Many, many years ago, I came into this world as a young, British, Afro-American baby. My parents, both being born and raised in Mexico, were and to this day are very perplexed as how this was even remotely possible. No one knows and frankly, no one gives a rats ass.

I remember as a youngster, I’d bounce on mothers knee while my father played the banjo, a true Mexican soundtrack for life. She was a heavy set woman, always building model airplanes and cars, and the glue had to set heavy otherwise they’d simply fall apart.

My father was very patriotic to my heritage. Nothing like seeing a full blown Mexican man playing James Brown licks and singing in a British accept, only to impress his adoring baby boy. I was his love child and he was my Papi Tortilla Alphonso Washington.

I attended all white school deep in the heart of Tijuana. I was actually revered and was given the nickname Midnight Pueblo which I understood to mean, “The new day cowboy”. Everyone avoided me, including my best friend Paco, our family hamster. I just assumed people thought too highly of me that they couldn’t identify. I felt more so to be running the show than I did any sense of shame or displacement.

Dad would often remind me, after picking me up on his unicycle after yet another school yard beating, that I was special and the most adored nino there ever was. I pretended to eat up his words, literally, as most nights the dinner table was vacant. Mother hadn’t worked for years and my father never had a job in his life. Months at a time, we’d survive on undrinkable tap water and day-old peyote. I either developed a heck of an immunity or it explains my narcissistic beliefs of who I was in school and in general.

Eventually, I became the man that sits behind this rusted up typewriter and shares his deepest thoughts with the listening universe, bringing us all just that much closer. I now consume the richest of foods… normally a juicy inch thick slab of spam, a handful of wheat thins and a tall, cold glass of lactose free strawberry milk. My parents still live in Tijuana but when they visit I swear it’s like Marde Gras all over again.

I face my days one minute at a time and I wish more of us would embrace it so. I have an albino sheepdog named Colin. I find equality at its strongest when we walk. He gets me, even though I don’t.

What can I say, life is deece  (I invented deece as a short form of the word decent). I’m proud of my heritage just I’m proud of yours. And that’s truly what it’s all about.