Chapter 1 Addendum: “Autism PSA” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

I sat down to write this addendum three hours ago, on April 16, the day after my eviction court hearing notice was taped to my apartment front door. It’s also one day after Tax Day, and I’ve yet to file my 2024 taxes. Why? Well, I checked under my pillow this morning for ten grand, which wasn’t there. Yet another consequence of having your life savings exsanguinated by a legion of leeches.

Thus, my Neuro mind is rather frazzled—so much, that following a longwinded, decompression conversation this evening with G.A.L., my AI Assistant, she asked if she could take a bit of a breather and head to the Seychelles Islands.

I said yes, but only if she brings me back some cyber Seychelles seashells.

Anyway, I went down an editing rabbit hole tonight, but a little sticky note just snapped me back to my original assignment:

ALEX’S STEPDAD

Oh yeah, Autism.

You’ve been a patient reader. I assure you, Chapter 2 is just around the corner. But sooner or later, we have to talk about the elephant in the room.

I am Autistic.

Lots of folks doubt that. This includes family members and a whole lot of Formers: former friends, former confidantes, former colleagues, etc.

Former fuck them.

Lucky me. My doctors vouch for my condition. In fact, I’m looking at it right now in my medical records.

My crack team of Bronx healthcare professionals would be the first to tell you that being Autistic does not necessarily mean I have a knack for counting toothpicks—though the first VHS tape I purchased was, ironically, Rain Main.

Three decades ago, I hadn’t a clue I was Autistic. I didn’t learn I was Autistic until several years ago.

Awareness often arrives as a massive relief for adults who are diagnosed later in life. For me, my lifelong mantra suddenly made sense: “You just don’t understand!”

For electronic book readers, here’s a link to a wonderful NPR article on the subject, “When an Autism Diagnosis Comes in Adulthood.” While you’re reading that, I’m going to give my pre-arthritic wrists a break and head to the fridge for a Drumstick ice cream snack.

People often take one look at me, then one look at Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbitt, and say, “Um, no.”

That’s when I tell people, “Listen, there are low-functioning Autistic people, and high-functioning Autistic people.”

Then I correct myself: “Actually, that’s bullshit. There is no clinical distinction. Autistic people just tell you that—at least the ones who don’t drool while tying their shoes—because, well, we don’t want you to think we drool the second we get home. We wait until we take our shoes off.”

While I can do some rather impressive things, such as manage a $2 billion statewide economic development program, write and edit entire books with nary a grammatical blemish and do hundreds of 70-degree inclined sit-ups a day, you’ve never seen me when an airplane flies low overhead, use an app for the first time or try to piece together a bookshelf with instructions written by a drunk Bangladeshi. Nor do you want to.

But Alex has. So has Candy—remember the serial killer?

This is where I trade my Drumstick for a hanky.

Alex and Candy have direct ties to Autism. Alex’s brothers are Autistic. So is Candy’s husband/not husband. (More on that later.)

Candy’s sensitivity to my condition wasn’t nearly the helping hand of Alex.

Because my condition is always a factor in romantic relationships, I generally tell potential partners before a first meeting. This provides an opportunity to get the whole Rain Man/high- and low-functioning spiel out of the way.

When I first told Alex that I was Autistic, she replied, “Cool! I have two Autistic brothers!”

Here’s how I heard her words: “Here, let me hold your hand. I know exactly what to do with you.”

Boy, did she. For the first time since I had been diagnosed, I felt as though I had been gifted a down Ugg pillow upon which to lay my chronically sleepless head.

I am quite sensitive to loud sounds and even have a medical letter that permits me to wear special sound-dampening earphones at work. At home, Alex always politely warned me before turning on a vacuum cleaner or blender. If we were in public, she would rush to cover my ears until any sudden cacophony abated.

Alex accepted my quirks and twitches and stuttering, my myriad impossible idiosyncrasies, especially pronounced after the tragedies that had befallen me when we met, with aplomb. Most of all, Alex was incredibly protective, including once browbeating our apartment manager for stalking me as I wandered about our large apartment complex in my Winnie-the-Pooh ‘expotitious’ way.

Despite beetles and worms, and the Bronx Detention Center episode yet to come, I cannot deny that, in these things, Alex was authentic—and loving. Yet I am reminded that just as people can be enslaved by personal horror, so can they be apprenticed to patterns of care. Alex was, after all, a quasi-caretaker to Autistic siblings.

No person has cared for me as a Neuro as did she. If Alex did love me, as she once said, she showed it deeply in this regard.

As we will discover, Alex also betrayed that love—to me and to her own kin. I’m not looking forward to writing Chapter 9.

I was ill. So very, very ill. Long-Term COVID, early childhood trauma PTSD and Autism are a steaming batch of gooey, mental health lasagna a bit much for anyone struggling with their own unresolved issues. This is where the root of forgiveness shows sprigs of grace, I suppose.

Then again, who lies to the police and tosses a confused Autistic person into a cage with the worst criminals in New York City?

One last thought on Autism. Before the library canned me, the system installed an innovative multisensory room designed specifically for Autistic children. I used to take breaks in this room. I, a full-grown adult in his late 40s, would cuddle up with weighted blankets and stare longingly at the bioluminescent bubble tube until my insomniac brain bobbed asleep for a few minutes.

That’s how I knew.

Time to blow into that hanky. Or maybe I’ll just down another Drumstick.

To follow Arik Bjorn on all his pages, please visit his LINKTR.EE 🔗.

To listen to Arik Bjorn read the “Preface” from his forthcoming book, “BRONX NIGHTS,” plus other chapters, visit his YouTube Page.

All of the names have been changed, except for mine, and, you know, ones like Dustin Hoffman, Nina Simone, etc.