Somewhere to begin

To write about your own life is tantamount to a simulated out-of-body experience, attempt to be objective about something that is clearly far beyond objectivity. or a diary, verbalised emotion that is really not of much interest to anyone but the person who wrote it, and even to the writer, a likely liability some time in the future.
There is, nevertheless, something attractive about writing to the unknown, immaterial eyes, to talk through print in most part talking to yourself, as if walking nude in front of an open window - if you look up and want to see, you can. I don't care. So there we go, I shall write what I like and the abyss of internet may read it at will.
Today then, at the end of another day filled with aimless browsing, looking at things I cannot afford (flat, car, more space, trip to india) I can at least write down what i remember of Leif, and not waste the entire waking time of this god's day of 18th of July.
I knew Leif when I was quite little, we played together in the gang of kids from the estate around, six blocks set around a small hill. The hill seemed very steep when I was six. I recently went back and it has shrunk. Otherwise the estate has not changed much, which is unsurprising. For drastic change to occur, some mesure of hope and ambition is almost invariably involved. The estae where I spent my childhood does not cultivate either, and anyone with sufficient ambition moves away rather as soon as possible. Leif, though. Leif is a gypsy, full-blooded and dark, like many of the other gypsy boys we played with. There were fewer gypsy girls out, I only remember the older ones, teenagers with glossy black hair and the uniform of a young and unmarried gypsy female, ruffled white blouse and simple black skirt. When the girls grew up to be women and married, they acquired the right to wear grown woman's clothes: The heavy black velvet skirts with the petticoats, the clourful silk and chiffon blouses and the heavy gold jewellery. Gypsies are unnervingly beautiful folk, when exhibiting traces of the original Roma culture. I know we are meant to call them Roma people now but I have never thought of the word gypsy as derogatory, and the proud and quick-witted and inexcusably attractive people I knew from my childhood never demonstrated the kind of shame or wiliness that you see in the begging, slippery Romanian gypsies and that bred the connotation. I feel bad for the Romanians, persecuted and reviled and deprived of their traditional occupations, horses and music that supports their nomadism so well. It is clear to anyone who cares to see that begging is awful, a living, granted, but awful. But it is hard to be a nomad and reject what is on offer by our liberal culture without ending up lie a reject yourself.
Leif was not a particularly quick-witted or a romantic figure, quite the contrary, I remember him as quite sweet-natured but thick-featured, slightly chubby or at least heavy-set and slow on the intake. His colouring was all hues of brown, hot cocoa skin, chocolatey hair, black peppercorn eyes. He was inseparable from his older brother and protector, and therefore not ostracised from our playground elite. His brother was very clever indeed, with a frightful temper and bony and accurate fists. Years later, I heard that Leif was running the horse-betting business in a nearby small town.
A mutual childhood friend who had stayed back much after I had moved further and further away told me that there had been a fight between Leif and some gypsies from Sweden who we unhappy about losing, and that Leif's face had been badly cut up in the fight. This did not, however, dim his chances with the ladies as it seemed that the fight had cemented Leif's previously fledgling reputation as a macho fighter - something that the good-looking, haughty gypsy girls were keen on, given their own abilities to fight like a Congolese guerrilla when provoked. Leif, who had never enjoyed much success with girls who are big on the sexy dangerous dark men even if they end up in prison, piss off never to be heard from again, leaving the girls - now women, of course - and their children behind without a second thought, or die early in a fight or an accident.
I saw him once from across the street when I was visiting my old home town. He was walking with a modern-day Cleopatra who was whisking his arm away- they looked like they were fighting - and he was talking to her with a low voice (at least I could not hear it on my side of the street), lost patience and slapped her. The girl slapped Leif back, following which he slapped her again, she kicked the ground and stormed off. Leif let her walk in front of him and touched his face unconsciously where she had slapped him. A few feet on, she stopped, pointed at something on a patisserie window and waited for him. He went inside and re-emerged a few minutes later with a small box which he handed over to the girl. She did not smile or say thank you, turned on her heels and carried on walking. A few seconds later she turned a little and slowed down a little, allowing him to catch up. They looked happy, and seemed both to understand what was required of each. I was glad that, unlike his brother, he was not chasing after a white woman, he could be with someone who also spoke Roma and got it, got everything, what life was like for him. Give or take a few slaps, they painted an idyllic picture.