This little bit here is because I want to define what “difference” means. Most people do not perceive that they react negatively to “subtle difference” at all, but for the person who is subtly different life can be very difficult. It can mean few friends, no family, no job and depression and a lost wandering confusion. I’ve felt it. I hope that - if I can explain my life- maybe I can understand my own life better, and maybe some other people - who have similar lives - might understand themselves better.

***

Last night I was in a bar talking with Eric, the guitarist in our band, about what I thought about being "different".  So, now this morning, I am sitting down and trying to write it out.

I write to figure things out, and I have a lot to figure out.  As the words form before me they kind of solidify.  The words make sense to me and then my life starts to make a bit more sense.  My life solidifies - if only for a moment.  The Word - a created thing itself - creates and transforms.  That's the fundamentals of magic.  That's the creative force of the word.

I try to write about things that are hard for me to accept.  Facing stuff about me and the world - and hopefully dealing with some of the bad stuff - is what this is about.  Otherwise, what would the point be? Now I want to write about "difference" -what it is and what it means.  But before I talk about "difference" - which has to do with my negative relationship with the world or what I believe is the world's negative perception of me - I have to explain what "I think" I am.

Recently I have been getting in touch with old friends from Toronto, Canada, former members of the Forest Hills Writer's Circle - a group of writer's, travelers, translators, poets and survivors - a wonderful group to which I belonged.    Then I was a writer and I was working for the Metropolitan Association for Community Living helping people with difficulties live in the community.   I was also renting a room from a gorgeous musician with whom I had a wonderful and unfulfilled crush.  The times I spent living in the little rented room down the hall and singing with her and talking about Jewish mysticism with her friend "The Guru" were some of the nicest and most intense times of my life. 

I don't talk about "difference" with my friends from Toronto because that wasn't my relationship with them.  I talk about what I am now.  Now I am a filmmaker, a musician, and a loving husband and father.  And that is my strength, my anchor, so that when I talk about "difference" - my relationship with the larger world - I don't get lost in black depression and meaningless anger.

NOW I want to talk about "difference" - that is, what I believe "the world" thinks of me.  The hard part is I can only say "I believe" because I can't get inside other people's heads and see myself as others see me, but I know I am different because the children called me "retarded" all through elementary school and in high school and university people became more sophisticated and began acting behind my back to screw up my life.  I mean, the vicious ones with the social skills did their best to see that I could not achieve so much.

"Difference" - as I use it here - does not mean disability.  It means "odd".  "Difference" here means an oddness which is not easily explained or understood always.  Some people are pretty prejudiced against difference, but they don't want the person - or even themselves - to know "why" they are prejudiced. 

In my case, it means that when a person first meets me I move a bit slowly and talk a bit slowly so they figure I'm stupid.  But the reality is that I am not stupid at all, so the person who had the false preconceptions - when they realize I'm not what they thought - gets pretty pissed off at me, and they do their best to screw up my life if they can.  The trouble is: though I am pretty bright and creative I don't have strong social skills, so I remain vulnerable to this.  I've experienced this.

There were moments of clarity when this discrimination and denial became really clear.  In Art College I worked really hard and did really well academically.  And there were a lot of people who gave me a hard time - as if they resented that I did so well.  If these people were in administration - junior administration, I'm not stupid - I would go over their heads and complain.    In my meetings with Vice President such-and such (who dealt with these issues) WHY I was having a hard time was always skillfully avoided, and I also had a hard time saying "I walk and talk slowly" because it made me feel disabled to say that.  The Vice President would nod sympathetically and then the next week he would say, "We have spoken to so-and-so and understand the situation and we are confident so-and-so will now behave themselves and we don't need to take any further action." I was never in on these little "meetings".  Cutting me out of the loop seemed to be important to maintaining order.  I was always made to feel that the greater the injustice the less compensation I could get.  But I didn't want "compensation".  I just wanted the world to stop giving me a hard time.

Vice President so-and-so would pass me in the hall, now and then, and ask me how I was.  One time I made the mistake of saying to him that I understood that people discriminated against me because I was slow.  Well, his face turned white, he stepped back and stuttered "No, no, no, that's not it at all."  He stopped talking to me at all.  The reaction was significant and it made me think.

And this is what I think:

Discrimination like this can often be dealt with unofficially.  However, WHERE THERE IS DISCRIMINATION A SELF-AWARE PERSON IS A DANGEROUS THING, because that can mean potential law suit.

Now all my life I have had a hard time, and this has all gone back to the car accident.  As a youth I had no wish to identify myself as a head-injury-survivor.  I felt that if I worked hard enough I could overcome my difficulties and become normal.  Well, in my efforts, I overshot "normal" a little bit because I have a pretty good university education, have lived in several countries, play harmonica, and now I have a video shown in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  However, I guess there are a few minor things which hang on from the accident and some of the "normal" people - though they may not be aware of their own prejudice or fear of difference - like to put me in my place.

"Normal" is ok, I guess, but, after so many years, it isn't where I want to be.

Peace and Love
Paul Bourgeois (The Other Blue Monster)