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

by John Elder Robison

  In those days, seeing the members of KISS at all, let alone without their heavy and wild makeup, was a very big deal. So they actually sent him to the school psychologist over this “crazy fantasy” that he insisted was true!

  I accompanied him to school the following day and set them straight. “What the hell is the matter with you people, hassling my little brother?” I asked the psychologist. At twenty-one, I had not learned about tact, but I knew how to be clear and assertive. And the memory of my own bad experience in the Amherst schools was still fresh in my mind.

  I don’t know if it was my honest face, my size, or my vulgarity that did the trick. Or possibly the photos, which I carried in the gold briefcase Ace had given me, the inside of which was decorated with KISS backstage passes. Whatever it was, the school did not challenge Varmint’s KISS tales ever again.

  “What a bunch of assholes,” I muttered to him on the way out.

  “Yeah,” he said. He followed my lead and quit school a few months later.

  It always struck me as funny, the way people acted. It was so incredible to them, the idea that I worked with KISS. I just thought of it as a fun job. Someone had to do it. Why not me?

  “I can’t believe you know Ace Frehley! He’s my absolute hero! What is he like?” Anna, the girl who worked behind the counter at Superior Pizzeria, gushed when I went in for my pepper and onion pies. I never knew how to respond to questions like that. They’re just musicians, I thought. What’s the big deal?

  I tried to answer, once. “He’s just a regular guy,” I said. “Dark hair, a little shorter than me.”

  “Stop!” she said. “He’s not a regular guy! And I know what he looks like!” And with that, she launched into five minutes of telling me what her hero was like. I slipped outside to polish my motorcycle. I had to escape, but I couldn’t leave until I got my food. She followed me outside.

  “What about Gene?”

  “Gene who?” I asked distractedly, as I polished my chrome exhaust pipe.

  “Gene Simmons!” she said. “Is it true, what they say? Can he really lick his own eyeballs?”

  Jesus Christ, I thought. This just doesn’t end…

  “Well,” I replied. “He does have a long tongue. And I know the girls really like him.” I did not know what else to say. Luckily, at that moment, her boss carried my pizza out the door and gave me the excuse I needed to escape Anna and NuttyRockStarWorld.

  I don’t know if it’s an Aspergian trait, or if it’s just me, but I was never affected by celebrity. No matter how famous a musician was, he was just a guy with a broken guitar or an idea for a sound effect to me. But I could never explain that simple reality to other people.

  “You’re just modest,” people said when they felt nice.

  “What an arrogant asshole you are,” they said when they felt nasty.

  The truth was, all I really saw were my engineering creations. To me, the guitar player was like the driver of a race car, and I was the guy that built and tuned the engine. So we were on the same team, but I wasn’t out there driving. I didn’t even see the racetrack. The engine was my world.

  15

  The Ferry to Detroit

  I called home every week when I was on the road with KISS that first season. There were no cell phones in those days, so calling home was harder than it is today. Motels had phones, but that was a real racket, with some sleazy innkeepers charging a dollar a minute for long distance. We carried our own telephones on the tour, in a big trunk with the other production office gear. As soon as we arrived at a new concert hall, we’d plug in to the switchboard and start dialing.

  I always called Varmint. He seemed to miss me and I know he liked to hear from me. He was fourteen years old that summer.

  Sometimes he had weird news of life in Northampton, where our mother had deposited him during her most recent bout of psychosis. That summer, he was living with Dr. Finch and his followers in a falling-down house near the center of town. The house had the atmosphere of a cult, and for that reason I seldom went there.

  Sometimes his tone was urgent, as when I called from some civic center in the Midwest and he said, “John Elder, can I come see you? Maybe tomorrow?”

  I realized something was up. He must want me to buy him something, I thought. With our father on the skids and an unemployed and nutty mom, I was shaping up as Varmint’s cash drawer. In fact, it seemed like the Varmint’s need for things was increasing even faster than my income. When he was little, he had dressed himself in aluminum foil. Now that he was older, he wanted designer clothes, and he figured I was the one to buy them. I looked forward to the day Varmint got a job.

  “Okay,” I said, “go to the AirKaman terminal at Bradley Field at six o’clock tomorrow. I’ll fly you out to our show in Cleveland.”

  I picked him up in a Cadillac. I rented Cadillacs whenever I could, despite the business manager’s whining about the expense. Varmint and I both liked them. They were always brand-new and they had a distinctive smell. Also, our grandmother had driven them when we were little, so we felt right at home.

  I always treated my rented Caddies with respect, except for the time I loaned one to our pyrotechnics guy and he gave it to two stewardesses from Chattanooga. At least, they said they were stewardesses. They vanished with the car and Avis wanted to charge the whole thing—twenty thousand dollars—to my American Express card. Eventually, they found the car parked at the Charlotte airport. We never saw the stewardesses again. The band’s business manager settled the bill.

  I never loaned my Cadillacs to the crew after that.

  The airport we flew into at Cleveland was way out of town. But as soon as we got there, my little brother started in on me.

  “Where’s the mall?” he asked. He hasn’t been here ten minutes and already he wants to shop! I thought. Well, there were malls back home. He didn’t need to be flown a thousand miles by jet to visit a mall.

  “I need new clothes.” He was trying to be reasonable.

  Not wanting to let him loose on a buying spree, I turned off the highway into a residential neighborhood.

  “There are no stores here.” I gestured into the empty darkness.

  Varmint looked around. We were in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but houses, and even those were increasingly far apart. It was a very dark night, and there were not many street lights. We had not even passed a 7-Eleven or a gas station.

  Varmint knew there must be malls to serve the houses.

  I had a sudden inspiration. Maybe I could pull it off. Varmint was a lot harder to trick now that he was older. But maybe…

  “Varmint, there are no stores here. None at all. If you just came out here to shop, you’re going to be disappointed. Cleveland is a religious community. That’s what the name means. They’re Clevites.”

  “What are Clevites?” he asked, skeptical. But I saw a hint of possibility.

  “They are very religious people. They founded this city. They worship Saint Cleve, the patron saint of harvests. They’re like the Shakers back home.”

  What could he say to that? He’d seen them worship the saints in Mexico. Slave had taken him there a few years back when she was looking for inspiration for her paintings. I continued. I had him now.

  “Frankly, I was shocked to hear they allowed KISS to play here. Usually, they have gospel performers in places like this. You know, Varmint, there are other religious communities like this scattered around the country. The Mennonites. The Amish. The Moonies. They would never host a KISS concert. Not in a million years. But times are changing. We could be playing for the Mormons soon. In Salt Lake City.”

  But he couldn’t get shopping out of his mind.

  “I really need new clothes. Look, I brought pictures.” He had Calvin Klein ads, and clippings from People and US magazines with nattily dressed stars and models. He had cut out his favorites and made a kind of collage. It would have been cute if he wasn’t using it to shake five hundred dollars out of me.

  “I can�
�t look at that junk while I’m driving.” I should have put him in the trunk, I thought. He was bouncing on the seat. The magazines were still in his hand. He wasn’t letting go of this idea.

  “Varmint, you don’t get it. There are no retail stores in Cleveland. None. They just have churches, gas stations, and grocery stores. That’s all.”

  “What do we do?” He said that as if it were my problem.

  “I know what I’m doing. We have a show tomorrow, at Richfield Coliseum. I’m working. You can come along. You can see the new explosives we just rigged up for ‘Rock and Roll All Night.’’’

  “But I need new clothes.” He was whining now. I had a fresh inspiration. Varmint was lucky I could think on my feet. Most big brothers would have run out of ideas and smacked him silly. But I was just getting started.

  “Look, if you really want to shop, you can take a taxi to the waterfront and catch the ferry to Detroit. It’s ninety miles away, across Lake Erie. But I gotta warn you, it’s a shameful scene, Varmint. I wouldn’t do it, myself.”

  I could conjure an image of the ferry landing clearly in my mind. It was a scene straight from the Bible. Sodom and Gomorrah. Worship of Graven Images. Depraved, orgiastic sinners waiting to be smitten by a vengeful God. All that and more, right there at the Cleveland dockyards. My inspiration took wing.

  “It’s a sick scene, Varmint. All these greedy people, burning with lust to buy. Drinking, joking, jostling each other around. Gathered around the dock waiting for the ferry like junkies waiting for a heroin fix. I’m not going over there. And besides, I have clothes. I don’t need new ones.”

  “Your clothes are disgusting,” he said with a sneer. “They’re dirty and they’re not stylish at all.”

  “Well, I’m not spending the day on a ferry to go shopping. What if it sinks?”

  “Do they sink?”

  “Shit, Varmint, you’ll be out of sight of land for hours while you’re crossing Lake Erie. You heard that song about the Edmund Fitzgerald, right? By Gordon Lightfoot? The Edmund Fitzgerald was a ship. Nine hundred feet long. It sank without a trace in a storm.”

  “Yes…” He was not sure how to respond to that.

  “That was here, Varmint. On the Great Lakes.”

  The image of a nine-hundred-foot ship sinking, right there, did not seem to bother him at all. His need to buy was very, very strong.

  “Twenty-nine people drowned. The whole crew.”

  “Well, if it’s a nice day, I’m going anyway.”

  I tried to reassure him since he had made up his mind.

  “When you get to the ferry terminal, if waves are breaking over the dock, don’t go. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he agreed, but he hoped the weather would be nice. “You can drive me there in the morning and we’ll check it out.”

  “I don’t know how to get there. And I have to work. Take a taxi. I’ll give you two hundred dollars for clothes and money for the taxi and the ferry. But you’ll have to get yourself there.”

  “Thanks, John Elder.” He figured he’d won.

  We walked down the hall to our room. Our security staff had set up a roadblock to keep unwanted fans from our corner of the hotel. They knew Varmint.

  We met Ace and one of the crew coming the other way.

  “Heeeey! It’s Baby Ampie!”

  “And Big Ampie!”

  Varmint did not really like being called Baby Ampie. He said, “I’m going to Detroit on the ferry. To get new clothes.”

  “Well far fucking out, Baby Ampie. Have a beer!”

  Varmint backed away. We continued to our room, and I showed Varmint where he could sleep, on the floor by the window. There were two beds in the room, but I was using one for myself and the other as a workbench.

  “I’m not sleeping on the floor. Clear that stuff off the bed!”

  “Varmint, you should be grateful for what you’ve got. I used four thousand gallons of jet fuel to get you here. And now you want a bed, too?”

  My little brother had no concept of the cost or trouble to bring him there. I didn’t, either, but he didn’t know that. I looked at the bed and considered the situation. If I put him on the floor, he’d whine all night. If I locked him in the hall, he’d make a scene. I decided to let him sleep on the workbench bed.

  “Okay, help me move this stuff carefully onto the dresser. But first we have to remove the TV so we have some space. Get me the Phillips screwdriver from the tool kit.”

  Working together, we made a place for Varmint to sleep. Through it all, he did not show the least bit of interest in any of the electronic devices I was working on. I was disappointed.

  It was clear that Varmint was not going to be able to sleep until he knew what was happening tomorrow with his shopping trip and the ferry ride. So he worked up his courage and headed for the front desk.

  He got up on tiptoe to lean on the counter. Assuming a worldly expression, he said, “So where do I catch the ferry to Detroit?”

  The clerk, a twenty-year-old farm girl with pimples, responded with a blank look.

  “The ferry to Detroit,” he said again, slowly, in case she was too dense to hear the first time.

  “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh…I don’t know,” she mumbled, with a dazed look. The help at the motels we visited was not always of the highest caliber.

  Varmint returned quickly and confronted me. “Is this a trick, John Elder?” But I was quick.

  “Look around. Decide for yourself. Have you seen a single retail establishment since we got here?”

  I had him there.

  “I dunno.” He was mumbling, too. He was confused. But he desperately wanted those clothes he’d seen in the magazines.

  “The high point of the year in this community is the Festival of Saint Cleve,” I told him. “Our concert is at the start of festival week. You didn’t see them come out of church and go on a shopping spree in Mexico, did you?”

  He realized I had a point.

  I dismissed the whole thing. “Ask around. Find someone else.”

  Varmint headed down the hall and I snuck after him to eavesdrop. He asked the first people he met. They were a sweet-looking middle-aged couple.

  “Excuse me. Do you know where I can catch the ferry to Detroit, please?” He was on his best behavior now.

  “Sorry, we’re from San Francisco.” They smiled at the nice boy with the blond curls. Nice people like them buy children like him and raise them as pets. But he didn’t want to be a pet today. He wanted clothes.

  He realized he needed a local. Maybe someone else who worked there. Someone a little more on the ball than the clerk at the desk. So he found a janitor shuffling down the back corridor. Surely he lived around there. He’d know.

  “Excuse me, where do I get the ferry to Detroit?” He was still polite.

  The janitor just stared at him across his barrel of mops and brooms and rags.

  “Whaaaaaaat?”

  “I need to go shopping. How do I get to the ferry?”

  “The ferry to Detroit? Waddaya, fuckin’ nuts? Ya wanna go shoppin’, ya go ta da fucking mall! Fuckin’ half mile up the road!” He turned around and shuffled off. “Fuckin’ idiot kid!” he muttered to himself as he rolled his barrel down the corridor. He coughed and spat on the carpet.

  Varmint stood there with a sick smile, realizing he’d been had. He didn’t say a thing.

  I retreated to my room, feeling very proud of myself. Anyone can trick a four-year-old, but it takes a master to trick one ten years older. I realized Varmint was getting bigger, and smarter. I might never be able to trick him like that again.

  Soon he would be too big to call Varmint. I would need to think of a new name for him. Chris, the name he came with, would never do.

  I took him to the mall the next day. He went home after the Cleveland show with a bag of fresh clothes, mostly satisfied. The next time I heard from him, he wanted me to buy him a new bike.

  16

  One with the Machine

 
Many people with Asperger’s have an affinity for machines. Sometimes I think I can relate better to a good machine than any kind of person. I’ve thought about why that is, and I’ve come up with a few ideas. One thought is that I control the machines. We don’t interact as equals. No matter how big the machine, I am in charge. Machines don’t talk back. They are predictable. They don’t trick me, and they’re never mean.

  I have a lot of trouble reading other people. I am not very good at looking at people and knowing whether they like me, or they’re mad, or they’re just waiting for me to say something. I don’t have problems like that with machines.

  I feel an affinity with many different kinds of machines. I’ll try to explain.

  Imagine yourself at a sold-out concert. You’re out on the floor—at what would be the fifty yard line if it were a football field—standing on a raised platform that holds the consoles that control the sound and lighting systems. You’re looking over a sea of heads toward the stage. It’s pitch-black, but you can see the NO SMOKING signs at the edges of the crowd. When the wind is right, you can smell the pot in the air. (Why is there wind in here, anyway?) The ceiling is so high, it seems like there might be clouds. And all around you, the crowd is moving. Churning. Laser pointers and cigarette lighters are flickering on and off like fireflies. The crowd is like a giant organism. It feels good to be standing above it, separate, with a little elbow room and a fence to keep people at bay.

  Even with nothing going on, it’s noisy. And you know the crowd can turn in the blink of an eye. You keep an ear open for gunshots. You worry about knives. You look down to see if the security guys are still in place in front of your platform. You are reassured to see them there, two weight lifters with black T-shirts that say “SECURITY” in big letters.