really knows what it’s about.

When I travelled, in the back of my mind, I wondered whether how I looked would even matter.

Visiting the Jewish Museum Berlin, with its remembrances of the Holocaust, I look through the glass at photos of Hitler Youth. Apart from the uniform they just seem to be kids on camp. Everything I know about myself separates us. They’re not me but they look like me. I notice someone right next to me, looking in my direction. They turn to the photos then back to me again. They have an angry expression. I step away and head towards the exit.

Just by the door there’s what looks like an old school arcade machine with a single load screen. It asks whether Mel Gibson’s ​The Passion of the Christ​ is anti-semitic. Without any irony I can discern it indicates the joystick and says MOVE LEFT FOR YES OR RIGHT FOR NO. I wobble it uncertainly, thinking it can’t be serious, trying to understand why it’s there after all that impactful and complex record of human history and division.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ANSWER it says.

There’s a zoo in the centre of Berlin. It’s near the houseboat I’m staying on run by Captain Edgar, a Kiwi. I take the U-Bahn with its canary-yellow trains. They have schnitzel sandwiches and vanilla milk available at each stop. From the window I see two people stuck in the revolving door of an office building. Frustrated, their ostensibly trying to appear polite and apologetic but also both refusing to let go or stop pushing. At the zoo I see a Kea. The first time for me. Bright green. Curious and aggressive. Beautiful but caged. The enclosure seems too small.

I walk by and there’s ducks wandering about on the grass. A lady shouts at me in German, waving her hands. She’s telling me, I think, to pass one over to her. I chase one for a minute before wondering what I’m doing and stop. I really have no idea what she’s saying. I’m speaking English but she won’t acknowledge it. I don’t understand and she just keeps on yelling. I back away.

I catch up with Kiwis living in the Prenzlauer District. They’re loving Berlin’s cheap rent and liberal arts scene. I tell them I’d like to visit somewhere a bit warmer.

‘You want to go to Spain or France? Oh you’ll be fine. They love people like you.’

I think I’ll move through customs easily but I don’t. In transit, bearded, with a backpack and a bit disheveled, I stand out. They want to talk to me.

‘You’re travelling light!’

‘What are you up to?’

And when I catch sight of myself in the one-way mirror, I don’t feel safe. I feel singled out. I know it will show and my cheeks will go red. I won’t be able to control it. I’m like the Incredible Hulk, but for embarrassment.

In Brazil some people call out.

‘Hey Allemagne!’

You’re a type locals know. More familiar than a gringo. It’s said without malice, with recognition and warmth. Here the multitudinous shades of skin colour are discussed in depth and celebrated, almost fetishized. I meet a guy who’s nickname is ‘Seis da Tarde’. 6pm. Not quite light, not quite dark.

I rent a motorbike. Walking through the blazing heat to the rental stand the business owner sees me coming from a long way off. He’s black, but also dark, almost purple.

‘Ha,’ he says. One hand upwards indicating the sun.

‘You’re very white.’ Matter-of-factly. Smiling.

‘You’re very black,’ I reply.

I shouldn’t have said that, embarrassed for being simultaneously ungracious and foreign. Luckily he’s caught the ‘very’ part and knows what I’m getting at. He pauses one second then laughs, shrugging his shoulders with some degree of shared acknowledgment.

Back in Wellington I bump into one friend then another, who both happen to be blonde and pinkish like me. We haven’t seen each other for a while and sit down at a café for coffee and a catch up. Immediately comments come in.

‘Ha! Look!’

‘Like brothers!’

​‘Better watch out!’

Someone we don’t know decides to take out a camera. It’s an odd feeling. None of us like it so we pack up and leave.

*​

The urge to locate yourself in relation to the world is natural. As a kid I used to get Santa Claus and God mixed up. I had the impression they were both bearded, magical, caucasian men, who lived far away.

I wasn’t allowed to see them directly, they did good things for me, and I likely owe them something I’d never really understand. A bit like my uncle who got me to breakdance at his wedding.

I wrote a postcard to Santa asking him for a pet. I wanted a dog but I was prepared to negotiate. I remember signing it:

*******
*******
New Zealand
Pacific Ocean Southern Hemisphere Planet Earth
The Milky Way

There’s a strong argument that my childhood and my ethnicity are both privileges. In terms of almost every opportunity I can’t disagree. There’s a continuous messaging about the superiority of whiteness just below the culture’s water-line. To assuage ethnic anxieties we often attempt to drown out their complexity with the absolutism of nationalism or chauvinism. Maybe I just have some nervous response to the hierarchy of colour that floats through our culture. Also to the bullish type that unquestioningly embraces these kind of unspoken tribal borderlines. Puffed up. Declarative. ‘Water Buffalo’ my girlfriend's mum calls them.

It’s dying out apparently. Blondness. It’s a recessive gene. Which might not be a bad thing considering the prominent blonde pinkness of a couple of recently elected world leaders. Are they tapping into some resurgent ideology? Is it intentional? Discourse and rhetoric that once seemed so distant and remote is now suddenly close-up. Ideology traverses oceans, overflows from screens into homes. Personal. Nearby. Full of consequence.

One of the funny things about ageing is that a thing like pinkness seems to matter less and less. The currents and eddies of external and internal identity get so intermingled it’s hard to tell which came first. The solipsistic navel-gazing. The introspection. Over such a superficial thing. Who has time for it? What you do for others is more important. So, you look like a policeman. Try not to wear too much blue.

I straddle something. But I don’t know what. Not hybridised. Bi-cultural? Not really. Pākehā? Sure. I guess. I think being a touch different has just made me suspicious​. ​I suspect my own idea of being woke, or anyone else that puts energy into making sure others see them as having arrived. I say this not because my pale shade gives me any view outside of whiteness but because I’m double-dipped. A bit alien as a result. A little aware of the theatre of identity since, it seems, I have more skin in the game.

‘Our family could do with a touch more melanin,’ my mum says.

​Aunt Sally tells me the family genealogy. I’m a restless footnote struggling to stay awake.

I’m thinking of Abraham, washed from the stones. The crystal waves colliding. Not parting for him, but closing in. Their ineffable weight. That diaphanous web of white crests on the surface, constantly shifting. The light aqua of oxygenated water rolls alongside emerald-black depths that frighten me. Thalassophobia. The sense of ice-cold water and of losing your energy to the ocean. Dissipating. Of having fought waves to stay afloat only to lack the power to swim to shore. Even though you can see it. The eerie calm of knowing that. Seeing coastline after coastline. Fetlar. Hoy. The Out Skerries. Zetland. New Zealand. Distance. Closeness. Geography. Opportunity. Repetition.

*

Ko Pacific t​ōku​ moana.
Ko Tukituki t​ōku​ awa.
Ko Taranaki t​ōku ​maunga.

I shuffle my feet saying my pepeha. Even though the words are meant and I’m proud of them. My t​ūrangawaewae​.

Where you’re born is like how you look. No one gets a choice about it. And I’m used to doing a bit of a strange dance, identity-wise. A step forward, a step back, like Snaggle-Puss. I re-adjust my bow tie and fancy cuffs and try to appear confident and articulate. To speak up. To say where I’m coming from.

I choose my words carefully. I know I’m more than one thing, like everybody else.

Every potentiality doesn’t have to be resolved. My emotions betray me now and then. I do go red when I get things wrong, when my blood rises, but no point being embarrassed about that now.

​I’m glad it shows. At least that way you know I mean it.