While in my late teens and early twenties, I was willing to accept the proposition that sex, drugs, and rock-'n'-roll were legitimate forms of communication. Words, however, were too dry, too antiseptic, and too problematic to qualify as meaningful forms of communication.
As I said, I had no romantic attachments during my first failed attempt at college. Afterwards, however, an attractive young woman named Claire from the accounting department at work would sometimes come up to me and talk. Flabbergasted that anyone would pay attention to me — I was convinced that I had nothing going for myself — I could never think of anything to say to her. My mind would always go blank, no matter how much I'd coached myself beforehand. It seemed that the most I could manage was a few feeble mumbles or weak grunting sounds.
I still can't understand why anyone would pay attention to me. In a way, I preferred chasing them, however awkwardly. Such efforts were usually to no avail, but at least I felt as if I were more in charge of the situation.
I guess it was Claire's carefree spirit that intimidated me and made me feel jealous. She had something, let's call it social ease, that I didn't.
Unable to ignore the obviousness of Claire's brief infatuation with me, my boss, Tyrone, asked me why I didn't ask her out. He said, "When you got it, you got it." It had never occurred to me to ask her out. Those kinds of things were for other people, I thought. Being young and impetuous, however, I took Tyrone up on his challenge and gave it my best shot.
I tried one more time to have a conversation with her. It felt awkward, which I now know is a bad sign, but I was somehow able to arrange to take a walk in the park with her and one of her friends.
Things went downhill from there. By the end of the stroll, she was yelling at me. I don't know why; it was her stuff, not mine. Perhaps it was because I wasn't being vocal enough. I don't know. This wasn't a lover's quarrel. Her voice had an angry, almost mean, edge.
That was the end of that. In a way, I was relieved. The pressure to succeed was off.
I still can't understand how you can like someone one minute and hate them the next.
When I wasn't trying, I had what Tyrone referred to as "it," whatever "it" is. When I was trying, however, I spoiled the whole thing and ended up getting yelled at. A problem I still struggle with today. If I do nothing, if I simply mind my own business, I'm usually okay emotionally. Wandering dangerously into the minefield of interpersonal relationships, however, is where I get into trouble.
People used to tell me, "If you can't get laid in New York, you can't get laid." They said the same thing about California when I visited there.
A few years later I moved not to California but to Vancouver, British Columbia. It was there that I was finally able to break the sexual ice. I had several one-night stands in my first two years in the province.
Abstaining from sex while in a religious cult was relatively easy, as I hadn't previously been in the habit of having women in my life. After leaving the cult, however, I had two relationships that lasted about ten days each, then my longest to date. A subsequent relationship at the ripe old age of thirty-three lasted about six months.
I don't want the reader to think that I simply walked away from the six-month relationship. I ran. I must admit that the first three months were nice, as my girlfriend and I were close. Realizing how serious we were becoming about each other, however, made me feel the most intense, primal, overpowering, and debilitating kind of fear I'd ever felt in a relationship. For the next three months, we fought much of the time.
In the end, it seemed that the bad days outnumbered the good by a substantial margin. On one occasion, I announced to no one in particular that I was leaving, and moved my stuff out of her room. We never discussed breaking up.
At first I felt a great relief, as if an enormous burden had been lifted from my shoulders. It was wonderful to be able to come and go as I pleased without having to check in with anyone. I was like a child, joyously turning the lights on or off or opening and closing the window whenever I felt like it. I was happy to have regained a much-needed measure of control over my environment. Soon, however, I fell into a deep depression and watched TV all day for a couple of months.
We were living in Rochester, New York, which is on the shore of Lake Ontario. The image that came to mind then concerning our relationship was of a certain species of eel that attaches itself to another fish by way of lips that function like suction cups. Once the lips are secure, the predator slices a hole in the host's flesh with its razor-sharp tongue and lives henceforward on the host's blood.
To me, being close to another person means being close enough to hurt or be hurt.
The following year, after some of my anger had subsided, I met a woman in one of my classes at community college. She had everything going for her — pretty, bright, ambitious, accomplished, well brought up in a good family — in other words, way overqualified. Going to the movies together was her idea. I tagged along only because there was nothing else going on in my social life. I knew I was in trouble when, as we were walking into the theater to take our seats, I was thinking about my former girlfriend.
A few years later, I returned to university for a second, much longer period of maladjustment. There I met Ann, a pretty undergraduate who was in my French class. I never did learn her last name. She had a rebellious, fun-loving spirit, which I adored, as well as a wonderfully rubbery, plastic, expressive face. She wore her emotions on her sleeve.
I was too scared to say anything to her in class. On one occasion, however, we struck up a conversation as we were waiting in line together in one of the cafeterias on campus. Taking a table together was her suggestion. At that point, all we had in common was a tendency to complain about our rookie twenty-two-year-old instructor. That's another story.
I boldly invited Ann to an event. One of my favorite bands, the Hooters, was playing at a club in downtown Providence. She probably thought I was being fresh when I mentioned the name of the band. I don't think she had ever heard of them, as they had been popular when she was still in middle school.
As she was being carded at the door, I wondered if her ID was real. I was pushing forty.
My conversational skills weren't as strong as they might have been, and I had trouble keeping the conversation going. Midway through the evening, I looked across the dance floor and saw her sitting on a stack of chairs against a wall. She looked forlorn and disappointed as a result of being abandoned in mid-date by me.
Over the course of the evening, I read doubt, hope, longing, and frustration in her face. It was all right there to see.
The band, which had been in the habit of playing much larger venues, was extra loud in the cramped confines of the club. I'm sure I lost five decibels of hearing that night. On the way home in her car, I couldn't hear anything Ann was saying, so I answered questions I thought she might be asking.
We said goodbye at my doorstep and I haven't seen her since. It was the best and worst night in my ten years in Rhode Island.
Instead of having my own life, I read the class notes in my school and college alumni magazines. I know you should discount as little more than shameless self-promotion what most people say about themselves in such a forum. Nevertheless, it seems that many of my classmates have arrived at the stage in their lives when their children have left the nest, and some of my classmates are even becoming grandparents. That is, as time passes, they experience new and different phases of their social and familial lives, each of them offering deeper, richer, and more complex forms of personal interaction.
My life, on the other hand, changes little from decade to decade. It doesn't involve people much. I guess you could say that death will again make us equal, if indeed we were ever so.
Speaking of death, when my grandfather died, I felt nothing — not happiness, not sadness, nothing. The same thing happened the following year when my grandmother died. When my Aunt Lucile died prematurely a couple of decades later, I felt nothing. Same thing when Aunt Joanne died.
When Diana, Princess of Wales, died, however, I was overcome with a deep sense of grief. And I'm not a big fan of royalty.
Childhood | Early Teens | Later Teens | Adulthood | Therapy | Autism | Final Thoughts | Bibliography