What's on my mind at present is some trouble I've caused a particular friend. It seems that I really upset him earlier today with our discussions and, what I thought was joking about, "the gays." There are a large number of ridiculous ideas that ignorant heterosexual people have about "gays" and the gay lifestyle, worldview, and so on. It should be noted that my friend, whom I'll call "Ned" for this post, is gay. During our discussion and joking, I told Ned about a really stupid comment a former supervisor of mine made a long time ago, about how gay guys like nice stuff, but they often can't afford it, and so they might be more inclined to steal. The supervisor didn't even make the comment to me, but to my boss at the time (who was also gay), and so I heard about it second hand. I tried to emphasize that I was paraphrasing as I told the story.
Now I would think that a comment like that would seem absurd to anyone with a rational mind. It seems as absurd to me as the idea of denying same-sex couples the right to civil unions. What difference does it make to one person if another person gets married or not? Surely a gay couple getting married couldn't possibly be seen as "devaluing" a heterosexual couple's marriage. That's ridiculous to me. It feels ridiculous in an empirical, absolute kind of way. A thinking person couldn't possibly believe such a thing, or have a problem with gay marriage, could they? But as I have learned so many times of late, what I think is often not what others think. This is called the Theory of Mind in the Aspergian circles. Neurotypicals, or nypicals, usually do not have a hard time imagining what others might think in any given situation. Aspies, on the other hand, are very very bad at this. I am, apparently, one such person.
In the situation I found myself today, I assumed that Ned would find my former supervisor's comment, and my former supervisor, absurd. We would shake our heads together, and then that would be it. Regrettably, something about the way I positioned the comment as I told it to Ned, and about how I unfortunately didn't believe that the supervisor would get in trouble for making the comment, really really upset him. He was asking me questions about it, and I soon started feeling cornered and misunderstood (which, as an Aspie, is a familiar feeling), and of course also became frustrated and angry. I just kept repeating, "I was paraphrasing," as if that would explain that I didn't think the supervisor would have put it in such a way that she could have gotten in trouble. That, of course, wasn't the point, but I was too wound up to see it then. We parted ways without resolving the issue, and even an Aspie could tell that Ned was angry at that point. Ned and I have not spoken since.
Now, my wife was there, and later I called her as she was driving to Chicago to find out what the hell happened. I didn't get why what I reported that some idiot had said was casting me as the bad guy in our discussion. I thought we were all against the stupid prejudices of the ignorant together! But my wife explained that I what I said then, and several other times earlier today, were "like sandpaper on an old wound. And eventually, that spot gets raw."
So here I am again, just like I was still a college freshman, being described as "abrasive." What upset me further about the whole situation was that I didn't realize I had been abrading Ned repeatedly. Of course I didn't, because I don't read people well. I've learned over time that my sense of humor, my blunt and frank way of speaking, and my overall demeanor are generally off-putting to people that don't know me, and merely tolerated by people that do know me. How depressing. Once again, I'm the asshole.
This kind of situation tends to keep me angry for quite a while, because I have nowhere to put the blame but on myself. Yet I didn't feel like I had done anything wrong, because, well, I didn't mean to. And, to be honest, I get tired of screwing up all the time. That's what it feels like, anyway. Most of the time I feel like I blend in to nypical society pretty well, so when I fail utterly -- especially with people I care about -- it is very painful.
My wife also said to me, "It's very easy for you because you're a white guy," the implication being that I am in the comfortable majority in society (for the record, Ned is white too, and so is my wife). But I don't know that I agree. I look like a white guy, just like Ned looks like a white guy. And so people around here make racist or sexist jokes around Ned and I because of the assumptions they make based solely on our outward appearances. Ned doesn't have a tattoo on his forehead that reads "GAY", and I don't have one that reads "AUTISTIC", but we look normal enough.
The kinds of accommodations I make in order to get by in the neuro-typical world are very taxing for me, and I often get sick of having to do it. Similarly, Ned has to make accommodations too, to get by in the hetero-typical world, and I am sure he gets sick of it, too. I am not saying that I have it as hard as Ned -- I know that I don't, because society hasn't passed any laws to deny me any rights. And, difficult as a lot of things are for me to follow, that's one thing I do understand. I may not be able to feel how awful it is, but I do understand that it is awful.
