Earlier that same year, 1995, I sat my GCSE exams, scoring the highest possible grade – A* – in History, A grades in English Language and English Literature, French and German, two B grades in the sciences and a C grade in woodwork. In my preliminary maths exam I had scored an A, but in my final exam I was given a B grade because my algebra was relatively poor. I found it very difficult to use equations that substituted numbers – to which I had a synaesthetic and emotional response – for letters, to which I had none. It was because of this that I decided not to continue maths at Advanced level, but chose to study History, French and German instead.
One of my A-level French teachers, Mrs Cooper, helped to organise my first overseas trip to Nantes, a coastal city on the banks of the Loire river in northwestern France, when I was seventeen. The teacher knew a family there who was happy to accommodate and look after me during my stay. I had never needed a passport before and had to arrange one at short notice before flying over in the middle of summer. I remember feeling very anxious about leaving my family, about flying on an aeroplane and about going to another country. But I was also very excited about having the opportunity to use my French and I coped well. Over the ten-day holiday I was treated extremely well by the family, given my own space when I needed it, and encouraged all the time to use and practise my French. Every conversation was en français – during games of table tennis, trips to the beach and over long and lazy seafood meals. I returned home unscathed, except for the sunburn suffered by my sensitive skin.
That same summer, a German boy called Jens came to our school to study to help improve his English. As I was the only student in my form class who could speak German he sat with me during lessons and walked with me wherever I went. I liked having someone to talk to and spend time with during breaks and we conversed in a mixture of German and English. Jens taught me many modern German words, such as Handy for ‘mobile phone’ and Glotze for ‘TV set’, which I had not read or heard before. After he returned to Germany we stayed in touch by email; he writes to me in English and I reply in German.
Adolescence was changing me – I was growing taller and my voice deeper. My parents taught me how to use deodorant and how to shave, though I found it very difficult and uncomfortable and let my stubble grow very long a lot of the time. The rush of hormones was also affecting the way I saw and felt about the people around me. I did not understand emotions; they were things that just happened to me, often seemingly appearing from nowhere. All I knew is that I wanted to be close to someone, and not understanding closeness as being primarily emotional, I would walk up to some of the other students in the playground and stand very close to them until I could feel the warmth of their body heat against my skin. I still had no concept of personal space, that what I was doing made other people feel uncomfortable around me.
From the age of eleven I knew that I was attracted to other boys, although it would be several years before I considered myself ‘gay’. The other boys in my class were interested in girls and talked a lot about them, but it did not make me feel any more of an outsider – I was already more than aware that my world was very different to theirs. I never felt shame or embarrassment about the feelings that I had, because I did not consciously choose to have them; they were as spontaneous and real as the other physiological changes of puberty. All throughout my teens my confidence was always very low because of the teasing I received and my inability to talk and interact comfortably with my peers, so dating was never a possibility for me. Although there were sex education classes at school, they never interested me and did not address the feelings that I was experiencing.
I had my first crush at sixteen, after entering the sixth form at school. My form class was much smaller than before with only a dozen students, and among the new intake was a boy who had recently moved to the area and was studying History at A-level, as I was. He was tall and confident and sociable, in spite of being new to the school – in many ways he was the total opposite to me. Just to look at him made me feel strange: my mouth would go dry and my stomach churn and my heart beat very fast inside my chest. At first it was enough for me to see him each day at school, though if he was late arriving to class I would be unable to concentrate on the lesson, waiting for him to walk through the door.
One day I saw him reading in the school library and sat down at the table next to him. I was so nervous that I forgot to introduce myself. Fortunately he recognised me from class and just went on reading. I sat there, unable to speak, for fifteen minutes, until the bell rang for the end of break and he stood up and walked away. Then I had the idea that if I helped him with his history coursework, it would be a lot easier for me to interact with him. I wrote out page after page of notes for the past month’s history lessons and gave them to him when I next saw him in the library. He was surprised and asked why I had done this for him. I answered that I wanted to help him because he was new to the school. He took the notes and thanked me. I wrote other notes for him, which he accepted only after I reassured him that it had been no trouble for me. However, there was never a moment in which he spoke to me as a friend or made any effort to spend time with me. I soon felt restless and wrote about how I felt in a short note that I gave him one break time in the library. I walked out of the room as soon as I had handed him my message, unable to stay while he read my innermost thoughts. Later, at the end of the school day, as I walked towards the gates I saw him standing in the middle of the path, watching and waiting. Deep down I wanted to turn and run, still feeling unable to face him, but it was too late; he had already seen me. We stood together on the path and for a brief, happy moment it seemed as though he had entered my world. He handed me back my note and said simply and gently that he could not be the person that I wanted him to be. He was not angry or upset and did not rush away, but stood patiently looking at me until I dropped my head and walked away.
Back home, I did what I always did in such moments of sadness and uncertainty – I listened to my favourite music, which always seemed to help soothe me. My favourite band was The Carpenters, but I also listened intently to other musicians as well, such as Alison Moyet and The Beach Boys. I have a very high tolerance for repetition and sometimes played the same song a hundred times over on my Walkman, listening in an unbroken sequence for hours at a time.
My two years in sixth form were difficult for other reasons too. The change in how the lessons were structured and the subjects studied came as a shock to me and I found it hard to adapt well. In my history class, the themes that I had studied for the past two years were replaced with unrelated ones that I had no interest in at all. The amount of written work required also increased considerably and I struggled to write more about events and ideas that I knew and cared much less about. At the same time, however, the relationship I had with my history teacher, Mr Sexton, was very good, much better than with any of my peers. He respected my love for the subject and enjoyed talking with me after class about those areas that I was most interested in. The extra flexibility at A-level also meant that I could study at my own pace much more than before and the classes were smaller and more focused. By the end of the final term, however, I felt exhausted and unhappy. Though I performed well in my final exams, it did not help me to answer the question that by this time I was asking myself continuously: ‘What now?’
7
Ticket to Kaunas
My parents always expected that I would go to university. They supported me steadfastly throughout my studies and were proud of my academic success. Both my mother and father had left school without qualifications and no one in the family had previously gone into higher education. But I was never comfortable with the idea of going on to university. Though I had worked hard at improving my social skills, I still felt awkward and uncomfortable around people. I had also had enough of the classroom and wanted to do something new and challenging. However, like many people at eighteen, I had no clear idea yet of what that might be. When I told my mother that I had decided not to go on to
university she told me she was disappointed. At the time my parents were not sure that I would be able to fully adapt to the demands of the outside world. After all, I still found that the smallest things – like brushing my teeth and shaving – required a great deal of time and effort.
Every day I read the back pages of the newspaper, looking at various job adverts. At school I had told the careers officer that I wanted to be a postal sorter or a librarian one day. The idea of working in a sorting office, putting each letter in exactly the right slot, or in a library, surrounded by words and numbers, in environments that were structured, logical and quiet, had always seemed ideal to me. But the libraries in my area were not looking for new staff and some required particular qualifications that I did not have. Then I saw a small newspaper advert asking for individuals interested in doing volunteer work overseas. I had read so much in books about the different countries of the world – I knew the names of all the capital cities of Europe – that the idea of living and working in a different country far away struck me at once as both a terrifying and enormously exciting prospect. It was a huge step to even contemplate, but I knew that I did not want to live with my parents forever.
I talked it over with my family. They were not sure, but said it would be okay for me to call the number in the advert for more information. A few days later some leaflets came through the door. The people who had placed the advert represented a youth branch of VSO – Voluntary Services Overseas – an international development charity and the largest volunteer-sending organisation in the world. They were particularly looking to provide young people from deprived areas of the UK with an opportunity – to perform volunteer work in another country – that would otherwise not be available to them. Successful applicants would be sent to positions in parts of Eastern Europe and would be given ongoing training and support throughout the duration of their placement. After further conversations with my family I filled out the application form and waited to hear from the organisers.
I felt very anxious about the possibility of leaving my family and travelling hundreds of miles away to a new life in a new country. But I was an adult now and knew that I had to do something if I was ever going to be able to make my own way in the world outside my room at home. My German friend Jens had encouraged me to travel, as he had done to Britain. He believed the experience would make me more confident and open to other people. I certainly hoped that by travelling overseas I would find out much more about myself, about the sort of person I was.
A letter arrived telling me that my application had been accepted and that I would need to attend an interview in central London. On the day, my parents gave me the money for a taxi so I would be sure not to be late. My father helped me with the knot in my tie and I wore a new shirt and trousers. The labels in the shirt kept rubbing against my back and I scratched and scratched until it felt very red and sore. Once I arrived at the building I went up in an elevator – watching the numbers as they flashed up on the little screen above the door – and then reached the reception and gave my name. The lady flicked through some pages then made a tick with a purple ink pen and asked me to take a seat. I knew that what she meant was ‘please sit down’ and not to pick up one of the seats in the waiting area and take it with me, so I walked over and sat and waited.
The waiting area was small and dark because the only windows were too small and set too high up in the walls to let in much light or air. The carpet was faded and there were yellow crumbs on the patch near my chair where someone had eaten a biscuit while waiting to be called in. There were magazines with lots of creases in them in a small pile on a table in the middle of the room, but I did not feel like reading so I looked down at the floor and counted the crumbs. Suddenly a door opened and I heard a voice calling my name. I stood up and walked over to the office, careful not to knock the magazines over as I passed them. The office itself had a large window and was much brighter. The woman behind the desk shook my hand and asked me to sit down. She also had lots of sheets of paper. Then the question came that I had most expected: What makes you think you would make a good volunteer? I looked down and took a deep breath and remembered what my mother had said about emphasising the positive. ‘I can think very carefully about a situation, I can understand and respect difference in others and I am a quick learner.’
More questions followed, such as whether I had a partner I would miss if posted overseas (I did not) and if I considered myself a tolerant person of other countries and cultures (I did). The interviewer asked me what I would like to do as a volunteer, what kind of work I was best at doing. I answered that I had sometimes helped younger students at school with their foreign language class work, and that I would enjoy teaching English. The woman smiled and wrote something down. Then she asked if I knew anything about Eastern Europe and I nodded and said that I had studied the history of the Soviet Union at school and knew the names and capital cities of all the different countries. Then she interrupted and asked if I would mind living in a much poorer country. I became silent for a few moments because I do not like being interrupted, but then I looked up and said that I would not mind and would bring the things that I really needed, like books and clothes and music cassettes to listen to, with me.
At the end of the interview the woman rose from her chair, shook my hand and told me I would be informed of their decision soon. After arriving home my mother asked me how the interview had gone but I did not know what to say because I had no idea. Several weeks later I received a letter in the post telling me that I had passed the interview stage and was required to attend a week of training the following month at a retreat centre in the Midlands. I was excited to have passed the interview, but very anxious too because I had never travelled on a train on my own before. There was a sheet of paper with the letter that gave directions to the centre for those coming by train and I memorised them word for word to reassure myself. When the first morning of the week arrived, my parents helped me finish packing and my father travelled with me to the train station and stood with me in the queue for the ticket. He made sure I got on at the right platform and waved me goodbye as I boarded.
It was a hot summer’s day and inside the train felt airless and uncomfortable. I quickly sat in a window seat that had no one nearby and put my bag on the floor and squeezed it tight between my legs. The seat felt spongy and no matter how much I fidgeted I could not sit comfortably. I did not like being on the train. It was dirty, with plastic sweet wrappers on the floor and a crumpled newspaper on the empty seat in front of me. As the train moved it made a lot of noise, which made it hard for me to concentrate on other things, like counting the scratches in the windowpane next to me. Gradually the train filled with people as it travelled between stations, and I became more and more anxious as the stream of commuters sitting and standing around me grew in numbers. The cacophony of different noises – magazine pages being flicked and Walkmans playing loud, thudding music and people coughing and sneezing and talking noisily – made me feel unwell and I pressed my fingers into my ears when it felt as though my head was about to shatter into a thousand pieces.
It was not a moment too soon when the train eventually reached my destination and the sense of relief I felt was palpable. But with my poor sense of direction I worried that I would end up getting terribly lost. Luckily I spotted a waiting taxi, climbed inside and gave the address to the driver. The short ride brought me to a large red and white building, dotted with windows and surrounded by trees, with a sign that read ‘Harborne Hall – Conference and Training Centre’. Inside, an information leaflet told visitors that the hall dated from the eighteenth century and was a former convent. The reception was gloomy with brown wooden pillars reaching up to the ceiling, dark brown leather chairs and a wooden bannister staircase opposite the desk. I was given a name badge to wear at all times while at the centre, as well as a key and the number of my room and a schedule for the week’s events.
Upstairs, my room was lighter and felt a lot fresher. There
was a small sink in the corner, but toilets and showers were situated down the hall. The thought of having to use shared facilities to wash myself (I showered daily at home) was an unpleasant one for me, and I woke very early each morning during the week to be certain that I was in and out of the bathroom before anyone else was up.
On the first day at the centre I was told that I had been assigned an English-teaching placement in Lithuania. I had only previously heard of the name and that of its capital city – Vilnius – and was given books and leaflets to learn more about the country and its people. There was then a group introduction with a dozen other young people who were going to various volunteer placements across Eastern Europe. We sat in a circle and each of us had a minute to introduce ourselves. I was very nervous and tried not to forget to make eye contact with members of the group as I gave my name and that of the country I was going to. Of the other volunteers that I met, one was an Irishman with long, curly hair who was being posted to Russia. Another, a young woman, had received a placement working with children in Hungary.
There were long periods of unoccupied time that the other volunteers spent socialising in the games room, chatting and playing pool. I preferred to stay in my room and read, or visit the hall’s information room, filled with books and charts, and study in quiet. During meal breaks, I would rush down to get my food first and eat it as quickly as I could to avoid having lots of people around me. At the close of each day, I sat alone out on the grass in the secluded grounds outside the hall and stared up at the trees standing tall against the warm, fading colours of the evening sky, absorbed in my thoughts and feelings. There was anxiety, of course, about the trip and whether or not the placement would be successful. But there was something else as well: excitement that I was finally taking charge of my life and my destiny. Such a thought took my breath away.
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant Page 11