by David Finch
Kristen rolled her eyes. “I know you think it’s the wife’s job, Dave. Just say it. And yes, that may have been your family’s system, but you’re an adult now. Right?” She continued the movie—I swear I saw Hugh Grant wink at her—and I returned to my introspection. That went well.
I never intended to live like a male chauvinist. I don’t consider myself to be one, yet prior to 2008 my de facto philosophies on the division of family labor would have suggested otherwise. My childhood seems to have had a lot to do with that.
My parents weren’t chauvinists, but they were very traditional, in the traditional sense of the word. They each had clearly defined roles. They both worked—my dad was a farmer and my mom was an elementary school teacher—but it was understood that Mom was the domestic champion of the family. If women in Mayberry or Stepford did it, then my mom did it: cooking, cleaning, sewing, gardening. My brother and I only had to mow the lawn and help Dad around the farm—that was the extent of our contributions.
My dad didn’t have to do much in the way of household chores. He would repair a toilet or wire a new outlet in the laundry room, but you’d never find him brandishing a toilet brush or sliding an iron across a pair of slacks. Although, in fairness, a few times a year I would spot my dad at the kitchen sink, doing dishes for my mom on the evenings when she could be found lying on their bed, tightly curled in on herself, suffering a migraine. I would stand silently in the doorway that separated the hallway from the kitchen, rubbing my fingertips along the glossy white molding, and watch him. He would first rinse a dish, then scrub it clean with soap and his bare hand, then repeat the process several times, making the dish spotless before setting it delicately and quite deliberately into its designated place in the dishwasher. Cleaning the kitchen after dinner for four people could take my dad all night; it would have taken my mom about ten minutes. Everything done in a certain way—like father, like son.
Then there was laundry. The laundry system with which I grew up was simple in terms of my participation therein. I’d observed that my mom almost never washed items left on my bedroom floor, but the tall wicker hamper that she placed in our bathroom was serviced regularly—at least twice per week, usually more. So when I needed something washed, it went into the hamper, and a few days later it would appear with its buddies on my bed, the whole lot of garments individually folded and stacked into neat piles. If she saw that the hamper wasn’t quite full, she’d go out of her way to find me and ask if there was anything else I needed washed. Later that evening, my à la carte laundry order would be delivered to my bedroom, perfectly folded by my wiped-out mom.
“Here you go, sweetie,” she’d say, handing me the clothes and kissing my forehead. “I’m exhausted. Good night.” Then I’d set them on top of my dresser, knowing that by the same time the following day, as if by magic, the clothes would have made their way into their respective drawers.
That’s what I call doing laundry, and for the longest time, I was puzzled that Kristen didn’t operate the same way.
When we first moved in together, I tried making things easy on Kristen by instituting a hamper system similar to the one with which I’d grown up. However, my married-adult hamper system differed somewhat. For starters, I located the hamper in the bedroom closet rather than in our tiny master bathroom. The other difference was that Kristen didn’t seem to give a shit about my clothes or my hamper.
I would load it up until it became a massive, unstable heap. I’d let a week go by without mentioning it, having learned that people who aren’t my mom get sensitive about demands for personal service. My patience ran out whenever I’d find myself without clothes to wear to work, at which point I’d ask Kristen, “Were you planning to do the laundry at some point?” What can I say? The question always felt innocent enough, though looking back now it seems outrageously manipulative. I didn’t mean to be passive-aggressive. I wasn’t willfully imposing my antiquated worldview on her. I just thought that was how things worked. But how else was she supposed to have interpreted it? Had we known back then that I wasn’t naturally equipped to adapt to someone else’s system, this whole laundry situation might have been resolved sooner. As it was, I looked like an ass. I constantly found myself confused. Am I an ass for assuming she’d do my laundry? Why wouldn’t she do my laundry? The purview of a wife has always included laundry, has it not?
To Kristen’s credit, I’m still alive. Also to Kristen’s credit, she would reply diplomatically to questions like mine, suggesting that if she was washing her own clothes, then I could throw my stuff in with hers. “Or, if you have clothes that need to be washed right now, you know how to do it,” she’d always conclude. Yes, I’d think, standing there in my bottom-of-the-barrel emergency clothes (brown corduroy pants, a tight blue polo shirt, and black socks), I know how to do it . . . but that’s not the point!
Due to what Kristen calls a “ridiculously high rate of sock-changings,” I was constantly finding myself barefooted during our first year of marriage, so I eventually started washing my own clothes. That, too, became a problem. I was washing only my clothes, not hers. It didn’t occur to me to wash everything together—why would it have? I don’t wear her clothes, I wear my clothes. This easily could have been one of the questions on that Asperger’s evaluation: Do you need to be told explicitly to wash your wife’s clothes if you’re doing a load of laundry? The follow-up questions being Do you need to be told explicitly to fold the clothes when they’re dry, even though you can explain the theory of relativity? and Wow, seriously?
Perhaps a more telling question would be Do you find it almost impossible to shed precepts and adapt to new ways of doing things? Thanks to my Asperger’s brain, the answer is an emphatic yes (especially when adapting means I’ll be personally inconvenienced in some way), while an Asperger’s-neutral question such as Does it make sense that a person’s gender dictates how they contribute around the house? would garner a logical no. And yet, there I sat one evening, face-to-face with the lovable Hugh Grant and the realization that I had expected Kristen to do all the housework, just as my mom had.
Later that evening, well after the movie was finished, I would write in my journal, Housework was my mom’s job, but that doesn’t mean it’s Kristen’s job. I’d give serious thought to areas in which I could contribute. I would deem the toy room too chaotic for my involvement and therefore leave it to Kristen, but I would commit to continuing my responsibilities around the kitchen. I would design an hour-by-hour schedule for housework that would help me to stay on track, a list so unrealistic and unwieldy that we’d never be able to maintain it:
MONDAY
7:30 PM—Clean kitchen
8:30 PM—Vacuum and dust family room
9:30 PM—Iron blue dress shirts only
Ultimately, grimacing, I would commit in writing to folding and putting away the laundry.
But that would all come later. The movie was over now; the credits were rolling and I had some damage control to do. Kristen was sitting next to me, and next to her was a motley stack of linens topped with a bra. Because my previous attempts at talking had failed so miserably, I picked up my phone and texted her:
Hey [Send]
Her phone vibrated and she picked it up while I pretended not to look. A second later my phone buzzed:
hello.
I’m sorry I root through the dryer. You shouldn’t have to fold everything [Send]
I’m used to it. :)
Put your hand out [Send]
Kristen slowly extended her hand in front of herself, as if she were reaching for something.
Give it to me over here, where I can reach it [Send]
The phone buzzed in her hand and this time she understood. Laughing, she lowered her hand, and I took it.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“For assuming that you would be responsible for all the housework.”
“It’s fine, Dave,” she said. “Everyone has expectations. But you
have to understand that there are other ways of doing things, and you need to learn how to open up to them.”
“I will do more around the house. I just need to practice it, that’s all.”
“I’m not asking you to do much,” she said. “I’m just saying that when you see clothes that need to be folded, you can fold them. When you see dishes that need to be washed or put away, you can do that. If there are toys on the floor, pick them up. That’s all I’m saying.”
You need me to be autonomous and learn how to adapt. You need me to be an adult. Ugh.
“Okay,” I said. “I get it. I’m going to figure out a plan and then I’ll get started working on it.”
“I don’t want you to spend a lot of time making plans and worrying about this,” she said. “Don’t make this a bigger deal than it needs to be. Just pick up, fold, put away. Help. That’s it.”
“Okay.”
“Without pouting,” she added.
“Pouting?” I picked up my phone.
:( Fuck you. [Send]
Chapter 6
Go with the flow.
Before we were married, Kristen and I lived with roommates for a year. They were friends of ours, and it seemed like such a good idea. It was one of those opportunities that neurotypicals might look forward to: a chance to celebrate and bond and party as only young, unmarried people with decent-paying jobs can—a yearlong last hurrah, and I missed it completely.
I wish I had enjoyed it more. Who knew living with friends could be such a disaster? They were, after all, good people, and as roommates go, they really weren’t so bad.
I’ve had bad roommates. One of my college roommates, Derrick, wanted to kill me. That’s not an exaggeration. He waited for me one morning in our room, and when I returned from my early classes, he shouted that he couldn’t take any more of my shit and threatened to murder me if I didn’t move out by the end of the week. “Can you give me another week at least?” I pleaded, holding up my calculus book with both hands to protect myself. “It’s midterms.”
“Fuck you, boy!” he boomed. “Fuck you, locking me out of the room at night!” But I thought I made it clear that I lock the door at eleven thirty sharp, no matter what! “Fuck you, waking me up every morning and telling me you’re leaving!” Isn’t that just proper roommate etiquette? “And fuck you for moving my shit around the bathroom! You don’t touch another man’s things, bitch! Fuck you!” But your system was all wrong! Bar soap doesn’t belong on a sink and toothbrushes should never be stored in a shower caddy!
Derrick was strikingly muscular and I was mostly ribs and hair. Something about the volume of his voice and the way he was pacing the room, telling me that I didn’t know who he was or where he came from, or what it was like to get “beat by an insane motherfucker”—it all seemed to suggest that he meant business. A couple of days later, after acing my calculus midterm (A+!), I moved in with a kid so inclined to talk about the time he’d spent working at the Target store in Eagan, Minnesota, that within a few weeks I’d started to reconsider my decision to move away from scary-ass Derrick.
A few months later I was bunking with Phill the percussionist, who despised and ridiculed the shape of my feet and listened to Jethro Tull at deafening volumes. After a two-week stretch in which he incessantly snapped the Morse code pattern for the word marimba with his fingers, I took a clerical job in the office of residence halls administration, which gave me a first look at all the prime single dorm rooms available on campus. At first, room turnover was slow, but I bided my time. Someone eventually requested a room change, and I helped myself to the fourteen-by-twelve single suite she was vacating. My new room was on a coed floor, across from a pair of dazzling Delta Gammas. Unpacking my milk crates, looking out over Lake Osceola and the music-school campus, and knowing that no roommate would be barging through the door while I typed up my letter of resignation to the residence halls administrator, I wondered how any student could ever walk away from such a beautiful room.
After Kristen and I started dating, I spent nearly every night at her house and never longed for the solitude of my own apartment. That was a first, and it proved that we cohabited well. She was the only person other than my family to earn that distinction. Growing up, I understood the power structure and everyone’s role in the household: Mom and Dad were in charge and it was best not to challenge them. My brother was three years older, so he, too, could give me marching orders that I’d blindly accept if it meant he’d play with me (“Here, Dave, drink this paint thinner. Then we’ll Hula-Hoop”). Most important, my family understood me. They loved me and accepted my little world for what it was. “Don’t mind our son,” my parents would say to guests as I pushed myself down the hallway floor on my face. The brushing sensation of blended-fiber carpet pile against my forehead put me in a place of tranquillity that to this day I can’t achieve with sex, drugs, love, or money. Their guests would cautiously step back against the wall, allowing me to pass. “That’s just our Dave.”
I didn’t have to worry about the sounds that escaped from my head. I had always mimicked the sounds of my environment, so even when I was older a few moos and quacks here and there didn’t seem out of place. Using the corner of my mouth, I would serenade my mom with a perfectly rendered trombone solo as she sat barefoot at the kitchen table, watching I Love Lucy reruns and paying bills. Sometimes she would turn down the volume on the TV and snap her fingers in time, or set her checkbook down and just watch me; if I became self-aware, I’d run upstairs and press my forehead against the cool glass of my bedroom window. Because we lived on a farm, I could get lost in a daydream and wander off for hours without anyone thinking to bother me. If they did come looking, they weren’t surprised when they found me standing motionless, expressionless, watching the wind pluck through the lilac bushes, or sitting alone in a cattle pen, tying individual strands of hay together. “Oh, there you are, Dave,” my dad would say with a smile, his steely blue eyes sparkling the way they often did when he was amused. “Supper’s almost ready, come and get washed up.”
Some behaviors were too obnoxious for my family to tolerate. High-pitched shrieking, lunging forward and backward, rewinding the same banal movie passage over and over. My mom would reach her threshold and firmly tell me to stop. In my dad, who was normally gentle and reserved, these types of behaviors provoked a different reaction. When he thought I was out of control, his face showed it—frustration, disapproval, anger. He hardly ever had to say anything. I drew my own conclusions about what he was thinking whenever he’d thunder away from me, growling, “Well, for Christ’s sake.” Namely, that I was a disappointment. The swish of his blue jeans accompanied him, whispering accusations at me above the stomping: Well . . . now . . . you’ve . . . done . . . it . . . After I frustrated him I wouldn’t see him for hours. I would hide in my closet, or behind an open door, and mentally replay whatever had happened over and over, forcing promises upon myself to never be annoying again.
After a blissful first year of dating, and having decided that marriage was in our future, Kristen and I began playing with the idea of buying a house together. At first, we viewed the idea as a practical next step in our relationship. “I think it would make sense to find something now, even if it’s strictly an investment,” Kristen said. I agreed, and as we began searching for properties, our conversations about real estate grew more and more romantic. “Ooh, here’s a nice two-story,” she said, showing me a listing online. “Look at that family room. Isn’t that so us? Can’t you just see us in there, playing games in front of the fireplace?” A good investment, and I get to live with my hot girlfriend—just the two of us. Nice! But Kristen had a different idea.
“What if we looked for a bigger place, and we each picked a friend to live there with us?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Would they pay us rent?”
Kristen seemed confused by this question, as though I’d completely missed her point. “Well, yeah. I suppose they would pay rent. But I was thinking
more about how fun it would be, all of us living together. Can you imagine?”
I considered the advantages of dividing a mortgage four ways. Yes, I could imagine having roommates.
I immediately thought of Delemont, an incredibly mathematical guy with whom I’d been friends since middle school. He ended up designing bridges—a job that’s just barely challenging enough to keep his interest. We worked about ten minutes from each other and met at least twice a week to have lunch, talk about math, and recite lines from Chris Farley movies. He had dark, wild hair, the sort I imagined could easily clog a drain. That was a check in the minus column, to be sure, and there were other demerits to consider.
When we were younger, Delemont tended to be loud and belligerent, especially whenever he drank or got himself into a crowd of people. In school, he would do or say anything if you paid him—he ate wood chips and friends’ goldfish for a quarter, and struck a science teacher over the head with a textbook for a dollar. He didn’t do these things because he needed the money; he did them because he needed to be outrageous—a motivation that I understood and admired. By the time he finished grad school, he had mellowed out somewhat, but his lack of regard for authority and rules in which he personally did not believe remained. Those weren’t the types of qualities I’d normally look for in a roommate.
Still, Delemont had a capacity for friendship and decency that could make this plan work. In high school, during open gym, some skid mark of a kid was teasing me about how little I could bench-press. He wouldn’t let up. I had tuned him out to study the tiny rhombuses etched into the grip of the weight bar when Delemont went crazy on the kid—getting in his face, yelling at him until a crowd gathered, then demanding that Skid Mark get on the bench and show everyone his highest weight. “You do it! Come on, big shot! Let’s see you do it!” He stayed on Skid Mark like a pit bull and since then I’ve remained loyal to Delemont, who also appreciates a fine rhombus when he sees one.