Rarely have I read a debut novel that conveys the piercingly accurate immediacy of its central characters' experiences with such grace and insight. “Rainbow Milk” begins with the story of Norman Alonso, a horticulturist and former-boxer from Jamaica who moves his family to England as part of the Windrush generation. He suffers from a debilitating illness which is causing him to lose his sight and he finds working and integrating into a small British community much more challenging than he expected. His situation and character is described with poignant delicacy so I was initially thrown when the story abruptly moves on to follow Jesse McCarthy, a teenage boy from the West Midlands who moves to London at the beginning of the millennium. But I soon felt an intense affinity and affection for this character whose story comprises the bulk of the novel. The way the author captures Jesse's fierce confidence as well as his vulnerability is so sympathetic and true to life. Only much later does the tale loop back to a connection with Norman and his family in a way which is achingly beautiful.
I recognize that in many ways Jesse's experience is very different from my own. He's a black young man who grew up in a predominantly white society and he was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. But I strongly connected to him as a gay boy that moves from a small community to the city. He throws himself into the pulse of urban life engaging in the same sex experiences he could only previously fantasize about. I remember the feelings of uninhibited delight and liberating honesty of those first sexual experiences - “This was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But I also intensely recall the subsequent fears and newfound isolation after understanding the consequences of those actions. Mendez conveys all this with great strength that makes no apologies for his character's explosive desire. As an attractive and well-hung young man Jesse meets many older men who want to use him: “he was a skinny, twenty-year-old black boy with a big dick, which was all anyone ever seemed to want him for.” Because of this, Jesse, in turn, also learns to use the men he meets rather than following his impulse to romantically settle down. The transactional nature of these encounters encourages Jesse to start working as a rent boy.
I think it's so powerful how Mendez captures the way that commerce bleeds into the emotional and sexual needs of a young man in Jesse's position and I've not read anything quite like it since the novel “What Belongs to You”. Some of his encounters are destructive, disappointing or simply dull. But others are surprisingly nurturing as there are a few individuals that see Jesse as a dynamic young man to engage with as more than an object of desire or a repository for their revenge. This forms a very accurate portrayal of the diverse and perilous social landscape which a gay man enters into where the physical body is so vulnerable. Equally, the full emotional consequences aren't often felt until much later as Jesse gradually learns what he truly wants in his relationships with men.
As someone raised by his black mother and white step-father in a predominantly white community, Jesse was prone to moments of intense self-hatred during his childhood because of the colour of his skin. Later the experience of truly inhabiting his skin begins as a form of imitation: “He actually felt like an actual black man, listening to rap, especially to the lyrics, really letting the beats get into him.” The novel skilfully moves backwards and forwards in time showing how Jesse learns to inhabit the multifaceted parts of his identity on his own terms and I particularly enjoyed how the story describes Jesse's evolving communion with music. There's an interplay between the song lyrics and the emotions of his personal experiences that form a startlingly personal view of the world through his eyes. And I have to note (as someone who was roughly Jesse's age when I moved to London at the start of the millennium) I especially loved the references to artists like Kelis and the Sugababes.
The novel so vividly describes Jesse's journey towards finding a sense of community amongst like-minded individuals and honest romantic relationships. There are some sections which describe the will and desires people place upon him in frenzied expressive bursts of italicised dialogue. These range in tone from darkly sexualized projections to the humorous and paltry demands restaurant customers make upon the staff. But there are also low key but pointed references throughout to the racist paranoias and subtly-expressed fears of people Jesse encounters in his everyday life from white men who avoid sitting next to him on public transportation to white women who cling a bit more tightly to their purses when he's around. It's moving how, in addition to forming bonds with other BAME individuals, Jesse grows to understand and articulate his experience through reading writers like James Baldwin, Bernardine Evaristo, Andrea Levy and Sam Selvon. Paul Mendez proves he's definitely a part of this tradition and also establishes a voice that is uniquely his own in this boldy heartfelt novel.
