Next year will be my 25th in Toronto, and I’m overdue to stop acting like I belong here. I just live here – in a city in irreversible decline. It is in such decline and you know it. Something else you know is you don’t want me in your group. The feeling is mutual.
After a group or project I start or even join collapses, or if I stagger home beaten up by some little shit who was also present and enabled by the rest of the group, you’d think I’d learn my lesson. At least after the fifth time, or the tenth. AIDS Action Now, Queer Nation, GLAMOUR, Fruit Cocktail at one end of the timeline, the Spacers, DemoCamp, TransitCamp, Lunch 2.0, TPL Fans, Hacks & Hackers at the other: The only constant is me. You didn’t want me there and you hurried to show it. You didn’t enable mere cyberbullying but actual bullying.
The facts do not change. When I was right I was right and you weren’t. But you’ve got a mob on your side, and I’ve learned you’ll do everything in your power to defend your own mediocrity and others’. In a city that merits its own adjective – Toronto-stupid – it is a much greater sin to point out a mistake than to fix it. You don’t want improvement. That’s not why you’re here, and it explains why you haven’t improved.
As a lapsed Catholic of course I try to forgive my tormentors. It’s happened once or twice. I keep running into them (into you) and, in the vernacular, that’s a trigger. I remember each of you little shits and what you did. Are you still as proud of it as you were at the time? Haven’t you grown up? Well, finally, I have.
Now, why don’t I just leave, pissants like you will be asking? My old friend was brave enough to do that. I can’t. I’m stuck here. But we aren’t stuck with each other anymore.
Most prose born on the Internet is highly defensive. Everyone is braced for audience attack and opens their posts with four paragraphs explaining why the remaining four paragraphs are worth reading.
I’m trying to leave a legacy of work. Straining to fit in with you people is getting in my way. If I don’t engage the enemy, I have nothing to defend. I disengage.