possibly a real person, but in such a misaligned way

i met up with a friend this past thursday at a local bar. i like hanging out with this person because i find her easy to talk to: she’s extremely intelligent, aware, curious but not in an overbearing way, open-minded, and speaks in complete sentences, means what she says. if you’re someone with asperger’s, you’ll understand why it’s awesome to find someone like this. i’m always grateful for each one i find. i’ve collected a few of them in my life, and currently the ones i know i can count on one hand.

during the course of our hours-long conversation, i wound up talking, as we sat on the bench near the back of the patio looking at everyone else on the patio, about how i tended to see people as empty. i tend to think a lot, am hyperaware about detail, extremely hyperware about what it is other people are doing, patterns, meta-thizing, etc. and a good majority of the human population i find, quite frankly, clumsily incoherent. most people to speak words that, written down, mean nothing, i have no idea how they communicate, most people have an inability to answer a direct question, think in convoluted, conflicting, circuitous pathways, and i can’t sense any organized depth in them. i get positively delighted whenever i meet somebody who’s actively intelligent, aware, conscious. because normally i see mud and lack of cohesion around me. and i tend to be a bit elitist, in a bitter, misanthropist way, about the general humanity i find i “share” this planet with. though i am aware that whenever you think you’re better than anyone else, that just shows how limited you are. but just cuz you’re aware of your limitations, it doesn’t mean you can escape them.

as we sat on the bench near the back wall, i looked out at the other people on the patio, of which we had an elevated vantage point, and i posited the following query: was that the case, that most people are generally unaware, uninspired, live muddy lives without much meaning? there is a good deal of evidence to back this up: ignorance, hatred, politics, war, un-thought-out irrational passions, stupidity, rudeness, cliches, repetitive destruction, typical bible belt prejudices and small-mindedness, magazines like cosmopolitan & teen vogue. but my query to my friend was: was that the general state of humanity, or was it my inability to see depth in people, that i can’t relate to people as a general rule, and that the emptiness i perceive is not them, but a quality inherent in me?

people often talk about mind-blindness when discussing autism, and the textbook diagnostic belief is one i don’t feel is true: that people on the autistic spectrum, people with asperger’s, are incapable of seeing another person’s point of view, incapable of empathy, we’re locked into our singular, mono-modal worlds. this is, and there’s evidence to prove this, simply not true. it’s instead a matter that our method of seeing the world is different. we feel the desire to connect, we want to make people happy, and sometimes we are made happy by others. we are usually incredibly hyper-perceptive, notice things about people that no one else notices. it’s just we, as a rule, suck at small talk, fluffy, empty stuff, and the social connection is a bit awkward. and how awkward and difficult it is varies as you travel back and forth along the spectrum.

my friend told me a couple stories about how, yes, she could understand the frustration with how humanity can seem generally uninspired, but she told me a couple stories about people she’d run into during work who, at first glance, seemed coarse, uninspired, lacking in vision. one person in particular she mentioned was a single mother, on welfare. at first glance, she seemed like every other victim of lower class poverty. but my friend wound up getting to know this person, to find out she’d been in a domestically violent relationship, had left her husband when she was 7 months pregnant, when the abuse became severe, had wound up living in poverty, on welfare, and was now struggling to get a teaching degree by taking classes at the local community college when she could. and that, right there, my friend said, though this woman isn’t going to be hyper-geeky aware like you or i, and can’t use our “big” words and fancy concepts, she is obviously coherent and real and has a richly textured story to tell.

i find that the older i get i tend to isolate myself, and the less and less i feel i understand or have anything in common with the vast majority of people on this planet (99.9%). i remember in my twenties, being young and cute and into adventure and a bit reckless, i hooked up with a lot of people, got invited to a lot of parties. i remember i tried. but i also remember continually finding myself at parties, on the edges, awkwardly, not having any idea what to say, continually misunderstanding what people would say to me, always the weird one, and i made up for this by throwing myself into a lot of unstable, sex-based flings. if you can’t communicate with somebody using small talk, and have trouble relating to the people around you, what better way to communicate than the language i instinctively speak best: the language of kinaesthetic awareness and sensation.

but i stopped the screwing around, stopped the meaningless sex, stopped the destructive relationships, and decided i was going to be an adult. this was near the end of my 20s, going into my 30s. and so, here i am, i’ve become an adult, age 34, and the crutch i used to use to relate, get involved with other people, is gone, and i find that nothing has taken its place. i find myself, anymore, feeling completely inadequate, nothing i say is understood by the majority of people i speak with, continual problems at work due to me being awkward and not smooth-edged enough. last night i met up with someone off twitter, a group of her friends, and the entire time i sat awkwardly, struggling with basic conversation, having no idea what to say, and given that i’m getting recalcitrant the older i’m getting, i found that rather than trying, struggling, i just sat back, stayed in my own world. here i was with these fascinating people traveling across the country via r.v., and i was unable to connect with them on any level, and the awkward was so thick it was palpable. i knew, inherently, there was something wrong with me. i struggled as we all sat on the back patio (another bar), and consciously fought the awkwardness laying itself thick on me, the fight/flight, me wanting to run, get away, and trying as much as i could to keep my posture level, to keep the agitation to the habitual, hard to notice repetitive finger-tapping i tend to do (fingers tapping against each other in rhythm circles, over and over). it was so overpowering, the awkwardness, i couldn’t find a place, i had this big mass of people facing me, only place for me to sit was facing them, and i’d sit, clumsy and empty, and they’d feel uncomfortable, so there i am standing by the bar trying to resemble some form of something, anything, something solid that won’t fall apart and run for the nearest “have to get away from people!!!!” hills.

and i found the person i’d met off twitter, who knows i have asperger’s, watching me with a cryptic smile. i didn’t respond, cuz that isn’t my way, i merely observe, make mental note, move on, so of course i never found out what she was smiling to cryptically at.

anyhow, i’m sitting with my friend i like, the first one i mentioned in this wandering, meandering essay of mine, and i’ve brought up on how when i look at assemblies of people, i can’t *see* anything, i get absolutely nothing. these “people” might as well be rocks, blocks of wood. i get as much involvement from them. and if i start to pay attention to them i don’t sense what has been described to me as the usual neurotypical connection, which i think is a bit warm, fuzzy, hard to put in words, involves looks on the face and staring into each other’s eyes, which is just freaky to me. i don’t get that, and instead i see the texture of the person’s skin on an almost microscopic scale, i see light shimmering off their skin, i can touch, in my mind, the glossiness of hair, my mind traces out the way the fabric they’re wearing falls on their skin. i am acutely hyperaware of every motion they make, every breath, every hesitation, every impulse.

but there’s a bit of a confusion here, and i’m going to give an example:

i sat with my friend on the back bench, and i already sensed it coming. i’m quite good at it. she finally said aloud, “it’s getting kinda late, i’m probably going to need to leave soon.” and i fumbled and stuttered and mangled the words, but finally got out that i knew she was going to say it, and was waiting for it, watching her go thru the motions. i find that i do this, i’ll be in groups of people, or meetings, and i am acutely aware of peoples’ tiniest mannerisms, and there’s always the slowest, barely perceptible herd impulse that will push thru a group, and i’ll know someone is on the way out, wanting ot leave, usually way before anyone else is. and i’ll watch the person out of the corner of my eye, waiting for it, watching their struggle, watching them form the concept in their head, and i watch the slow progression, til they finally manage some public motion, and then i watch the slow wave pass thru the rest of the herd, and how everyone else readjust to accept this new thing, it all occurring clumsily, slowly, and it’s like watching undulating lines pass along a topographical map.

the question my friend presented to me: if you have problems relating to people, seeing body language, then how is it you’re able to do this?

and i’ve been confused about this, myself. i find myself being much more aware than the average person on the autistic spectrum is supposed to be. i am usually hyper vigilant about, again, as i mentioned above, the smallest motions of other peoples’ bodies, mannerisms, habits, i track, predict, make mental notes, can sit on a subway train and be aware of 200 things the people around me are doing, and i am tracking each and assembling them together in my head and analyzing the periodicity with each respective movement. i don’t feel an emotional connection to any of these people, nothing warm and fuzzy, nothing muddily human, but i am acutely aware of them on a surface, mathematical, angled level.

and while you can be not so good with the normal empathy, small talk, reading facial expressions stuff, and this can lead to a lot of social ostracizing, you can still be so aware of people around you that you can predict, to the millisecond, when they will move, what direction they will turn their head, what the first word of their next sentence will be.

and if i put my mind to it, i can get very good at reading people. i might not be warmly, fuzzily connecting with the words someone is using while they’re talking to me, and i’m usually not looking them in the eyes, but if i’m interested in the person i will pay acute attention to every single tiny movement their body is making, every breath, every hesitation, and there is so much you can read into a person based on their word choices, analyzing patterns, paying attention to small details.

it’s coming at it a different way. and my way is strange, and it comes from behind, but isn’t what i just described a pretty concrete form of awareness of another person? is it some form of an ability to connect? it’s not just that i’m aware of these people in this manner when i do this, but i always find myself, purely for experiment’s sake, adjusting my words, my tone, very consciously, as if a scientific experiment, slight movements of my own limbs, and watching how they adjust, and i find that you can shape people’s response, trains of thoughts, on the most hard to detect level that few people are aware of. and in the context of sex, or really caring about somebody, when i get to this level with somebody, which happens very, very rarely, i can be a surprisingly perceptive, affectionate person, very aware of the other person. thought what 99.9% of the human population sees when they look at me is a stiff, formal, awkward person who keeps to herself and mumbles her words and is always misunderstanding what you say, and why doesn’t she attend our lunch dates and why can’t she just be more social?

one of the ideas i had for why i’m so hyperaware of other people’s smallest body motions is that people who were abused as kids, which i was, tend to become hyperaware like i am. i’m very hypersensitive to peoples’ motions around me, constantly vigilant, always on guard, and this is something i developed as a kid. and it’s a weird thing to do when you’re telling yourself you have asperger’s syndrome, but you find yourself much more aware of other people than the average person with asperger’s syndrome is supposed to be. and there’s all the talk i do about overly sexualizing relationships with other people, the love of seduction, impulse, adventure, and right there i just sound like a slightly fragmented crazy person, but way too “human” to be on the autistic spectrum.

which implies that people on the autistic spectrum aren’t human.

and it goes back and forth, back and forth. i draw up the concepts in my head, all the postulations, imagining myself to be this or that.

i finally was able to achieve some sort of salvation when meeting the group of people traveling cross-country last night, when i suggested we move venues, to somewhere (and i didn’t explain it to then this way) where the arrangement of the club meant they couldn’t cluster like they were, and they’d be more exposed to the elements, which would provoke some sort of loosening up. and i was right, their personalities changed in response to the new environment like i’d predicted. and along the way i started talking with one of the guys about the video editing work he does, and we wound up in a conversation by ourselves over an hour long about very geeky things, video codec rates, and standard definition versus hd, etc, highly involved, trading back and forth conversation. which is easy to do, if we start talking about something practical, concrete, hell yes. and he was very excited and we connected and he offered to help and gave me his email address and it seems he was impressed by my enthusiasm. talking about concrete, geeky things, we were able to connect. and when i sensed our hour-long conversation beginning to end, and knowing i’d be faced with the group as a whole again, i impulsively stood up, motioned to the dance floor, as a new song had started playing, and said, “i need to go dance now.” and he grinned and said, “enjoy”. and off i went to the dance floor, to stand in the corner, hidden from most view, not looking at anybody else on the dance floor, and tried to figure out if what i was doing was actually dancing, and having no idea what it looked like to anybody else.

and then the cross-country group left, and i sat awkwardly next to my twitter contact for almost half an hour, conversation ground to a halt. her being a very intelligent person, but the conversation simply is not there, and i impulsively considered doing what i used to do, the flirtation, turning it perverse and skin-based, but as i sat there i realized it’d been so long i couldn’t even remember how to do that. and so i sat, instead, head down, not looking at her, bad music playing out on the dance floor, and it was silent for the longest time, and i kept staring at the texture of the wall next to where we sat. and i reached up a hand, and ran the palm of my hand lightly along the granulated, craggy wetwork, and then hovered my palm over the metal plates, and it was incredibly electric, i could feel it in my entire body, the sensation was intense, and i wished with all i could that i were alone, so i could lose myself in that sensation, give myself to it, surrender. because the sensation playing itself along the quantum physics layer of skin cells along my palm was so much more religious and right than any empty conversation with another human being could ever be. and i kept this to myself, only touched the wall with the palm of my hand for the shortest hesitant moment, obvious, but not prolonged, and then i withdrew, though still wanting it, but withdrew, because i didn’t want to seem strange to the person i was sitting awkwardly next to.