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When I started studying special education, I realized, everyone is special. i also realized how special I am, and how there will be no accommodations for the handicap of Humanity. When I learned about neurodivergence, I realized, or I already knew that everyone is neurodivergent. People are in different states or levels of sleeping or awake.

Whether I spend 3 and a half or 7 and a half hours with Will, it feels timeless. It feels long, but also tolerable. This job fits with my broken down state of depression. I don’t have to plan, organize, promote, or try to sell anything.
I don’t have to pretend I’m professional, bourgeoisie, cultured, or motivated. The main crisis in teaching for me arose by realizing that like the students in my class, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to set fake goals for them, and monitor their goal progress. I don’t want to plan lessons. I don’t have anything fun or cute in mind. I don’t have any school spirit. I don’t care about holidays. I don’t even care about technical birthdays. Every day is the same to me.

Any day can be Christmas. Christmas isn’t real. Any day can be Halloween or Easter, just pick the right kind of candy. I’ll buy candy for kids. I’ll buy them shit, but I won’t be on the board of PBIS or plan or attend special events.

Every day is the same to me, and I want it that way, partially to match the kids, the people with Autism, for whom nearly every minute is the same, or could be, or should be, and age ain’t nothin’ but a number, like Aaliyah sang.

For the first hour or two I spent with Will today, we watched kids songs with “movement.” I forced myself to sing softly, do the motions, and get in the “fun kid mode” with him. I started thinking, Is this what everything’s come to? Me dancing to Elmo? But I know that on every basic level, I need to breathe deeper and move my body. So this makes me do that. So I told myself, tomorrow isn’t real. No one knows if civilization will last even 10 more minutes. Just be present, breathe, move your body, use your intuitive-communication with Will. Make today real for him, or with him, because tomorrow is a black hole or a bright neon light to him and always will be.

So I sang as many nursery rhymes as I could. But negative thoughts pestered. I remembered my repeater dreams where friends from high school point out that I can’t sing beautifully anymore. And I thought, I bet even Will’s parent noticed that I sound like a smoker. I keep coughing. They’ll pretend to believe me if I say it’s a cold or allergies, but they’re very smart people.

I helped Will eat (I fed him, fork to mouth, or fingers to mouth). He floated in and out of scripted worlds. But later he created novel sentences (nonsensical on the surface) which means they weren’t from any tv show or song. He talked about CHERRY TREES. It turned into a Berenstain Bears script, but at first, it was novel.

I think it had to do with his happiness that someone’s finally washing his parts. I’m serious. He’s never used his hands to wash anything other than the left hand washes the right one, with a mechanical squishing sound, as he scripts into the mirror. My flatmate also makes that horrible sound while washing her hands. Hers is a little different, it’s fast and slimy.

Nobody has ever washed Will’s parts, which means, they’ve never been washed other than with the swishing of bath water. For a few reasons, his presentation has no sexuality, but puberty inflated his size and covered him with hair. I cleaned out his belly button, full of lint.

I use the soapy washcloth to get in the folds of things at the mid-range. And I can tell Will anticipates it with positive nervousness, and says like “woah!” and then starts jumping happily (once he’s out of the bath). I scrub him down with the towel (also no one’s done that for him). They usually just dress him while he’s still half wet. I have enough sensory issues that I’m almost incapable of doing that to him. It seems cruel. And I’m paranoid about all kinds of mold and the smells that result.

So I scrub him down with the big towel (that kind of stinks… I’m not in charge of the laundry but would like to be), especially his big, hairy legs. But I also scrub his hairy chest and belly and the patch of hair over his area, which is still pretty new to his body.

Then he likes to walk to his room naked and jump in place or in the mirror, scripting from movies and tv shows and saying, “Will. AT THE MIRROR!” And smiling and saying, “That’s a great one” or “1, 2, 3, Say cheeeeese.” These are favorite scripts. I’ve probably done 1, 2, 3, Cheese over a hundred times (at least) with him.

The skill I have really boils down to mimicry. I can translate other’s mimicry and perform it. When I thought I was a great, child singer, no one said to me: You’re just a good mimic. Which is good because that would have been rude. It takes decades to put sorrow into your voice, and to know what you do and don’t believe.

One time at an economics summer camp that I attended in the 11th grade of high school at a local MN college, for some reason (probably my bragging) I was singing His Eye is On The Sparrow for a group of peers in our “cabin,” and while I tended painstakingly to technique, at the end of the plain looking girls asked me, “And do you believe that?” Or, “Do you believe that?” (his eye is on the sparrow)?

I forgot my answer but she definitely called me out. I would throw all that paternal individualistic religion hoo-ha in the compost bin. There’s no individual, invisible, male spirit with his “eye on me.” The only thing with its eye on me is my superior-self, the dream-self that negotates meaning between the sleeping, dead, past, the present (hopes and fears, plus sensory and mental blossoming), and even knows the future based on trajectory, memory of past lives, and intuition. The manager of the house, my body, my behavior, the one who secretly loves me unconditionally.

Jobs I don’t mind:

This is factual record, not poem:

Washing hair, sweeping, dusting, washing humans, trimming skin and nails, narration of events, shrinking concepts to the smallest word container, and vice versa. Painting after thoroughly cleaning the walls. Reading aloud to people. Singing or dancing with people. Sitting in silence with my eyeballs and ears open watching someone to make sure they don’t have a seizure or try to kill theirselves or anything, summarizing speeches, making people laugh at horrific jokes, removing dead skin, cutting hair and trimming facial hair, plucking stray hairs, feeding people based on the other person’s rhythmic attention (not shoving food down their throats). That’s it.

ALL PARTIES

I was attracted to Bill, yet scared of those potentially soft-bougie politics. Snotty behavior, which reminds me to provide soft tissues for a soft thanks. Mostly, I want to talk or listen, to practice it not hurting and/or make sure it still doesn’t hurt. They tried to laugh, but it got not funny, death as fear. People said nasty things. People remembered things differently. Some people sold themselves. Some simply reported on this. But shit well nothing worked out, really for anyone. All parties were happening on the wrong tracks.

The Tyranny of Hands and Verbalism

When I imagine how it feels to have severe Autism, with other “isms” like ADHD and IDD, I imagine lacking the urge, will, and ability to use my hands in a functional way, or any way, or like in a nightmare, the hands won’t dial 911, open a door, wave as if I'm a frozen statue, and then my hands don’t grow muscles at all, they’re soft, like a cookie dough star, a spongy sea urchin, but dry, and warm, but for everything that needs to be done, the hands don’t respond.

It’s similar with words. Nothing with words is easy or makes immediate sense. People talk so fast, with so many words, about things one can’t connect with, abstract, just sounds really, at various pitches and tongue movements. Imagine mimicking it, but never finding fluency.

Never finding it natural. As if an alien culture landed and informed language using humans that from now on, we will communicate through puffing our cheeks out (the aliens have cheek-gills, so this adds nuance and a visual, essential aspect to their semi-audial communication style).

Cheek gills, have they. And we don’t. We don’t even have working gills! We do all the oxygen exchange through our smelly, putrid mouths with our banana colored teeth and like dogs, really, panting, don’t utilize our cheeks at all, much less our cheek gills.

But suddenly, you’re born into a family that DOES have cheek-gills, and it’s easy for them to use them. But you don’t. But you love your family and they love you. So they try to accommodate your needs to not be forgotten like yesterday’s trash. But mostly they wish you could do the thing that’s so EASY for them. Flaring their cheek-gills in short, red-slice of light-flashing message amongst themselves.

That’s just a metaphor for the frustration and isolation kids without narrative language concept (severe “nonverbal” Autism) feel not intuitively grasping NARRATIVE LANGUAGE CONCEPT.

time IS NOT the same for them. “FIRST, NEXT, THEN, LAST” is a lesson 4-5 special education teachers will teach this child (you, imagine it) at least on a weekly basis for at least 6 years. They will NEVER care about it, and most will actively refuse it FOREVER.

“Now” is their reality. Give me the thing I want or need now. I’m not interested in later and I’ll fight you for it unless you bribe me sufficiently.

People with severe Autism are direct in a beautiful way. I love working with Will, though. He’s my friend in a way, we’re friends. I’m an old, unbalanced lady and he’s a young, unbalanced man, a forever-7-year old, in an ivory tower, held by his mother, the peasant Queen, just like Diana.

And then what about the hands? The small, soft, pale hands, the little starfish hands, that don’t listen to the need of the times. You’re needed, hands! One of the hands raises 3 inches of the lap. But the hand won’t do it's job, because it’ll fall back on the lap, rather than grabbing food and putting it in the mouth. He can’t use fingers in a way like humans or raccoons- like to DO STUFF. Can’t or won’t, hates it.

I’m the hands, I’m the voice-prompter. It’s a huge responsibility, but I can do it this way— only teaching one at a time. The main job is to imagine it. The secondary jobs are to be there when his brain is too tired for all the cheek-gill-flapping and gills in the cheeks everywhere he turns. It’s too hard. School is hard. Bus is hard. Life is hard— so much gill flapping, and I try to puff out my cheeks like everybody else, but my cheeks are too tired right now, too. I’ll feed you then. Fly away, little alien, speak your alien language, I’ll fly away too, free from reason, time, narrative of first, next, then, last. Just kidding, I can’t. It’s my job to be sober as a clock.

The Sun Being Bad

In 2026, summer started in mid-May. School didn’t get out early or anything, but the sun came ready to bake, shake, and quiver To take our winter’s water back to the moon. It was 90 in mid-May, but then it snowed again, with tears With sleet, with despair, and mother tried to kill us. She’ll say she didn’t and she burned the books that told us this, the diaries, saying I cannot mother anymore, I’ll bake them in the oven, in some forest, in some cabin, decorated with candy. I’ll throw them off the Sears tower once and for all. Right down on Chicago Avenue, splat, in front of Robert's Shoes where I got my first Converse, black high-tops, fitted properly, with dad. And 1988 was one of my last with dad before he turned on me instead of his wife, whom he feared, whereas me, he snickered at. Even you fear the sun. In 1988, summer was still arriving on time as per the old norms, and we went shopping. Goodbye mom and dad, goodbye Robert's Shoes, goodbye Chicago Avenue, fare thee well, 1988. Goodbye Earth and solar system. I’m sorry, but we’re early and unpredictable. And now it’s shooting stars and flashing lights. It was 90 in mid-May, but then it snowed again, with tears With sleet, with despair, when our parents tried to kill us.

Bill the Reaper

Three or four years ago, after one of the schools I worked for fired me, I tried to leave teaching (for the millionth time) and I got two freelance or PT Jobs. One was doing applied behavioral analysis for families with Autistic kids, like training their kids to not mind sitting at the table or using words or making eye contact. I didn’t like that jobs because the parents were always nearby, and it was for 3-4 hours at a time, with hardly any breaks. That’s too damn long. And although the hourly rate was good, I’d only have 1-2 things per day (1 was enough) which didn’t come up to 37.5 hours a week, the basic minimum for survival in Pittsburgh 2026.

The other job I got was for this guy named Bill. Now, the story I’m going to tell isn’t a healthy story, of healthy people with romantic feelings and agency. The female protagonist (me) is normal looking (overall) yet deeply weird, antagonistic, and runs from intimacy of the sexual flavor and also from friendship if it seems daunting.

So I don’t do intimacy with people, not in a long time. But I got this job to help Bill get ready for work and ready for bed at the morning and evening time of the weekdays. He lived about 20 minutes away. For me, the main problem was always his hourly rate. He thought it was great. Fifteen per hour cash, no taxes. I like the no taxes part, but 15 x 14 =210 and that’s the most I can make in a week with you, Bill. Bill is a tea party type. He has these tank tops with American Flags and other white trash stuff that he chooses for outfits. He wears jeans with elasticity, which I’d be interested in purchasing for myself at this point. He’s finicky, like me, and has specific concerns and directions about how to do every damn thing based on things he’s learned the hard way over the years. I listen. I like following directions. I like Bill. I like being his “secretary.” But that’s just me. I’ve seen too many movies, read too many books. But even at 6:00 AM, when I get there, to simply wake him up, start turning him, talk to him, I swear we connect. We don’t agree about everything. He won’t smoke, I’m a pothead. He thinks he’s pure proletariat, I think he’s in denial. He thinks 15 cash is good, when sadly, it’s not. It’s not your fault that it’s not a good rate anymore, Bill. But it is your fault if you don’t raise the rate to keep me. Are we friends, do I owe him anything, does he owe me anything, is he taking advantage of me? (of course). I’m the real proletariat, he’s my boss. Is it okay that I talk to you so much as I try to get you ready exactly the way you want? I feel bad if the hair dryer is too hot. I feel bad if I mess anything up. And I’m scared of blood. I have a sensitive nose, and I smell death. And you might die. And I might not be able to work for you anymore. Because feeling some type of way for a guy that’s dying is worth more than 15 cash, no benefits. Yeah, I wanted to please you. Yeah, I owed you nothing. Hire and fire at will. Have you ever had that? Hire and fire at will? Ever been fired? Evicted? Dumped for not being ready for sex (that’s me in 1995), yeah that’s what I thought. But poor you, too. You want me to know that if you had a choice you’d have never met me. I’d never have seen you naked, or washed your balls and feet. I’d never know the smell of your piss, or seen the color of your blood. All blood is the same color. My piss and shit don’t stink, and never will. Because I’m not really sorry. Not sorry for you, not sorry for me. It’s just a life. It’s like 70-80 years out of infinity. Make sure you put the lotion on the feet because feet will turn bad given a chance. Then I dreamed I was stuck in a small space, in this athletic gym, this boxing gym, but in a raised garage, and I tried to get turned around, but I smashed the car into, out of, above on the ramp, and my car hung there, after a big bang. Then a man came and lifted it down with his hands, like a superhero.

Two things Bill wrote to me when I tried to say hey after 4 years I keep thinking about you, here and there, even though you let me go to the wolves of no paycheck, no wages, no salary, for 2 weeks. Maybe you weren’t conscious to think, that gal can’t pay rent if I don’t pay her. Well, Bill said, fuck you, and “cunt.” It’s not enough to go on.

Revelations

Fire and ice, liquor and meth Tires and rice, you have bad breath

Just joking, that aint the poem, haha _________________________

Flying among untethered souls of my history, I tossed and turned, feeling hot and then cold My legs were exposed to a breath of fresh air, and the city spread forward from balcony views

I begged the people around me to flee, the fire leaping from each edifice and advancing like clockwork, at a quickening pace, I didn’t rush them at all

If it gets any closer, oh my god, we need to run! And like I thought, in the new row of towers, flames caught and bloomed here-ward, toward us, and we all evacuated to ground level.

But they questioned me falsely, and they proved me wrong.
They brought me back up to the penthouse, to look again, do you see fire? From the same spot, I could cross my eyes, and see that nothing was burning, nothing had burned But right forthwith, a deadly snow began to fall on the wide, green lawns, and on the cherry blossoms outlined below, and the vivid spring tulips, and we trembled, knowing.

I started having obsessive desire to pick up litter and trash starting in first or second grade. I cleaned up our alley in the south side of the city. I made a fort in the backyard of salvaged “fort” stuff, and soon found it very uncomfortable to walk past trash/litter without examining it or putting it where it belonged, probably in a trash can or recycling. Well, since then (1982 or so) litter has multiplied by trillions. Bottled water wasn’t even a thing back then, NO BOTTLES EVERYWHERE. There really wasn’t even that much trash or litter, in retrospect. Now, in Pittsburgh it’s like the whole residential city is the trash heap. Literally, litter everywhere, on every lawn, in every gutter, illegal dumping, big old TVs, Big flat screen TVs with cracks (sitting there in the woods until the end of time). There would be no way to keep up with it. But my personal narrative explains that this was the start of my generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. Besides picking up paper and being unable to walk past it, which I reinforced for myself by providing the relief of picking up paper every once in a while (the strongest KIND of reinforcement, haha!). I also needed to double check all the locks on doors in our house, pick the shoes and laundry piles up on the carpeted stairs up to our floor of rooms, and straighten towels on the racks in the bathroom. Then I needed to complete certain caring rituals toward rows of dolls and teddy bears, or they wouldn’t be able to sleep, nor would I. Then we’d have to go downstairs in pajama feet and tell mom and dad with a trembling voice, “I can’t sleep.” Of course, they’d be mad, but for awhile they agreed to come up and sit with me next to my little futon while I fell asleep.

safe safe not safe not safe safe safe safe is it better to just know that you’re not

no one is safe no one ever will be and it’s too late to make the earth safe you were born too late you got up too late you went to sleep too late and know you’ll feel the fatigue in your eyeballs and bones and hands and legs and neck and back and hips

You know that animated movie Wall-E? I basically want his job. I want to collect a huge organized collection of random things normally considered trash. I want to sell these random things and have a giant “make-shop” with sewing machines, long tables, machine parts, motors and gears, everything you lost and never thought you’d find again In the dystopian utopia of a solar punk dream, I have a special shop like that, and I stop for every thing on the ground to examine it, because there’s no rush. Other than the storms that sweep us away every few days, when the ships coming looking for us. Build the make-shop in the basement, with light coming in slanted through the ceiling, a place that’s secret and holy and creates from the remnants, saves them, cleans them, knows someone will need it back eventually.

INCREDIBLY EASY

writing poem

misquoting what somebody said

remembering the moral of the story

behavioral analysis

adrenaline flight

self sabotage

psychic leaps

tangental connections

the melody and the refrain

staying put or being blown around

IMPOSSIBLY DIFFICULT

finding the building entrance at the theater in a new part of town or on a university campus

finding the way out of an overwhelming department store or mall

forgetting about the dead

noticing the future on tip toes

bowing to the wind

lying

stepping on spiders

The Sad and Fluffy Tale with Stripes

One night I was reborn as a raccoon baby, in a soft, warm nest with my brothers and sisters. We kept each other warm with our bodies and our sweet breath, as we patiently waited for mom to come back from the night’s work. The darkness grew lighter and lighter and birds began to sing, as we realized with dread that mother may not come back The next night we went to look for her, and explore the world. We were hungry. There were five of us that morning, and I was the one who found mom. At the edge of our trees, there was a highway, with roaring machines moving at lightening-seeming speed, and a terrible smell. I wished I were back in the next with the soft smell of grass, feet, and mom. But she was smashed, of course. There on the terrible pavement of death, my mind couldn’t comprehend it. I slept for another day, in a dark corner, and then I was too hungry to stay dying of a broken heart. I could hear other raccoons out there, and I could smell food. We found free food on the back patio of a great mansion. It seemed like it was for us. We ate there, refusing to talk or think about mom, or the terrible place with foul smelling killing machines, and we slept and grew. Then one awful day, we came too early, and met the cat. The cat was one of us, wild, with no mother. But he was leaving marks, his smell on the rugs around the food, and he wouldn’t let us come eat. The food is for everyone, I said to him, hands calmly at my sides. No, it’s not! The cat hissed. It’s for meee! The humans (he pointed a black paw at the mansion), they put it here for me! Not you ugly little bears! We’re not bears, said my sister. Then one of the tall, hairless ones, the family, the humans! said the cat. They started banging an invisible wall between us. Tap tap tap tap! The cat ran away. The voices beyond the invisible wall, if they were voices, it was yelling. They didn’t want us there! The cat was right. I felt my heart break, and stopped loving the world. All of it’s amazing smells, tastes, and sounds. All for nothing, all for a hateful life of death, stink, and invisible walls. My brothers and sisters ran away, but I stayed and stared back at the things. They were waving, and still banging with a sharp sound, I felt frozen. But I also wanted to attack them. And I wanted the food that was ours to begin with. I wanted to live. I wanted to kill the cat, selfish bastard. I backed away without taking my eyes off the shapes and sounds at the invisible wall. We’ll have to find food somewhere else, I guess, also it was morning, and we were so tired. We went to bed hungry in a new nest that we made, farther down the street. But now that I know the sound of “highway,” I can always hear it. I’ll never think life is for fun, or pleasure, or rest, or return, anymore.