Welcome to 4 East: On Visitors

Without any doubt, the most Stomach- churning, heart-in-my-throat, shit-in-my-pants moment at 4 East came when I was paged by the nurse's station -- only to discover that I had a visitor, and that visitor was my boss.

My employer has a very tough, no-second-chances policy when it comes to drinking, which is why I took such care every morning to at least not smell the part. Normally I did not drink in the morning, but if by some chance some vodka managed to arm-wrestle its way into my orange juice, I knew that some thorough Oral Hygiene mixed with either peanuts or corn chips would do the trick. 

On the other hand -- anyone who knows me knows the stresses that I have had with my current boss, knows that in the past I have dubbed her irreparably inhuman, sadistic even, and that it's not just me: every single person who works for her feels the same way. I have seen student workers actually dance when they were told that she would be out for a few days. I myself have not been above a whispered "Yessss!" and an air-pump at such news, and I get laughter every time I do it, no matter who I'm talking to. Everyone agrees.

So you can imagine my horror as I waited behind the red line and watched as she was admitted onto the ward. She came through the door and gave me that same smile that a snake gives before it devours its prey. Then she said, "You look good."

I said, "Are you crazy?" I had a four-day growth of beard, my hair was scraggly and uncombed, and I'd been wearing the same clothes since I'd been admitted. Everything was clean, but I still felt and looked like a hobo.

We walked across the hall to my room, where, thank goodness, I had back-up: my old friends H___ and BC, and my former boss and ally E____. So I felt that I had Moral Support; I felt that I had back-up, and I felt that I needed it, because I also felt certain that my boss had come to tell me that my job was gone.

Instead, she had come to tell me that they were drawing up Family Medical Leave papers so that I could keep my job and continue paying into my insurance policy in case I ran out of vacation and sick days. Later, H_____ told me that he'd found her "really nice." Well, dude, she was on her best behaviour, but still and all it came as quite a shock to the system.

*

It doesn't make things easy for visitors that 4 East serves dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon. Not only does this  make the evenings long, but it makes it almost certain that your visitors are going to show up while you're eating. Sometimes I'd be rude and push on through the meal while we chatted; sometimes I'd be polite, and have a cold dinner waiting for me when they left. The most comical example of this came when my old boss E____ came to visit during dinner, and was shortly joined by my current boss (back for another round? Back to perpetrate some evil that she hadn't been able to the time before thanks to my other guests? Whatever the reason, she seemed disappointed that I had company to protect me once again.)

Anyhow -- both of these women are in the book business, and both are managers of small, independent stores (E_____ owns hers) -- and E_____ was sitting to my left and my current boss was sitting to my right, and it wasn't too long before the shop talk was flying past me right and left. They were comparing notes, exchanging news, thinking out loud about current trends and suchlike. And it went on for a long time, with me in the middle wondering when I could get back to my dinner. At some point my roommate came in and flopped on his bed -- I wondered what he was making of all this. After, honestly, ten or fifteen minutes of the two of them talking across me about the book business I started to have thoughts along the lines of "Hello! Alcoholic in the room! I'm here!" and "Why don't you two just do a book convention together and let me eat my dinner in peace?"

It was amusing, to say the least.

*

I was always glad to have visitors, always glad to be reminded that there are people out there who care about me, but in one respect alone I did sometimes feel somewhat guilty about it. This is because I believe that I had more visitors than anyone on the floor. and I know that I had more visitors than my roommate, who had none. Ever. The entire time he was in 4 East. He was, underneath the tattoos and the scary appearance, a nice, decent man who had lost his way a long time before and who was paying for it now in a big way. He'd come up to me and say, "Boy, you had a lot of folks visiting you today!" And I could tell that although he meant it in a nice way, it made him sad that he had no one "out there" who gave a shit, no one who could even be bothered to visit him. 

This makes me even more grateful to everyone who took time out of their day to stop by 4 East and see how I was doing, especially BC, who drove all the way up from another state for what must have been a not-very-much-fun twenty minutes or so. The day that he came up, I came out of a group session and there were the three of them sitting at a lunch table in the commons room. I literally did a double take, not expecting to see my friends in that place.

Even then, it took my favorite person on the staff, the one I've less than accurately called Joan Arkwright in these posts, to remind me of It's a Wonderful Life and specifically of Clarence's gift to the Jimmy Stewart character at the end. She had a way of saying things that made me dissolve into tears.

-- Freder.

Facebooked

It's day two of my Facebook withdrawal and my typing fingers are itching. Never mind.

As I was saying to my friend BC last night, the initial attraction of Facebook was that within 48 hours of joining I was reconnected with friends from my high school years that I hadn't heard from in three decades -- and some of them became pretty close and good contacts. But in latter days, the temptation to hop on Facebook and just type whatever moody soundbite came to mind was rather too strong, and with a growing catalogue of "friends" (some of whom share my employer), that temptation was getting rather more dangerous than I realized.

I've known BC for better than thirty years now, and have regularly corresponded with him for most of that time, and as he rightfully pointed out last night, he's heard much worse and darker thoughts from me than anything I ever typed on Facebook -- and yet I haven't done myself any physical harm to date. But one do-gooder "Facebook friend" who probably doesn't know me all that well and didn't realize that I just needed to vent some steam took it upon themselves to call the police in on me -- and not just that. They sent my comments -- my PERSONAL comments on my PERSONAL page -- to someone in authority here at the college, someone who also over-reacted -- and as a result I've been ordered back into mandatory counseling.

How Big Brother is that?

Y'know, I've been thinking about going back into counseling for some time now, so if I can get it paid for by the college I guess I won't complain about that. But, really -- what a nerve! Which one of my so-called Facebook friends had the cojones to violate our minimal relationship and intervene so deeply into my personal life?

I want to say to them, "If you can't stand the Angst, don't read my posts!"

If you've known me for any length of time at all, then you know that Angst is pretty much What I Do. If I couldn't type about my feelings then I would have no outlet at all for them -- and then I would really be in trouble. Typing about shit is my way of channeling and coping with shit. It's the reason why I started this blog, which was never intended to be anything else than a kind of Daily Therapy.

Over time, the blog and Facebook kind of began to meld, and that was my mistake. I typed things on Facebook that should have been reserved for this much more private forum. But that doesn't excuse someone from meddling in my private life and actually creating more problems for me when I have plenty enough of them already, thank you.

This is one of the reasons I have to kill my Facebook account. I don't even know who it was that knifed me in the back, so I can't even "unfriend" them and get them the hell out of my life. As I should have known, there are lurkers on Facebook, stalkers on Facebook, and people who will do Evil to you if you give them the opportunity.

-- Freder.

Hearts and Flowers

. . . and now with our pow-wow of the weekend behind us, my typing fingers are freed and I can safely reveal that my friend of approximately 32 years, one of my best friends in the world -- BC, I've referred to him numerous times on the blog -- is getting married.

And my reaction, my feelings, as you already know, are exceedingly mixed.

There is the part of me that is genuinely happy for him. This is something he's worked on for a long time.

And on the other hand, there's the part of me that's going: What the fuck??!! Where in fuck's name did that come from??

But even the shock is secondary to the feeling I can't shake, that I am losing one of my best friends ever, that my life is being diminished yet again.

And don't give me that line about "Oh, you're not losing a friend, you're gaining another friend!" That line is such a load of cod's bollocks that even the people who spout it don't believe it. Fact is, this changes everything from here on. There's a reason why the tarot card named "Le Morte" always features a scythe-swinging skeleton. Death and Change are the same devil.

And I guess that's where a lot of the anger that flashed through me when I heard the news came from. Still mourning one loss. Didn't need another.

Well, that and the fact that I thought I'd reached the stage in my life when I would never have to attend another fucking wedding, ever again. To steal from my friend EWR's vast catalog of colorful sayings, I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon.

But there's more. Those of you who have been reading here for a while must know by now that I am quite the perverse and capricious bastard.

I'm jealous. What's he got that I ain't got? I'm at least as good a catch as he is, warts and all. How come he can make this happen and I can't?

Fact is, I have never walked out of any relationship. I'm always the one who gets dumped. I've tried to learn from the mistakes of the past, but it always ends the same way.

The one I lasted with longest was Lorna. We lasted barely over a year. She had a bad case of "Guess What I'm Thinking" and "Guess Why I'm Angry at You." Had I known then that I had Asperger's I might have been able to make a better case for myself. As it was, I used to beg her, "TELL me what you're thinking. TELL me what you're feeling. DON'T make me try to guess. I can't read your mind." Truth was, I couldn't read her face or her body language, either, and now I know why.

She told me early on that she never wanted to get married again, because her first marriage had been such a terrible experience. Her first husband did things like throw bricks at her, or strangle her until she went unconscious and then anally rape her while she was out. I listened to all this and took her at her word.

As time went on, I kept getting a vibe from her that I couldn't understand. Because I took her at her word, I didn't even want to mention the M word. One day when she was particularly cranky at me I said, "I would marry you. . ."

And she said, "That's not what I want."

I wanted to shake her. I wanted to say, "What do you want? Just tell me!"

One afternoon I called her and she said, "We have to talk."

I was so stupid in those days that I said, "About what?"

So that was it. She broke up with me over the phone. I wish I could say that I never saw her again, but we worked for the same newspaper, and with all the daily stress of banging out advertising on the tightest of schedules mixed with my sadness over losing Lorna, I eventually had a nervous breakdown and walked out of that job.

Which was a mistake, really. I'd have been so much better off staying there. I could have managed it without the complications. Never date anyone you work with.

Strangely enough, that lesson still hadn't sunk in when I started seeing a lovely lady that I worked with at the first bookstore that I worked in. We lasted about three months. I had it in my head that I had lost Lorna and a couple of others because I was too withdrawn, too reserved, and so I dropped the "L" bomb early on.

Now, mind you, I don't understand to this day why the "L" word should be so toxic. I've loved a lot of people in my day -- doesn't mean that I wanted to jump into a Marriage Ceremony with them. But, oh dear, suddenly I was a threat to her freedom. I went over to her house one evening bearing pizza and a movie, expecting a nice, normal casual evening, and instead she broke up with me.

I went out into the dark and sat alone on the front steps of her house. I could physically feel something breaking inside of me. It wasn't my heart. I know this because my heart still troubles me with feelings of wistfulness on a daily basis, feelings that can't be pursued because That Way Lies Madness and, perhaps, an appointment with the tallest building in town. What was breaking might have been my last connection with the world that Most Everyone Else lives in.

That was a decade ago. I haven't had a relationship since. I'll probably be alone the rest of my life. In the words of The Great Man, W.C. Fields, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No sense being a damn fool about it."

So Anyway.

Although they have little reason to know it, as we see each other seldom enough and when we do get together I am usually withdrawn and distant in the manner of those who share my disease, I value my friends highly. It's a blow to lose this one.

-- Freder.

The Things Normal People Do

 I hate it when people give me food. I know that it's meant to be a gesture of something or other, but to me it's just one of the ways that normal people are trying to rob me of control over my own life. The stuff is usually fresh and needs to be eaten right away -- but what if I don't want to eat cucumbers or peas this week?

Not being at the mercy of someone else's good intentions is  a big deal to me at this stage of my life.

I rarely go out and do things on my own hook because normal people are always coming up with ways to steal my days off, and after that's happened I always need time to decompress. There goes the weekend! The first and only recreational-type thing that I've done for myself, on my own hook, in more than two years was to go to the movies last week to see Captain America.

Otherwise, the only time I leave the house its to go to work, go to the store, or because someone is scheming up plans that they think will improve my life.

Yesterday I had to go out to my father's house again for lunch. About the only reason I didn't mind this is because it gave me an excuse to drive my new car for longer than three minutes.

I expected to be made uncomfortable and I was, although forewarned is forearmed and like that. My father's wife gave me a tour of her garden and forced me to eat raw peas. The only thing I eat raw is carrots. I chewed manfully, but really wanted to spit the damn things out.

Food is as personal a thing as clothing and sex: we should always be allowed to make our own choices in these things. We have so little control over almost everything else.

I heard some of the same stories that I've heard before, was pressured once again to come to the theater with them (for deeply personal reasons, I don't want to attend live theater anymore, but especially not under these circumstances.. I've tried to explain this to them, but I always stop short because I can see that. for them, it's not about my feelings). I was aware that my father was studying me to see if my hands were shaking. This awareness usually makes me nervous and causes the shaking, but yesterday I was steady.

I had a space heater forced on me. My father has been trying to give me one of these damn space heaters for at least two years now. While Mom was alive I at least had a valid excuse not to accept it: there was no room in the house to put it anywhere! Yesterday he was not taking "no" for an answer.

Too much time was spent with my father and his wife giving me a hard time because I told them that I'm unwilling to attend -- that thing I can't write about because my friend won't just tell everyone his secret like a normal person, no, he has to sit on it so that he can make it into a Big Presentation, turn a get-together into another episode of The Fucking *their name here* Show.

Normal people do things, I guess, in an attempt to be friendly. Instead, I just always feel like I'm being Railroaded.

I had very little freedom -- of movement or anything else -- for some considerable time. Now that I have choices, I want to be the one who calls the shots in my life -- and incursions from the outside world like the thing I'm not allowed to talk about really make me cranky! I'm feeling more protective than ever of my free time. . . not to mention my larder.

-- Freder.

Please, No Secrets -- Especially Depressing Ones

I wanted to write of the strides and accomplishments from the past four-day weekend, but something has come up that's sucked all the joy right out of it -- and I can't even blog about it, because I am sworn to secrecy.

Why do people do that? Why do they tell you the secret first, and then say "Oh, but you can't tell anyone or talk about it until I tell everyone else myself at the next big get-together!"

Wouldn't it be the polite thing to first ask: "Can you keep a secret?"

So that I could answer "NO!" and then the person could either keep their secret to themselves or go ahead and tell me knowing full well that I intend to blab about it at the first opportunity.

I want to blab about it, not because I want to spoil the surprise, but because I'm upset by what I was told and want to get my feelings out there, out in the air, out of my system.

First, although I am very happy for the person, that's where it ends -- and it's irritating that I'm being made to feel that I should empathically share the same level of happiness that they are experiencing -- as if their happiness and my own are one and the same. 

Actually, my reaction is the opposite. Their happiness is just a reminder that I haven't been able to achieve what they have done, and probably never will. Furthermore, I am feeling that their happiness will have a significant negative impact on my life. And now I can't even explain that statement without blowing the "Big Secret."

They explained that they only told me to "give me incentive to get my health back," in other words, to cheer me up.

... and I shot back, "You've known me for How Fucking Long? Since when have Empathy for Other People's Happiness and Keeping Other People's Secrets ever been qualities that I cheerfully possessed?"

Fact is, I hate Happy People. Everywhere they go, they're all "La, La, La! La, La, La! I'm So Happy -- and You're Not! La, La, La!" It's disgusting. Happiness is not something that can be shared, and therefore it should be enjoyed in solitude.

It's not the first time that this person has done this to me. Alone among my friends, this one flaunts every success and every milestone at every opportunity. I am the first to say that this is my problem, not theirs, but every new success cuts me, makes me realize that I am not accomplishing anything in the creative sphere, makes me feel that my life is diminishing by the day. Again, I am happy for this person, but I wish that they would show a little sensitivity once in a while. "Glad for your success, but will you please stop rubbing it in my face?"

If anything, my reaction just reinforces the certainty that I have Asperger's Syndrome, that I'm not like other people and don't react to news like this the way most people would. 

Which brings up another point of contention. I referenced Asperger's in one of my emails, and this person didn't know what I was talking about. They haven't been reading my blog. Thanks a lot, friend. I read all your stuff.

There is to be a gathering of the clan soon, and all of this has made me not want to attend. At best, because it's an Asperger's Thing, I tend to sit back, watch and listen to the others, and usually only interject when a quote comes to mind. This time, I cannot promise that I wouldn't appear morose, especially when the Big Announcement comes and I have to pretend to be happy about it.

-- Freder.