Haircuts are Weird

A lot of times I really don't want to do it. I'll go months, and sometimes years between professional haircuts. For most of the 90s I'd shave parts of my head and cut what was on top by shear guess work. It had a kind of D-I-Y mystique.

But now, most of the time, I feel a bit old for that. I save it up until that moment when I look in the mirror and realize I look like like 1978 and something really needs to be done about it. So, I flip the switch un my head that says "it's haircut time," and I take care of it. I also prepare myself for inevitable disappointment.

I'm probably not going to be happy with what I get.

And the experience itself is difficult. Not as difficult as for some. I don't throw tantrums. I like the sensory experience of the clippers but not so much the scissors. It's not too bad for me, but I can totally see how it could be a million times worse for someone with a stronger sensory reaction.

My first trouble is that, sitting in the chair, I just can't explain what I want. So the barber or stylist just does what seems natural and I usually end up with either a 'big boy haircut' or the Anderson Cooper. What I want is something different, but I lack the words to explain it.

And maybe there aren't words. Maybe there's just this internal sense of what it is I want my hair to be that just doesn't match the training and the expectations of the stylist. In some ways, what I want is a crazy manga haystack of hair. What would happen if I said that? But I never can quite say that, probably because of the second thing.

The second thing is the physical proximity to another person that I don't know so well. It sets off a lot of weird things inside me. When I go to the dentist, my gums swell from anxiety and are prone to bleeding. That's another story.

The barbershop is a very different environment than the dentist office. It's less clinical, better music, and the stylist always is ready to chat. The conversational aspect is the killer. It's easy to be taciturn with a chatty dental hygenist, because your speaking organ is compromised. There is no such built in defense against the small talk of the hair stylist.

And the stylist is so, so close. Touching my head and really getting closer to me than I'm used to lately. And it's confusing.

In a way, it feels very intimate. But I don't know what to do with that feeling. It's a misreading. The stylist is doing her job. Today it was a her, which simultaneously makes it easier to relax and easier to get confused about the misreadings caused by proximity.

With a male stylist, I know where I stand. I've long since figured out that I'm not attracted to men. Long ago I gave the question a proper amount of objective consideration. I can be okay with knowing who I am in that interaction.

With a female stylist, especially an attractive one who seems to fall in the same general age bracket as myself, signals start getting sent. Not of a creepy variety, so much, but just of the kind that, well, hell, it creeps me out. I don't know who I am in relation to this person who is putting her hands on my head. Especially since small talk is part of the exchange. Is there some underlying hint within her question about what I was planning on doing that evening?

Probably not. Now I can see it as probably not. Or was it? It doesn't matter now, but at the time I was confused. Was there some sort of perfect answer she was hoping for and if I'd said it we could have ended up hanging out after her shift watching reruns of Doctor Who? And is that the kind of thing I want out of a trip to get a haitcut?

I suppose this is it. When people get that close to me, I cease to be able to figure out what they want out of the interaction. There is too much information all at once for me to sort through, and I can't even figure enough of my way through it to be able to say 'no, not so short with the bangs.'

When I was married, it was easier. It was easier to know who I was in relation to other people. Certain levels of intimate connection were out of the equation as soon as I said the words 'my wife.' But now I don't know. I could be anybody.

That's the most terrifying thing about getting a haircut. Someone is so close to me, way inside my personal bubble, physically doing things to the outside of my head. If I don't know who I am, could they be doing things to the inside of it, too?

It takes a lot of work to get to know someone well enough that I can trust them to be so close to me. Getting a haircut forces me to shove all that reluctance aside. And maybe that's really why I'm always so disappointed with the results. They remind me that I don't know who I am when I get too close to a stranger. When I don't know how my story plays out with their story. When I don't know what they want from me and I can't figure out what I want from them.

But I have to get haircuts sometimes.

How HDTV Made Me Realize I See Things Differently

...and other thoughts about sensory issues

I'm feeling a bit of confusion lately because the APA's diagnostic manual is changing its language and that's getting people agitated. The big headline that was going around last week was that the Asperger's Syndrome diagnosis will be dropped from the DSM V. That makes me feel unsettled because I've built up a certain sense of identity around having Asperger's. I have a better idea who I am through the lens of the Asperger's diagnosis. However, my traits are mildly expressed, and I sometimes worry that I'm not spectrumy enough to belong to the club.

And then, every once in a while I'm in a room with one other autistic person and twenty or so garden varieties (or whatever you want to call 'normal' people). Inevitably, the autism spectrumy person says something that makes the other twenty people cock their heads like they didn't hear it right, but I laugh, almost too loudly, because I totally get it. 

Technically, my paperwork says Autism Spectrum Disorder, not Asperger's, so I should just calm down. And even if I somehow were to get re-evaluated and I were determined to exist on the wrong side of the DSM V autism line, I'm still all in with the neurodiversity camp. Neurodiversity is a club that includes everybody.

So, to try and reel this in to what my title is about, the new DSM autism guidelines specifically include sensory issues. From my understanding, this is new. Sensory processing issues used to be considered common co-morbidities for autism, but now they're part of the diagnostic checklist. Brilliant!

However, "hyper- or hypo-reactivity to sensory input" is a pretty broad way to put it. And how do you test for it? Some expressions of hypo-reactivity are more obvious, like the kid who doesn't notice that he's cut himself until someone points out his shirt is soaked in blood. Or the little girl who screams and arches into bridge because the car seat is way too hot. Others, however, really aren't.

Because autism can limit your perspective to your own experiences, it's hard to know how your perceptions may not match up with those of others. Someone with milder visual or auditory processing issues might not even realize that they're having an issues until well into adulthood, when they have accreted enough information to realize something funny is going on. At the age of 38, I've finally connected enough dots to realize that I've got a bunch of quirks in my perception that most likely add up to general sensory processing issues.

I'll list a few. I would also like to point out that these issues tend to manifest themselves more profoundly when there is extra stress going on in my life.

Auditory

First, when I was in 7th Grade, I noticed the ringing in my ears, or tinnitus. I hadn't been listening to loud music. In fact, I never really liked loud music. Earlier on, I'd insisted that I not participate in a recorder lesson in Sunday school, because the tones of the recorders hurt my ears. After noticing the tinnitus, it was also hard to put up with the high-pitched squeal that the CRTs in the TVs and computer monitors of the day would make. But I loved TV, so I forced myself to acclimate to it.

As I grew older, the tinnitus made it absolutely pointless to go to any place an amplified live band was playing. All the music turned to static in my head and I feared my eardrums would explode.

When I was 20, and going through a lot of confusing health problems, I brought up the tinnitus with my doctor. She said there wasn't anything to do about it and implied it was the consequence of rocking out too hard. She obviously had no idea what my situation was. I never brought up tinnitus with a doctor ever again. 

Later on, when I was making one of my big pushes at trying to be more social, I discovered a couple drinks would kick the tinnitus in the background, and I could actually hang out in a club with loud music for a while.

Visual

I have similar visual issues. It's hard to talk about, mostly because people get confused and worried when I do. I'll ease into it.

Sometimes, when I'm in a new place or situation, it's like I take a thousand polaroids and then throw them all over the floor at random and, until I can assemble it into some kind of a photomosaic, I really have no idea where I am and what I should be doing in the place. It takes a while to put the puzzle pieces together and figure out what's going on. I wonder what this looks like from the outside. I must project some sort of vibe that makes it seem like I'm on official business. I've often totally blown by the guy collecting the cover charge without consequence simply because I didn't realize he was there.

I'm not exactly sure if the polaroid photomosaic counts as a sensory issue, or a processing issue, but related to it is the fact that, sometimes, when a lot of things are going on in a situation that I'm supposed to be involved in, everything goes white. It's not that I can't see, but my ability to make sense of it goes away. There is no distinction between people, environment, and the damned basketball that I'm supposed to be passing to somebody. In my head it can all register as a timeless flash of white. This is a big part of why I don't like to drive so much, and especially not at rush hour. I had one of those timeless flashes of white back in February. It ended up with me being in an upside-down car.

Another visual issue that I've been recognizing more and more, but has been with me for quite a while, is visual snow. At some point, when I was a teenager, I noticed that my vision would be kind of fuzzy sometimes. I did get glasses, and that corrected very mild myopia (so mild that I've always passed the DMV vision test without my glasses), but things still seemed a bit ghostly out of my left eye in particular. I was interested in the supernatural at the time, and I started really trying to see auras. And I definitely started seeing auras around anything that was against a dark background. I saw halos around lights. I'd see things flickering in the corners of my field of vision. I would also see little sparks flitting from the corners of grid like patterns, especially 1 inch square bathroom tiles. At the time, I thought I was learning how to see magic.

That experience kind of faded into the background as I became very worried about what life was going to be like after high school. Visual issues would continue to show up in little ways, usually when I was exhausted or over-extending myself. Resting, reprioritizing my projects, and avoiding bright lights has usually done the trick. It has been worse at times when major changes have been going on in my life. I've seen ophthalmologists a couple times about this, only to be told there was nothing physically wrong with my eyes. Perhaps I just didn't have the right vocabulary to explain what is going on. But knowing nothing physically was wrong was a relief itself and helped alleviate the symptoms.

When HDTVs started becoming the norm, I had a bit of a reaction. At first it was really hard for me to look at an HDTV with my glasses on. Things were too sharp and too not the way I'm used to seeing them. I gradually adjusted, but ever since then I notice how, to me, real life often looks more like it's shot on lower grade film stock from the 80s than the glorious HiDef presentation of the opening ceremonies to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

This past summer, as I was in the midst of every major life change you could think of, it got really bad. I started googling my symptoms and found out that 'visual snow' was consistent with what I was experiencing. I also found out that three groups seemed to represent a lot of the sufferers of visual snow: people with Asperger's, and people who have done way too many hallucinogenic drugs. Although people have often asked if I have, I've never done any hallucinogens, mostly because I've always suspected my brain was weird enough as is. 

Pain

The sensation of pain is always a bit off for me. When I was married, occasionally my partner would notice nicks on my hands and ask me how I'd cut myself. I'd have no idea.

I've also had chronic muscle and joint pains that have lasted for years. For quite a long time, I was unable to turn my head very far to the left. Doctors would prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs and I'd try special pillows and ginger pills and a host of home remedies. Then, after five years of avoiding dentist visits, my new dentist thought it was time to have an impacted wisdom tooth pulled. Like magic, after the extraction, my neck pain disappeared. Perhaps the tooth was causing pain in my jaw the whole time, but it wasn't registering right, and instead my neck was seizing up. I'm not sure. All I know is that I take dental hygiene seriously now.

In another dental situation last year, it turned out I had an abscessed tooth. Again, I didn't feel any pain in the tooth, but I had been feeling very run down and a little woozy for a month or so leading up to the regular visit where an x-ray revealed the infection. It was curious that I had a raging infection inside my head and never felt any pain. I'll have to keep an eye out for that.

In general, I've also found that I have an odd relationship with NSAID pain relievers. They do the job really well, but when the medication wears off, the pain comes back worse than when it started and I need to take more meds. For the most part I've stopped taking meds for my muscle and joint aches since I realized this was a cycle. My muscle and joint pain has significantly decreased.

Nothing is consistent

I've noticed other sensory quirks, but the one thing I've noticed above all else is that none of them are 100% consistent. It seems like multiple variables are at play when it comes to sensory issues. Familiar environments and a general sense of well-being with my place in the world makes a lot of the symptoms disappear. Fear, anxiety, unknown situations, being out of my routine, changes in the season, worrying about getting a job can all build up and tip it the other way.

In the end, I think the best way to manage sensory issues is to know yourself, know what you tend to react to, and know what you can do to regulate your internal situation so you can better process the external situation. Take breaks when you need them. Eat good food. Get exercise. Those are the big three that seem to help everything.

Over-Generalization Problems

Over-Generalization is the thing every high school English teacher warns the class against when they are studying the unit on persuasive writing. And, I'm not making a sweeping generalization here. I'm a certified English teacher. Avoiding generalizations is part of every pursuasive writing curriculum I've seen.

It always seemed ridiculously easy to me not to generalize. Actually, it was kind of hard to generalize, although I didn't realize this. Every situation and every person was it's own discrete entity that had to be figured out individually. It makes it really hard to start conversations, because I have trouble making assumptions about what people might like to talk about, and I really hate making a guess and being wrong.

This totally doesn't bother most people, though. Most people are natural generalizers and will be quick to make assumptions about other people. If those assumptions prove to be wrong, people either adjust, or don't even register it. It's amazing how many people seem to not pay attention to the things I do to figure other people out. At the same time, however, I'm totally lost on the subtle cues communicated in body language and, sometimes, tone of voice.

Perhaps generalizers are getting plenty of other information that either reinforces, or helps them readjust their assumptions. I'm willing to entertain that notion.

However, there is a domain, divorced fron body language and social cues, in which over-generalizations become glaringly, and sometimes painfully, obviously wrong. The written word.

This is my domain. The written word is easier for me to communicate with because the written word stays. It's not like a spoken word that might flit past my ears too fast for me to understand (I eventually do, but sometimes it's a week later). The written word is pinned down and on display. I can refer back to it. I'm learning how valuable this truly is. Sometimes I totally misinterpret a written message on the first pass, but it's right there, so I can doublecheck.

So, in the domain of the written word, over-generalization is especially conspicuous. These things can be fact checked and disputed. An entire thread of the Pursuasive Writing unit has to do with identifying logical fallacies, which are largely based on different types of over-generalizations that line up pretty closely with psychologically researched decision making heuristics.

Basically, most people need to learn how to look past over-generalizations in order to make informed decisions.

Having said all that, I saw something in a bookstore yesterday that really upset me. I happen to live in the town that has one of the strongest surviving independent bookstores in the US. I love that place. I love bookstores in general because tge experience of books is very visual, tactile, and olfactory for me. E-books only give me one third of the experience.

So, I have tremendous respect for this store, and I don't want to seem like I'm bad-mouthing them. I won't even mention them by name.

In fact, I regard the upsetting thing as a typical example of neurotypical over-generalization in action. It just happened to occur in a spot I care deeply about.

One thing about this particular store is that it can be hard to find books on Aspergers on its shelves. I assume that's because the titles they do get in quickly sell online. They don't stick around in the brick and mortar for very long. I used to work for this company, and I'm familiar with how their online sales are fulfilled. This is a very plausible scenario for me.

On my last visit, I was pleasantly surprised to find a robustly stocked couple of shelves labeled 'Aspergers.' I even found a copy of Tim Page's "Parallel Play" which I've been meaning to purchase for my own personal library for quite a while.

I was pretty happy.

And then, I saw the upsetting thing. A couple psychology textbooks with the title "Mental Retardation" were placed in this section. I checked their barcode labels and, no, this was not a mis-shelving incident. The labels read 'Aspergers' and this was wrong.

Super over-generalization strikes again. Aspergers is not MR. This scares parents and promotes unfair prejudices. Not only is MR an out-dated label (differentiating between specific intellectual disabilities is much more helpful for everyone) but Aspergers is NOT MR. Not even a little bit. It's sensory issues, and noticing different details than most peopel, and trouble filtering out non-social information from social information, and having anxiety from being misunderstood all the time, but it's not mentally retarded. We're processing information at least as fast as neurotypicals, we're just tuned into different wavelengths, different bandwidths. The neurotypical world would be missing so many things if we hadn't pointed them out. And the missapplied MR label has crushed so many people. So this really offends me.

If a bookstore needs to generalize to keep a section full, I'd totally support includind Aspergers in a general autism section. That fits. Or a general special needs section. That's okay. I wouldn't feel bad about seeing Aspie books near Down Syndrome books near ADHD books in a Special Needs section.

But when a bookstore narrows down the focus of a section so tightly that it's just Aspergers (still a broad category within itself... you meet one Aspie, you've only met one Aspie, we're all different) a twenty year old textbook on MR absolutely does not belong there.

Inappropriate over-generalization hurts. And it doesn't help people understand those who are different from them. And on some levels, we're all different. This kind of thing hurts all of us.

Looking for Signs

This is a slightly modified version of a piece I wrote for my old work's website about five years ago. At the time, I thought it was about my relationship with zines. Now I've got a more precise idea. It's about how I used zines to help me overcome my Aspergian difficulties in social arenas. Zines might be a bit of a dated concept, but I still love the format. It has the potential to be at once more expansive and more intimate than anything on the internet. And I like the physicality of them. I think they can still be a powerful tool for teenagers and young adults on the spectrum to overcome the social thresholds that are excruciatingly difficult to cross. A zine says, "here's a piece of myself. It has some words and thoughts I might have trouble digging up in realtime. But when they're out here on paper that we can both see, it's easier. Want to get coffee?"

  

I’ve tried four or five times to begin this article, an article about a thing I do that takes a lot of time and care, something that somehow is such a part of who I am, a natural extension of my being, that I have trouble describing it. In a way it’s like explaining why I wear shoes or metabolize hydro-carbons. Why do I make a zine? What is a zine?

It’s a kind of insanity surrounded by little scraps of paper I’ve photocopied and cut out from old books. Pieces of letters and postcards from friends. Original drawings, some comics, a kick ass cover illustration I really should have had to pay money for. Stories from friends who I’ve asked to give me stories because I know that life is more than just playing video games and drinking beer. It is, you know. Am I crazy for saying that?

Am I crazy? I spend a lot of time and a lot of money, money I could have spent on beer, photocopying and pleading for submissions and mailing and sharing a 40 page photocopied publication that has a new issue about once a year. It’s a zine called Bony Landmarks and people tend to tell me they like it. Perhaps they’re just being polite because they know I’m crazy.

But, seriously, you ask, what is a zine?

 I’m not sure I can do the paper and staples artifact justice on a computer screen. I think I can only really give you a clue. A clue and a quote.  The clue is that a zine is a very special kind of publication that relies much more on the creativity of those with big dreams and limited means than it does on advertising sales and circulation. You can’t find them at Barnes & Noble or Borders, but you just might find them amidst the jumbled reading materials in the corner of your favorite coffee shop. They pass between peers on high school and college campuses. They wind up on merch tables at punk shows and in anarchist infoshops and radical bookstores. And if you can find an independent record store, you just might find some in there. But most of the time, for me, they come in the mail because I’ve sent someone a couple dollars concealed in an envelope you made out of an abandoned art project. Or I’ve sent them my own zine to trade. 

I got my own start doing zines back in the 90’s. I had been playing around with making mini-comics. I had learned how to successfully fight the self-serve copiers at Kinko’s and make them do what I needed them to. Making comics was really time-consuming and my drawings were crude, but I really liked the finished product. If only I could make them faster. 

One day, I ran into a friend on the bus who handed me a zine. It was half the size of my last comic, but it didn’t matter. The thing had energy in its collages and its typewritten pages of true-to-life, aimless teenage wandering in a desert city. I realized that the free-reign and open possibilities of cutting up and photocopying together whatever the hell I wanted was a lot more exciting than just making comics. I could do it. I could make them different sizes, different shapes. I didn’t have to worry about what people might expect a comic book to be.

Around that same time I picked up a copy of the long since defunct Factsheet 5 from the used magazine racks at, you guessed it, Bookmans. Factsheet 5 was the zine community resource of its time. They reviewed absolutely everything and if you sent them $3 they’d send you a priority mailer stuffed with zines that they were done with. It was a crash course education on the possibilities.

Inspired, I ditched the mini-comic format and made something called the Twilight Zine. It was full of my semi-autobiographical fiction and comics as well as a couple light-hearted jabs at the alien abduction phenomenon that was going around at the time. I printed my friends’ rants. I satirically skewered my enemies, both real and imagined. I tried to be funny and smart and meaningful. I was trying to change the world, tear down the system and all that. Plus, I figured it would help with meeting girls.

And it kind of worked. Having a copy of the Twilight Zine in my hand gave me something, besides my cultivated veneer of zero self-esteem, to represent the best and cleverest of myself at a first meeting. I might not be able to come up with immediately snappy conversation, but I could hand over my latest tract of what it was like to be an unpaid intern working at the Aliens’ secret ChupacabraCorp headquarters. It eventually earned me some cool points with a couple indie-rock girls. Through various twists and turns of teenage/twentysomething drama, this somehow led to me crashing on a friend’s couch in Portland and somehow spark a relationship with my friend's housemate. I stayed there a week, but before I left, I gave her a copy of the Twilight Zine with my phone number on the cover. One thing led to another...

A couple years passed as I moved to Portland and found myself very involved in being a dad and a husband and working in used bookstores. I tried to keep my hand in at writing, but we were washing our own cloth diapers, putting together the most awesome DIY wedding, and of course I had that Sunday morning volunteer shift at the food co-op. Let’s just say having a baby is a bit more time consuming than anyone thinks it will be. We did, however, make it to the first Hip Mama Gathering in Portland, which fanned the lingering zinester ember within me. 

The next year I managed to scrounge enough Twilight Zine back issues to stock a table at the Portland Zine Symposium. I split the table with one of my first zine friends, Dr. Verno the Inferno. (A funny story about Dr. Verno. When he was still undergraduate Verno the Inferno he started sending his zine to my P.O. Box. It was full of some crazy shit. And some of the stuff in his accompanying letters were pretty specific to things I knew about and it almost made me feel like I had a stalker. How did he know this stuff about me? It was quite a few weeks before I realized that we both worked at the same movie theater. And had some of the same friends. And everyone assumed I knew he was making Spleen Zine. It was probably obvious, but I totally missed it.)

          

The year after that, we moved to Tucson. For me it was a return to my hometown. We staked a claim at a crappy apartment complex and I landed a job at Bookmans.

          

We only had one car at the time and I rode the bus a lot. One of the things that happens when you ride the bus is that parking lots become the enemy. Especially in summer. Parking lots are these huge, desolate sources of merciless blackbody radiation that you always have to cross to get between the bus stop and wherever it is you’re going.

         

It might have been heatstroke, but I began to see parking lots from the distanced perspective of an armchair anthropologist from the year 3100. Because the parking lot had no relevant function in my own life, I began to wonder about the curious customs of the great civilization that had left behind these monumental earthworks. Unsuitable for agriculture and prone to flooding, perhaps these structures served some ceremonial purpose. I wondered if it was something I could write a book about.

I decided I probably couldn’t make a book, but maybe I should try making a zine.

My Grand Unified Field Theory of Parking Lots never came together, but I started thinking more about the things around me as being cultural artifacts. And each of these artifacts could lead to some kind of meaningful interpretation of the lives of the people who created and used them.

This was part of the strange inner dialogue I had going on during my first year at Bookmans. I suppose I was really trying to come up with some kind of meaning for my own life. Sifting through the books on the trade counter, pricing them in the back room, shelving them on the sales floor. I was constantly in touch with so much information. There was obviously some meaning in there. There had to be signs. I was looking for signs.

I absolutely had to start doing a zine again. But how was I going to fit it all in. Spare moments only came in fits and starts and life was a constant struggle. Could I even come up with enough content on my own? And I really wanted to make an impressive, thought-provoking zine. Something even better than if it was my old semi-autobiographical, ranty fiction.

I wanted more people involved, and I wanted real stories. I wanted to document cultural artifacts, and, following a fascination I had developed for one of Bookmans’ non-fiction sections, I wanted true adventure. And I came to the conclusion that I needed to form an art collective.

I sent e-mails and asked friends if they’d like to join my art collective because I wanted to make a new zine about true adventure and cultural artifacts. I have some really trusting friends because I’m sure they had no idea what the hell I was talking about. 

In the end, my friends played along and we called ourselves the Look for Signage Art Collective. We put together three issues of Bony Landmarks between 2005 and 2007. They were pretty cool. And I met a few new friends through the process as well. They are friends who are scattered around the country, and I've never met some of them in person, but every now and then one of us makes a zine. And I keep looking for signs.

The Politics of Eyegaze

One of the stereotypical autism traits has to do with eye contact. There's this common perception that lack of eye contact is the most obvious sign that someone has autism. And, that's just not true. Not entirely. It is true that many people with autism avoid eye contact. It's also true that some people with autism go overboard with the eye contact. Like everything else about the spectrum, it's not an either/or thing. There are extremes, and there are gradations.

For some, it is painful to look someone else in the eye. For others, it's just not a very meaningful source of information. And for others, there's this received idea that it's important:  TV shows and movies and parents and teachers tell us this and we try, but we can't quite figure it out.

I think eyes are pretty. And I like looking at them for a bit. But, my own gaze can wander. I wear glasses, so it might not be as noticeable to the people I'm talking to. I've got camouflage. But I look at eyebrows, and mouths, and teeth. The nose. I keep returning to the eyes, because I know that's what you're supposed to do. But do I get the message? If it's a directional thing, like, eyes are pointed at said object, I've learned to follow that (although it was really hard when I was younger). If it's an acknowledgement, as in, I know that driver sees me in the crosswalk because I can see their eyes, I can do that. But the clues to feelings?

I've studied this. I've read a lot of comics, and drawn some comics. Expressively, I have an idea of an exaggerated state of eye-based emotional communication. And I think I've learned to emulate this overly expressive style. It garners laughter from small children. And it's usually very intentional. When I'm not trying, or when things are serious, I tend to have a flat aspect. My eyes don't show my feelings. This probably saved me from getting bullied. Random aggressors didn't get the fear reaction they expected and they moved on to someone else who would give it to them.

When I was getting my diagnosis, one of the testing instruments was a set of photographs of eyes. Each picture of eyes has a set of four adjectives and I was supposed to pick the right one. I don't have a lot of confidence in my results on this test. I ended up scoring on the low end of normal, but it was really hard. As a former teacher, I was quite familiar with the test prep strategies for boosting scores on multiple choice tests. I took my time and I used those strategies to improve my guesses on a lot of them. The more exaggerated expressions were the ones that were easier to figure out. But there were no mouths to look at. No frowns or smiles. Just eyes.

I tend to look for meaning in everything. I know there's meaning and I look for it really hard. I look for it in architectural details, in the weather, in patterns of information I see on Internet newsfeeds, and I look for it in other people's eyes. I know there's a signal there, but sometimes I'm blind to the one that's really obvious to most everyone and I keep looking for a meaning that I can read.

When I look at eyes, I look with an intensity that hopes to cut everything else away and peer straight into the core of who I'm looking at. I want my gaze to burrow in and find their secret code. And then I worry that I'm being too intense, shift my eyes to something else, and back, to cool it down somehow. How must it feel for someone to have me look at them like that? I don't know. And if they smile, what does that mean? What do they know that I don't. What if they're just being polite to a passerby, or what if they want me to talk to them? And why can't I find the words to ask them? And maybe that's it. I'm looking for words in their eyes. Words about who they are inside their eyes. It's ridiculous, when put so simply, but Western culture behaves as though this were a true thing: "the eyes are the windows to the soul."

Eye contact is so important in our culture, and it is supposed to mean something. It indicates something about confidence and self-worth. And somehow we believe it's impossible to look someone in the eye and lie to them, but that's not true. In other cultures, direct eyegaze is an act of aggression. In other cultures children are taught not to look directly into an elder's eyes.

Lack of eye contact is not a true sign of autism. It's just a sign of someone who doesn't buy into the cultural significance of eye contact. Look for other signs.

Self-Reflection on my college burnout year and my mission

Had a bathroom moment of self-reflection where I realized that the main reason I did not pursue a science or engineering degree is that, when I was starting college, I absolutely did not want to do anything that might require working with a lab partner. I took an astronomy course that had the lab component built into it for 4 credits under the same course number, rather than the 3/1 credit split between separate lecture and lab sections like most of the science offerings. I never went to the astronomy lab, but aced the lecture, mathematically making a C and confounding the professor. It was a weird choice. But it really wasn't much of a choice. The uncertainty of negotiating a lab was too much for me.

If nothing else, I wonder if some kind of social interaction support would have helped me that first year. Would I have held on to that National Merit Scholarship and Regents fee waiver? Who knows? That was really my first breaking point. Even though Asperger's was emerging as a diagnosis back then, my troubles my first year in college would have only started the process. I probably should have at least gone to campus health, but that, in itself was too insurmountable of a social barrier for me.

This is why I want to find my people when they're young and help them out. They need help to get them through those spots when they start to break down. Help troubleshooting what the real obstacles are. Help developing strategies to cope with environmental stresses and social unsurities. These are all things that never totally go away, but they can be dealt with more quickly.

An autistic burnout phase doesn't need to last for months or years. It could be just a day, or an hour, if the proper strategies and understanding are applied. These kids can be brilliant. They could be the ones who save the world.

That Awkward Moment ...

When You Realize That You Really, Really Don't Want a Lap Dance

The following anecdote is absolutely true, at least as far as I can remember it. Names have been changed to protect people who are still my friends.

Back in the 90s I was a dishwasher in one of those coffee shops that was doing well because Starbucks had yet to realize that people who lived in Arizona would also like to pay too much for coffee. Like most jobs in my life, it became the key incubator of my social world. Admittedly it did take about three months for me to actually talk to anyone outside the kitchen. Once I acclimated to the place, though, these people became my family.

These were the people who took me under their wing, taught me how to drink, and kept me out of fights with random frat boys after I'd learned how to drink. They looked out for me, and made sure I got a fair share of the tip jar. They also were a bit bemused that a regular proportioned guy with balanced facial features like me had made it to 24 without going all the way with a girl. Especially fascinating for them was the fact that this wasn't for religious reasons and it wasn't because I was secretly gay. I just couldn't get it together to make that kind of connection. Any kind, really.

They took me to clubs on cheap drink nights, wound me up, sent me in promising directions, and laughed when I puked on the floor. It was actually a lot of fun, but I was not sending off the full Zaphod vibe. I was an Arthur Dent. The college girls just weren't that into me. And, to be honest, I wasn't that into them.

One night, a couple of my work friends, let's call them Catwoman and Maverick, and I were hanging out at our regular watering hole across the street from the coffee shop. We were shooting pool, having a good time, and the idea of hitting a strip club came up.

These aren't the kinds of places I usually go. But, I felt I could use the life experience. We all got into Maverick's car and drove three miles up the ugliest street in America to such an establishment.

The first bit was easy. I followed Maverick and Catwoman in, paying the cover charge like Maverick (you have no idea how many places I've breezed into without paying cover simply because I didn't realize I was supposed to).

Then, it was just weird. It was exactly like the kind of cheap strip club you see in movies or TV. Nothing special, except there were women on a stage with not enough on and I felt very, very weird about it. My eyes scanned the place and settled on a TV that was playing footage of construction equipment. Front loaders and caterpillars and bulldozers shoving massive amounts of dirt around. I found those images very comforting and I kept returning to them as I tuned out what was going on in the rest of the place.

At the edge of my field of vision, I noticed Maverick and Catwoman were talking to one of the women. I didn't pay much attention until she came up to me. She was right in my rigorously defended personal space and I was sort of squirming.

"Relax, Machine," said Maverick. "We bought you a lap dance." Machine was my nickname in that crowd.

It was too much. Looking at the nakedness of these people that I didn't know put me right at the edge of what I could deal with. The idea of one of them being within touching distance, or actually touching, sent me over the edge. I think I might have said "I have to go." I'm not sure how I managed to get out of the chair without actually making physical contact with the woman right next to me, but I'm pretty sure I pulled it off.

The next few minutes were a blur, until I found myself walking alone along the ugliest street in America. It was three miles to get back to where I'd left my vehicle parked. Catwoman's car was in the lot, too. I tried to make some kind of note explaining why I had to leave so suddenly. Whatever it was was bullshit. I had no idea why I left so suddenly. It certainly wasn't because I felt like I needed to "take a walk" or whatever I put in the note. Mostly the note was to let my friends know that I was okay. I was. I just couldn't be there.

There wasn't any fallout from the incident, although, like everything else, I did feel awkward about it. I seem to recall that Maverick thought it was hilarious while Catwoman was pretty confused by my actions. I could be projecting that, though. I do that sometimes, fabricate my own idea of what someone's internal reality is because I don't read the body language right.

The big takeaway for me, though, was, don't go to strip clubs. They're exactly what I think they are. And I don't want anyone touching me that I don't know really well. Especially if they're naked.

Some Thoughts on Empathy

A few weeks ago a friend asked me some questions about Asperger's and specifically brought up the topic of 'empathy.' Specifically it dealt with the widespread misconception that people with Asperger's and autism are incapable of empathizing. To put it nicely, this is a gross over-generalization. After letting my friend's question percolate, I barfed out this collection of thoughts I've had on the topic. I'll shape them into a proper chapter for my book at some point. For now, I feel it's important to share, especially since it's been a big talking point in the autism community lately that autistics feel that their feelings are largely ignored and disregarded by the neurotypical professionals and researchers that work in the field of autism therapy.

The trouble with empathy is that it’s so-called expert practitioners take the skill so much for granted that they are pretty cavalier about judging other people’s deficiencies or perceived lack thereof.

They seem to think that empathy is a simple, straight-forward thing and you either have it or you’re irrevocably broken. They tend to overlook the fact that empathy is actually a complex and multifaceted group of abilities, each with its own range of proficiency within the so-called normal, or neurotypical population. And yet, it is accepted as common knowledge that women tend to be more emotionally sensitive than men. Without even seeing that this one gross generalization acknowledges that there exists an accepted normal range of empathy, they are quick to make judgments about what lack of empathy means.

This was one of my own big questions when I was looking at myself. I felt like I didn’t lack empathy, because I could appreciate that others had emotions. I've long felt that those emotions are important, and that honoring others’ emotions (when I recognize them) and taking them into account in my interactions was a valuable skill that I possessed.

 In order to figure out what empathy really is, and what it really means to other people, I had to do a lot of thinking and reading and observation before I started to get a good sense of the several different skill sets that come together into this one thing that people call empathy. In working with special education populations, which very much became a vehicle for self knowledge, I got experience not only working with kids on autism spectrum, but with students in emotionally disturbed (E.D.) classrooms. I also reflected on people I’ve known in my life who were bipolar. And I looked at myself in ways I never had before.

I’m going to give a quick outline of the key, big deal things about empathy I’ve figured out. This will obviously have to get expanded into a whole chapter.

1) Recognizing facial expressions and other non-verbal communication. For various reasons, some people do not pick up the subtext of a lot of subtle body language. There is the common aversion to looking people in the eye (I had to train myself to work harder at this, beginning in high school with a sudden awareness that I was walking around with my head bent toward the ground all the time, and that might look weird. Some advice in something I read, it might even have been Wolverine in an X-Men comic but I don’t remember for sure, got the message through that looking people in the eye was important. I often fake it by looking at people’s glasses, or eyebrows, or chins). If it’s hard to look at someone’s face, it follows that you’re going to miss some subtle facial expressions that indicate emotion. And it’s confusing for the other person, because they are accustomed to these non-verbal cues being picked up. They tend to assume that you don’t care about their feelings, when you don’t notice the cues.

2) Expressing emotions. Often, because of varying factors, someone with ASD or Asperger’s won’t display the expected body language that accompanies emotions. I have had a few moments where someone’s commented on me having a flat affect, or not properly responding to bad news. Or just being confusing. The truth is, I do try to keep up a neutral expression a lot of the time, because, otherwise, I would be expressing discomfort and agitation almost constantly. Also, sometimes my emotional responses have to do with something deep inside that isn’t obvious to others. I get in trouble with my daughter because, sometimes when she’s working so hard at something that she’s at the point of total frustration, but she’s pushing on anyway, I’m so proud of her that I can’t help but chuckle. Then she gets mad at me for laughing at her when she’s having a hard time. Poor kid. I’m working on that one.

3) Perceiving emotions vs interpreting them. I think people with Asperger’s and ASD perceive a lot more emotional information than they credit for. I would say that most are really good at picking up fear. They might not always know how to respond, but when people around them express fear, or anger, it can escalate negative behavior. And I’m talking about the entire spectrum from non-verbal to math genius. They obviously pick up on those emotions, so saying that they can’t because they don’t have empathy is bullshit.

4) Emotional information in the face of all other information. One of the issues with having a neurodiverse brain is that incoming information is processed differently. Some of the filters neurotypicals have aren’t in place for the neurodiverse. Where a neurotypical can quickly hone in on the social and emotional information in a situation, someone with Asperger’s might be having trouble filtering out visual, aural, and sensory stimulus of all kinds. The emotional information coming in can often be lost in the flood of everything else, while neurotypicals are apt at tuning in on the emotional.

5) Mirror neurons.  There are these things in the brain called mirror neurons. They respond to what someone sees other people doing. If someone smiles the other person automatically smiles back. If someone is seen to be crying, the observer feels a little sad as well. It probably also has something to do with why yawns are contagious. It’s a big part of empathic reactions, but I also think it’s a big part of creepy crowd behavior and peer pressure. Mirror neurons don’t respond as strongly in AS brains. This is part of why I hate pep assemblies.

6) Sociopathic lack of empathy versus autistic lack of empathy—two absolutely different phenomena. One of the English teachers I observed, when I was going through my teacher certification program, taught literature from a psychological perspective. She was having her students analyze characters for traits that might indicate they are sociopaths. The terms sociopath and psychopath are pretty interchangeable and mostly indicate where you are in terms of the nature vs. nurture debate. One of the attributes of the psychopath/sociopath is labeled a lack of empathy. In the case of the psychopath/sociopath this means that the person understands the feelings of others, but doesn’t care. They can be master manipulators, con artists and leaders of industry (the percentage of CEOs who test as psychopaths is higher than the percentage in normal population as reported in the book The Psychopath Test). The psychopath, however, understands exactly what kind of emotional responses they are creating in other people, and they understand how to mimic expressions of the emotions they want to manipulate others with. They’re driving it. When lack of empathy is being used in description of someone with autism or Asperger’s, it’s in the context of the ASD person not understanding what the emotions of another person are, not responding to another person’s emotions appropriately, and being unaware of how their actions affect the emotions of others. Obviously these are two very different kinds of lack in empathy. Having worked in ASD classes and in ED classes, I can safely say I’ve worked with both autistics and psychopaths. Totally different worlds. And yet, they get this same, imprecise description of lack of empathy applied to them.

7) Personally, I started looking at my own empathy quirks pretty seriously. Most of the time, I really do care about other people’s feelings. I don’t want to upset other people. I try to be agreeable, helpful, and dependable, because people appreciate that. I’d like to think that counts. For a while, when I was misdiagnosed with depression (a doctor thought I was depressed because I wasn’t having an expected emotional response to bad news) I was put on Prozac. Prozac made it so I absolutely didn’t give a shit about anybody else’s feelings. I didn’t like being like that, so I stopped talking the drug. I have trouble figuring out when someone’s being nice to be nice, being nice to get something out of me, or are romantically interested. It all kind of feels the same, and I’ll rapidly cycle between the possibilities until I’m hit over the head with which one it really is. Arguments based on purely emotional appeals don’t hold much traction with me. Manipulative people just confuse me. They tend to switch tactics trying to find the right emotional button to push that will get me to agree with them, but to me is just seems like they are talking in circles and contradicting themselves. I’ve learned to smile and nod and try to be as diplomatic as possible. Usually the manipulator gives up and goes to bother someone else.  It’s only when the someone else talks to me about it later that I figure out what that confusing person was actually trying to do. I tend to pick sides in a conflict based on how I understand the facts, rather than how the people involved are connected to me. I’ve gotten in trouble for being disloyal because of this.

Basically, feelings are just as important to autistic people as they are to everyone else. There are some blocks to how feelings are communicated and shared, but we have them, and we do care about the feelings of the people in our lives. So, when neurotypical people and professionals tell us that our feelings don't count, or are a lesser kind than their own, the autistic people aren't the only ones who are having an empathy failure.

How Music Works

Just a quick little mention. I'm reading David Byrne's new book How Music Works.

As a kid in the 80s, I was aware that there was a band called the Talking Heads. I was also almost aware of the giant suit the front man wore, although I didn't really notice it was off-sized for gis feame. I also couldn't pick out many words beyond the refrain of any pf the songs I heard. (This actually applies to most songs for me... I have to sit down in a darkened room and repeat repeat repeat the song to try and hear the lyrics. Or just read the liner notes as the song plays.)

But David Byrne's voice and sound just struck me as being super cool. If I'd listened to much music then, I'd have listened to more of the Talikng Heads. Later on, I saw Byrne's movie, True Stories, and was delighted to see a film made in my own "language."

It was a delightful surprise to read in chapter 2 of How Music Works that David Byrne is a self-diagnosed Aspergian. Another fish swimming in the Shoals of Neurodiversity!

It's October 19th... Or is it?

This week has been a total wash. I'm not in my usual habitat, i.e. my apartment, so it's been really difficult to be productive. I'm taking care of something important, though, so I'm not going to complain.

However, the next time I do spend a week out of my natural habitat, I'm going to make a travel version of this system Autistifying My Habitat. In my normal habitat, I set up similar schedule boards for myself and was amazed at how motivated I was to do the dishes just so I could move over the velcro "dishes" tag to the completed column. Chores that usually pile up started happening. On a daily basis, even.

This week, however, I'm without my schedule and I've regressed to watching old episodes of Community on Hulu all day. It's partly research, because Abed is one of my pop culture Aspie heroes (along with Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes, Kenneth from Safety Not Guaranteed, and Jess from New Girl. Jess might be a debatable choice, but I'm keeping her because she seems like she'd be okay with dating an Aspie guy, and that's good enough for me at the moment).

I'm also kind of in turtle mode because an essay I wrote about Abed and how he's my Aspie hero was returned by a pretty big deal internet magazine. It wasn't a rejection, per say. In the response the editor said, "This is an interesting piece, but you should resubmit it for consideration when "Community" comes back on the air. I wouldn't run it right now, but I might then."

So, it was neither a rejection nor an acceptance. It was a deferral until such a time as NBC figures out what it's doing with my favorite TV show. They day before NBC announced that they were indefinitely delay the previously scheduled October 19th season 4 premiere.

I had originally planned to post my essay here today, contingent upon it being unequivocally rejected by other publishing entities. Unfortunately, thanks to NBCs noncommittal scheduling stunt, I have a very equivocal 'you should resubmit.' It's very fair for the editor to give me that kind of Magic 8-Ball response. Nobody knows anything about when Community is going to start, and it only makes sense to publish my essay if and when Community starts. NBC, on the other hand, is being very unfair about not letting me know when I can watch my show. I know I shouldn't take it personally, but, to be honest, I think I am. It's personal. NBC is breaking my heart.

The cast  and crew of Community, however, gave us this: 

Community Season 4 Premieres... Someday

The cast and crew of Community love me.

Happy October 19th, everyone. Whenever the hell that's going to be.

The Shoals of Neurodiversity

I used to have a blog at this very spot, but deleted all about ten months ago due to some serious introspection that needed to occur.

But it's time to start it up again.

The Shoals of Neurodiversity is the umbrella title for a project that I hope will become a book. I plan to share portions of it on this blog as it proceeds. I'm also trying to shop chapters around as essays to be included in other places. We'll see.

I'll put one up here soon. I have to give it enough time to properly assume it has been rejected by Salon.com. I know. Shoot for the stars, right?

What an awful preamble. I didn't even tell you what the project was about. Basically, it's about neurodiversity. Neurodiversity is a term that embraces a positive attitude toward people with Asperger's syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders. I also think that it's a wide enough term that it can embrace those who are a bit weird, but maybe not to the extent that they need an expensive diagnosis.

I like thinking about the shoals of neurodiversity because shoals is one of those neat words with multiple meanings. It can be the shallow bits near the shore of a large body of water. Bits that can be difficult to navigate a boat through but, at the same time, quite easy to wade in. The other meaning is similar to a school of fish, although I think schools may be homogeneous groups, while shoals are more heterogeneous with a large variety of fishes existing in the same area. 

I could be wrong. I grew up in a desert.

Either way, to me the Shoals of Neurodiversity represents the teeming masses (somewhere between 1 and 10 percent of the population, depending on which studies you read) of people who are on the autism spectrum or very near to it. It also represents can be a swath of the human experience that can be difficult to navigate, but not impossible to comfortably wade in.

My main point in this project is to emphasize that, despite how much the neurotypical (non-autistic) mainstream might like to otherize us, we are, and always have been present in the fabric of humanity. We belong. We help shape the world. We don't want to be cast out, neglected, or judged as lesser because we aren't as adept at negotiating the social structures of the neurotypical world.

It is my hope that this project will be helpful to everyone.