Do You Think This Is Strange?

by Aaron Cully Drake

  We stood that way.

  Why don’t you say something? the threads asked.

  What should I say? I asked back.

  We got nothing, the threads admitted.

  The lunch bell rang. So I knew what to say.

  “Let’s go get lunch.”

  She nodded and we walked to the cafeteria in silence. On the way there, the threads kept asking the same question.

  Why is your heart beating so fast?

  A TEMPORARY PHONENAPPING

  We sat at the lunch table. I sat directly across from her. It made it harder to look at the wall, but I did it anyway.

  For the first few minutes, we said nothing. I chewed my cheeseburger, and she ate her sandwich. When she finished it, she pulled out her journal and began to draw spiralling circles, triangles nested inside each other, zigzag lines.

  “Danny Hardwick called me a retard,” I said. “But I’m not a retard.”

  She paused, then began sketching again.

  A moment later, my phone vibrated.

  I’ll be late tonight, my father texted. Thaw out some chili.

  Okay, I replied.

  Then two things, two unexpected behaviours, happened in rapid succession.

  The first unexpected behaviour was that Saskia lunged across the table and snatched my phone out of my hands. It happened so quickly that I flinched only a split second after she had pulled it from me.

  That was the second unexpected behaviour: I flinched. I am rarely surprised. I am rarely alarmed. My dad stopped shouting Boo! at me when I was five years old because it never startled me.

  But Saskia startled me.

  She sat back and I leaned forward, mouth open, staring at the phone in her hands. She tapped away, swiped left, then right. Her thumbs flying, she typed something. Then she stopped. For a second she regarded the phone, my phone, tapped and swiped the screen two more times, then put it on the table. She pushed the phone toward me even as her free hand began to draw in her journal.

  I reached over and took back my phone.

  She had entered herself as a contact.

  TYPE H FOR HELP

  I lay my phone on the lunch table in front of me. I didn’t touch it. I stared at it as if it were nearly dead but could leap up at any moment. I was at a loss for what to do, and the threads were of little help.

  Could you just delete her from your contact list? they suggested.

  I could.

  She stole your phone. Should you report her?

  I could do that, too.

  You could text her.

  I hadn’t considered that.

  —

  I’ve had a phone in my pocket for the last four years. It’s rung nineteen times. Each time, except once, it was Bill, and each time our conversation was short. But I haven’t had a phone call from him for nine months. He learned to text message me. Where the hell are you? he usually texts.

  Few others have messaged me. I made the mistake of giving my number to Oscar Tolstoy and he had bombarded me with text messages on the hour.

  The newest edition of the Beckett price guide is in bookstores today, he texted.

  I didn’t reply.

  A rookie card is the first licensed issue from a major manufacturer, he texted, and not the first card on which an athlete appears.

  I didn’t reply.

  Ken Griffey Jr.’s rookie card was not included in the Topps base set of baseball cards, he texted.

  I changed my phone number.

  Now my phone lies dormant, save for the messages from Bill that seep through. I like the sudden slight surprise when my phone vibrates, informing me that a rare new text has arrived. I like the special moment in between picking up the phone and looking at the message. I like the momentary stuttering of the threads, as they shoulder each other to the side.

  Who’s calling? the threads demand.

  Well, let’s find out.

  And then I see it’s Bill. So I put the phone back in my pocket.

  Oh well, the threads shrug. False alarm.

  But now there was a new name that could potentially appear on my phone. My list of contact was now my list of contacts.

  I stared at the phone. I considered sending a text to Saskia. It merited consideration: I had never texted someone except in response.

  Why would you text her? the threads asked.

  We could communicate about chemistry class.

  What is there to communicate about?

  Nothing.

  Try again.

  I could have texted her to come to lunch instead of having to find her.

  But she may not have answered. She was with Danny Hardwick.

  But she didn’t want to be with him.

  She needed your help.

  She can text me when she needs help.

  That works.

  I typed, This is a test text message and sent it to her.

  Very nice, said the threads. Smooth.

  Three minutes later, my phone vibrated. I looked at the message.

  this guns for higher

  Two minutes after that, she sent me another message.

  even if your just dancing in the dark

  A minute later, she texted me again.

  hey baby

  She did this three more times over the next fifteen minutes. I looked at each message but did nothing more. She was simply typing words, sending them to me. She was listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.” I could hear it playing on her headphones.

  —

  Later that day, near the end of chemistry class, she texted me as I read from my textbook.

  what are you doing

  “I’m studying chemistry,” I said to her.

  A minute later, she texted me again.

  what are you doing

  “I’m studying chemistry,” I said, annoyed.

  The third time she texted me to ask what I was doing, I opened my mouth to reply but stopped. Instead, I texted back:

  I’m studying chemistry. Do your work.

  all right

  goodbye

  Five minutes later:

  why

  Why what?

  why did you send me a test text

  You may need to text me, and I wanted you to have my number.

  why

  Because you may need my help.

  If you need help, type h.

  h

  Do you need help?

  no

  Only type h when you need help.

  only wen I need elp

  You can use h in words.

  it was a joke

  Okay.

  Five minutes later:

  say saskia do you want to try it

  Saskia, do you want to try it?

  h

  “Do you need help?” I asked.

  She put the phone down and lifted her hands, clasping them open and shut quickly. She picked up the phone.

  no thanks

  goodbye

  We continued our studies.

  I don’t remember what I was studying. Just that it was with my friend.

  JACK SWEAT

  In my life, I’ve had four true friends, although I am not counting Gordon, my hamster. My parents were the first two. Saskia Stiles was and is the third.

  The fourth was Jack Sweat, and we became friends because he was a brute of a young man, plain in form and function. His eyes were intense, his tone deep, and his words sparse. He preferred the language of motion and that was why we were friends.

  He attended a nondescript school three blocks from his home and was the captain of the wrestling team. He could have gone to any number of schools. Everyone wanted him, but a public school got him. He needed to be close to home: on weekends and some evenings, he worked at his father’s store, the Butcher’s Shop.

  Jack Sweat was one of the few people who still stayed around after I told him I was autistic. He said he didn’t hold it against me. And then he hit me.

  But I hit him back, so
we were even.

  —

  Behind the Butcher’s Shop was a boxing club called the Butcher’s Gym. Both were owned by Jack’s father, Leonard Sweat. In his prime, before he became a butcher by trade, he was known as one by name. He was the Butcher in the simplest of ways: a relentless fighter, he never quit, was never knocked down, and never failed to finish a fight. At the end of twelve rounds, he sometimes looked like a slab of meat.

  In the end, his career battled itself to a draw and he hung up his gloves. The Butcher turned his nickname into a name when he bought a meat shop at the edge of downtown. After that, he opened a gym and trained others for a different kind of meat processing. That was where I met Jack Sweat for the first time.

  —

  I opened my eyes and I was fourteen, standing outside the Butcher’s Gym. Bill drove me down, dropped me off, and drove away, all at my request. “You don’t want your dad walking you in to get boxing lessons, do you?” he said, and then he nodded. “Fair enough. Who would want that?”

  The front of the Butcher’s Gym is painted yellow and black. Plate glass runs across most of it, floor to ceiling. When people look inside, they see a boxing ring and an octagon and someone training in at least one of them. From seven in the morning to ten at night, the gym is never empty.

  Except on Sundays, when the gym is closed. Nobody gets to beat anyone up on the Sabbath.

  I walked in the front door of the Butcher’s Gym and stood at the edge of the carpet. The place was hot; it smelled like wet socks. A compressor ran in the corner, cooling the meat in the freezer of the Butcher’s Shop next door. It made an overriding background noise so consistent in tone and tremor that, within thirty seconds of being in the room, the sound was forgotten.

  An athlete methodically punched the third heavy bag in a row of five. A man with a white towel on his shoulder held the bag. When he saw me, he let go and walked over.

  He was short with a thick brow, feral eyes, hairy arms and hands. His face bore the history of someone who had boxed all his life. His nose skewed at arguing angles, his ears cauliflowered, and thick scar tissue made his forehead look armour plated.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  “I’m here against my will,” I said. The man looked at me, frowning.

  No, that’s not right, a thread said. Try again.

  I said, “I want to talk to the Butcher.”

  “Well, I guess you’re talking to him. What do you want?”

  “I want to fight.”

  When he got close enough, he could see the fading bruises on my face. “I’d say you’ve done enough fighting already.”

  “No,” I said. “The other boys fought. I was what they fought. But I didn’t fight them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “So you’re looking to get some revenge.”

  “I don’t want revenge.”

  “What do you want?”

  Even before the words finished coming out of my mouth, I knew that I was saying things wrong. “I don’t want to end up looking like you,” I said.

  I estimated that I had angered him, because he said, “Are you fucking with me, kid?”

  “No,” I answered. “If I don’t learn how to fight, I will get beat up, and I will end up with damage to my face that may become permanent, and it may resemble the permanent damage that you have on your face.”

  “Holy ratshit, you don’t filter the things out of your mouth, do you?” His jaw was tense. I saw the muscles flexing rapidly. “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen years, seven months, and nine days. I was born at 12:35 AM, at Eagle Ridge Hospital, which is the same place that the ambulance took me—”

  He held up his hand. “Shut up,” he explained. “No wonder you got shitkicked.”

  “I wasn’t kicked,” I said. “I was punched. I was punched twenty-one times.”

  “Can’t say I am surprised. You got a mouth.”

  “I have autism.”

  The Butcher frowned. “You have a what-ism?”

  “I’m autistic.”

  “You mean pencils and paints and such?”

  “I am not artistic,” I said. “I have Autistic Spectrum Disorder. It is a neurological condition that affects one in every one hundred and eight people.”

  He paused. Then his eyebrows raised with enlightenment. “Like Rain Man.”

  “The character in Rain Main was a stereotype of someone with autism.”

  “Can you count cards, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re lippy.”

  “I have difficulty understanding subtleties in conversation. I interpret things literally. I reply literally.”

  The Butcher scratched the grey stubble on his chin and nodded. “And so you pissed someone off. Maybe more than one someone?”

  I didn’t answer.

  A boxer walked over and stood beside the Butcher. He was sweating profusely. His hands were wrapped with brown bandaging. He appeared a little older than me. He looked first at the Butcher, then at me. He nodded. It was Jack. Jack Sweat.

  “How did you hurt your hands?” I asked him.

  Looking down at his wrapped hands, he said, “Seriously? Are you a retard?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not retarded.”

  “He’s artistic,” the Butcher said.

  “Artistic?” asked Jack.

  “I’m autistic,” I corrected.

  “So what?”

  “He wants to fight,” said the Butcher.

  Jack looked at me, at my fading bruises. “Looks like you got your wish.”

  The Butcher shook his head. “If you’ve got a mental thing, then maybe this ain’t the right thing for you.”

  “Autism isn’t brain damage. It’s a neurological disorder. Depression is a neurological disorder. You would let depressed people box.”

  The Butcher laughed. I believe he inferred that I was making a joke. “They’d be awful slow fighters if they were depressed,” he said and laughed again. Jack laughed.

  I turned my lips up and smiled along. This was going well, I thought. At that moment, I realized I should say something humorous.

  Which is typically how my conversations implode.

  —

  I am unable to crack a joke. I am not a humorous person. Bill tells me it’s because of my autism, but I know many non-autistic people who are not humorous. Therefore, I suspect it is a condition of my character. I am not funny. Not deliberately, anyway.

  I have a large mental repository of riddles and jokes, but they’re filed according to their facts, and according to the humour within. If I tell a joke, it will be based on physical similarities with the present.

  For instance, on June 2, 2009, Bill put down his newspaper at the breakfast table and shook his head. “Goddamn Christ,” he said. “An Air France plane went down. Two hundred and twenty-eight people were killed.”

  He looked directly at me, and I suspected I was supposed to say something. I think I was wrong. I should have said nothing. But I didn’t.

  I did a search of my memory and returned several things:

  Once when browsing through Wikipedia, I had ended up on the Air France page.

  I had arrived there by a long, convoluted route that began with “pop music.” On this route, I had travelled through Rihanna’s Wikipedia page.

  Rihanna dated a man named Chris Brown, who was charged with assault after he hit her.

  The most important relations were then tied together, and the strongest correlation to these three items was a joke that I read two years previous.

  “Why do so many husbands hit their wives?” I asked.

  “Huh?” My father stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Many husbands hit their wives for a reason. Do you know what the reason is?”

  “What does that—” my father started, then he stopped. “I don’t know. Tell me what the reason is, Freddy,” he said.

  “Beca
use they just won’t listen,” I responded.

  My father did not reply. He shook his head slowly and returned to reading his newspaper. At the time, I thought he had obtained the information he was looking for and was satisfied with my answer.

  —

  Being unable to make spontaneous humour, I try not tell jokes. But sometimes, when I judge the situation as appropriate, I attempt to make a joke.

  “They’d be awful slow fighters, if they were depressed,” the Butcher said to Jack, and chuckled.

  I said, “What do you call a boxer about to graduate tenth grade?”

  He continued smiling. “I give up,” he said.

  “Eighteen,” I told him.

  His smile froze, then dropped. He stared at me and did not say anything.

  I had read several web articles about comedians on stage who have had their jokes greeted by silence. I had an appropriate response at hand.

  “Is this mic on?” I said.

  THE ONLY JOKE I EVER TOLD MY MOM

  I opened my eyes and I was six. It was midday. My mother, father, and I sat at the kitchen table. I stared at my hands, folded on the table.

  “Are we going to have a snack?” I asked hopefully.

  “No, Freddy,” my mother said. “We aren’t. Instead, you are going to sit with us and we’re going to have a conversation.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I want you to tell me a joke.”

  Outside, a dog barked. Down the street, I could hear the laughter of playing children.

  “I know a lot of jokes,” I said.

  “I know,” my mother said.

  “I’ve read books of jokes.”

  “Tell us one of those jokes, then,” she said. She brushed some loose hair away from my face.

  A joke instantly sprang to mind; I was reminded of it because my mom had brushed away the same loose hair four weeks earlier, while I was watching a news item about complaints that the smell of a pig farm was ruining the pleasure of the people who used a nearby jogging path.

  “What’s the difference between a woman jogger and Wilbur the Pig?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Freddy,” my mother said. She smiled at me, her eyes eager and excited that I was about to tell her a joke. “What’s the difference between a woman jogger and Wilbur the Pig?”