Question 1:
Is it difficult for you to understand what people are feeling just by observing facial expressions?
There’s a blind spot on Reigerts Road, a dead zone at the peak of a high-sloping hill where two cars traveling in opposite directions cannot see if a stray vehicle swerves into the wrong lane. It’s the kind of steep incline where the asphalt meets the horizon, and if you get a good enough speed going, you hit the hollow pocket on top, and your stomach drops through the floor, and if you were sixteen in 1995 and drove a 1988 Hyundai Excel, you hit that sucker at 85 mph, lifted the wheels three feet off the ground, and landed back on the pavement like Bo and Luke during the theme song for the Dukes of Hazzard. Maybe you even howled, “Yeeeeeeee-haaaaaaaw!”
It was your grand-awakening era. When you were by yourself, it felt like the biggest thrill in the world, like blasting free of your chaotic household, religious relatives, and monotonous teachers, and soaring into a bold new life of adventure. How others may have viewed your madcap antics, you honestly hadn’t considered.
Enter your buddy, Tim. It’s a random spring day, right after school. The sun is gleaming, you’ve got a fever for speed, and you know just the remedy. Tim needs a ride home; you need a shot of excitement. It’s the perfect scenario, and you’re pretty sure you’ll blow his mind. You’ll change his life forever.
Everything goes smoothly in the beginning. You pop a Beastie Boys cassette in the deck, snap on a pair of Oakleys, and put the pedal to the metal. Tim’s into it at first. He tilts his seat back, pokes his elbow out the window, and lets out a sigh, like, “Yeah, man. This is the life.” As you turn onto Reigerts Road, you’re doing close to 80 mph. It’s right where you want to be, accelerating toward maximum exhilaration. The song matches your mood, matches the rising velocity… MCA is rapping about how he can’t, he won’t, and he don’t stop!
Halfway up the cliff, Tim grabs the bottom of his seat and clenches his teeth. “Whoa!” he says, “Whaaaaoooooooo!”
“I know,” you say. “It’s a rush, right?”
That’s when you see a familiar car up ahead, one of those Volkswagen Rabbits with the tiny tires and humpback hatches. It’s Tim. Another one. There must be twenty Tims in your class, and this Other Tim is a wild dude. You once saw him squeeze a tube of paint straight into his mouth. His nose is pierced, and his hair is green, either because he dyes it or he has horrible hygiene, but either way, he’s the kind of guy who understands rowdy. You stamp the accelerator, and within seconds you’re so close to his bumper you can smell the exhaust. You can see his torn backseat and faded Megadeth T-shirt through the window.
“Check this out,” you say. In a flash, you whip your car parallel to his, racing into the eastbound lane. Your ramshackle Hyundai rattles like a tin can.
“Um, Simon,” Tim says, his voice low and squeaky. You can hardly hear him over the Beastie Boys, which you crank even higher. “Watch out,” he says.
“For his tricks,” you say. “Yeah, I know. I won’t fall for ‘em.”
The needle on the speedometer is flapping up near 90 mph. You doubt you’ve ever pushed it this far before. When you glance over at Other Tim, your windows are side-by-side. He’s doing some frantic jig with his head. One second it’s aimed at the road, then the dashboard, then his feet, then his hands gripping the steering wheel. His car jerks back and forth, slows down, then speeds up again. He never looks directly at you.
The looming crest is upon you. What lies beyond that vertical plane is a mystery. It’s like climbing the opening hill on a roller coaster without the assurance that someone has already constructed whatever comes next. There is a swell of adrenaline, a surge of steam, and then, as you reach the crown, crossing from shadow into shine, a burst of light. The car is sailing. You float for what seems like a minute, and when you touch down there’s a flurry of sparks, and you explode with elation.
“Hell yes!” you holler. “We got him. We beat him good.”
You wrench the car back into the correct lane a split second before an onrushing van decides against bailing out and veering into a tree. Its horn blares as you hurtle down the road. Other Tim’s VW is barely visible in your rearview mirror. You’ll rub the victory in his face tomorrow morning. The Tim beside you is speechless. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, which means you were right. He’s been transfixed by the experience. He doesn’t need to say a word. His astonishment alone is thanks enough. You aren’t sure if the stereo goes any higher, but you turn the knob anyway.
You sing along to the track, “Strictly handheld is the style I go. Never rock the mic with the pantyhose.” You drum the steering wheel and scoop your fingers through the breeze outside the window. “I strap on my ear goggles and I’m ready to go!”
Question 2:
Do you fixate on small details that you can’t let go?
It’s a hectic morning. You and your son, Holden, are running late. You forgot to buy bananas, and you always eat a banana for breakfast! It’s a terrible time for Holden to come out of his room wearing blue shorts with a huge gray stain across the thigh.
“Dude, what’s all over your shorts? You didn’t notice?” you say, pointing at the spot.
“Huh?” he says. His long blond hair curtains his eyes as he looks down to check. “Oh,” he says.
“Where’d you get those?” you ask.
“My drawer,” he says. He’s seven. Too young to do laundry but old enough to toss dirty clothing into the hamper. You’ve been on him for weeks about it.
“Which drawer?” you ask.
“One by my bed,” he says, his twitchy lips already fighting back tears.
“Not your bottom drawer,” you say. “Couldn’t be. No shorts down there. I checked. There were no shorts!” Your voice is loud and barky like a snarling dog. It’s too hostile for the situation, but you can’t turn back now.
“Maybe the middle drawer?” he says, his face red and watery.
“The pajamas drawer! Not a chance! The pajamas drawer? You call that organized?”
“I can’t remember which drawer…”
“Well, it wasn’t the bottom drawer!”
“Maybe,” he says, shaking. He yanks the collar of his T-shirt and uses it to swab away tears.
“No!” you shout. “It wasn’t. I looked last night! The top drawer is for socks and underwear,” you say. You grab your shoes, slamming them down with such force that Holden jumps. “The second drawer is for your pajamas. The third is for pants and shorts! That’s the order!”
You’ve woken your wife. She stands in the doorway, drowsy and dismayed. “What’s going on?” she asks.
“Holden mixed up his drawers. They were perfect. Socks and underwear up top, pajamas in the middle…” Holden turns away and cries into the corner.
Your wife points at him, then at you, scowling as she slices a thumb across her neck. “Go put on different shorts,” she tells Holden. “It’s okay. Give me the dirty pair. Hurry up. You’re late.”
Holden runs into his room. Your wife shakes her head, lets out a long, exhausted sigh.
“Sorry,” you say. “I took a long time organizing those drawers. He’s messy. There shouldn’t be any dirty shorts in those—”
“Enough,” she says. “Enough with the drawers. He’s putting on a clean pair. You’ll be out the door in two minutes. End of story.”
Holden exits his room. He’s got fresh shorts on, but they’re rumpled and twisted sideways on his hips. His eyes are still puffy, but they’re starting to clear, and when he sees you smile, he smiles back. You reach down, straighten his waistband, and open the door.
“Sorry, buddy,” you say. “I didn’t have my banana this morning.” The door closes, trailing calamity in its wake.
Question 3:
Is it okay to reveal your autism results over the phone?
During the test, Dr. Rosenblum asks silly questions in a serious tone.
“Do you feel the urge to count the cars in parking lots?”
If you laugh, he lets you know you’re out of line. He lays the clipboard on the desk and glares at you over the rims of his glasses. You wonder if your childish responses are a sign you have a rare form of immature autism. The same thought occurs to you later when you’re asked to stare at a computer as blinking squares appear on the screen. Every time you see one flash across the monitor, you’re supposed to push a button on a handheld clicker. “Got you, motherfucker!” you whisper each time you press it. “Stay down, fool.”
Doctor Rosenblum sends you home with a survey for your wife, too. She isn’t much better at maintaining a solemn demeanor, but her laughter comes from a different place. “Jesus Christ,” she says, scanning the form. “Number twenty is a doozy. ‘Is inflexible,’” she reads aloud, “‘Has a hard time changing his mind.’ If it was any harder,” she says, “you’d be a cinder block.”
Three weeks later, Dr. Rosenblum calls to discuss your results. Right off the bat, he says you’ve been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, but just barely. Barely. Is this something to be happy or sad about, you wonder. It’s part of the deal, you know. An inability to identify emotions is a hallmark of autism, and at age forty-five still one of your biggest challenges. It’s what they used to call Asperger’s, he tells you, which makes you feel both older and more damaged..
The reason it took longer to assess the results, he informs you, is that there was a lot of overlap in his findings. He wasn’t certain if he should classify your disorder as Asperger’s or Post Traumatic Stress. For example, he says, your tendency toward emotional coldness could be due to autism or a coping mechanism you developed to stave off instability and neglect during your childhood. That checks out, you think. For starters, there were all those times your dad got tanked and forgot to pick you up from school or soccer practice. Once, you had to stay so long after karate lessons that your instructor missed his daughter’s birthday party. That one gave you nightmares for years. Still does. And who could forget the night he drunkenly stumbled out to the kitchen, buck naked and muttering, during one of your sleepovers? He crouched beside the pantry and ate peanuts until he blacked out on the floor and started snoring. Try explaining that debacle to your friends. Worse yet, try explaining it to yourself. You can’t, and so you shut down. You turn everything off.
Question 4:
Is it difficult to make deep connections with long-lasting friends?
In high school, you played a clown, but it only got you so far. Eventually, there’d be a Soundgarden concert you weren’t invited to or a cookout that everyone attended except you. You were perfect for a laugh in small doses, but maybe not the best for larger groups, especially if they involved sentiments other than glee, like sadness or sympathy. You used to play a game in the hallways where you pretended someone was stalking you. There was danger in every corner! Someone could pop out of a locker and attack, or there was a spy in the trash can outside math class. You’d leap and run away, and everyone would shriek with laughter. If anyone needed a weirdo for entertainment, they called you.
Thank goodness there was also kindness. Nobody was ever seriously mean to you, maybe just a little avoidant. Despite your troubles presenting as typical, people were willing to give you a chance. You had some luck, some magnetism, something… You couldn’t put a finger on it, but you were glad it was there. For example, you had a lovely girlfriend. She had plenty of suitors, but she chose to be with you. It could’ve been because you were nice. You’d never hurt her. Many years will pass before you realize how much safety plays a role in relationships. You never knew how cruel boys could be to their girlfriends. But she knew, and she knew you weren’t like that.
In college, you couldn’t woo a girl to save your life. Convincing a girl to sleep with you was like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube without using your thumbs. It just wasn’t possible. You’d go to parties with friends, and they’d take a girl upstairs or make out with her on some thrift-store sofa covered in beer bottles. You remember riding the train back home with your friend Joe after one such occasion. Back at the party, you’d spent fifteen minutes trying to sweet-talk a girl into liking you with zero success. Eventually, she excused herself to the restroom, and within two minutes of coming out she was sitting on Joe’s lap with her tongue down his throat.
The sight baffled you, so you just straight up asked him what the hell happened.
“How’d you do it?” you asked. It was almost midnight, and the Blue Line clattered down the tracks. It was loud, and Joe was across the aisle, so he had to yell.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Get girls to kiss you and stuff.”
Joe shook his head. He didn’t say anything at first. As you waited, you thought about your situation. You were no hunk. You knew enough to understand that being handsome was an obvious advantage when it came to igniting sexual attraction, but you also knew Joe wasn’t Brad Pitt either, so he was a perfect person to ask about technique. After a while, he leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees.
“You have to gauge what they want from you, and you have to give it to them at the right time in the right way.”
You laughed, put your hands over your face. “Why don’t you just say it’s quantum physics?”
Joe laughed and slumped back against the seat. “You have to talk about sexy things that get them going, but not too much. You can’t be timid, but you can’t be too aggressive. Sometimes you talk about boring things with them. I’ve seen you.”
“Cool,” you said. “Glad I asked. No more convos about the Samuel Beckett trilogy. Problem solved.”
Throughout your twenties, you struggled to figure out what other people were doing to not only get laid but secure jobs, maintain friendships, and project a natural bearing in the world. You studied daily interactions, the way method actors prepare to portray historical characters in biopics. You learned three key things. One, if you don’t have something ordinary to say, don’t say it at all. Two, keep tabs on people you care about. If they mention something important, follow up later to see how it’s going. Three, don’t rush into things. Read a room. Take a moment to settle in before engaging in any impulsive movements or dialogue. This was particularly helpful when it came to romance. You chased off too many women by getting too close too fast. Whether you overcorrected is still an open debate, but aloofness worked better than suffocating people with your personality.
It’s notable that when you received your diagnosis, half your friends were baffled and the other half weren’t. The friends you made during your teens and twenties were completely unsurprised, while the newer ones you made later in life were slightly perplexed. You’d improved your ability to pass as normal as your life progressed, like someone becoming so skilled at buying cheap clothes that look expensive they eventually get recruited as a fashion designer. Okay, not that skilled, but still. You’re proud of how far you’ve come. Whether the triumph was achieved through deception or determination doesn’t matter anymore. The pretending is over.
Question 5:
Do you have obsessions that if not acted upon cause great distress?
They say it runs in families, and you don’t doubt it. Your dad walked around day and night, straightening magazines that weren’t “flush to the corner” of the coffee table and taking scalding hot baths every evening at precisely 7:15. He spent hours staring at tree bark and flower petals, painting abstract pictures that represented the patterns and faces revealed to him by his immersive meditation. Neither he nor your mother had any friends. It makes you sad they weren’t able to utilize whatever grace you’d managed to harness.
Obsessions are a tricky thing because it’s hard to recognize them when you’re on the inside looking out. That said, you can’t think of one in particular. Sure, you like to write, but it isn’t as though you painstakingly outline every detail of a story, furiously scribble notes at 4 a.m., and become enraged if someone interrupts your meticulous schedule that you’ve timed down to the second. Goodness no.
You realize now that you’re on the outside peering back at it, the obsession. From this vantage point, it looks equally like a glowing orb and a darkened pit, sort of like that famous photograph of Earth taken from outer space. Coincidentally, your dad made a replica of that picture out of wood and glass and wired it for electricity, which isn’t odd at all, but rather beautiful and artistic… or maybe all three at once.
Your mom has been on progressively higher doses of antidepressants for forty years. A few years ago, she broke up with a man who treated her like garbage. He was an alcoholic and a thief who stole $2,000 from her bank account to pay off a gambling debt in Reno. He was wearing a beige cardigan on the day she found out. He was drinking a 2013 pinot noir straight from the bottle at 9 a.m. and spilling it all over his velvet slippers. You know all this because she’s repeated the story a hundred times, each reiteration expanding in scope and specification.
Many authors say they like their stories to be spontaneous and organic. They don’t plan a thing, just let the flow of the narrative take them like a winding stream. This has always sounded like malarky to you. There’s no way it can be true. You treat your writing like an intricate roadmap plotted by the hand of God herself. For you, approaching a story without a heavy hand guiding the way would be like driving from your hometown in Pennsylvania to your mom’s townhouse in Lake Tahoe wearing a blindfold. You’d never make it alive.
Question 6:
Do you prefer to do things by yourself rather than with others?
When you were eleven years old, you started begging your parents to let you go to the movies by yourself. They knew it would be seen as weird. They knew what other parents and kids might say if they saw you walking into the theater without an adult by your side. People wouldn’t know what to do with a kid ordering popcorn by himself, and then sitting in a seat so close to the screen he had to dislocate his neck just to see the scene where Master Splinter defeats Shredder at the end of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Still, your parents thought, What was the worst thing that could happen? So some people would see you shuffling through the parking lot afterward, unaccompanied and wearing a purple Donatello mask? Deal with it.
At twelve, you started going bowling by yourself. Your parents would drop you off. You’d buy mozzarella sticks and root beer, slide into some stinky rental shoes, bowl a smooth sub-hundred, and soak in the freedom like you were Ponyboy Curtis from The Outsiders or some shit. It actually wasn’t the cool factor that made you want to do it. It’s hard to explain, but maybe the best way to put it was that you wanted to be alone with your thoughts. You wanted to talk and act and think without anyone expecting anything from you. If you wanted to spend two straight hours tossing gutter balls and daydreaming about the poem you’d write when you got home, that was up to you. You didn’t want to feel guilty about wanting to be alone, and if nobody was around to point it out, there was no guilt to be had. You couldn’t feel like an outsider if nobody was there to set the boundaries.
At sixteen, you drove nine hours alone to visit your sister in Providence, Rhode Island. When you were twenty, you took an Amtrak from Chicago to Los Angeles by yourself. You read The Brothers Karamazov, smoked Camel cigarettes, and drank scotch in the dining car while staring out the window at the Sierra Nevadas. It was probably the best time of your entire life.
Something you only told a few people is how you would ditch your CCD classes at St. Paul’s Catholic Church every Sunday night. Your dad would drop you off at the lobby and you’d scamper through the front entrance and out the back exit before anyone ever saw you. You’d walk the streets alone for ninety minutes until your dad came back to pick you up. You’d find a way to sneak back over to the lobby, timing your reappearance perfectly so that it looked like you were leaving in unison with the other kids. Somehow, you were able to blend into the shuffle, get lost in the crowd as it dispersed into the parking lot. When you remember back to this time, it’s with a mix of wonderment and woe. Who was looking out for you? How did nobody find out? No classmates? Parents? Not one nun? Nobody was curious who the mystery boy was darting into a pack of children with panicked eyes? You’re concerned about that boy now. You want to protect him. If your son, had been the one taking those kinds of risks, what would you do? You’d be petrified. What does a thirteen-year-old even do for an hour and a half every Sunday, isolated and drifting, totally detached? What did you think about on those long, meandering walks? Alarmingly, you have no idea.
Question 7:
Do you get upset over minor things or have a hard time understanding things that upset others?
If there’s one thing that grinds your gears like nothing else, it’s people who put their flashers on and park in the middle of the road. It makes you bonkers. The worst is when there is clearly space to pull over, and the son-of-a-bitch still decides to sit there and make everyone drive around. Most people don’t beep when they pass, but that’s lunacy. You lay on the horn until your wife and son yell, “Dad! Come on. Enough!”
But it’s not enough. You have to talk about it, too. You have to let everyone know exactly why it’s wrong and how infuriated you are. “What’s wrong with them?” you ask, but you aren’t really asking. You’d probably talk right over them if they tried to answer. You’re just using it as a segue to your next contention. “Why? Why?” you repeat. “Why would somebody do that? They could pull their cars over and nobody would even notice. We’re going to be late. We have to eat lunch by 1 p.m.”
“You made that up,” your wife says. “We aren’t on a schedule. It’s Sunday afternoon. We have no plans.”
“Do they think they’re more important than everyone else?” you continue, oblivious to your wife and your son, who is strapped into the booster seat behind you. “Somebody needs to do something. It’s wrong. It’s dangerous. People could crash. Someone could get hurt. Or die!”
“Nobody is dying,” your wife says. She stretches her hand behind the seat and pinches Holden’s foot. “Everyone’s fine.”
“Where’re the cops? It’s against the law. It’s gotta be, right? Right?” And now you really want an answer, but everyone is too exasperated to give you one.
When you were first dating and you got like this, your wife would rest her hand on your leg and massage it. Later, the hand grew swifter, more like a slap reminding you to pull yourself together. Now, eighteen years, one son, and several marriage counseling sessions later, the hand is a claw digging into your knee. “Ouch!” you say. “Okay, okay, okay…”
After a blowup, you can go from pissed to placid fast. Your blood pressure spikes, then plummets back to baseline in a matter of seconds. Once you’re past the stupid car blocking your fucking path, your heart rate slows, you shake it off, and everything is chill again… for you.
“Hey, how many ABC vans have you seen today?” you ask Holden. You’ve been counting the number of lime green vans around town with an “ABC” logo on the side. They belong to a plumbing company, and everywhere you go you see scads of them. They’re like the rats of utility vehicles. You and Holden play a game where you count how many you can find in a certain timeframe. The record is twenty-six in one month. Holden does not respond to you. You look in your rearview mirror and notice he’s staring out his window, trying to compose himself. You’re not sure what’s going through his head, but he looks perturbed. Your wife is still trying to soothe her own anxiety. She shakes her head, takes a deep breath, and rolls her window down.
When you were Holden’s age, your dad used to freak out, too. If you left too many dirty dishes in the living room or bothered him too much when he was trying to read, he’d flip out. He’d also lose it if, say, he was looking for a box of crackers in the pantry and a can of soup fell on the floor. You’d have thought a grenade had been dislodged from a combat belt.
“Motherfucker!” he’d yell. “Fuck!”
It was scary. Sometimes you’d run and hide in your bedroom. After a while, though, he’d always come and check on you. He’d knock on your door and when you opened it, he’d be standing there, looking rejuvenated. “I’m sorry,” he’d say. “I know. I’m nuts. I shouldn’t have gone off like that. My nerves are shot.” His nerves were always shot. If there was a time when his nerves were unshot, you can’t recall. But you accepted him anyway. You’d forgive him, and he’d either tell you a joke or offer to toss a football with you in the backyard, and all would be forgotten.
“Hey,” you say. “What if we go to the park after lunch and play baseball. What do you say?
Nobody moves at first. They don’t have your preternatural ability to decompress after a big flare-up. For years, you wondered why people around you got so worked up about issues you deemed inconsequential. At work, your associates might sit around for hours steaming about a switch to new accounting software, while you couldn’t care less. On the other hand, if your boss added another bureaucratic item to your personal checklist when all your duties were already crossed off for the week, you might need to be restrained from flipping over a table. Learning that people have different ways of cycling through emotions was another huge part of your acclimation to the world of conventional behavior. This is another test, and now you know what to do.
“I’m sorry, guys,” you say. “I got carried away. I get worried that someday one of these morons is going to slam on his brakes and cause a ten-car pileup.” Still not much movement. Your wife readjusts in her seat. She unfolds her arms, which you take as a positive sign. Body language 101. Holden turns away from the window and stretches, clasping his hands behind his head. “You know what?” you say. “You never see an ABC van plopped in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. You know why?” you ask. “Anyone?” Nobody answers, but you sense a smile breaking through on Holden’s face. “Because they understand basic traffic guidelines. Following the rules of the road is simple as ABC. Get it? The Jackson 5. ABC, Easy as 1, 2, 3, simple as do re mi, ABC, 1 2 3!”
“Daaaaaaaad,” your son says, half giggling, half whining. “Don’t be ridiculous,” but now he’s laughing.
“Oh, brother,” your wife says. “Heeeeeere we go,” but now she’s grinning too.
“You see what I’m talking about, right?” This time someone does respond. Holden leans forward against his seatbelt.
“You’re worried about us because you love us,” he says. “You want to keep us safe.”
“That’s right. That’s it. Car safety,” you say. “Follow the rules, and nobody gets hurt. We’ve come full circle.”
“Full circle,” Holden says. “Yeah, that’s right.”
You watch over your shoulder as he draws a hoop on the window with his finger. You see him trace the outline several times, then add details. He scribbles wavy lines branching out from the perimeter. They reach far to the edge of the glass, disappearing beyond. That’s when you realize, he’s drawing a sun shining out in all directions.
Simon A. Smith
Simon A. Smith is a Chicago teacher and writer. His stories have appeared in many journals and media outlets, including Hobart, Lit Magazine, Whiskey Island, Chicago Public Radio, and NewCity. He is the author of two novels, Son of Soothsayer and Wellton County Hunters. He lives in Rogers Park with his wife and son. You can find more of his work at his website: simonasmith.com
