October 1, 2007 (revised October 12, 2007)
I also did not want him to see my trademark distraught face. I had felt sort of happy looking at the manatees. They had looked like a long-time married couple who were not disgusted with each other. But now, due to the presence of my ex-boyfriend, my only boyfriend ever, those smiling aquatic mammals filled me with limitless sadness, for they represented something I thought I would never enjoy again, namely neurotypical-style companionship of any quality.
Milo whistled three more times. I kept staring straight ahead. �Cecelia,� he said. I did not respond. �Cecelia.�
I might as well turn around. I did not like tormenting people, and I could hear the desperation behind each mention of my name, or so I imagined. And he had seen my trademark distraught face many times already.
So I turned around and looked at him for the first time since our breakup five months earlier. He had replaced his old reddish-brown dreadlock attachments with new reddish-green ones. Otherwise, he looked the same: scruffy Van Dyke beard; neatly-pressed tie-dyed T-shirt; khaki Army jacket covered with random scribbles in blue ink; black cargo pants just long enough to escape floodpants territory; and sneakers so hypertrophic and garish, they could have been the suburban office complex where I worked.
I had first met him one morning before work almost seven months earlier, at the Brewtopia coffeehouse at Robinson Town Centre. I was sitting at a table, leafing through an eye-straining Christian tract someone had left there, when he walked up to me and said �Excuse me, but maybe you can help me out. I need a job, any job, that will keep me off the streets, and, well�could you ask Jesus to maybe help me find that job?�
�Sorry,� I said as I closed the tract and set it back down onto the table. �I am an atheist who is reading this tract just out of curiosity. Furthermore, Jesus is a fictitious hippie. How can a fictitious hippie help you find a better job?�
�Well�maybe he can help out a fellow hippie, even though I�m not fictitious.�
�I thought hippies�fictitious or nonfictitious�did not like to work.�
�Not this hippie,� he said, jerking his thumb toward his chin. �I want to be a millionaire before I�m thirty, then retire to Polish Hill and spend my days playing strip bingo.�
�Do you really want to do all those things?�
He said no, he was just kidding about the strip bingo. He preferred strip Yahtzee instead. I assumed he was still kidding, so I smiled. Then he introduced himself, I introduced myself, we chatted for a few more moments, we exchanged cell-phone numbers, we parted ways, and I went to work.
I was a billing associate for Tovey Incorporated, one of the largest physicians� billing services in the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. I worked for the largest branch, not far from the coffeehouse. Specifically, I worked in Robinson Township, in the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport business corridor. I had not worked for my company long, just for a few days, but it had seemed like a million millennia to me.
I spent all day drawing up bills. I reviewed the healthcare records of patients and itemized each expense, no matter how picayune, based upon the official billing guidelines of doctors, hospitals, or both. The greater the amount of billable items, the better. Patients were cash cows that the company enthusiastically encouraged billing associates like me to milk at New Orleans flood levels. So, for example, if a doctor in some hospital used a moist towelette to wipe off the mouth of a nine-year-old leukemic girl after the girl had vomited due to chemotherapy, I could charge the girl�s family seventy-five dollars: five dollars for a moist towelette that retailed for thirty cents, and seventy dollars for the doctor�s labor.
We billing associates never saw the financial records of patients; the Wheeling branch handled those records, the company told us. Maybe the company knew that if we billing associates saw those records, we would discover how many people were not rich and thus had inadequate health insurance or no health insurance at all, possibly causing a lot of my coworkers to feel bad and thus negatively affecting their work performance.
As for me, I could compartmentalize, doing my job well as long as I did not think about the financial consequences for non-wealthy patients. Only when I turned on my mind again would the consequences affect me. During my first week of employment, I would cry in the ladies� room at least twice a day, then lie on my bed after work and cry more furiously, the tears making my limited-edition Sailor Moon bedspread quite damp. I felt guilty over drawing up such immense bills. I felt guilty over putting people through such monetary torment. I wanted to resign, but I was earning more money than I had ever had, eight dollars and fifty-five cents an hour.
Oh, the hell with it. I decided to resign. I hated feeling distraught. During the end of that first week, during our first date, at Brewtopia, I told Milo my plans to resign. He had actually telephoned me the day after we had met, asking me if we could meet there for what he called �delicious beverages.�
During the date, I told him what I did at my job, that I found my job onerous, and that I could no longer bear up emotionally.
�Well, we all hate our jobs,� he said, �but you really shouldn�t give up that paycheck. I get the feeling you haven�t had much luck finding decent work.�
�Correct,� I said, feeling the tears well up in my eyes, �but I just cannot bear treating the poor and uninsured and underinsured in such a callous manner. How can they afford to pay for the life-saving procedures they receive?�
�You�re a very empathetic person, Cecelia, and I like you for that. But you really shouldn�t worry so much. I�ll let you in on a little secret: it doesn�t matter if you don�t have insurance, or if your insurance doesn�t cover anything. No one pays for big medical bills anymore. Sure, most people will pay for the small stuff, but they know they can�t pay for the big stuff, so they don�t even bother trying. They just declare bankruptcy, or simply ignore the bills. And the doctors and hospitals, they just eat the expense.�
�They just eat the expense,� I said as a tear started trickling down my right cheek.
�Of course. They�re not going to waste time going after poor people, who don�t have much to begin with. Probably the vast majority of bills you draw up are just busywork. Something the healthcare bigwigs have you do to justify their jobs. To make it look like the healthcare business is well-run, like a real business.�
�But how do doctors and hospitals earn money?�
�The health insurance companies pay �em. Or they get paid by the pharmaceutical companies for pushing the latest drugs that treat problems you never knew existed, like that new pill that prevents your butt from falling off�.Come on, cheer up, Cecelia.�
�I would like to do so.�
�You should. You�re kind, and you know how to rock the eyeliner. And you have Asperger�s, so you�re hipper than most people.�
He had noticed. He had noticed I have Asperger�s Syndrome, that form of high-functioning autism that Thomas Jefferson and Stanley Kubrick allegedly had. Milo had noticed I had Asperger�s, and he did not mind.
�How did you know I had Asperger�s? When did you know I had Asperger�s?� I asked.
�I knew it almost immediately, when we first met here,� he replied. �It was the careful way you spoke, your lack of facial expressions. Maybe your eyeliner. I know about Asperger�s cuz my mom and dad, they have their own private practice as mental-health counselors for autistic adults. My parents work at home, in Cranberry Township, and when I lived with them, I�d see people like you stream in and out of the office all day�.But enough about my favorite pastimes. How did you know you had Asperger�s?�
�I saw a microscopic blurb in the City Paper last year for that local Asperger�s website. The eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old demographic lifestyle website.�
�I�m familiar with it.�
�I had a hunch I should check out the website, so I did. Almost all of the symptoms it listed for Asperger�s applied to me. I cried out of gratitude. I had possibly found the reason for my lifelong difficulty in interpersonal relations. A week later, I visited the doctor, Doctor Palakar, whom the website had recommended for Asperger�s testing. He tested me, and the results were, of course, Asperger�s.�
�Doctor Palakar, huh? I know him, and so do my parents. He�s the next Barry Manilow!� I assumed Milo had said something humorous.
Doctor Samir �Sam� Palakar was a forty-four-year-old Oakland psychologist who specialized in treating autistic children and adults. He was a star in the Western Pennsylvania autism community, partly due to his extensive knowledge of that, uh, hip neurological condition known as Asperger�s, and partly due to his moonlighting in a popular Seventies- and Eighties-rock cover band called Hot Pink Mullet.
Anyway, Milo and I did not talk for a few moments after his Barry Manilow comment. During the silence, I realized I liked looking at Milo. I wondered if the reverse situation applied.
�So�does Asperger�s run in your family?� he asked.
�No, I do not think so,� I replied. �My relatives all seem like neurotypicals.�
�What about your parents?�
�The same situation.�
�What do they do for a living?�
�Not much. They are office drones in Carnegie, but then I am an office drone, too. I do not have much in common with them other than office-dronehood, an interesting situation considering I still live with them, in Carnegie.�
�Nothing wrong with that. Despite your differences with them, you still have a strong parent-child bond.�
A few hours later, I lay naked on my back, on the bare mattress lying on the bare floor of his bedroom, in his paramecium-sized apartment. Milo, also naked, had commenced thrusting inside my vagina. The thrusting had temporarily distracted me from that small archipelago of grayish goo stuck to the floor to the right of my head.
But I did not mind his floor�s uncleanliness very much. I really liked him, which meant I was almost feeling orgasmic pleasure. And he really liked me, or so it seemed during that first sexual encounter.
My relationship with him lasted two months. Once or twice a week, after I had finished work, I would meet him at Brewtopia, where we would discuss pop culture and why Republicans did not count as sentient forms of life. I never discussed what had happened at my job, since nothing of note ever did, which I did not mind, since I valued comforting routines. Aspies such as I tend to value comforting routines.
Anyway, after each date, I would drive Milo in my automobile to his place, not far from the coffeehouse. (Actually, I drove my father�s automobile, a mid-Nineties Buick with radio knobs I found too scratchy for my fingertips.) Milo lived by himself in a virtually empty apartment, not that we spent much time in any room other than the bedroom. I kept almost feeling orgasmic pleasure, thanks to him. After we would have sex, I would drive home with great reluctance; my parents did not like my driving the Buick anywhere late at night and thus increasing the Buick�s chances of being vandalized or stolen, not that Robinson Township teemed with petty criminals. One would think the only crimes there were insider trading and overtipping your caddy.
At first I was a little surprised Milo the hippie could afford to live there, even in such a small and nonluxurious apartment, until I realized that his parents lived in an even wealthier area, Cranberry Township. He possibly had rich parents who gave him more than a few pennies every month. He possibly had a trust fund. He gave no indication he had found employment or even had any genuine need for employment. He was possibly slumming.
As the relationship progressed, I started wondering if he had any genuine interest in me beyond the bedroom. He had told me many times that he liked me, but did he really have no objections to my Asperger�s or to my living arrangements or to my Cyndi Lauperesque wardrobe? He stopped telephoning me after the relationship had commenced, instead sending me e-mail that just told me in a sweet manner when to meet him prior to sex. Imperial e-mail with a manatee face.
I did not want to cause turmoil that could possibly euthanize the affection I had started receiving more than intermittently for the first time. On the other hand, I wanted to experience actual, mutual romance the way many non-Aspies allegedly did.
So at the end of those two months, I made what we introverted Aspies would consider the ultimate sacrifice. I took the initiative in communicating with someone. I e-mailed Milo asking if he would meet me for an actual, slacker-style date, namely at the Hot Pink Mullet acoustic concert at the Barnes & Noble in Robinson Township. I had never seen the band perform or heard any of its music. Milo e-mailed me a one-word response that same day: the word YES, in capital letters. Apparently he really wanted to meet me.
So the next evening, I found myself in that bookstore, found myself surrounded by a few dozen other patrons in the bookstore�s coffeehouse, watching the band perform. Doctor Palakar sang and played lead acoustic guitar. Middle-aged gentleman number two played backing acoustic guitar. Middle-aged gentleman number three played bongos. Middle-aged gentleman number four played tambourine. Doctor Palakar was the only band member who wore a pink mullet, which made sense, considering he was the band�s leader, and that the band was Hot Pink Mullet, singular. He was nearly bald in real life, but at the concert he wore an obvious wig, a curly pink mullet wig, pink like the dollar-store version of Pepto-Bismol my father guzzled, along with bourbon, after work every night, while sitting for hours at his laptop at home in the basement, until he would fall asleep and start snoring, causing my mother, sitting upstairs at her laptop, to click her tongue several times, Morse Code-style.
The band competently performed the classic-rock staples �Till the Morning Comes,� �Party Party Party (and Party Some More),� �Down-Home Moan,� �Sunflower Junior,� �Bingetown,� and �Phoenix Fox.� Then Doctor Palakar announced that the band would perform an Asgard Viper disco medley. I do not know if Hot Pink Mullet performed any other songs, for I left in tears a minute into the medley. I had not seen Milo at the concert.
I drove back home, where I intended to send Milo the nastiest break-up e-mail in computer history. I had intended to call him an insensitive fake who considered me less than human. Instead, I found he had sent me a break-up e-mail.
In the e-mail, he wrote that he had attended the concert, having stood by the new-release nonfiction section and watched me for a few minutes before leaving. He wrote that he had not felt strong enough to tell me in person what he would now tell me in writing.
He wrote that he liked me, particularly my personality, my intelligence, and my wardrobe. He added that he did not want to hurt me in any way, knowing how sensitive I was. However, he did not think we should see each other again, mainly because he did not have any genuine sexual interest in me, and he did not want to continue pretending otherwise. He revealed that he had a fetish for slender blondes, at least since he had first seen the character Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston, on that Nineties television series Friends. He would even fantasize about Rachel while having sex with me. (I am neither slender nor blonde myself.) He had made the ultimate sacrifice and had sex with me out of sympathy, having concluded that Aspies tended not to receive much attention from potential sexual partners. He wrote that his parents had treated countless unattached Aspies�thirty- and forty-year-old virgins who had expressed little interest in pursuing relationships, but who, he argued, were obviously �fricking lonely.� (Did he think he had deflowered me?) He ended the e-mail by calling me �one of a kind, forever and ever.�
Did he still consider me one of a kind, forever and ever, now that we had reunited in the PPG Aquarium? I did not know if I should ask him. I did not know if I should bring up our past relationship. I did know I wanted to tell him that I had received a raise at work due to my high productivity, from eight fifty-five an hour to eight eighty-five, thus bringing myself closer to what he did not know I considered his lofty economic stratum.
END
I read a different version of the above story aloud at the 2007 Western Pennsylvania A/V Jamboree, at the Andy Warhol Museum, on September 28, 2007. (I had written the story for the occasion, due to Andy Warhol's having allegedly been autistic.) Thanks to Greg Pierce for asking me to participate.--DVM, October 1, 2007
@#$%-ing Fiction. ^&*(-ing Home. Fucking awesome %$#&.
� 2007 David V. Matthews