The Secret Life of a Black Aspie

by Anand Prahlad

  Did I love her, my wife would ask. Did I want to be with her? Was I committed? Or she would say, “You don’t really love me” or “You don’t want to be with me.” I had heard other partners say the same things. I knew those were supposed to be easy questions, but they weren’t. I didn’t know how to know those things. I didn’t know where to get the answers from. By the time I knew what I felt or thought about something, it was usually too late to do anything about it.

  “Are you cheating on me?” she would ask. “Tell the truth.” And I would start thinking about my secrets and wondering if they equaled cheating. Beware of “firsts,” the books say about people on the autism spectrum. They never get past them. I never did. My first lessons were all secrets.

  The first secret was when I was molested in the barn as a child.

  The second secret was when I was molested at the doctor’s office. Sometimes, while I was facing the wall or lying facedown on the cot with my pants down, waiting to get a shot, the nurse’s hands searched for something under my skin. Her breath changed and she inhaled deeply. The freckles on her arm turned to water and washed over me. The water was warm. Eventually, she turned me around and looked at my body and smoothed the skin of my hips like smoothing out a tablecloth. I could feel her hands and her eyes long after we had left. Even lying in bed, sick, the feelings would come to me. The waves of her freckles would wash over me.

  The third secret was the books of pictures I carried in my mind since I was in elementary school. Pictures of surprise moments. They were like the seedpods I kept, or the birds’ nests or pieces of bark. They comforted me and helped the world to stay balanced. Once, in elementary school, Janet Jones turned around in her seat, and her smile was so sweet it never left me. Once, one of my cousins was swinging high on a swing set and I saw her panties against the dark skin of her thighs. They had strawberries on them. I would think about them a lot when I had headaches, or when my head was spinning from too many sounds or too many colors or too much brightness. It was just like eating cold strawberries.

  The fourth secret was when I was young and secretly playing doctor with my cousin. There was a summer when she came to get me almost every day. The hollyhocks were blooming bright pink beside my granny’s house. Butterflies clustered around wisteria. We’d sneak away to a cool spot beneath pines, or to a hidden room of Granny’s house. My cousin would lie down and say very sternly, “Now say it. Say it.” She would slap me and then apologize and hold my head in her hands. “Say it, say it!” she would insist again, and I would pretend to be the doctor. “Let’s take these down,” I’d say in the pretend voice. “Don’t worry. I just need to do a little exam. Let me look at your privates.”

  “Privates” was like a magic word. It changed our breaths.

  The fifth secret was that boys sometimes turned into girls. I saw boys turn in elementary school. I sometimes did it myself. Many times, I wished that I had male and female genitals and breasts. I felt like I had both. I loved girl things since I was a child. It started with my mama and my granny. I loved being in Mama and Daddy’s room. I loved all the smells of lotions and perfume and powders and Noxzema.

  One of my favorite places was their closet. There were so many dresses and skirts and shirts with so many color tones and textures. When I went in there, they would rub against my skin, against my arms and face, and sometimes one would break the secret code of objects and reach out for me. I would hold my hands out, or my face, and close my eyes, and let it caress me. Mama left a lot of herself in the closet. When I was in there, I could see into her better. I could see her happiness when I looked in her pink hatbox.

  At a summer camp for student leaders, I met another boy who turned into a girl. He went around in the barracks at night acting tough and pulling the covers off boys who were sleeping and hitting them across their butts really hard with a belt. For me, the belt triggered memories of getting beaten by my daddy. When I fell apart, and pleaded with the boy to stop, he said OK and told me to meet him the next day in our barracks.

  The next day he sat beside me on the bed and turned into a girl. He held my hand and said, “I’m sorry.” And then we lay down and he held me like I was a girl. He rubbed nappy hair against my face. We didn’t talk. I could hear the din of voices outside, coming from different distances and directions. Diffused light broke through small, opaque windows on one wall, close to the ceiling. I could hear her breath get very heavy as she moved against me, and then it got calmer, and me and Ruby were happy.

  The sixth secret was the first time I had sex. There was a white girl in science lab in high school named M. When we stood at long, high tables to do experiments, like cutting open pigs or frogs, or mixing chemicals together, she was usually to my right. Sometimes she smiled at me and needed help with something, so I helped her. But one time when I was helping her, I caught her scents. First, there was the patchouli splashed on her neck. And then I smelled her strawberry shampoo, but also her hair, and the scent of the pillows she slept on. Baby powder deodorant was a subtle spice in the stronger, salty wind of her armpit sweat. I could smell the house where she lived, and the thin resin of Dove soap coating her body. I could smell the ripples of heat rising from beneath her skirt.

  The rest of the day, I couldn’t talk. If anyone said anything to me, I didn’t even hear it, or I snapped at them. I snapped hard, like I did as a child, wanting to cut into them with my voice so that they would leave me alone. When I went back to my place at the science table and I was just standing there, overwhelmed, M had looked over and smiled at me. Did she know what had happened?

  After the day that I smelled M, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I couldn’t stop tasting her on my tongue. Even when I was eating, sometimes, I would taste her. I kept feeling that my face was buried under her arms, or in her hair, or between her thighs. I wouldn’t look at her or talk to her for a while, though. Something from her had entered me, like seeds enter the earth. So I finally decided that I should have sex. I had been studying the polio vaccination and thought that having sex would be like getting an immunization—that once I had it, I would be immune to the constant tensions I was feeling. I would be able to get my focus back.

  One night, we went parking and she showed me what to do. Some things about it were interesting, like, people were just like horses and dogs. Like, bodies know how to talk to each other, without us saying a word. Like, the fire and water inside us are older than our minds. And some things about it were good, like, floating in air, without gravity. Like, floating in warm water without a tub. Like, the cry when things run from our bodies like a person from a burning house, and the two bodies almost seem to become one.

  But some of it felt bad. Touching breasts gave me a sinking feeling, like when an elevator falls. Having my back touched felt like I was being raped. Having my neck or throat touched was the worst. Taking my pants down reminded me of getting ready for a whipping or being swallowed by the shadow in the barn. And lying on top of another person just seemed ugly and wrong.

  The seventh secret was M’s pregnancy. We didn’t know how she got pregnant, since she was on the pill and I was using a rubber. But she did. And then the eighth secret was her abortion. Her mother secretly sent her away to a clinic in Boston for the procedure.

  The ninth secret was the open marriage. M’s mother was probably the only white mother in the county who would have allowed a black boy into her home, much less to see her daughter. It had been our secret. But after the abortion, she had a change of heart. She pushed M to marry a “decent” white man, but what she didn’t know was that they had agreed to have an “open marriage.” Ideas about open marriages and swinging were popular in the sixties. There were cartoons about it in magazines like Playboy. So I kept seeing M occasionally for the next three years.

  My secrets were always there, in yellow houses. They didn’t fade with time. I was always still figuring them out. I was always still finding comfort in the familiarity of their flavors. If I didn’t taste them
for a while, I became hungry for them, the way I missed my mama’s greens and candied yams and corn bread. I missed the forbidden words, the words “polite” people didn’t say. But not just the words, the attitude that made them all right and forbidden at the same time, like salt flowing into sugar.

  I missed the letting go that “polite” people didn’t do. I missed a forbidden, freckled hand. I missed the playing with danger and guilt. I missed the space of no morals, where my wounds could meet the wounds of someone like me and somehow be comforted. I missed the secret scents. I missed boys who turned into girls. I missed lesbians telling me I was a lesbian in a man’s body, and holding Ruby, and opening her up. I missed being “over there,” looking over here, and laughing at the vanilla side of the street.

  Once I was in relationships, I didn’t know where to put the secret parts of me. I had learned from childhood not to trust them. They weren’t acceptable. My wife was from a world where the only places for those parts of me were closets or cages. It was like that with most of my girlfriends. They were white and knew how the white world worked, even if they disowned it or felt they didn’t fit into it. They were straight. They were neurologically typical. They were moral. They had a sense of structure and could communicate and hold jobs. I was so “not normal” that I needed normal people to be with. I would sometimes meet people who were more like me than some of my partners were. I met them among the homeless, or in red-light districts, psych wards, or ashrams. I would taste them when they talked, or when they stood near me. But I didn’t want a girlfriend from those worlds. It would have been like the neurotypical leading the neurotypical.

  When I was living in all those yellow houses, I never thought about having ASD or what it meant to have it. I didn’t know that I carried so many secrets. I didn’t even realize that I kept living in yellow houses. I didn’t know how I felt a lot of the times. Or what. I remember now, though, because I’ve had time for my feelings to come back. And because I often feel the same way now. I know that I felt I was really alone and had to take care of myself, even when I was with other people. I knew that other neurotypicals think they’re right all the time, and they think the way I am is wrong.

  I knew how to take care of myself better than other people knew how to take care of me. I made my own rules all the time, in almost everything. I didn’t understand neurotypical rules. Too often they didn’t make sense. They wouldn’t protect me. I didn’t feel like they applied to me. I would never have survived just following neurotypical rules. The same way a black person coming from a plantation wouldn’t have survived following white people’s rules. But my rules weren’t necessarily the best ones to follow in a relationship. For example, my rules said disconnect the minute I’m overwhelmed. Stop listening. Find a good feeling wherever I can whenever I need to. Keep my secrets. Don’t bring certain things up because I’d never be able to explain them.

  Surviving and being in relationships seemed to be two different things. Surviving and being black with ASD in cross-racial relationships seemed to be many different things.

  Gray Concrete

  Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.

  I went to see a movie about a boy who was on the autism spectrum. It was called Stand Clear of the Closing Doors. His sister forgot to pick him up from school, and so he wandered directionless in the city, lost, not realizing the danger he was in, not understanding how time works. A symbol on someone’s jacket caught his eye, and he followed it into the subway. Once there, he couldn’t get out. He didn’t know how to. So he lived there for ten days. The sounds of screeching and loudspeakers, people’s voices, the fluorescent lights, the scents, were like knives sticking in his brain. He crouched in a seat on the train, terrified, clinging to himself. He rode train after train, getting off when they shut down at night. Eating from garbage cans. Drinking from subway sinks. He peed on himself, and he got so dirty. But the subway slowly became familiar, even if it was painful to be there. He would rather have been at home, but he couldn’t think to get there. So he started to learn the rules of how the trains worked. What to expect. How to find safety.

  Concrete buildings have been my subway. I know the rules there. I know the roles. I know how to talk to people in gray concrete. What to say. How much to say. When to say things. Student. Teacher. Patient. Client. The wolf can’t huff and puff and blow the buildings down.

  There is not a lot of moving around in gray concrete. There is not a lot of expressing emotions. There is no yelling, fighting, or calling names. You don’t need to keep time because it is kept for you. You can find time to dream. You can find time to read. Like when I’m waiting for the doctor to come. Or in a classroom waiting for the teacher. When the doctor or the teacher comes, they always smile and say something polite and friendly. There’s a minute of talk, but no more. Something real, but not too personal. About seventy words. These are the rules of gray concrete.

  Most of the time, I didn’t want to go to gray concrete. I wanted to stay at home with my things. Familiar and soft things. The right temperature. The right scents. But I had to go. And getting there was filled with small traumas. First, there was just getting ready. Tearing myself away from the comfort of my mind, where there was no time. And no hurry. And no lines between me and spirits. And nobody else’s rules. And no small or capital letters. Suddenly, the clock was a boss, and I was working in the fields. Suddenly, I had to put my glasses on so that I could see the lines between things instead of just the shapes and colors. It hurt my head to focus on the lines. To make edges where there didn’t seem to be any. And every time I left home, it was like the first time. It was like tearing pieces of skin from my body.

  I always got to gray concrete in cars, or buses, or on trains. I learned to take deep breaths and pretend that nothing was out there. That I didn’t know what I knew. That I wasn’t going to be crossing a desert. That the distance between home and where I was going was not aflame, was not like a flood zone, a tundra, a forest fire. That I was normal and it would be painless. It would be nothing. Like it was no big deal for other people. The heartaches of horns. The headaches of sirens. The searing of light. The stinging of cold. The burning cold of rain, burying into the cells of my body. The endless groaning and revving of engines. The hidden fury of traffic waves. The nausea of motion and speed.

  Sometimes I would be going to the gray concrete where there were doctors. The rooms there were full of hard things, a lot of metal, and air that was too cool. At least it was usually quiet there. A nice person would call my name, and I would stand on a scale. They would wrap a blood pressure cuff around my arm and take my temperature. When the doctor came, she would be trying to clear the last patient she had seen from her mind. She would look distracted for a minute and then start asking me questions. I would try to remember to practice talking, before she came, so that words would come out of my mouth. But still, it took a minute. Question. Answer. Question. Answer. Stethoscope and gentle hands pressing against my chest. My back. Gentle voice, telling me to breathe. Listening. Listening. Rustle of cloth against the paper on the exam table. Hands on either side of my neck, feeling for glands. My doctors have usually been good-mood people. I wondered how they stayed in such a good mood talking to people all day.

  Sometimes I would be going to the gray concrete of a hospital. Light-colored concrete, cinder blocks, shades of light green, gray, occasional shades of light yellow. Coldness would emanate from the walls and the floors. Even though they were covered with tiles, or with gray or brown Berber carpet that never really looked clean. They usually had clocks on the wall. Round, ugly brown or black with white faces and arrow hands that clicked but resisted clicking. Sometimes the clocks would have bars around them. Someone was trying to trap time, but they couldn’t. They had long hallways, like a train. Like a square tube that gets gradually smaller at the far end. Like a tunnel that leads to other tunnels. Like a maze in a surreal reality. And in the ceilings were sometimes florescent lights. They buzzed and hisse
d and laughed as you walked beneath them. They flickered and hummed. Mocking light. Mocking balance. Mocking the deliberateness of matter.

  The rooms were full of soft things, trying to cover the metal and other hardness. It would be the same every time. I would be in a bed. And they would be putting me to sleep. They would be trying to kill me in order to help me. The anesthesia would never work right, and death would come along and take me into his hands. He would carry me in his arms like a soldier carrying another soldier from the battlefield. My head would open up, and everything inside would lose its place, its meaning. Its sense. Its order. I would still be able to hear the doctors and nurses, talking about my body as if no one was inside. I would still be able to hear the sounds of metal instruments clinking on metal trays. The surgeon’s commands. Machines beeping. Liquids dripping, and cool weights moving through my veins. Then, for a long time I would hear nothing. Feel nothing. And then I would be hearing them trying to wake me up. I would hear the panic in their voices. And then I would feel blankets on me, even though I was still cold. I would feel a pillow. I would think, there was a window, and warm light was pouring in, bathing me, even if no window was really there. I would slowly come back, but my mind would not come back for a long time. And nothing in my body would work for months.

  Sometimes I would be going to the other kind of hospital. You know. Like the ones for “disturbed” people. There were no metaphors inside this kind of gray concrete. The walls wouldn’t let them through. Things inside there were just themselves. Just being inside gray concrete was like taking a sedative or an antidepressant. Everything moved to a low, dull place in the center—there were no edges. There was hardly any taste. But there were soft things on the bed. And there were soft sofas with soft pillows. The building would seem like it was tilted though. So I would have to tilt myself to one side to compensate.