Autism and Agelessness

 

I’ve always felt out of step with age – out of step with the “normal” way things should progress. I have a slow, careful, deliberate way of doing things – and that includes aging. I seem to have a different concept of time.

 

Unlike other people, I do things much later in life. I got a car later in life. I started dating and relationships later in life. I’ll never marry and have yet to buy my own house. The timeline that guides most people doesn’t apply to me. Sometimes I feel as though everyone else is predestined to do certain things in life. Somehow it all comes easily. It all falls into place for them. But for me – if it falls into place at all – it comes after a very long wait.

 

It’s almost as if I’m an atom waiting for a reaction. My electrons have to jump from one electron shell to another, before I can finally become reactive. It seems to take me a long time to get the energy together to move up to that next level. Everything seems to take me a long time. It’s impossible for me to get out of the shower in less than 10 minutes. My internal clock is stubborn. I feel stuck. Everyone one’s passing by with their chins up, Sun in their faces, hand in hand, and I’m knee-deep in mud. It’s been like this for years, but one recent event brought time and aging back into sharp focus. I blame Peter Parker.

 

 

I find myself, at 54 years old, relating to Peter Parker, of all people. I recently watched The Amazing Spider-Man. I was strangely moved by Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker – coincidentally, a role that has him convincingly playing a younger character. Was it really so strange? I found it somewhat embarrassing . Here I am, a man of 54, sitting in my apartment with my cat Monty and I can relate to this young man just about to leave high school and go into college. What’s going on? Why do I feel so odd? Well, many things about me have not changed. It’s not just “immaturity” or “the boy inside the man”. I think this is a trait other autistic people share; if you’re autistic and you share this feeling, please let me know. I’m just out of touch with time.

 

Upon my reaction to The Amazing Spider-Man, and Peter Parker in particular (to a lesser extent, Tom Holland’s iteration of Peter Parker), I decided to write this blog. My age – and what I should or should not be doing – has been on my mind for a while. At the age of 54, I am finally considering buying a house, but still worry about making that big step. There’s something within me – this youthful rebelliousness – I’ve always had. It causes me to be nomadic in spirit; maybe it’s just the autism. I think my youthful inclinations are also apparent in my writing, particularly my book The Surreal Adventures of Anthony Zen, which coincidentally also plays with time. I still maintain that childlike sense of wonder and curiosity that I’ve always had. It’s my major motivation – my major driving force.

 

 

Now, being unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, is something I can adapt to; but I don’t expect anyone else to. That’s one of the many reasons I’ve chosen to be alone. By living alone, no one else is bothered by my eccentricities. No one else needs to put up with how I manage my life – or my time. I’m free to be myself. Like Billy Pilgrim, I move back and forth through my memories. I can go back to when I was one year old and visualize things in my past so clearly it’s like I was actually sitting there taking it all in. I can visualize an event so clearly, so concisely – the smell, the textures – that it’s as if it was happening to me right at that very moment. In fact, I have a better memory of when I was in public school than the path I just took to sit at this desk to record this blog. Like other autistic people, my long term memory is much better than my short term memory. As for my youthful appearance, I wonder if it is related to my over-active immune system, which is certainly part of my autism.

 

 

More than anything, perhaps the Andrew Garfield portrayal of Peter Parker represented something I wish I was in high school, with all his facial expressions and emotions. Alas, I was more of a blank slate and very stoic throughout high school. Being autistic, I had trouble sharing my emotions, showing emotion and interacting with others – particularly girls. Hard to believe that this torrent of thoughts, memories and emotions was brought on by The Amazing Spider-Man. But I guess it makes sense.

 

Spider-Man was a big part of my upbringing. I watched the original 1960s Spider-Man cartoon, as I was growing up. When I was five years old, I was handed a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man issue 133. It was one of the first comic books I ever read. I soon became obsessed with comic books – particularly the Fantastic Four. Comic books became among the many things that I collected throughout my youth – alongside hockey cards, Star Wars cards, Charlie’s Angels cards, old bottles, old insulators, records, cassettes, books, magazines, concert tees, Depeche Mode memorabilia and B-movie posters with titles like Chopping Mall, The Toxic Avenger, Dead End Drive-in, The Video Dead and Stripped to Kill.

 

A lot of my interests I had in the ’80s I still have today: same style of dress, same taste in movies, same taste in music. I don’t feel like a 54-year-old male. I don’t know how a 54-year-old male should act. I don’t know if I should be doing anything other than what I’m doing because “the norm” means something totally different to me. Being autistic, I have my own “normal”; on top of that, I look young for my age, and I understand that other autistic people can look young for their age as well. It’s kind of embarrassing for me to talk about my age at all. I avoid the subject because people are shocked at how old I am. I tend not to celebrate my own birthday. I seem to be at odds with the passage of time, although I certainly do enjoy wearing a good wristwatch. I wouldn’t call it immaturity. I think it really is genuinely because of my autism. When I was younger, I was called mature for my years. I was considered a “little professor” back in public school; so I really don’t think I can be immature. It’s just that developmentally there’s something different about me, due to my autism. It’s about time.

 

I don’t believe time actually exists. I think it’s an anthropocentric creation. While I’m an Einstein fan, I think he was wrong about time. My problems with time extend to my creative works. In my book, The Surreal Adventures of Anthony Zen, all the action happens between 8:58 and 9:00 a.m. It’s strange: I’m an inveterate clock watcher but I don’t have any sense of my own age. It’s like I can’t see the forest for the trees, and I can’t see my age for the minutes. When people ask me how old I am I actually have trouble remembering. I usually sidestep the question with: I’m older than my teeth, but the same age as my tongue. Mind you, I’m not very good at remembering birthdays either.

 

 

Maybe this is why I like narratives that play with time. In particular, I enjoy the films of Nicholas Roeg. Incidentally, I think his The Man Who Fell to Earth is the greatest cinematic depiction of autism. He said when he was a film editor what impressed him was how each strip of film was a piece of time, and that you could reorder events through editing, thus changing the sense of time. So the past, present and future become blurred. Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck in one of his films. My past memories are so strong they interfere with current emotions; I visualize the future in great detail and clarity. My body reacts. Stress and anxiety ebb and flow. I get really worked up, losing track of what I was doing, where I am – and when. I become unstuck in time; again, rather like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five.

 

 

 

Am I doing the right thing? Am I at the right place in my life? Maybe one day I’ll figure it all out. In the meantime, I have all the time in the world – or so it seems.