boyhood

That is how the questioning always works. At first it may wander here and there; but in the end, unfailingly, it turns and gathers itself and points a finger at himself. Always it is he who sets the train of thinking in motion; always it is the thinking that slips out of his control and returns to accuse him. Beauty is innocence; innocence is ignorance; ignorance is ignorance of pleasure; pleasure is guilty; he is guilty. This boy, with his fresh, untouched body, is innocent, while he, ruled by his dark desires, is guilty. In fact, by this long path he has come within sight of the word perversion, with its dark, complex thrill, beginning with the enigmatic p thah can mean anything, then swiftly tumbling via the ruthless r to the vengeful v. Not one accusation but two. The two accusations cross, and he is at their point of gunsight. For the one who brings the accusation to bear on him today is not only light as a deer and innocent while he is dark and heavy and guilty: he is also Coloured, which means that he has no money, lives in an obscure hovel, goes hungry; it means that if his mother were to call out "Boy!" and wave, as she is quite capable of doing, this boy would have to stop in his tracks and come and do whatever she might tell him (carry her shopping basket, for instance), and at the end of it get a tickey in his cupped hands and be grateful for it. And if he were to be angry with his mother afterwards, she would simply smile and say, "But they are used to it!"

Coetzee, J.M. (1997) Boyhood Vintage: London, p. 60-61