Episode X
2023: Aspie Asperation

I

Once upon a time, a fifty-one-year-old man received an email from an old friend, T.J., from his America Online days circa 1996. He’d been reading episodes from Tales of a Gen-X Nothing and had a question for our hero.

“This is not a joke or an insult, Kevin: Are you aware that you are likely an Aspie?”

If you don’t know what that signifies, it’s how someone with Asperger’s Syndrome refers to themselves and others of their kind.

That man is me.

Honestly, this isn’t the first time folks have asked me this question. I also occasionally get asked if I’m gay, which I’m not, fuck you very much. Just because a man enjoys culture, history, music, and the arts doesn’t make him gay. It does, apparently, possibly, make them an Aspie.

Mom seems to think it’s a possibility. I’ve never been formally tested, though. In 2003, after my ex-wife Marie thrust a very nasty, expensive, and long divorce on me, I began seeing a psychologist at the behest of my attorney, Nick. It was good advice. I was a fucking mess. And not even so much because Marie was cheating on me with someone twelve years her senior (she’s got daddy issues like you wouldn’t believe) and sucking me dry financially with every excuse one could fathom to dig for that gold. It was all about my son. She wasn’t letting me see my son. And what time she dripped out was extremely limited and with more terms and conditions than the Geneva fucking convention. She used that boy to extract money from me for time with him. That’s all she cared about. Money and pleasuring herself in appallingly unconventional ways. And probably not even in that order.

What time I ended up getting with my son, I paid for both monetarily and emotionally. Plus, I was abusing painkillers and other meds to mask that pain at a rate that would kill most people. No one knew except Nick, and my psychologist, Dr. Greene. I was a functioning addict, through and through, and I hid it well. Even with Marie sucking me dry like a textbook succubus, I was still well off and could afford such indulgences.

II

Dr. Greene put me through batteries of tests over the first few weeks, ranging from Rorschach to intelligence quotient. He also asked me many questions that made little sense then. But after an hour or so of recently reading up on Asperger’s, it looks as if Greene may have been attempting to plot where I could’ve been on the autism scale. Technically, that’s what Asperger’s is now, a notch on the autism spectrum.

Personally, it’s my opinion that every time the fucking DSM reclassifies something, it’s so that Big Pharma can pump out some new wonder drug and make obscene, gross profits. Those drugs usually aren’t needed, rarely work, and have more side effects than Covid-19 and the jab combined. Plus, I suspect these numerous drugs only serve to zombify us into easy submission.

So, whatever.

Unfortunately, Greene passed away a year after I stopped seeing him, and I never got the results of most of those tests. He did, however, give them to Nick. I wanted to know my I.Q. And after some pressure, Nick showed me the results. I won’t share it. It’s impolite to brag. Let’s just say Mensa would accept me if I applied.

When T.J. reached out, he included far more information than I expected. I’m the one who writes verbosely; I don’t read verbose writing. Not even Stephen King back when his writing was worth a fuck. I’d skip multiple pages of useless information about a character’s backstory that ultimately had no relevance to the story.

It’s all about me, kids. If you want to make it about you, start your own damned blog. Maybe I’ll read it if it’s interesting. But maybe not. Apparently, a hallmark trait of being an Aspie involves talking only about ourselves and our interests. But that’s what Tales of a Gen-X Nothing is all about, and it has a purpose. So I’m justifying my self-interest. Read the Preamble episode for a refresher.

III

Google is not the best place to research symptoms for, well, anything. It’s a lot like WebMD. No matter the symptoms, you’re dying a horrible fucking death, and every conceivable illness shares the same symptoms. They’re akin to every new drug having the same side effects up to and including death. It’s how Big Pharma covers its ass. A simple search for “Aspie” symptoms turned up every damned symptom one could imagine. At least half don’t apply. I’d compare the exercise to reading horoscopes. They’re generally interchangeable across signs depending on the author’s day or which zodiac sign slice the Price is Right-like spinner wheel lands on.

For example, here are some symptoms of Asperger’s:

Often verbalizes thoughts that most would keep private.
In other words, no filter. Anyone who’s known me longer than five minutes will attest to this. My friend Dan has told me more than once, “Kev, you know it’s not necessary to say everything that comes into your head, right?”

Usually, I’m attempting to be George Carlin-level funny, but I can see where some may take what I say as TMI (which means Too Much Information if you’re not learned on your Internet acronyms).

Avoids eye contact.
Definitely. That’s been an issue since I became self-aware. Later in life, I justified it by saying I don’t like letting people into my soul. I became adept at fooling people by staring at the bridge of their noses or eyebrows. No one can tell the difference. The only time I’d make direct eye contact was with a girlfriend, and only if we were getting along. And during lovemaking. But not casual sex, as that’s so impersonal.

Oh, shit. There we go with the inappropriate TMI again.

Well, whatever. Who cares? I don’t.

Appears to lack empathy.
One of my exes, the one I call Becca in the memoirs, often accused me of this, besides being a narcissist. But note the qualifier “appears.” I feel empathy, mostly. I know I have trouble articulating it and, moreover, expressing it. That blank look on my face or lack of response doesn’t always mean I’m cold or unfeeling. I feel shit, more so than most imagine. Showing it is something else. I’d say, “I gotta work on that,” but I’m fifty-one now, and the whole “I’ll change” thing resembles that dot on the horizon signifying the running horse long out of the barn. And yet I’ll get super fucking emotional at movies. I wonder if there is a correlation between fiction/fantasy and real life. Perhaps I’ll ask T.J. about it.

Difficult time interacting with peers.
I’m laughing out loud at this. Anyone reading the memoirs section knows this is a running theme.

Flat tone or speaking style that lacks pitch.
This is one that, for me, is not applicable. I’m very animated and do crazy things with my voice. If you’ve ever seen Ashton Kutcher when he portrayed Walden Schmidt on “Two and a Half Men” go off on Alan in a disjointed rant, that’s me when I get worked up. Vocal inflection denotes emotion and context. It’s not a problem I have.

Inability to express one’s own feelings.
Personally, I feel that’s true to a degree. When I want to, I can and will. But not with everyone. I don’t talk about my feelings often, and certainly not with people not in my close friend’s circle. But I’ve always thought that’s me protecting myself. Who knows?

Lack of interpersonal relationship skills and instincts.
The former, yes. The latter, no. I survive on my instincts, and that ‘gut feeling’ when something is amiss is usually spot on. I’m adept at reading facial expressions and body language. When someone is interested in what I’m saying, I can tell. And also when they aren’t. It’s not that difficult, really. How much I care either way is usually consistent.

 Interpersonal relationship skills? I’m laughing out loud again. When the memoirs section is finished, that’ll be more than clear. I’m not good at relationships. They never work. I know why that is, but it would be a dissertation of sorts, so I’ll spare you the extra ten pages of the abstract. I’d say out of the eight billion people on the planet, there has to be at least one who’d love me enough for who I am to tolerate my shortcomings. But at this late age, my optimism dims a little more each day.

Has trouble understanding other people’s feelings.
Guilty. And I hate it. I’d change that if I could. It’s been the source of problems in so many relationships.

Having a hard time understanding body language.
Not applicable. I can totally read people from a mile away. But that may have been different once. If it was, it’s something I learned to overcome.

Having narrow and sometimes obsessive interests.
Well, I’d say this blog that few people read is one.

My writing, specifically the “Displaced” series.

I’d say I even felt that way about Becca at some point in our relationship dating back to 1991. But not anymore.

The whole filmmaking thing and equipment.

And music. Holy shit. Sometimes a song will come on, and I’d spontaneously name the artist, album, the year they released it, the side, and track number. I’m used to dealing with records and cassettes, hence knowing the side.

Difficulty with change, especially with routines.
Oh, hell to the yes. Don’t fuck with my routine, or I get all out of sorts. Beginning with waking up and making coffee. And don’t you dare attempt to interact with me until I’ve had said coffee. It doesn’t end well, and I rarely remember much of it since, technically, my brain hasn’t booted up yet.

Tends to be reclusive.
I’ll own that one, too. I often liked to do things alone as a kid, then as a teen, and as an adult. I’d spend time alone in my room with a project while listening to music. It’s still true today. I’m doing it right now, writing this at 4:10 a.m. while listening to my Heartbreak YouTube playlist, specifically Jon Secada’s “Just Another Day.” This song reminds me of 2016 when Becca wouldn’t talk to me on the phone because her Idiot Hubby was home, and we couldn’t have that, fuck forbid! He hates me, after all. I meant more to Becca than he ever did. Well, at one time, anyway. He declared I’d have nothing to do with his kids. That’s no doubt another reason Becca stays. So on the weekends when she’d not talk or text, I’d drink my ass off listening to that playlist.

I even asked my buddy from The Card Player’s Circle, Manyette, the other day if he thought I was an Aspie. He said, “I don’t know, I’m not a therapist or a doctor. I’d call you reclusive, though.”

There you go.

Problem-solving abilities tend to be poor.
Not. Even. Remotely. Problem-solving is my life. I am a computer programmer and debugger, after all. It’s what I do. My DIY background comes from having to solve problems on my own. If I may be permitted to toot my horn, I’d say I’m pretty damned good at it, too.

When I was elementary school age, I used to disassemble toys, study them, and put them back together. I’m talking full-fledged electronics. My Realistic tape player comes to mind. Yes, I still have it. This leads us to…

Attachment with objects.
That would certainly explain the obsessive trip I took back to my childhood home in Woodbine, Maryland, after my father died and his widow abandoned it. I wanted things I left behind thirty years ago. Photos, movies, slides, etc. He told me decades ago he’s gotten rid of them, burned them. I didn’t believe him. When I returned to Woodbine, I found them. But while there, I found other things I wanted because they were part of my childhood. Mom’s kitchen table, which used to belong to her grandfather. The secretariat we’d owned since before I was born. The old green harp table designed for the antique bowl and pitcher set (I found that, too). Mom’s complete set of the 1952 “Complete Books of the Western World” set in its original shelf unit. And Mom’s Eagle lamp she claimed to have purchased for her first apartment. I wanted these things, dammit! I would not see them thrown away or destroyed when the house was torn down. They have sentimental value for me. So I paid some friends to pull them out of the Woodbine house and drive them to South Carolina, where I live.

Now they’re mine. I look at them all the time, savoring those pieces I saved from my childhood.

There are my son’s stuffed animals from his childhood. Buster, a stuffed crab, and Charlamagne, a stuffed lobster. They would talk to him with the voices I gave them. Eventually, he outgrew them and Toy Storyed them. I can’t bring myself to get rid of them. It would cause me so much pain. They’re also my last attachment to my son since he won’t speak to me anymore.

Oh, and recall the General Lee and my Mom’s car from the last episode?

There you go.

Extensive vocabulary.
Let’s put it this way. I had to go back and edit damned near every novel I’ve written and ‘dumb them down’ because many of the words I used were too complicated and might break the flow if one didn’t know the meaning. In other words, I had to write more like James Patterson. I mean that respectfully. He sells more books than I do.

Emotional vulnerability.
And why I’ll never get married or have a girlfriend ever again. I don’t need that fucking drama or opening the rest of my cold, stone heart to have it stabbed viciously, over and over again. Hard pass.

Poor writing skills.
On the contrary, I think I’m a pretty talented writer. I make many mistakes while I type, as I never learned to type correctly. I tried. But it’s terribly difficult to unlearn old behaviors. That and the fingertips on my right hand are numb, and I miss proper key locations more often than not. Grammarly helps.

Loneliness.
Well, yeah. My inability to find and keep a love interest had that effect. It’s going to cause me to die earlier than I want. It happens to older men who live alone and are lonely. There’s not much I can do about it.

No fear.
That used to be true until my forties. Now I fear death too much to take extra chances. But if there’s a hurricane, and the state has issued a stay-at-home order, I want to be the first to go out with my camera and document everything. I suppose that counts as ‘no fear.’

No interaction with others.
People are usually busy living their lives. They have jobs, spouses, or kids. I’m single with no more kids. I’m pretty much always free to do things. Others aren’t. It is what it is. Sometimes I’ll ask but get shot down. That leads me never to ask again. I hate rejection, which is also another symptom.

Keen senses.
I often tell people that ‘hearing’ is my superpower. I can hear and quickly identify the littlest things. It’s freaky sometimes. Cars stopping in front of the house while I have Spotify running. The neighbors coming and going from their homes across the street. I’ll hear conversations several rooms away. Even the ability to follow multiple conversations at a restaurant.

Hell, occasionally, I’ll hear the squealing of some high pitch and trace it back to the source, like a failing refrigerator component.

When I hear music, I see colors. It’s called synesthesia. It explains why I can pick up songs so quickly on the piano. I also can’t read music. It all gloms together like musical dyslexia.

Anxiety.
Another running theme from the memoir. Anxiety comes from a fight-or-flight response with the inability to do either. It can strike without cause or reason. I fear doing things incorrectly and sometimes worry I might be a bad person. Or not good enough.

Escapism becomes necessary.
I rarely understand the world around me or how others think. Some people escape into their own world. Me? I escape into the past to a time when I felt safe, comfortable, and not so stressed. This is usually at the Woodbine house or the Arthur Avenue house in Eldersburg.

Rejection is hard to deal with.
No shit. Since parting ways with Becca, I’ve only asked out one woman. Stephanie. She shot me down with an “Aww, you’re such a good egg, Kev.” And that was that.

That’s it! I’m not playing that stupid game anymore. No more putting myself out there so nakedly just to get my dick slapped with the rejection board. If someone out there digs me, she can approach me; otherwise…done! Stephanie was the purest form of disappointment. Talk about not feeling like I wasn’t good enough. I could almost see Becca’s face laughing at me, saying the same.

There are also Becca’s years of rejection. Not only will I never have enough money to make her happy, but I’ll never be as awesome as Idiot Hubby. Nothing I did was good enough. For years I let Becca spoon-feed me that rejection from half a country away until I was ready to self-destruct in the worst way possible.

Loyal.
Shit, I could have told you that. I always thought that was a Scorpio attribute.

I’ve only ever cheated in one relationship. Her name was Tessie. She’s Manyette’s older sister. I stepped out on her with another Card Player’s Circle member’s girlfriend. His name was Taylor, and her name was Becca. Yes, that Becca. He’d broken up with her at which point she and I got together.

This is a tale that is coming in the memoirs. It’s too fantastic not to be true.

In every other relationship, those women cheated on me or handed me the dreaded Walking Papers. This goes to show that loyalty really gets one nowhere.

Accepting of Difference.
That’s not me. Not anymore. Maybe never. I’m very judgemental. I usually take people as they are with a live and let-live credo. But if one irks me? Forget it; I am judge, jury, and executioner, bitch! Also, I’m not a huge fan of progressive leftists. I can deal with classic liberals since they’re not so far off the planet, but those other people? Fuck them. Anyone my age dying their hair blue and pretending to be a gender they’re not is emulating the Gen-Zers and needs to fucking stop. You’re an adult now. Fucking act like it!

It basically comes back to one thing. Don’t be stupid. If you’re stupid, I’ll dismiss you and move on. Stupidity gives me a headache.

If the ‘accepting of difference’ is fundamental, like sex, skin color, religion, or things of this nature, then I don’t care. I’ll count that as accepting differences. I often tell people I dislike everyone equally. This way, there’s no favoritism, and they can never accuse me of hating just one person or group. I take people one at a time, and if I like you, you’ve won the lottery. But if you hurt me? Watch the fuck out. I’ll walk away with pieces of your soul dragging behind me.

IV

I spent a week chasing that white Aspie rabbit down a rather deep hole and coming nowhere near the bottom. It became my primary focus. Work and this blog took a backseat. It became one of the few reasons I withdrew into isolation for the week. It’s how I process things. T.J. suggested it was “autism burnout.” He could be right. I don’t know. I do know it’s a coping mechanism I’ve had for as long as I can remember. If I’m not ready to talk about it, there’s no way I’m going to or can be made to. I think. I sleep. I get up. I think. I work. I sleep. Repeat.

In a follow-up conversation with T.J., I pointed out that some of these Aspie symptoms didn’t apply, and if anything, I was the opposite. How does that work?

He suggested I research a recent concept coined in the nineties called “Twice Exceptional.”

Oh, great. Another layer to wade through. Plus, I’m not thrilled with the label. Exceptional. That’s not how I would describe myself. When I think of exceptional, I think of people like Elon Musk, Dr. Jordan Peterson, or even Mozart.

I won’t spend time here explaining the entire 2e concept. You’re free to read more about it here, although I approach Wikipedia with more than one grain of salt.

Understand, most of these diagnoses didn’t exist when I was a child. Who knew? I can tell you when I took the California Achievement Test in fifth grade, my language mechanics scored at a twelve-grade level and a ninth-grade reading vocabulary and language expression. All are in the upper ninety percentile range.

I recently asked Mom about this, and she said a group of us in the second grade were reading beyond our grade level. We had our own reading group. I remember them vividly. Jude and Marie. The school wanted us to skip a grade in the reading units since they felt we’d get bored with the grade-appropriate curriculum. I could do so, mainly because splitting the three of us seemed like a bad idea. Turns out that wasn’t the best move for me. With writing, I’d not learned to format sentences correctly, and what I wrote would be run-on sentences. I needed those skipped lessons, and I had to catch up after the fact. If one was to read some of my early writing, not only were run-on sentences prevalent, but comma placement was also another area of opportunity.

While searching for the paperwork Mom saved from that era, I discovered a letter to her from the county wishing to place me in the gifted classes. Apparently, the county school system thought I was worthy based on the California Achievement scores. The reason I didn’t attend? The classes were in July, and I balked at giving up my summer to go to fucking school!

Still, ‘gifted’ isn’t a word I’d use to describe myself in my grade school years. My grades through elementary and middle school were average. I never failed a class. High school was a different matter. My grades could’ve been better. The thing is, I hated doing homework and, most times didn’t. If I was in danger of failing a class, I’d step up and do what I had to do to pass, but overall, no. I had this mantra that I already spent eight hours a day doing schoolwork I found boring and pointless in most cases; why the fuck would I want to spend additional hours at home doing more? My free time was mine, not the Carroll County school system’s, so fuck them!

I also suffered from a confidence problem. I wrote that past tense, didn’t I? Suffer, still. For example, going back to ninth grade in high school, all freshmen were required to take the Maryland Functional Writing Test (MFWT) and pass. If one didn’t pass, there was an opportunity to take it again in subsequent grades. If a student didn’t pass it, then they didn’t graduate. The whole idea of the test was for the state to determine how well students could communicate in writing as part of daily life experiences in society. The MFWT would measure a student’s ability to write narrative and explanatory material, measuring abilities in organization, sentence formation, mechanics, addressing the audience, and generating content.

This test scared the hell out of me. If I didn’t graduate because I couldn’t pass a writing test, what would my parents think of me? I’d be seen as a failure. I stressed over this test for weeks.

The minimum passing score was 5.5 out of 8.0. To my utter surprise and disbelief, I scored a perfect 8.0. I didn’t get to keep whatever it was I wrote. I don’t recall what they were about. However, I still have fiction I began writing in my freshman year. If it’s any indication of what I wrote to pass this graduation requirement, then I should’ve had more confidence in myself. It’s not a badly written story. The premise, on the other hand, is utterly ridiculous science fiction, logically impossible, unbelievable, and just plain goofy. Unlike Displaced, which is totally believable, right?

But then, so was a lot of Sci-fi from the early twentieth century. Asimov, Matheson, Clarke, Wells, etc. Hell, even Jules Verne and his journey to the center of the Earth wouldn’t withstand scientific scrutiny.

Again, selling myself short. I really ought to stop that.

V

Mom will tell you I didn’t apply myself. If I had, I’d have been one of those kids in the yearbook noted for their high SAT scores and scholarship opportunities. I don’t disagree with her. Hell, even when I was on the verge of graduating high school in 1989, I agreed with her. I knew what I was doing. In my mind, it was the minimum to graduate. The Law of Least Effort.

It’s a mistake I often wish I could go back and remedy. I wasn’t thinking big picture.

I began community college after high school and did that for a year and a half. A car accident cut the last semester off. Just as well. While I got something out of one or two classes and damned near having an affair with my vocal coach, I felt I was just living grades thirteen and fourteen and wasn’t getting much from it. Sadly, the bullying from certain high school students carried over. A fight would no longer land one in the principal’s office. It would mean the involvement of law enforcement.

I had other plans anyway. I wanted to be a composer, specifically for movie soundtracks. I was already writing original pieces, orchestrating them, and recording them to the best of my ability. Obviously, that never panned out, and I ended up drifting from job to job until late 1992, when I got serious about finding a place in restaurant management.

I also had no choice. I had to take steps to stand on my own after the devastating showdown with my father, which ended in his ostracizing me from his home and his life. It was probably the most tremendous favor he ever did for me, although I wouldn’t understand that for years to come.

T.J. wrote to me, “Unfortunately when we don’t get that recognition and support, we are acutely aware internally of the missed opportunities and wasted talents.  As the years progress, this awareness manifests internally as compounded hate and disappointment with ourselves for not having achieved the greater things in life that we know damned well we are and always have been capable of.”

Looking back through my childhood (and soon, teenage years) through the lens of this blog, I can clearly see this, and it makes so much sense. I made so many bad choices. Not finishing college, getting married to the wrong person because I thought she was the best I could do, investing years into working for a company with no future, and years of my life in a relationship that hurt more than it helped. I know there is only one place I can lay the blame, and that’s at the feet of the person currently writing these words.

The entire point of my decision to write these memoir entries was an attempt to determine if my best years are behind me or if there are better days ahead. I feel like it’s the former, but I can’t say for one hundred percent. Not yet, especially with this new information from my old friend T.J.

Have I been on the spectrum my entire life and never knew or it understood it as I became older? Had this caused people to dislike me because I was different? Has it caused people to accuse me of having no empathy, being anti-social, and being a narcissist? Has it caused me to not much like myself? Have I truly been kicking my own ass for years, believing all this shit to be fact and that I’m generally a bad person navigating life with the bare minimum effort until I die alone?

I’m beginning to wonder now.

Perhaps publishing my memoirs via this blog was indeed the first step to figuring all this shit out. What the solution is, I don’t know.

Sometimes, to move forward, we must be willing to look back. And thus, this work.