An Autistic Gala

Last Sunday I was a guest on the Opening Arguments Book Club, where my book was featured. (Join Here.) During our discussion the notion of cocktail parties came up, and the host, attorney Matt Cameron, said something that I heard as "Gahs are a nightmare." I didn't know the word so I let it pass, but later I watched the recording and realized he said, understandably, that "Galas are a nightmare." Yes! Yes, indeed! If I had heard the word properly, I would have had a story.

About ten years ago, long before learning I am autistic, my wife and I attended a gala for a very good cause organized by two very nice people. It was held in a huge, black curtained warehouse, with loud music, strobe lights and lots of stray joyous noise. At some point after doing my duty I sought refuge near the bar. My plan was to escape as soon as possible and roam the neighborhood until my wife was ready to go.

So there I was, drinking my drink, biding my time, drinking, biding, drinking, and planning my Irish Exit--when suddenly, maybe fifty feet away, I saw one of the organizers dancing her way towards me in the most extravagant way possible, arms akimbo, alternating feet sliding towards me, like a military drone coming in for the kill. The song was The Commodores' "Brick House." 

I suppose I looked lonely. I wasn't. I was desperate.

Decades before that I got a free ticket to one of Seattle's best theater companies. I arrived early and got a front row seat. Only when seated did I realize I had come to an audience participation workshop! I sat frozen in terror until the featured instructor, a nationally famous actor and clown, threatened to come in my direction.

He looked at me. I shook my head. He looked concerned and puzzled but kept coming. I shook my head harder. He kept coming! Finally, I stuck my foot out and he got the message, turned quickly, and attacked the person next to me, who was delighted.

As the brick house tangoed towards me I tried the head shaking to no avail as she began dancing around me in a circle. Finally I just turned and walked away. 

I'm not sure this woman had ever been rejected. She was not happy. She danced away. I felt rude, but relieved.

And then, when I could breathe, I looked up to see her husband, dancing to my rescue! Alas, I was as rude to him as I'd been to his wife. I don't think he'd been rejected much, either.

My last gala!

And last time I ever saw those two nice people.

An Old Client Found; An Old Problem Persists.

The other day a child fell from a sixth floor window in Seattle. It was a hot day.

In my book I briefly touch on three "window fall" cases we handled in the early 2000s. I mainly tell the story of how my sister Ann's creativity and persistence helped expose one defendant's dishonesty--something that had become a pattern with that defendant. It happened the day before mediation and probably had the result of doubling our recovery.

For several years all I could see were windows--sliding windows on the upper floors of mid-rise apartment buildings. I drove through town looking up, looking for better designs. That's autism for you. 

Also capitalism. The crap windows were cheap, and everywhere.

My mentor Paul Whelan is the one who made these cases feasible. He got the Washington State Supreme Court to recognize a product liability action against window manufacturers.

We then got a case in a nearby suburb where a toddler fell from an upper story window onto concrete and suffered horrible injuries. His family was in town briefly and were provided this apartment. In addition to a poor design, there was a known installation defect in the window that made it difficult to open or close. One hot day, our then four-year-old client stood on the window sill to wave to neighbors and fell through the screen.

Autistic perseverance brought me to the legendary Seattle pediatrician Abe Bergman, who kept track of all such cases that passed through Seattle's Harborview Medical Center. Dr. Bergman told us that it was a common problem when temperatures rose. Windows were opened, and toddlers, whose job is to explore the world, did so.

We asked our experts to design and build a "fix" that could be added to any such window. They came up with something any adult could operate but a toddler could not. It could be bolted on to any window sill.

Later we got another case involving the same property management company. They told us that second case was the first they had ever heard of. We told them about the other one. They kept lying until Ann got them into potentially deep trouble by finding another, right before mediation.

Anyway, yesterday, after reading the story of the recent tragedy in Seattle, I googled the name of the little boy who fell onto the concrete you see above--and rather remarkably I found a professor of mathematics at a famous university! He looked just like my client!

I wrote him an email, and this morning I woke to emails from both the professor and his dad. Both said that the money from the lawsuit allowed him to work his way to a brilliant recovery. It was one of the better mornings I've had.

Being autistic in a neurotypical world can be a pain. It's also a joy. 

But putting your autistic joy to work to help others--that's priceless.

Opening Arguments Podcast

A month or so ago I found a message on my phone telling me that a legal/political podcast called Opening Arguments wanted to talk to me about my book. I checked out the podcast on YouTube and loved what I heard and saw. The episodes I found were hilarious and serious at the same time. How else could a legal/political podcast react to the world we live in today?

Then I got an email from one of the hosts, Boston immigration attorney Matt Cameron. In a lengthy missive, Matt told me that he, too, is autistic and that he'd read my book and wanted to talk about it. I happily agreed.

A week or so later I dressed for the event (nice ironed shirt and sweatpants) and set up my laptop so as not to emphasize my double chin. Turns out this version of the podcast was not destined for YouTube, so I needn't have worried.

But what a nice hour. It's always sweet to talk to a similarly situated autistic person. We understand each other!

The podcast is easy to find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you normally find them. (I'm not a podcast person, so I can't offer much more help than that.) Here is a link to Opening Arguments' Patreon page. Click Here for Opening Arguments.)

One June 26 the book and I will appear on Opening Arguments' Book Club, for Patreon members only. Looking forward to it.

Passing

For a long time I passed as "normal." I had a wife, kids, car, a home, and a good job. Then, a divorce, a second marriage, another kid, more cars.

Normal, right?

I also had a profound secret--because my college years, which went on for a long time as I dropped in and out of different schools, were anything but normal. I spent them mostly alone. 

But I didn't talk about that, to anyone. And because my life appeared "normal," nobody asked.

Until my wife, Rebecca, a bit tipsy after a date, asked about my college girlfriends. I felt, instantly, as if I were plummeting down a dark, deep elevator shaft. I had no college girlfriends, at least not in any normal sense. A handful of spectacular young women tried to befriend me, and we did fine while they were in front of me, but I could never seem to hold on to them for more than days or weeks.  I fell into an instant, dark depression, made worse by all the years I had successfully avoided talking about the truth of my life as a young man--even with Rebecca.

From that moment on my life as a young man began to bother me more and more. I went home and thought about each of the young women I describe in my book. I felt I had wasted the best years of my life. I blamed myself for having been so alone. I hated myself for it. I felt utterly ashamed. 

So finally, after another five or ten years, I got myself to a therapist.

I liked that first therapist. I spent days before my first appointment carefully scripting a full disclosure of my life and times. I did a good job rehearsing. I poured it all out in the first session, brilliantly, flawlessly, beginning to end. At one of the next sessions I arrived laughing, because I realized that I had left Chuck Berry out of my brilliant soliloquy. I brought a 200 page manuscript as a visual aid. A few years earlier I had written a memoir about my fixation on the man! She took it home to read a bit. But though she now had all the evidence anyone should need this classically trained psychologist was never going to see that I am autistic. She was looking for trauma and abandonment and avoidance to explain my solitary life.

Luckily, Covid intervened and I stopped seeing her. I tried again a few years later, with a new psychologist. It took the new person ten minutes. She sent me home from my first session with with a book on neurodivergence. 

The rest of my diagnosis took four or five weeks. I spent hours online, at the library, and doing whatever else I could think of to understand what it means to be autistic.

What a blessing. For the first time my entire life, including my "college years," made perfect sense.

And instead of blaming myself, I began to applaud myself for having made the best of a tough situation. I also saw the many lucky breaks I'd had that helped me find my own small successes in life: a dysfunctional but loving family with built in playmates; a wonderful, tiny high school; three years in a foreign culture that didn't notice my quirks or differences; an accidental career that allowed me to use all of my autistic talents and charms; a mentor and champion who supported me in the workplace; and above all, a loving wife and family who accept me despite my quirks and perhaps in part because of them.

Strangers in a Strange Land

When I was an older teenager, the social world was a complete mystery to me, but I didn’t know. Only by looking back, with the hindsight of autism, do I see all the mishaps and misunderstandings.

As a young twenty-something, things got worse and I did know—or at least, I knew that something was wrong. I would see collections of unremarkable young people roaming the streets together and I knew that, for some reason, that life of camaraderie and romance was not available to me. I kept calm and carried on.

By the time I went to West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer things were changing a bit. I managed to infiltrate the outer perimeters of the American trainee group, but my biggest progress was with the African teachers who were training us. We had some wonderful discussions.

Months later, in the village where I was posted as the lone American (or non-African, for that matter), I started becoming what I have called fully human. Africa was the only place after high school (or since) where I ran with a group of friends. Africans couldn’t spot the subtle quirks quite as easily as Americans. To them nearly every foreigner seemed a bit silly and odd, so I didn’t stand out. Also, I knew I had to learn a whole new set of social rules from scratch, and worked deliberately to do so. 

Of course, it wasn’t all easy. My story about the doors shows that even in Africa I had a certain amount of social trouble, but those difficulties had little or nothing to do with being autistic.

Before my diagnosis I told a few people that it took me decades to learn to operate my hard to operate personality. That was true. I’m still learning. But it’s not really my “personality” that is difficult. What’s hard to navigate are the social rules, and cues, and expectations.

The first time I slept with a woman (girl) she had to start unbuckling my pants for me to understand what she wanted and what was happening. 

More than fifty years later I’m a quicker study, but it’s still hard.

I still feel lost in social situations others seem to understand. I often feel confused. I’m alone way too much and too often. And because I’m autistic (and human) I ruminate over these things endlessly, as I’m doing here.

If you happen to find this and feel similarly, please comment and follow. We’ll do better together.

If you find me or another neurodivergent person a little hard to understand at times, remember: we’re foreigners in a land and culture we find bewildering. Instead of looking at us as odd, look at us as strangers in need of a hand.

Sometimes Autistic People Need a Bit of Instruction in Social Matters that Come Easily to Neurotypical Folk

In my story about doors I hint at how confused autistic people often are by social cues, gestures, facial expressions, small talk, and unspoken social rules that "neurotypical" people come by instinctively. Especially early on, because we do learn, if only by trial and error.

In my book I tell how I accidentally rebuffed various people who tried to befriend me, romantically and otherwise--how I failed to recognize gestures and meanings, or how I failed to act when it was my turn to move the relationship forward. For me, social interactions were essentially happy, random events. I enjoyed people when they were in front of me. They enjoyed me. But it took years of trial and error for me to begin to understand my role in keeping them in front of me. 

One person stood out, because I actually pursued her. When I wrote my book I couldn't explain the difference in my behavior. But recently, I remembered an important small event that I didn't bother to put in the book.

I had met this person at dinner in our dormitory. She came and sat with me. That was the only time in two semesters that anyone other than my roommate ate with me. 

We hit it off immediately. She had a sardonic sense of humor. I remember walking back to the dormitory joking about all the other residents. (The ones who never spoke to me or ate with me!)

We spent a lot of time together over the next several weeks, and even went on a couple of dates that I suggested.

In the other romantic interactions I describe I took little or no initiative. I just enjoyed the fruits of my own passivity.

Why the difference?

Sometime soon after our dinner together, the young woman saw me talking to my roommate in the lobby. She stopped and talked to us. Then she told me, "You should come up and see me sometime. I'm in room 204."

That's all I needed. I watched her run up the stairs. My roommate said, "Peter's got a little hottie!" (He knew this was a very rare thing.) And, without answering, I darted up the stairs behind her.

The only other time I received anything like instruction in social interactions was during my Peace Corps training. I describe it in the story about the doors. I learned all the rest by trial and many, many errors.

But I did learn.

What Happens to Autistic Special Interests?

What happens to an autistic special interest once you lose interest?

I don't have to worry about my interest in Chuck Berry. I always compared his career to that of Sgt. Pepper. "He's been going in and out of style, but he's guaranteed to raise a smile." Even if my own interest waxes and wanes, he's eternal, and his music is always there to remind me.

I remember a lot of intense interests that never clicked. As a child I wanted a croquet set until I got one. We played once. As a young teenager I was under the influence of nearby gold country and very briefly explored things like gold panning and horse-shoeing. I remember reading avidly about pigeons, for about a week. I tried building a telescope. Did not succeed. I was a photographer for a year or so, and then a movie-maker.

When I became an adult I found, quite by accident, that my legal cases became intense special interests. The exploding trucks of my book title (My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big-Daddy of Rock and Roll) were by far the most intense, but every case took me over for a time. For months I'd think only of childproof bottle caps. For years I would be obsessed by upper floor windows that provided deadly exits for toddlers. Whatever car had most recently injured a client was all I could think about until the case ended.

But when the case ended, I forgot it all, except for a few "war stories." I was on to the next one.

A few years ago I retired from the practice of law. I've found nothing to replace it. The way I practiced law it satisfied a thousand of my itches. I could be speaker, writer, teacher, movie-maker, thinker, artist, comedian, and all the while extremely, exuberantly autistic.

For a year or so I've been dabbling on another case. My work was supposed to be part time and behind the scenes. It has been fun--until a series of events threatened to put me back into the driver's seat of that case. And what I realized, in a heartbeat, is that I am no longer that person. The lawyer in me has left the building. That case--whatever its merits-- could never rise again to the level of interest that it once would have inspired in me.  

I hope I continue to find intense new interests. A few years ago I found an interest in neighborhood birds that continues, slowly, to grow; but it will never be like Chuck or the pickups. Same with Italian; I became intensely interested for a while, but now that interest has passed. 

Do we outgrow our special interests? Do we outgrow our need for special interests?

Do we just grow old and become less interested?

I hope not.

I hope a week from now I'm thunderstruck by something fantastic and new.