I knew an autistic who was outgoing and social, high-spirited in company, unoppressed by her condition. Or maybe she wasn’t autistic at all. I think she was because she was such a goofball. Such a honking, loud, ungainly creature, bizarre in her manner, often picked on and toyed with by others, regularly unaware of what was up socially even as she plunged ahead and got in the mix. Quite a combination: someone without the equipment to fend for herself, but with the instincts to get in the group and stay there. Maybe the experts would say she wasn’t autistic at all, just a straight-out ding-a-ling with no diagnosis attached. Too bad, experts. To me she embodies a trait central to the autistic condition. If an autist functions well enough to hold regular conversations with people, he or she will find the conversations slanting against him or her the way they slanted against Terry (the name I give her here). I never saw anybody so kicked around or so eager just to feel like other people thought she mattered.
Now she’s head of publicity for a hedge fund. Not bad. She’s the one living in the world of people, whereas I, a fellow autist, have always been a one-man tribe skulking on the outskirts. The grass is thin here, the air empty. She has her sister, her late (I think) husband, and she has the people she’s worked with; I imagine a stream of ex-colleagues bumping into her and smiling. Has she ever been lonely? For a boyfriend, I guess; for her husband, dead or otherwise; for an individual friend, at one time or another. But not for people in general. The burbling guffawing goofball, forever disappointed in her standing with others and forever lunging into their company, does something that accords with the rules and makes company, the presence of people whom you know and who know you, a faithful part of her life. I don’t do that thing, I do some other thing, and a life around people isn’t part of my life.
Eye contact comes to mind. My therapist says I shouldn’t blame it for all my social problems. But I have glitchy eye contact, painfully so. I have to skirt around its problems, and some are unskirtable, so malfunction recurs in my social life. If I didn’t have that, maybe I’d be like Terry. Some people could say I should’ve tried being cheerful and an enthusiast who was easily dazzled by the people around him; or her, since I mean being like Terry. Instead of being endearing but awkward and inclined to try too hard, I exercised my foot-in-mouth tendencies by being prone to personal remarks with an undercurrent of implied disrespectful analysis. Eye contact hurts, okay? Most people have to stop their breath to be as ill at ease and counting-the-seconds as I get from talking to somebody. You enter a frame of mind when eye contact’s a problem. Being face to face is an imposition, and you don’t even know that. The discomfort and confusion can result in a big and unhappy mouth. Maybe I’ve learned since then. But we all have our stories.
My therapist and I get along. He finds me polite and well-intentioned, and I put together coherent sentences for him, phrased to be understood right off, not running into dribble-on monologue. I don’t know what other, non–eye contact factor he had in mind. I would’ve asked but I often need a second go at something like this; first time around, I’m just trying to get through a conversation.
To Terry, if you’re out there—sorry for “honking, loud, ungainly creature” and “burbling guffawing goofball.” Someday I’ll describe myself as I was back then.