Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's (33 page)

Try it yourself—what do you think of when you hear “Montagoonian”? Is your Montagoonian a short, stocky guy with a sloped forehead? Does he hunch over when he walks, his shoulders bunched together, with a club like a baseball bat in his right hand? Is his back covered with hair? Does he look like he could lift your pickup truck with his left hand? Or is your Montagoonian tall, thin, and distinguished looking? Neat as a pin, with wire frame glasses, a rumpled sport coat, and a dress shirt? Maybe a book and a pipe in his hand?

If you’re like me, your idea of a Montagoonian is the first example, not the second. I guess I wouldn’t like to be thought of that way, either, but then again, I didn’t choose to live in Montague. And there’s no two ways about it. Living in Montague makes one a Montagoonian.

I lived among Montagoonians myself for many years, so I know. I was a Chicopean from Chicopee—a town famous throughout western Massachusetts as the gateway to Montague. I moved away, and like magic the club vanished from my hand and my brow straightened.

So despite my increased adaptation to polite society I still occasionally have trouble with the names I give people and things. And I’m sure many other people with Asperger’s would say their experience is similar.

What is a person with Asperger’s? We are Aspergians.

26

Units One Through Three

M
y skill at choosing people with whom I might form relationships was always less than my skill at choosing mechanical or electronic things. You can set me loose in a parking lot with an order to find the one car that’s never had any bodywork, and I can do it every time. Need help picking a farm tractor or stereo amplifier? I’m your man.

It’s too bad my skill with respect to people is impaired. Even worse, people have to choose me back to form a relationship, and my own choosability may be limited. Although people tell me I’m perfectly presentable now, I have at various earlier times been unkempt, fat, slovenly, foul smelling, and rough looking. At those times, it’s possible that many highly desirable people passed me by. There’s no way to know.

When choosing a potential mate, I have always been very fearful of rejection. So I was always very careful to display little sign of interest lest the girl ridicule me. Memories of girls pointing and snickering at the few high school dances I attended are never far from my mind. I chose Little Bear when we were very young, and she chose me back. We were very happy for a few years, but it didn’t last. As we grew older, we seemed to grow in different directions, and our relationship fell apart. I had to return to the choosing stage, or allow myself to be chosen yet again, to find lasting happiness.

Martha, my next mate, had to choose me, at least to a sufficient extent that I knew she would not ridicule my own expression of choice. Even before we had heard about Asperger’s, I noticed that she watched me very carefully. She found that I would calm down if she stroked my arm or rubbed my neck. She also scratched my head and rubbed my ears. Those things soothed me and made me less fidgety.

I liked the fact that she paid close attention to me and was always kind. She never seemed to get tired of me. It seemed like a good match. With the passage of time, I began to feel good about my choice. I think she did, too, because she stuck around.

Now that she’s here, life is the best it’s ever been for me. There is a joy and tranquillity that I never experienced before. I don’t dread coming home, as I did at the end of my first marriage. I have a home where I feel comfortable, and I like being there. I haven’t had that feeling since I was a child in Georgia.

But there has always been a question, one that many guys must face. Was she really the best choice for me? There are millions of girls in the world, so it’s reasonably certain that other good matches for me exist. They could even be better matches. But is what I have good enough to justify a cessation of searching? I think so. But what about the sisters?

Martha is one in a set of three sisters. She’s the middle Unit, Unit Two. Since Units One, Two, and Three share the same genetic source material, differing only in training and conditioning, it begs the question—did I get the best one? I’m sure anyone else would agree that when there are three of something, only a fool would not want to pick the best of the three for himself. As it happens, all three sisters are reasonably similar in appearance, clean and well kept. They look like a matched set, except for Unit One being somewhat smaller than Units Two and Three. Outside of the normal variations from youngest to oldest, there is no visible basis for decision. The younger Unit has the advantage of youth, the older Unit the advantage of greater experience. The middle Unit, the one I’ve ended up with, may represent the happy medium.

Unfortunately, when picking a mate from a set of three sisters, it is usually necessary to establish a relationship with one in order to meet the other two. That usually precludes a person from selecting a different sister once an initial choice has been made. That was certainly the case for me. It’s a tough problem, one with no good answer. Unless you blindly believe the one you picked first is the best, you are bound for trouble.

Since I have a hard time blindly believing anything, I try and reassure myself by asking Unit Two questions.

“Do you think I got the best sister?”

Often her answers are disturbingly vague.

“Depends on what you want her for,” or “Depends on who you ask.”

I would have thought that she’d want to reassure her mate, saying something like “Of course I’m the best sister.” It troubles me that she doesn’t. Even after all this time, I cannot tell if she is being nice to Units One and Three, if she lacks self-confidence, or if she really does not know. Two of the three possibilities are unsettling, to say the least. I wish I could be sure.

The most troubling part is this: If one or both of the other Units also has a mate, he might also believe he has the best Unit. Would that mean one of us is wrong? That’s a scary prospect for a logical thinker like me.

The situation with sisters may be similar to what happens at a car dealership. For example, say three of us walk into the Mini dealership intent on buying cars. One of us chooses the red Cooper with leather seats. One takes the yellow Cooper convertible. One of us takes the Cooper S coupe. If there is no squabbling among us, an observer might conclude that each of us felt he’d acquired the best Mini, depending on what he wanted it for, as Unit Two would say. After all, there are buyers of sports cars and buyers of trucks.

However, it is equally possible that two of us made wrong choices, and one of us chose a Mini that is or will be far superior to the others. A revisiting of the situation in fifty thousand miles might reveal the true winner.

And so it is with sisters, but with an important difference. I alone can select a Mini. It’s a one-sided choosing. But a successful sister selection requires that my chosen sister also choose me. That’s a major complication. In fact, it complicates the whole process so much that it’s beyond my level of social skill to manage it. And that’s why I allowed myself to be chosen—as opposed to being the chooser—by a sister, and I’ve lived reasonably happily with the choice.

I’m actually more than reasonably happy. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. But I wonder sometimes…
could I be happier still?
There is no way to find out short of starting over, and then I could end up with no mate at all, which would be much worse. So I don’t pursue that line of thinking.

The business of choosing a sister highlights two common Aspergian traits I exhibit: logicality and directness. Every guy who marries a girl who is one of a set of two, three, or four wonders if he got the best sister. But most of them won’t admit it. Some guys in that situation are so hypocritical as to deny wondering. Others will shrink away and say nothing, hoping such thoughts will go away. But I lack those inhibitions, so I ask the question out loud. And sometimes people seem offended, but why?

After all, it’s acceptable to wonder whether we got the best car. People openly debate which brand of chain saw is best. We all want to live in the best neighborhoods. So, given a choice, why wouldn’t we want the best sister?

Some people will consider that argument and respond, “I don’t care about the best sister. I want the best girl for me, period!” That presents a completely different question. Choosing a sister is like saying, “I want a chain saw, and I’ve decided on a Stihl. Should I get the five-horse farm model, or the four-horse home model?” Choosing the “best girl, period” expands that field of choice from one make, all models to all makes, all models. The decision becomes a lot tougher.

We are choosing a family, as it were.

At that point, a wise girl-chooser would look at the Units Zero—both parents, if available. The behavior, condition, and appearance of the source material of any girl under consideration will tell you a lot about what you will have twenty-five years hence. I attribute much of today’s sky-high divorce rate to people’s failure to choose wisely among families, and within families, among brothers or sisters.

It surprises me that others don’t approach questions like this in an analytic manner, since people commonly subject car or dishwasher selections to extensive analysis, and indeed public analyses are available for many of those products in magazines. But nothing of the sort is offered for people, and when I suggest it, folks act offended. I guess that’s the directness of Asperger’s that people have trouble with.

Somehow, people often interpret my thoughts to mean that I don’t much like my mate, or anything else. People say, “You’re just skeptical of everything.” That’s not true. I do like my mate, more than I can say. And to a lesser extent, I like my car and I like my chain saw. But I also like to feel that I came to be associated with each as a result of intelligent consideration and choice, and not just chance.

It must be my logical consideration of a decision many see as purely intuitive or emotional that throws other people for a loop.

27

Married Life

T
he first time I heard about a person “turning” was when I was ten, and my grandmother told me that my uncle Bob was getting divorced. “Your aunt Marsha got on the Pill, and she just turned!” said Carolyn, in a whisper, as if she were scared.

Great-grandpa Dandy had told me how wild animals and dogs could turn, but I had never thought of Aunt Marsha that way. Dandy had an old double-barrel shotgun under his seat in case he ran across a turned animal.
Will she come around here, and would Dandy shoot her?
I was embarrassed to ask, because I was sure everyone except me knew what to do when a person turned. And from the knowing nod my grandfather gave, they all seemed to know about the Pill, too. I resolved not to take any more pills myself.

I didn’t see Marsha again for a long time. By the time I did, she must have calmed down, because she didn’t attack. She must have turned back. Dogs do that. One minute they snap at you, and ten minutes later they come up and wag their tails as if nothing happened.

A few years later, Uncle Bob decided to get married again. At the wedding, I said the first thing that came to mind, in typical Aspergian fashion: “Uncle Bob, how many times do you have to get married before you stay married?” I don’t remember what he said, but I remember the result: I wasn’t invited to his next wedding. That was to my aunt Relda, and that was the one that finally took.

When my father got married the second time, he didn’t invite me, either. Maybe he was afraid of what I’d say, too. In any case, he thrived for over twenty years with his second wife. That marriage lasted until he got a skin infection, at which point the liver damage from years of drinking and experimental medication caught up to him, and he died.

Myself, I’ve had to get married twice for it to stick. I’ve pondered the reasons the second marriage has been more successful than the first, and for the sake of other Aspergians with relationship troubles, I will share the things she does that have kept us together:

First, she watches me very carefully. She has learned to tell if I am sad, or anxious, or worried. Some people say I never smile and I don’t have many facial expressions, but somehow she can get me to smile, and she can read what little expressions I may have. And she usually knows what to say or do to make me feel better. Or make me feel worse, which happens occasionally, when she’s turned.

She always shows interest in me, and she seems to believe in me without reservation. When I tell her I’m going to do something, she always thinks I will succeed. I am sure that her confidence in me increases the odds for my success. When I succeed at something, I come home and tell her.

“I always knew you could do it,” she will say. “That’s why I married you.”

I really don’t know how she could possibly “always know” I could do something I never did before unless it was so trivial anyone could do it, but that’s what she says.

I never had a mate who thought I was going to fail, but I have pondered the possibility that such mates may exist. And I am sure my present situation is better.

Second, she watches what people say and do around me, and explains things I miss. Even today, I miss conversational nuances that are a typical component of conversation between “normal” people. Humor and sarcasm often go right over my head. There are times when a person says something they expect me to laugh at and I just stand there. There are times when people say things that are meant to be nasty, and I completely miss their meaning. She points those things out, gently, and I try to learn from what I missed. I miss less and less with every passing year.