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.

"Your Door is Always Shut." A Perfect Analogy for Autistic Confusion with Neurotypical Social Rules

One of the things that is difficult to explain is the difficulty many autistic people have understanding things that "neurotypical" people comprehend instinctively: social rules, social cues, facial expressions, unspoken meanings. We eventually learn, but it takes us longer. Think of us as strangers in a strange land.

That might be why I love being in strange lands, far from home. It feels normal to me, but a more interesting form of normal.

When I joined Peace Corps in 1980, I moved to the West African nation of Togo and fell in love with the people and culture. But it took several months for that love to really take hold. I was infatuated instantly, but then fell into a dark place, because, as usual, I found myself very much alone, despite my best efforts.

And then an "aha!" moment. I learned a simple rule of local behavior--a social rule that Togolese understood automatically but that I and most foreigners were oblivious to. 

It is a perfect analogy to an autistic person's life before trial, error, and painful missteps teach us the rules everybody else knows.

Here's an excerpt from my book, My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll:

I am determined to make friends.

During our training, a departing second year volunteer dispensed some good advice. She encouraged us to seek out important people in the village and do our best to make friends with them. 

“These people will really help you when the time comes that you need some help. So, when you meet them, invite them to visit. And be ready for them. Have some beer or soft drinks and some snacks.”

I try. I have just finished three years where I was more alone than I ever have been or ever will be, but suddenly I am Monsieur Sociabilité. I walk through town like the stranger in an old western. Eyes follow me everywhere. Babies see my bizarre skin tone and hair and burst into inconsolable shrieks of terror. I shake many, many hands. I ask about people’s jobs, wives, homes, and children. I buy rounds of beer and pamprankou—a fermented drink made from raffia trees that smells to me like Cheerios left too long in a bowl of milk but that has advantages beyond the gentle buzz it provides. 

“Ça fait bien pisser!” says the elder Mr. Dando, with a happy smile.

The remark is as befuddling to me as when Terri showed me her contraceptives. I smile, nod, and finish my calabash, confused but at least confident in the knowledge that I will “piss well” tonight.

Lots of people introduce themselves to me. Lots of people accept my offers of drinks. I like to watch them pour a drop for the ancestors before taking their first sip. I learn the pleasure of sodabi, the homemade gin distilled from palm wine.

The two villagers who are friendliest to me are the Dando brothers. Both Dandos have children in the school where I will teach. One of the Dandos is the “catechist”—the man who guides the Catholic congregation through Sunday services when a visiting priest isn’t available to say an actual mass. I will learn that in addition to being a devout Catholic, he is a firm believer in the local gods. He gives me some hope when he asks if I speak the local language. I tell him no. “You’ll learn it. When you play with the girls, they will teach you!” I listen with interest. Maybe the future government minister was wrong about the girls. I invite both Dandos to my house. “How about Sunday, after mass?” I ask the catechist. 

“I will come!” he responds dynamically.

I prepare for the visit. I buy soft drinks and beer, peanuts and cookies, and even a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label Scotch whisky, which, like Quaker Oats and Marlboros, is available tax free everywhere in Togo, including Death is Better.

I wait. He never comes. I crack open the bottle of Scotch and follow a shot with a slug of warm beer from the bottle.

This sad scenario repeats itself a dozen times. I invite various teachers and “fonctionnaires.” Ils ne viennent pas. I invite the Dandos again and again. They don’t come. 

In Seattle I had been alone for a reason. I invited no one. Here I am doing everything I can to be more sociable. The foreign language and culture somehow free me to do so. I am becoming a new person, but with the same old result.

Even the teachers at my school don’t visit. They are friendly at work, but aside from my school director (friend of the future minister) they never come by, despite my invitations, and even the director only stops once or twice to say hello and check on me. So even though I am learning to reach out to people, it is not working. It’s like the pretty young woman I invited to the basketball game, but 100 times over, and makes no sense to me.

I decide to finish the school year and go home. In letters home I call Death is Better “Better Off Dead.”

Then one day some newly minted teachers are assigned to our school. I see them congregating with the other young teachers in front of a house on the main road where several teachers live. I decide to make one last effort to be friendly with my colleagues.

One of the new teachers is an excitable man named Dadjo. Dadjo has an almond shaped face, facial scars, and heavy duty black-framed, Bo Diddley-style glasses. He shakes my hand with gusto and snaps my middle finger as he lets go.

“And do you all hang out with Monsieur Pita?” Dadjo asks the other teachers.

A quiet, polite teacher who has been around since the start of the year shakes his head and gazes at me.

“Mr. Peter likes to stay by himself.”

This pisses me off. How can he say that after all the efforts I’ve made, for the first time in my life, to meet people? How can he say this after I’ve waited, time and again, for him and others to respond to my invitations.

“I like to stay by myself!” I repeat, nearly hissing. “That’s not true. I invite you to my house all the time! You never come!”

I think these are the first angry words I speak in Africa—but I’ve had it.

The professor looks as befuddled as I feel, and a bit sad at being so maligned.

“I come to your house every day,” he responds, shaking his head. “The front door is always closed.”

And then I see it—a vision of startling clarity—how so many doors in the village are wide open so much of the day, with only beads or a sheet of light cloth to keep out the hot sun and flies. 

How visitors approach those open doors clapping their hands to get the attention of people inside. 

And how I, like any good American, go home every day and shut and lock my front door.

I understand, for the first time, that I simply haven’t known or understood a cardinal rule of Togolese sociability.

I return home and leave my front door open. All afternoon and evening I am besieged by visitors. The teachers. My neighbors. Children from school. The Dandos. Dadjo.

And it is like that every day for the remaining two and a half years I live in Death is Better. 

After learning about autism and the difficulty many autistic people have understanding neurotypical social rules, social cues and facial cues, I see this as a nearly perfect parable. My inability to understand how the social world works has had definite consequences. I failed with girls in college not because I didn’t care, and not because I didn’t want to be with them, and not even because they didn’t want to be with me. Each of the young women I’ve described here obviously did, at least for a time. I just didn’t understand the rules. I didn’t understand how things work.

But little by little I am learning, not only the rules in Africa, which are new for me, but the general rules of sociability, which are more universal—and Africa and its people will be a huge part of that education.

"Wing it, boys!" (My Struggles With Autistic Inflexibility.)

There's a wonderful story told by Keith Richards in Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, a movie about my oddball hero, Chuck Berry. The story includes what might be the first rock and roll instant replay.

We first see the scene play out live. An all star band is backing Chuck at his sixtieth birthday celebration in St. Louis. Things are going great when a happy Chuck finds Richards, mid-song, leans into his ear, and says something. Richards laughs and shakes his head, No! Chuck, surprised, laughs, shrugs, and moves away to continue the song. Although the band never misses a beat you can hear a minor musical fender bender when Chuck hits a bad chord during the encounter.

After the show a drunk and exhausted Richards explains that Chuck told Keith mid-song that he was switching keys. Richards says something like, "After weeks of rehearsals, he wants to throw it all out the window and say, 'Wing it, boys!'"

It's something I loved about Chuck Berry. On stage he was constantly winging it, often with musicians he'd never met before climbing on stage. (But he'd rarely been told "no" before.)

I bring this up because I often have trouble winging it. It's one of the many, many ways I'm no Chuck Berry.

I never knew much about autism until I began researching it when I was "diagnosed" (hate that word) at sixty-five. But I remember once, with my very first band, learning something important about many autistic people. 

We were a lousy but enjoyable little band--two older guys, two attractive young women, with a song list to die for. I started playing music on stage in my mid-fifties and I was still at the stage where every song we played felt like a minefield. We had tons of fun, but things often fell apart. Our fender benders were train wrecks.

One day our singer got us a job filling in for an established "gypsy jazz" band at a local club. The band we replaced was headlining the show. We were not established and did not play anything approaching jazz, gypsy or otherwise.

When we arrived we learned that the booking agent put us in as headliners and expected an excellent touring band to open the show. These folks had records! They played four or five shows a week at bars and clubs all across North America. They were amazing. We were not.

We told the booker, "Hey, we should open. These guys are way better than us."

He refused. The more we argued the more adamant he became. We were replacing the headliners so we would be the headliners.

Later, our singer, who knew the show booker, explained.

"He's autistic," she said.

I didn't know then that many autistic people have trouble with flexibility. We don't necessarily like surprises and sometimes need to mentally prepare for change.

I didn't suspect this of myself, because I often love to be surprised, and love to be in new places. I prided myself on being able to instantly adapt to major changes in my former work as an attorney. Minutes before my very first trial was to begin a very experienced attorney for Ford objected to every one of the exhibits I planned to use in my opening statement. But I knew the facts better than him. I walked over, grabbed several of his exhibits (we hadn't objected) and used them to tell my story.

I was an expert attorney in my field--due in part to autistic strengths that trumped my autistic "deficits." 

As a musician it's a different story. I have some humble musical gifts, but I have definite, less humble limitations--and when someone tries to change things at the last minute, I get thrown for a loop.

Sometimes it's easy. If a singer turns to me and tells me to keep soloing beyond whatever we'd agreed to in practice, I can manage. But once I had a full meltdown because, the day before a Halloween show we had spent a couple of weeks preparing for, two of the band members insisted on adding two difficult new songs. When I tried to object they began berating me, and when one said I didn't want to play the new songs because, "They're not Chuck Berry songs," I lost it. (Editors note: I don't play Chuck Berry songs, so it was doubly mean.)

For what it's worth, I learned both songs for the show, and even made a chart so that the bass player could follow on the more difficult one--but that was my last show with those three.

Today it happened again. Our drummer had to cancel a date a month or so from now. We had plenty of time to agree on a replacement for the show, and I know an excellent drummer who'd played with all of us in the past, but the band's newest member--an actual pro musician-- signed someone up without consulting me. 

I appreciate the hop-to spirit. I also know that it will create a frightening minefield for me that night. I will have to deal with unexpected new twists to the songs and a new person, unknown to me, on stage in front of a hundred or so people.

Maybe it's a good thing. If I had aspirations of becoming a real professional musician it would definitely be a good thing. (But I have no such aspirations!)

I'm turning seventy soon. Music is not my true metier. I'm autistic. And I feel a bit like that autistic show booker who panicked when we asked him not to put us at the top of the bill.

But I will get through it. It's what autistic people have to do every day.

Trop Parler C'est Maladie, Spark Launch, (and a Little West African Music)

I want to thank Chaya Mallavaram and Mike Cornell for having me on their wonderful Spark Launch podcast, which focusses on neurodiversity. (Find it HERE, or look for it on YouTube or other places podcasts are found.) In our discussion I talk a bit about my very autistic way of preparing for my first visit with a therapist--scripting and rehearsing every word I wanted to say. I didn't do that for Spark Launch, but I'm afraid that writing my book, writing several articles, and scripting several speeches about the value of neurodiversity had me overly prepared. (My dad would have called the result "diarrhea of the mouth;" my friend Dando Gabi would have said "Trop parler c'est maladie!") I talked too much, and should have settled in for more of a conversation. But in the end, good stuff was said by all.

By the way, I only learned recently that Gabi's wonderful phrase, "Trop parler c'est maladie" (too much talk is an illness) was from a song by Benin's Polyrthmo--a song I'd probably heard ringing in the background a hundred times--or may even have danced to a few times. Music was (I'm sure is) ever present in Togo in those days. 

(And speaking of Togo, I tell a good story from Togo in the podcast about when I learned the value of open doors--a nearly perfect analogy to like as an autistic person who doesn't understand the rules of the neurotypical world.)

Former Child, Still Autistic: Robert F. Kennedy Hasn’t Got a Clue

Talking recently about autistic kids, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said, “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

As a former kid and still autistic, let me say that maybe he got the baseball part right, because I was a terrible baseball player. Fly balls put me into a panic, and pitched balls evaded my bat most of the time. 

But I played baseball. Two years of little league, and as few games of schoolyard ball as I could muster. 

He might be right about dating, too. Looking back I realize I dated about as well as I played baseball. I went on my first dates when I was twelve or thirteen, but I didn’t make a habit of it for quite a while. In fact, I never made a habit of it, except with my wife. 

Still, I remain proof that, just as a man with a brain worm can become Secretary of Health and Human Services, an autistic kid and man can date.

Mr. Kennedy might also be right about the “job” business. I’ve had a dozen or so jobs and excelled at most of them, but the truth is, autistic people like me often prefer to start businesses of our own and to be our own boss. 

That’s not “holding a job,” it’s being an entrepreneur—a “lil’Elon” if you will. 

(I won’t!)

I’ve never published poetry, but I’ve written lots of songs and a book. Do those count?

As for the toilet, I must say my biggest fear is reaching a point in life where I have to use a toilet assisted. But I guess if I do, I’ll keep calm and carry on. It happens to the best of us—even us autistic folk.

But where Mr. Kennedy really got it wrong is that business about never paying taxes. He must be mixing up regular autistic people with the autistic billionaires he hangs with today. Being something less than a billionaire myself, I can tell you I’ve paid lots of taxes! DOGE can confirm this. They have the data. 

Maybe they’ll give the money back now that they know I’m autistic and bad at baseball. Let’s call it an administrative error.

As the saying goes, if you’ve met one autistic person you’ve met one autistic person. We’re all different. We each face different challenges in this neurotypical world, and some of us face more than others. I’ve had it good.

But the biggest challenge most autistic people face is the ignorance and prejudice of people like Mr. Kennedy.

April is Autistic Awareness and Acceptance Month. Our Secretary of Health and Human Services hasn’t got a clue.

Peter O’Neil is an autistic attorney, husband, father, grandfather, musician, writer, and the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.

My Virtual Autistic Book Tour, Stop One

Well, I'm probably too old a dog to learn the trick of YouTubing, but here I go--a YouTube channel in support of my book My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll. YouTube picked the right thumbnail--a beautiful picture of my lifelong hero, Chuck Berry, leaning against someone's Cadillac in the alley behind the Blueberry Hill nightclub and restaurant in St. Louis. This video is an introduction to my odd(tistic) fascination with Chuck; my late, late-in-life "diagnosis" as autistic; how my autism helped my legal career; how it hurt my social life, (especially as a young man;) and a bit about why I wrote the book in the first place. BTW: the book is a good read--fast, funny, and reasonably literate. 

Neurodiversity in the Legal Community: Why Autistic and Otherwise Neurodivergent People Bring Value

I thank the Washington State Association for Justice for publishing my article on the value of Neurodiversity in the legal community.  You can read it by clicking HERE. It's a followup to an article I wrote 20 years ago in which I compared my skill working product liability cases to the Seattle artist James Washington, Jr., who carved stone and who once said, "If you love a thing, it will give up its secrets to you."

Washington worked mostly in stone, which he tapped and scraped until he found what he felt was always inside--usually something from nature that was also very spiritual.

I told my readers to return again and again to the documents and evidence of their cases until the case gave up its secrets. I told them to think like artists, intuitively. Now I realize I was teaching them to think like an autistic person.

 Peter O’Neil is the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.

  

My So-Called Disorder: Accommodations are not a Charitable Gift to Autistic People

Thank you to The Seattle Times for publishing my op-ed, called My So-Called Disorder Made Me A Better Attorney. You can read it HERE.

Peter O’Neil is the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.

My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big-Daddy of Rock and Roll

     It's a big deal, at the age of 65, to learn that you're autistic--a big enough deal that you might write a book about it. I found out, almost by accident, during my first visit to a young psychologist. Ten minutes into the visit she asked if I liked to read. Yes, I told her. Non-fiction? Anything, everything.

    "Well, I have a book I'd like to lend you."

    The book was Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World that wasn't Designed for You, by Jenara Nerenberg. I took it home and began my journey.  Here's an excerpt from the book about that first visit.

                    6.    My Second Attempt at Therapy

     Once again I have chosen almost at random—or maybe this time magic has intervened. I have made several efforts to find a therapist, but with so many people distraught about Covid no one is taking new patients. I will eventually learn that this particular person had an opening because she had taken time off to be with her daughter and is rebuilding her practice. 

    I spend the days before our first session preparing: walking, talking to myself, relearning, revising, and rehearsing my life story. I figure I will do what I did last time—until I show up, and my plan falls apart.

    It’s my first visit. Icy roads add to my nervousness. She has sent an email telling me to “take a seat in the waiting room” when I arrive. I can do that. The waiting room is broken into two adjacent areas with a handful of chairs in each part, and I take a seat by the front doors.  

    At the appointed hour my new therapist walks into the other part of the room, pauses for part of a second to look at the empty chair in front of her, then turns and walks over to me. We are both wearing masks.

    “Peter?” she asks.  

    “Yes,” I say, and begin to stand up. She’s a lot younger than I am, probably half my age.

    “You weren’t where I expected you to be!” She points to the empty chair. “I thought you would be over there.”

    I am never brilliant with small talk but now I’m flummoxed. I am the only person in the waiting area and 15 feet from “over there.”

    I follow as she walks silently to her office and points me to a small couch. Now my own expectations go unfulfilled. I’ve prepared myself for a certain amount of chit chat, maybe about the icy weather, maybe the earlier snow, or maybe a meaningless question about whether I had trouble finding the place, but there is none. We have evidently used up our stores of small talk on my seating choice.  

    Although I don’t know it yet, this awkwardness on both sides bodes well. It is a sign that I have come to the right place, that I am with the right person.

    I fall onto the very center of the little couch and lean towards an armrest that is too far away.  I wind up at a forty-five-degree angle. I am making the first impression of a crazy person, which, given her profession, is perhaps not surprising.  After all, I am here to talk about my crazy life—but it’s not the first impression I planned.

    I pull myself up to a more dignified vertical and we begin. I have come with the firm intent to repeat the well-rehearsed story of my life to this new person, as I did with the last. She even knows this plan, because in my initial email I foolishly shared the “candy store” comment of the previous therapist. I promised good stories. But my plan sputters immediately into chaos. I jabber out bits and pieces. I breathe oddly. I talk about my current clingy depression. I talk about my painfully alone college years. I try to say something about the crazily alcoholic but loving home I grew up in. My voice warbles. I blame my ragged breath and speech on the mask I am wearing. She smiles and says, “It’s okay. It happens. Just talk.”  

    And within minutes, she begins ushering me gently towards an entirely new understanding of who I am—a unified theory of me that explains almost everything.

    She doesn’t tell me during our first session, but she has seen something, and I know this because at one point she talks aloud to herself, laughing a bit and shaking her head, saying, “It’s not even a firm diagnosis yet!”

    I’m listening and wondering, “What? What’s not a firm diagnosis?” 

    Ten or fifteen minutes into our first session she says, “Do you like to read?”

    “I do.”

    “Do you like nonfiction?”

    “Anything. Everything.”

    “Oh good!” she says. “I’m thinking of a book you might like. It focuses on women, but you’ll be able to see past that.”

    This is exactly what I have been hoping for—a book that will help me understand who I am and why I am that way. Because I have known most of my life that I am different.

    And then she asks the big question.

    “Do you know the term ‘neurodiversity?’”

    I do not—so she reaches back to a word I had used to describe my relationship with Rebecca. “We like each other and love each other and support each other despite our quirks,” I told her.  

    She smiled. She smiles again now.

    “It means ‘quirky.’ Neurodivergent people are people whose brains are wired differently from most people. Not badly, just differently. We see the world differently from most people.”

    We? Have I heard this properly? At any rate, I like it. I’ve known all my life I am wired differently, that I see things differently, that I’ve lived differently, and even lawyered differently. I’m proud of it. I can’t wait to learn how and why.

    As I’m getting ready to go she loans me a copy of the book—a volume so new and fresh it makes me nervous. I hurt the books I read. I spindle, fold, and mutilate. I cart them on long walks to read in bits and pieces from any dry bench. They wind up with arched spines and ragged pages spotted with drops of coffee and wine. But I take the book home, protecting it from the winter elements, and immediately sit down in my customary spot (I have two) to gingerly open it and read.  

    I am immediately and stunningly disappointed. She hasn’t understood me at all.

(Peter O'Neil is the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll, available on bookshop.org, barnseandnoble.com, amazon.com, or on order from your local bookstore.)