The Dressing: (Father’s aside)

Outside, I am not a man. I am a thing which in fine company arouses awe: that curious fusion of fear and longing I have learned to make use of.

I am not a country though I bear the marks upon this countenance of my own wretched, fragrant island and the hopes of its enslavers in my name: a river crossed, a conquered view.

Still, I am not that sad city. I am more than its vainglory and collective shame.

Here, on this Isle, I am a continent. I am so large they cannot grasp my meaning. Contours loom, unmapped, my lineaments refuse coherence. I am the Dark Interior, that Other, mysterious and lost; Dread Destiny, riven with vine and tuber, satiny prowler slithering up behind his doomed and clueless prey.

Since in their eyes I have no culture, I am free to borrow strange adornments: the Ottoman Sultan’s quilted turban, a French phrase, Caesar’s cape flung hyperbolically across Africa’s gaily layered robes. In this way I have made from their lust a business.

This is their system; they understand the service I provide—no trifling pleasure. And if to them I am no more than a mere phantasm, a swarthy figment of their guilt, yet I came to these shores yoked to my name: Bridgetower, a reach and a stretch—and now I would give up my small empire to you, my son, but not ever must you forget that you are, indeed, a Prince—just not the pitiable one they worship here, not just the one they can see.