When I was thirteen, I thought I was ugly. My body was turning into something I didn’t understand. I had boobs which I thought were hideous, and I didn’t understand why men were looking at me. Not boys, men. It was disturbing, and although I had a mom and 2 sisters, there was no one I could talk to about this.
One day I was walking down the street and a man cycled by me and made a point of smiling, waving and flirting with me. Something about him creeped me out. The second time I saw him, he was driving a beaten-up truck, this time he slowed down and did the same thing as he had before. The newspaper shop owner saw this through the window, and when I went inside he said “He’s one of the gyppos from the park.” Gypsies have always been considered mysterious, romantic and mystical. But those were the Romany gypsies of old, who wandered the lands of the East and roamed across Europe over many hundreds of years. The London gypsies are a different breed. They consist of people who don’t want a job and like to stay on the move. They often get into trouble as the crime rate will often rise when they are in town (they don’t stay long). Social Services can’t stand them, because they won’t put their children into school – how can they when they are always on the move? Their reputation is that they leave a place in a much deteriorated state than when they first arrive. There is trash, no sanitation and areas become rodent infested after they leave. I spent the next few weeks in terror that I would see this man again. I thought he might kidnap me. I was scared. The real gypsies of old really had it made. As I sit here in an air conditioned box, staring at a smaller box with several hours of work ahead of me, I ponder the gypsies plight. I suppose they were a lot like the American Indians back in the day. Nomadic, living off the land. I can imagine them all sitting around a camp fire at night, the young listening to the old. Passing down their stories to each generation and sealing their immortality. In my heart I am a real gypsy – you probably are as well. Every day women get out of bed, turn their inner dial to ‘caretaker/wife/mother/lover/cook’ as they walk through the house with a multitude of lists running through their head of all they must accomplish within the short hours of the day. Men are more like the London gypsies – they open their eyes, fart, scratch, get out of bed and focus on perhaps one thing (two if they are clever). Although they are the ones with the least to do, they somehow also get to be the ones that tell the stories, that get the immortality. It is like they are the actors in the movies of our lives. Women get to be the prop-man, the producer, the one that puts it all together. We never get to be the stars. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I had smiled back at the gypsy. I might be traveling the British countryside and dodging the law. The upside is that instead of having a house to clean, and a yard to mow I would just have to dust the caravan and throw all the trash outside the door. There might be something to that lifestyle after all……anyone want to run away and be a gypsy with me? Wandering Jude