Let’s Talk About Discrimination on a Biological Level
Let’s talk about us.
Today, let’s ponder the origins of the savant. Let’s think about how it became a ‘thing’ for clever people to be crazy, and how I will never be considered ‘normal,’ and how you will always want me to be more and less than I am.
I don’t mean that anyone discriminates against me because I have funny ears or big feet. I mean the way you people look at me like I’m some kind of mutation because I know things without learning them.
I mean the way you splutter into the word ‘intelligent,’ emphasizing it until it turns purple in my head like a children’s snake, waiting to say ‘special.’
That’s what I am, you see.
Special.
I’m very small, and very interesting, and you love listening to my (fake) accent, and I’m your daughter, in a weird kind of way like you love your daughters but they will never be as thin and as delicate and as clever and cleverly-made as I am: I am like someone else’s puppy that’s cuter than your age-old farting bull-terrier and compared to me you are a farting bull terrier, as is everyone else.
I am your unseen, unloved, unfinanced daughter and you love to look at me and I am special and yes — that means I’m a little retarded. I slur. I wipe my hands on the bare tabletop. I had a top when I was little and it was green and I couldn’t spin it.
I had a bird when I was little and I cry when I see them now.
I had a parent but I lost him and I had a friend but she died and I had a girlfriend (you know, another girl to put on make-up with) but she got AIDS and I have a boyfriend but he’s nice and now what I really have is you — you, and you hate me. You won’t even invite me for a cup of tea.
You’ll bring me one, like a biscuit: like you throw a biscuit to avoid touching the dog.
In my head, I know that you’re sad. I know that you are me, older and with a scar behind your ear. I know you.
In my stomach, knotting, I know that you’re trying to use me up like a nanny squeezes a wet rag after wiping up Purity.
Your real children make messes and I am here to wipe them up.
As a child, I dreamed of being some crazy military type, forced to run and scream and kill because no one else would. Eventually, I learned to dream of doing this: selling a world to a million people after I drew one picture.
I know you.
Will you ever admit that you’d rather we’d met in a bar?
I’d rather we’d met in a bar, the same age and easier, had I not experienced a life which matters more than being successful.
Had I not found a life I could take with me regardless of what I did and who paid me to do it, and realized that life comprised a person, I’d be wishing we’d met as kids ready to steal the world and done so.
I still consider asking you if you’d like to work with me instead of use me.
I doubt I’d ever need to.
Will we ever meet, older, and talk as if we were close while the new children watch us and think about how we must know what we’re doing?
Do you think that we might even be referred to as ‘professionals’?
Have you considered our lives as examples to others?
I’m a little terrified by the idea that everything I described above may already have passed.
Today, let’s ponder the origins of the savant. Let’s think about how it became a ‘thing’ for clever people to be crazy, and how I will never be considered ‘normal,’ and how you will always want me to be more and less than I am.
Let’s talk about us.
