By Jules-Scott

(Essay / Reflection – 2025)

Intro:
We think of laughter as joy. But for me, it has often lived a double life.
It has been medicine and mask, connection and complicity, survival and betrayal.
This is my story of how laughter shaped me, both as disguise and as freedom — and what it means to reclaim it on my own terms.

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The Double Life of Laughter

I have laughed a lot in my life.
But don’t mistake that for a life that was always funny.

Some of those laughs were nervous — cracks in my voice that tried to cover the weight I carried.
Some were awkward — filling silences that felt like walls closing in.
Some were strategic — smiles stitched into sound so I wouldn’t be mistaken for the “angry Black man.”
And many were masks — agreeing with jokes that cut me to the bone, just to stay inside the circle, just to not be left outside in the cold.

Here in Holland, jokes are often daggers dressed as play.
About color. About size. About the way you wore your hair — red curls, dreadlocks, punk spikes.
Anything different could be turned into comedy.

People called it humor.
But for me, it was survival.
I laughed, even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt.
Because not laughing left me exposed.

There were times I laughed not because something was funny, but because silence would have exposed me even more.

I laughed when people who were different became the punchline.
And that difference lived in me too:
my Black and brown skin, my homosexuality, my restless mind that never fit the mold.
I laughed at jokes told by white people, but also at jokes told by Black and brown people.
All of them cut. Because there was always a part of me that belonged — and another part that did not.
That was the real joke of it all.

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The Mask of Laughter

Laughter became my disguise.
It was cheaper than explaining my silence.
It was safer than showing my anger.
It was the price of belonging, even if it meant betraying myself.

And inside, those jokes didn’t just land and disappear. They stayed. They scratched the walls of my chest. They made my skin feel thinner, like paper you could tear with one breath.

But to the outside world?
I was easy. Approachable. Harmless.
Not the angry Black man. Not the melancholic one. Not the one you had to fear.

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The Medicine of Laughter

And yet—
there are times I laugh with every part of me.
Not to cover, not to belong, not to soften anyone’s edges.
But because something in me breaks open,
and joy comes rushing out.

That laughter is round, full, reckless.
It shakes my belly, waters my eyes, folds me in half until I can hardly breathe.
That kind of laughter is honest.
It doesn’t ask for permission.
It doesn’t apologize.
It is life, raw and unfiltered.

I find it in the hands of comedians who see the world the way I do.
Trevor Noah, for instance.
He doesn’t use jokes as daggers. He uses them as keys.
Keys to open the locked doors of history, identity, injustice.
He makes the absurd visible, but never forgets the humanity beneath it.
His humor is cultured, layered, global — born from a life that has known exile, racism, survival, and yet refuses to stop believing in people.

When I laugh with him, it’s not nervous.
It’s not a mask.
It’s medicine.
Because in his voice I hear something rare:
a faith in humanity, even when the evidence is thin.
And if he can believe, so can I.

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The Paradox of Laughter

Laughter has never been one thing for me.
It has been a mask.
It has been medicine.
It has been a betrayal of myself and a return to myself.

Sometimes it connected me.
A shared chuckle, a quick grin, the warmth of belonging — even if shallow, even if it cost me.
Other times it made me complicit, binding me to jokes that tore pieces out of my skin while everyone else called it harmless fun.

There were days when laughter weighed on me like a stone.
The forced smile, the aching cheeks, the echo of cruelty hidden in humor.
And there were nights when laughter carried me, light as breath.
Belly-shaking, body-breaking joy, the kind that proves we are still alive, still human, still capable of wonder.

For me, laughter has always lived a double life.
Both shield and sword.
Both wound and salve.
Both silence and song.

It is the sound of survival.
And it is also the sound of freedom.

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Reclaiming Laughter (and the Smile)

There is a part of me that has been angry — with myself, with others, with the world that kept asking me to smile.
In photographs, I always had to. “Smile, it looks better.”
As if my face, in its quiet honesty, was not enough.
As if the curve of my mouth had to perform joy in order for me to be acceptable.

And so I smiled, even when I didn’t want to.
Not because I was sad. Not because I was broken.
But because not smiling was treated as a threat, as a flaw, as a shadow no one wanted to see.

We live in a culture that worships positivity, that mistakes endless smiling for proof of a good life.
But the truth is: joy doesn’t always live in the smile.
Sometimes joy is stillness.
Sometimes truth is silence.
Sometimes authenticity is refusing to curl your lips when your heart isn’t there.

I am learning that not every smile is real, and not every unsmiling face is negative.
The absence of a smile does not mean despair.
It can mean depth.
It can mean honesty.
It can mean: I am here, exactly as I am, without disguise.

And that, I think, is the point of it all.
To laugh and smile when it’s real, and only then.
Not as an obligation. Not as a mask.
But as a choice. As something sacred.