Everyone Everywhere: Mixed Race Family Stories

This story starts where most do not: Oceana Watford.

It’s 2013. I’m a teen in the disco room, knees creaking to ‘Summer Nights’. On my legs: Topman’s cheapest. On my chest: more where that came from, with some Lynx sprayed in the pits for good luck. Have you seen Magic Mike? Imagine that but with 0.02 per cent of the muscles… and the magic. That's me.

The disco room hosted planet Earth's dorkiest people: teenagers from Hertfordshire. It is a swirl of swinging bones. Aggressively middle-aged DJs spin ‘cheese’ as teens slather sloppy kisses around. The aftermath of Jägerbombs trickles down chins as a hundred limp chat-up lines gush past in a gale of hormones, with the unwelcome stench of flatulence flooding overhead. Welcome to Oceana.

Inside this musty, alcopop-guzzling hole, lives are about to change.

I’m with my new-ish friend, Clive. That’s not his real name –he was born in the 90s, a decade-long ‘dry patch for Clive births’^[1].

Back then, he was famous for his business idea: posting care packages of chocolates to stoners. This idea first came to him one evening when, of course, he was stoned. It’s scientifically impossible to come up with a business idea this good when you’re sober. Impossible.  

Clive and I flail around dancing, a moat of sticky carpet surrounding us. We are the Black Swan; we are Natalie Portman.

I notice my massinā, Liam, across the dance floor.

Liam is asian, while I am mixed: my asian mum is Sri Lankan and my white dad is English. I had never mentioned this to Clive before, in our short, budding friendship.

‘My cousin is over there!’ I shout over Shania Twain in a fit of enthusiasm. ‘Let’s go see him!’

Clive and I slither through gaggles of people toward Liam.

‘Liam, meet Clive,’ I said. ‘Clive, meet my cousin, Liam.’

‘He’s your cousin?’

‘Yeah?’ I notice confusion washing across Clive’s face, so I tell him about my family.

‘Ohhh,’ Clive says, the blanks filling in. He shoots back:

‘I thought you were Egyptian.’

Clive and I had never discussed race or my family before. He had seen me and decided yes, this person is Egyptian, and never thought about it again. I have a lot of questions about this moment, the first being: how many Egyptians does he know with silly names like ‘Lucas Fothergill’?