Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

by John Elder Robison

10

  Collecting the Trash

  For a long time, I had been considering how to escape my parents’ house. When I was fifteen, my father had bought a motorcycle to commute to school. He wouldn’t let me ride it, but it got me thinking about a bike of my own. I asked everyone I knew about motorcycles for sale. I scanned the classified ads for a cheap motorcycle. Finally, I found one. I bought a 1966 Honda Dream for twenty-five dollars. Once I made it run, I was able to get away, at least temporarily. It was with the possibility of escape in mind that I followed my parents to their friend Walter Henderson’s fortieth birthday party. My parents were always on their best behavior when they were out in public, so I knew they would not turn on me. And I would be downtown, where it would be easy to get away if things got strange.

  Slave and Stupid seldom did anything together. However, they both liked the Hendersons, so they headed to Walter’s birthday party together. I liked Walter, too—at least what I knew of him. He taught English at Amherst College and wore a brown corduroy jacket. He was always an interesting fellow to talk to, and he seemed moderately interested in me. For some reason, my parents really wanted me to go to his party.

  I had never gone to a faculty party before. They were for grown-ups—usually my parents’ friends. Some of their friends were okay, but others seemed to me arrogant and conceited, and it was starting to make me angry. I knew I was some kind of misfit, but it was becoming apparent that some of the grown-ups who smiled sweetly and told me how terrible and fucked-up I was were complete fuckups themselves. And my experience in the music scene had shown me that there were places in the world where misfits were welcome.

  Slave said, “John Elder, Walter and Annette really like you. They really hope you’ll come to their party.” Maybe they like me, I thought. Or maybe they think I’ll be entertaining because I’m weird. Yes, that was more likely. They thought I was weird.

  Stupid said, “It’s up to you, son, but they did invite you. If you ignore invitations, pretty soon they stop coming in.”

  As if I ever got invited to parties.

  I decided to go, but I didn’t ride with them. I went on my motorcycle. When we arrived, a big crowd was milling around in Walter’s yard. They had a tent set up, and a table with food, and what looked like a band. Everyone was dressed better than me. They probably all have good educations, respectable jobs, and families, I thought. But I figured, I’m clean. I shower every day. I’ll be okay here.

  Walter had had cards printed for the occasion. He gave me one when we arrived. It said:

  WALTER HENDERSON, 40

  Lecturer, 40 different topics

  Traveler, 40 different countries

  Chef, 40 different courses

  Lover, 40 different women

  This was going to be my kind of party, I could already tell.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there. Annette saw me and led me over to talk to one of her friends. I guess she meant well. After a brief introduction, she flitted off to take care of the next guest. Her friend George turned out to be a rather pompous professor who tried to engage me in conversation.

  “We have a son about your age,” he told me. “We’re very proud of him. He’s starting at Harvard in the fall.” Just then, another couple walked over and the woman said, “Our daughter Janet has decided to go to Smith. So she’ll be nearby for four more years! What are you doing?”

  All three of them looked at me.

  I wasn’t doing anything in particular. I certainly wasn’t going to Harvard. Somehow, I was in the improbable position of scoring in the ninety-ninth percentile on the intelligence tests and still flunking out of high school.

  I was sure this crowd would just sneer at the idea of my growing reputation with local bands, so I decided not to mention it.

  “I’ve actually started on a career,” I said.

  “Really? What are you doing?” This came from Thurston, another pompous friend of Annette’s. Thurston, a department head at Amherst College, was far removed from making any career choices himself. He stood there, drink in hand, with a superior smile. Perhaps he was thinking of visiting his Thugwald, or whatever his son’s name was, at Yale.

  “I’ve gotten into the waste management business. Down in Springfield. They’ve started me right at the bottom so I can really learn the business. On a truck, in the North End.”

  “You mean you’re a garbage collector?” someone asked, polite but incredulous. Garbage collectors were not usually seen at Amherst College faculty parties. Garbage collectors came in afterward and emptied the trash. They didn’t participate in creating the trash with their intellectual betters.

  I smiled back.

  “We don’t call ourselves garbage collectors. We are Sanitary Engineers.”

  By this time, another older fellow had stepped over to join the conversation. I didn’t know him, but with his curly hair, tweed coat, and bow tie, he probably wasn’t a Sanitary Engineer.

  “I’m an engineer. I went to college for eight years for the privilege. I don’t think a mere city garbage collector has the credentials to call himself an engineer.”

  I decided to change the subject.

  “You know, we see all kinds of things. Just last week one of my buddies found a dead baby in the Dumpster behind one of the dorms at the college.”

  That was met with shocked silence.

  “We heard the mother was a student there. No one knows why she threw the baby away. Her father was the president of some big company. But she’s in jail now.”

  There were now six people gathered around. I had given them something to think about. Would their kids do anything like that? One of the moms forced a smile and said, “It must be hard being out there in all kinds of weather.”

  “The weather isn’t the problem. We can take weather. It’s the packs of wild dogs and the feral children you really have to worry about.”

  “Feral children?” That surprised them.

  “We meet them in the rougher parts of town. Two of them hit one of our guys in the head with a beer bottle full of gravel. Cut him badly. Almost killed him. They’re worst when they’re in packs. And some of them carry knives.”

  My audience looked shocked. “Can you get a police escort?” one asked.

  “No, the police don’t care. They have their own problems. It’s a city, you know. We’ve started carrying billy clubs. They won’t let us carry guns. A few of the guys carry motorcycle chains. They wear ’em like necklaces. A punk with a knife is no match for one of us, swinging a motorcycle chain.”

  I let them digest that for a moment. They would see their local trashman in a whole new light after that. They looked horrified, but they couldn’t help themselves. I was not your usual faculty party entertainment.

  “What do your parents think of your new career?”

  “They wanted me to go to medical school, but when I told them how much money my boss makes, they were impressed. He does a lot better than any doctor I know. So I guess they’re proud of me.”

  “How does your boss do so well?” asked a bookish-looking fellow who had recently walked up.

  “Tips. We get tips everywhere we go.”

  “I’ve never heard of that. Who gives a garbage man tips? I’ve never done that.” The woman who was speaking sounded pretty sure of herself. No tips for her garbage man.

  “Well, if you’re in the city, and you don’t want the dumpster to spill shit all over your steps when they pick it up, you tip the trashman. One of those dumpsters can do a lot of damage if it falls on a car. A well-tipped driver makes sure that doesn’t happen. And if you’ve got a restaurant, you make sure you tip good, otherwise your trash overflows, you have trouble with rats, and the health inspector shuts you down.”

  Inspired by the appalled silence, I continued.

  “Did you read about that burger joint on Boston Road? Whole kitchen was full of rats. Little girl went in the bathroom and got bit. It was savage; her arms were all chewed up. And just nine year
s old. That place probably won’t ever reopen. They didn’t pay their Sanitary Engineer, and look what happened.”

  “Excuse me, may I talk to you a second?” said Annette. She and my mother had caught me entertaining their friends. They steered me away from the group. I moved toward the food table, picked up the shrimp platter, which had only eleven shrimp remaining on it, and began to eat. I was having a fine time.

  “John Elder, what are you going to do? You can’t lead those people on like that! They believe you!”

  “Well, you invited me.” And they had. But they wouldn’t do so again.

  “Hey, Annette, I’ve got a question for you. Which is easier to load on a garbage truck? A pile of bowling balls, or a pile of dead babies?”

  “I don’t know,” she said sullenly.

  “Dead babies. You can use a pitchfork.”

  My mother and Annette looked sick. They were both sorry they had invited me. I wasn’t worried. I was sure Walter would see the whole thing as humorous. I ate the last shrimp.

  “I’ll go apologize to your friends. You wait here.”

  I walked back to the group of garbage aficionados I had collected.

  “Folks, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go. They just called from work. Emergency. One of the other garbage companies firebombed one of our trucks. They’re calling all of us in. See you later.”

  And with that, I walked quickly to my motorcycle, put on my helmet and leather jacket, and kicked over the engine. The back wheel spun up little clumps of grass as I rode away, my crazy parents and their friends receding in the rearview mirror.

  11

  The Flaming Washtub

  Visiting my friend Jim Boughton’s house was another of my escapes. We had similar interests, Jim and I. Rocketry. High-powered electricity. Explosives. Motorcycles. Fast cars. Jim lived about five miles away, in South Amherst. He was two years older than me, blond and heavyset, with a slightly demented look. He lived in a big old Victorian home that was owned by Amherst College, where his parents taught theater. The house was ours to wreck.

  “Don’t worry,” Jim would say, as debris spattered the outside of the house. “Amherst College will fix it.”

  The Amherst College maintenance staff mowed the lawn, repainted the interior, and fixed all of our destruction. My father taught at the university, which was low-rent compared to Amherst. We didn’t get a free house, and no one fixed anything. The holes I smashed in the doors at thirteen were still there three years later.

  “Come check out what I built,” Jim called and said one day.

  Jim had been working feverishly on a top secret project, and it seemed he had finally gotten it to work. When I arrived at his house, he led me out to the shed, which stood about fifty feet behind his parents’ house. Sitting in the middle of the floor was a burned-looking concrete barrel with a steel frame above it, from which a chain dropped into the barrel. A hose connected the barrel to a huge silver tank of propane.

  “That’s my new furnace,” he said proudly.

  Another eighteen-year-old would have shown off his new car, or his new guitar, or his new camera. Jim showed off his new blast furnace. He had built the whole thing himself, right there in the shed. He had made the pliers and tongs and equipment to handle molten metal. He had made the frames to hold the ceramic furnace body. And he had made the burner. Amazingly, almost everything was constructed from scrap. I was sure there was nothing else like it in Amherst.

  “You’ve got your very own steel mill,” I said.

  “No. It’s not a steel mill. You need oxygen injection to get the higher temperatures needed for steel. This is a nonferrous foundry for casting aluminum and bronze.” I was a good audience. The average layperson would not have appreciated the distinction.

  “Wanna see it work?” he asked. Without waiting for my agreement, he walked over and turned a switch. I heard the sound of a fan picking up speed.

  “I’ve got two high-capacity vacuum cleaner blowers forcing air into the furnace. It’s not as good as oxygen injection but it’s free.”

  The sound of the fans got louder as they sped up. “I’m using the most powerful fans I could find at Grainger’s, down in Springfield,” Jim said. Those fans could move air. Inside the garage, my hair was starting to blow.

  “Now we turn on the propane and light it off.”

  Jim turned what looked like a water faucet down low on the side of the machine. The smell of propane filled the garage.

  “Ignition!”

  He grinned, lit a ball of paper trash, and tossed it in the barrel.

  There was a loud bang, and I was stunned for a second. A bright flash and the propane odor had vanished. If the shed had had windows, they would have blown out. But it didn’t have windows, at least not since the first time the furnace had been fired up.

  Once lit, it sounded like a jet engine at idle. I looked over the top of the barrel and saw flames swirling in the chamber.

  “Let’s crank it up,” he said, as if it wasn’t cranked already. He turned a big rheostat and the fans sped up as he turned the faucet to let more propane into the burner.

  “We have to keep the propane mixture right,” he said. “A yellow flame means carbon monoxide. We want an almost colorless blue flame.”

  The roar was increasing to the point where I needed earplugs. Blue flames came out the top of the barrel. The roar was incredible, unbearable. So was the heat.

  “Let’s melt some metal,” he grinned. We tossed chunks of scrap aluminum into a bucket, which I quickly discovered was not a bucket when Jim corrected me.

  “It’s a number forty silicon carbide crucible. It holds forty pounds of aluminum or a hundred and twenty pounds of bronze. Molten, that is.”

  The aluminum chunks, former automobile transmissions, were about to liquefy.

  Wearing heavy gloves, Jim hooked the crucible to the chains and used a pole to move it over the furnace. Then he lowered the crucible inside. The sound of the furnace changed slightly as it swallowed the metal. After a few seconds, the chain that dropped down into the barrel was glowing dull red, just like the barrel top. I was afraid to step over and look inside, but I did anyway. It had only been a few moments and already the hard edges of the broken metal were softening in the intense heat. His furnace looked like a jet engine running in a gardener’s shed in South Amherst.

  I opened the door to get some air, but Jim motioned me to close it.

  “The roar antagonizes the neighbors. They might call the police.” The police had visited Jim and his inventions in the past. We certainly didn’t need them there again.

  Jim pulled the chain and the crucible came up out of the furnace, glowing hot. He pulled it on the track and gripped it with long metal tongs. He handed me some gloves and another pair of tongs.

  “You can help me pour.”

  I held the pouring shank—a long pole with a hoop in the middle that Jim had welded up in his garage workshop. Jim carefully set the crucible in the shank. He scooped the slag off the top, then slowly and smoothly poured the molten metal into a gray box on the floor. Steam jetted from the corners of the box as he poured. The box contained tightly packed damp sand. The object he wanted to mold in aluminum had been inserted into the damp sand, and then carefully withdrawn. The process was surprisingly delicate.

  “It’ll take a few minutes for the metal to harden, and we can crack the mold open.”

  He shut off the furnace. The fan spooled down, and the heat gradually diminished. Now that the noise was gone, he signaled that I could open the doors.

  We cracked the mold halves apart. There, inside, lay a perfectly formed pair of human arms cast in gray aluminum. I was impressed.

  “They’re Andy’s,” Jim said proudly. Andy was his little brother. He had posed, if you can call it that, in Jim’s sandbox while the arm molds were being made.

  Jim sprayed the arms with water, and steam filled the garage. He lifted an arm.

  “Look at the detail! Fingernails! Hair! Even f
ingerprints!” He was right. The casting was remarkably detailed.

  A few months later, Jim was working in the garage attached to his parents’ house. It was a big house with a big garage, which Jim had turned into his private auto repair shop. Jim had taken a huge soapstone washtub from the basement and made it into a parts-cleaning tank. He filled it with gasoline, which was flammable but very good for cleaning grease off old car parts.

  That night, Jim and I were helping our friend John and his girlfriend, Carol, rebuild their VW engine. The engine block and a pile of other parts were soaking in the tank as we stood around, tinkering and drinking beer. Jim had installed a pump in the washtub to circulate the gasoline. It cleaned better if it was moving, but we couldn’t run the pump all the time because the vapors were dangerous, and cleaning is a slow process. The gas was getting dirty, I guess. We’d already gone through a whole case of Old Milwaukee, and less than half the parts were clean. It was after eleven, too late for more beer. We’d have to make do with what we had.

  Jim walked over to plug the pump in, and a spark jumped clean across the garage. In an instant, the tub of gasoline was on fire. It seemed like the whole place was on fire. With all the fumes, it probably was.

  “Fuck!”

  “Fire!”

  “Get out!”

  “Now! Run!”

  I was close to the door, so I jumped out, leaving my beer behind. All of a sudden, the seventy-five-degree night air felt cold. I didn’t seem to be on fire, and I didn’t feel damaged. I was lucky, I guess.

  Everyone scattered through the open door, into the safety of the yard. Everyone but Jim. We could see him in the flame-filled garage. His arm was on fire. He took off his glove and swatted it, and the fire went out.

  In only a matter of seconds, flames from the tub were hitting the garage ceiling. Yet Jim was still in there. He moved to the flaming tub, crouched low. With a mighty shove, he pushed the tub of burning gas and car parts out the door and into the driveway. It came to rest about twenty feet away.