Tervel Andrews

CHARACTER MONOLOGUE: OLIVER (IED TOKYO)

"People and things are not as simple as we make them out to be. We make assumptions all the time, try to group and limit and make people understand themselves as we understand them to be. But people and things are not as simple as we make them out to be. Especially when they're two things. I was born in a former British colony founded on the right to escape persecution and to persecute freely on new real estate. I am the product of the melting pot, over two generations of people from different places with so-called 'liberal' tastes in mates. I am many things, but for the sake of brevity, let's say I'm two. Both these things were allies during World War II, not that there's any importance in that statement. I live in Japan now. And even here, where the people look more like me than in other places, I'm still on the outside a lot of the time. It would probably hurt more if I wasn't used to it. But I'm looking for something here, besides a quiet place to write. I'm looking for who my grandmother was. I'm looking for the identity she lost when she was forced to become a comfort woman. I'm looking for that girl in the school uniform. No, not her, the one next to her. The one who's not smiling. I'm looking to understand, because no matter what I do or what I look like, 'I am not the same, I am a Martian...' and I think I just found someone else as lost as I am." ~ Oliver (IED Tokyo)