In it, I am wearing a costume that is clearly racist and offensive.
This picture was taken from a Christmas Assembly at Lisgar Collegiate in Ottawa, Ontario, and I was performing a rap as an “urban Santa.” Although I was not in black face as some have asserted, my family and I had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii and I had a very uncharacteristic tan. I am deeply apologetic for that triggering tan, the privilege that implies, and for my blatant cultural appropriation.
It is also true that I wrote, “I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A CRAZY CRUSH ON YOU!! in Marie-Therese Vitzhum’s yearbook in 1983. I am deeply embarrassed by my insensitivity to my brothers and sisters who struggle with mental illness. After finishing in the bottom third of the standings in a fantasy hockey league two years ago, I, too, fell into a depression, so I need you to know you have an ally in Michael Murray, not an enemy.
I love you.
I hear you.
And I am listening.
These past behaviours of mine are not in keeping with who I am today or the values I have fought for throughout my career as Commissioner of the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey League. I want to offer my sincerest apology, and to state my absolute commitment to living up to the expectations the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey Community set for me when you elected me Commissioner. I understand why your faith in me has been shaken, and I recognize that it will take time and serious effort to heal the damage this conduct has caused.
I am ready to do that important work.
Humbled and grateful for this teachable moment.
Your fantasy hockey Commissioner,
Michael Murray
]]>Our son Jones loves to dance. It’s his thing. You can see the joy in his eyes. They shine, lit from some spot deep within. Each morning he jumps up on our bed and dances for us, and it is no small thing. It’s beautiful and unpredictable and so ecstatically rendered that it feels like being blessed by a higher order of being. It’s a good way to start the morning.
Both with sticks, Jones and I walk quietly to daycare. Both of us lucky. Somewhere in our bones we know this unspoken thing. Big, slow snowflakes drift like dandelion puffs around us. A delivery van stops across the street. Bollywood music blaring. Just blaring. Jones has never been quite so astonished. It is a miracle, and he looks at me like we’re both witnessing a miracle. He’s glowing. The snow increases, squalls for a moment. It’s the gentlest invasion of white, as if silent, weightless birds are schooling around us, as if the world fundamentally changed before our eye. Jones points, “There are so many of them, daddy!” The Bollywood music is still pouring out of the van and Jones begins to dance. In his puffy jacket. His rain boots. His ridiculous hat. His glowing face. A woman with heavy snow flakes, glistening and then melting into her dark hair, smiles as she walks her dog through us.
All these things coming together.
This day being made, this day being blessed.
]]>It was one of those beautiful summer days, one of the days you wait for, and Jones, like all the children there, was having the time of his life. Running from one attraction to the next, he would fling himself into each discovery with greedy amazement. His joy in his body, and the interaction between it and this emerging world around him, was a visible, glowing thing.
Not far from us was a young boy in a wheelchair. He seemed conspicuously alone as he sat there looking through a mesh screen at all the other children playing inside the Bouncy Castle/Obstacle Course. He was probably around 10, and although he could move his head a little bit, he couldn’t move his arms or legs at all and speech seemed difficult. Sheltered from the sun by the shade cast from the nylon castle, he sat motionless and quiet while all the other children tumbled and spun and screamed.
The Bruno Mars song “Marry You” was playing, and even if you don’t know this song you probably know this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xdyRsGOl6U
It was a hit about ten years ago, and is the sort of infectious, optimistic pop that’s nearly impossible to resist– a welcome trigger for your body and mood, an instinct to movement, really. It’s happy music and it would have been on every party mix made at the time– the song kids would hear in their heads whenever they thought about the person they had a crush on, the song that would surge through them into adventure and love.
And then there was this boy– a spectator, and it was unbearably sad. I went over and stood beside him, and there I saw his two companions, maybe brothers or friends, both lanky boys of 13 or so. They were rolling and leaping through the castle, and when they spilled-out the exit, all hair, shouts and over-sized feet, they immediately ran over and hugged the boy. Excitedly, they shared every detail.
He was so loved, and it seemed right then that there was no boundary between the three of them.
And then the they pushed him off to the next attraction, speeding him over the bumpy, uneven ground like it was some wild game they played, all of them smiling, all of them beautiful and happy beneath the day.
]]>
Mary Webster, November 13, 2009
“I can no longer be near that man. He lost a tooth one night when we were dancing. It just fell out of his head, and all he did was put it in his pocket and jam some Kleenex in his mouth, which quickly became sodden and red. I had to run to the washroom and throw-up. It is impossible, and I mean physically impossible, for me to dance with him again.”
Claire Hepburn, December 12, 2009
“I will not dance with him again. He’s just too sweaty. At first you can see it on his upper lip, and then it’s all over his face. His hands are cold and slippery, like something that lives in the water, and one night I noticed that he was sweating through his pants, near his groin. He said he had an unusually effective lymphatic system. Gross.”
Julia Barylak, December 12, 2009
“He simply can’t dance. It’s like he’s trying not to dance and you’re fighting against some creature from a parallel universe who’s attempting to thwart your every move. It’s so frustrating that when I get home after class I drink a bottle of wine and watch game shows. I really hate him.”
Alex McLaren, February 28, 2010
“He always asks me to call him The Colonel, and I’m not going to do that.”
Jillian Dickens, September 02, 2010
“He gets tired very easily and then his nose begins to whistle. It’s demoralizing, as if some ghost or the specter of death is in the room with you.”
Rei Hokkaido, March 15, 2011
“I always feel like I’m one of those prank shows when I’m dancing with him. At first it was kind of fun and unpredictable, like a witty conversation with somebody begging for money, but then it quickly devolved into a display of mental and physical illness. I’m sorry, but dancing with him just makes me sad and I come here to be happy, my life is difficult enough, you know?
Alison Perry, October 12, 2011
“He wore a mesh top to one class and is always telling knock-knock jokes. That’s enough, isn’t it? But even more, his dancing skills and ability to learn new moves are so horrible that I feel I’m regressing whenever it’s my unfortunate turn to partner with him, and I cannot do that any more.”
Aurina Gupta, September 2, 2012
“I was there the day he wore the Batman costume to class on the opening night of The Dark Knight Rises. He really seemed to think that the cape was sexy and kept spinning around and around, or rather, stumbling around and around. He knocked over my water bottle and stepped on my iPod, breaking it. I cannot tell you how much that evening upset me. I was sure he was going to get on the subway and shoot people after that class. “
Debra O’Malley, December 11, 2012
“I can’t say why, but he just reminds me of the Ikea Monkey.”
