Editor's note: this essay wasn't written today- it was written a few weeks ago. I wonder why I keep losing friends, hee hee
I lost a friend today, but they didn’t die- they told me, outright, that they don’t want anything to do with me because they don’t like how autistic I am. I’m sorry about that. I’m autistic. Autism can’t be cured, there’s no remedy for it. I came out of the womb with two defiant middle fingers raised, screaming in pain. And now that the world has me- now that I’m here- the world is going to need to deal with me a little longer. Up yours, world.
I’d known this friend for around a year, had talked with them multiple weeks in a row, and at the end they said that they didn’t know me as well as they thought they did, which given the amount of time we’d spent either means that they’re extremely easy to fool or that I’m extremely good at being deceptive. Of course, neither is the case- they’re just wrong. Wrong and misled about a lot of things. And so they threw our friendship in the dumpster.
I’m tired of my generation. Not individual people in my generation, per se. The general sentiment. The self-righteousness, the smugness, the bland affect. And that’s nothing new, it’s been the case that every generation considers themselves inferior to the ones who came before and eventually the ones who came after, yet I feel it’s less common for someone to pick apart their own generation.
I am a second-class citizen, by default. On a professional level, I’m a second-class citizen because I’m ineligible for 99% of jobs. I’m ineligible for 99% of jobs because I can’t operate in a hierarchy. Even a hierarchy where I’m at the top. Everyone in an endeavor must be equals. I can’t stand either being above anyone or being below anyone. If I ever got hired, I would say something to offend my boss in 20 seconds flat. It would be completely futile. And the jobs that involve stocks or passive income- most of those are scams. In today’s economy, it seems the only viable careers involve being someone’s underling. And I can’t do that. I possess too much autonomy and too much agency. God, I hate it. I wish I was a subservient gopher.
Tough titty, world.
On an interpersonal level, I’m a second-class citizen, because I don’t experience romantic attraction. I don’t become attracted to people in a romantic way, I don’t have any interest in settling down or getting married or whispering sweet nothings behind chantilly lace on a Saturday evening where the wind caresses our hair and she leans into my neck and goads me softly into a poignant embrace.
I’m aromantic, and I didn’t choose to be like that- it’s just how I’ve been my entire life. And because, in our sick society, friendship is always treated as less important than romance, I’m always a second priority, an afterthought, a footnote. Nobody knows what to do with me and I just hang around awkwardly. I have dozens of friends but will probably never have a friend who I’m completely compatible with. And it sucks.
My friend told me that they don’t have time to hang out with me under the capitalist system, they have to make rent. I say, capitalism is important to be concerned about. It does suck. But it doesn’t excuse treating your autistic friends like shit, or failing to understand how autism works. Capitalism is not a catch-all scapegoat. Some things can only be blamed on personal autonomy. That’s another thing my generation lacks, personal autonomy and accountability. You can just blame everything on capitalism. Forgot a birthday present? Oh, sorry. Capitalism got in the way. Couldn’t make it to you when you were sick? Capitalism. Lied to you? Sorry. Capitalism.
I’m told, time and again, that the struggles I’m going through aren’t unique, that I can relate to people because they’ve been where I am, that surely I can get what everyone else has going on. I don’t think I can. The more I interact with people- people from all over, all stripes and kinds- I realize how fucking unique my own personal issues are. It’s kind of amazing, actually, how different my issues are from those of everyone around me.
I’ve never been through capitalism. There’s a pretty prominent one. I don’t know the value of labor because I’ve never had a job besides freelance mail-order comics. Everyone else jokes about how much the system is crushing them- “aw damn, my workload is so heavy!” “Aw dang, it sure sucks to have this job!” Jobs are voluntary, idiot. If they weren’t, it’d be slavery. If you have a shit life, you can’t blame it purely on external factors. They play a part, of course- maybe 60%- but at some point your own personal choices are what make your life suck for you or not.
I’m sure it does suck, in some cases, to have a job. I can only begin to imagine what it must be like, and that’s the problem, is that I have no fucking idea. The notion of selling my own time for money is as absurd to me as selling my own excrement, because my time is something I value to an extreme- I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife and I optimize every second of every day towards producing something I want to make. You don’t like it? Eat shit.
A while back, I went in for a print course at a local print shop, and unlike some of the courses I go to, this was a privately owned shop, and the guy who ran it was a control freak. I had pulled out a can of ink, and some wooden block letters, and I was just dipping the blocks in the ink and plonking them down onto some paper, and this moron is like, “No! Let’s do it the right way.” And he said this as if I was a kindergartener, as if I wasn’t 21 and didn’t have agency as a fully grown adult, and I wasn’t plonking the letters down like this because I wanted a certain look- I wanted it to look erratic and haphazard and spontaneous.
So he actually physically stopped me from dipping these letters in the ink anymore, and he calls over one of his lackeys, and this lackey starts spraying them off with solvent. And then they go over this whole speech about how you have to wear gloves, and then he forces me to take my letters over to the press, and even though this is a very basic physical printing press, about as close to Johannes Gutenberg’s original as you can get, he treated it as if it was an IBM superprocessor that I was too stupid to understand. I guess most of the people who attend this course have to actually be told that the letters are placed backwards. That’s how dumb people are these days.
“No! You can’t pull out that drawer!” he said. “You have to pull out the drawer beneath it halfway so that it doesn’t fall out. Then pull it out.” And he’s talking about this big metal cabinet with all the typefaces and fonts inside, and I’m thinking about what an idiot he is for not just installing stops on the cabinet so that the drawers can’t fall out and he never has to worry about it. You can fix a cabinet so that the drawers don’t fall out, yet for no actual reason he sticks to this archaic, inefficient system because he thinks it’s quirkier to risk someone spilling his letters all over the floor. It’s OK if he wants to adhere to bad practices like this, of course- it’s his press- but then he shouldn’t offer a free course where he pretends as if his blocks and press are publicly available. He should just sit back there and enjoy them all day, on his own.
The one big mistake he made is that you never tell an artist that they can’t do something. If you tell them that, they’re absolutely going to do it. I have to actually restrain myself from going back to that shitty course, pulling out a can of ink, and smearing it all over the walls and furniture, just to show the big man what he should be doing with his ink. Glop it around, spread it everywhere like peanut butter. Ooh, ya like being tidy? Shove it in your face. Cram it down your throat, dumbfuck.
The weasley employee spraying it down with solvent says, “Oh, don’t get this near your mucus membranes. Ooh, this stuff is dangerous.” Oh yeah? Ink is dangerous? Same shit I see in my ballpoint pen every day? Let me get a nice milk mustache of it, let me rub it up my nose, just to see how it feels. Can’t tell me what to do, ya fucking hack.
Damn, I sure am glad I wasn’t employed there. Good example. I’m not job material.
I realized, after my friend dropped me today, that at my core I am a misanthrope. I try to be nice, try very hard to be tolerant and give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and feign interest, but it’s very difficult, because autistic people are bad at being disingenuous. And maybe I don’t like people. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I don’t like people because lots of people suck a lot.
People who have immense privilege tend to assume that they don’t have any privileges, and they tell me I’m privileged for wanting to be an artist. Well, you can operate a motor vehicle and feel safe about it. You can leave the state without undergoing an existential crisis. You have the thrill- the bonafide independent glory- of managing your OWN finances! Paying your own rent! And being steadily employed on a regular basis, and being able to work with other people! And getting paid by the HOUR! Think of it! The hour! Not every month when someone randomly pays you $5 for something you drew on a whim, no, you have the ability to pretend as if your work is valuable, even though you know it’s not. You can lie to yourself! Ain’t that peachy?
Not only have I never had a job where I work on behalf of anyone but me- but get this- I’ve never once been inside a church. Or a synagogue, or a mosque. Nor have I ever been to a college. I think most people have been to at least one of these places a couple times. Not me. I spend hours on end walking up and down every street in a whacked-out lightning bug haze, eyes aglow with feverish dreams, hair splattered every which way. That’s my life for ya. Can you relate?
I was out with these two guys the other night, they’ve never walked anywhere. They can’t walk three blocks, they feel that’s beneath them. I tell them I walked an hour to get to the concert we were at, and one of them nods his head but I can tell he has no idea what that must be like, to walk for an hour to get to a place. It’s sad how hard he tries to pretend as if he gets it.
“Let’s turn around and head home!” The other guy calls out, because these mongoloid freaks don’t have the capacity or patience to wait three minutes, to savor a moment at a beautiful place. We speed back at 50 mph, because these drooling sycophants have to get to work tomorrow, they have bedtimes, at 35 fucking years old they have bedtimes. Bedtimes are for teenagers, that’s what I say. I tell them about how I usually go to sleep at 4 A.M. and wake up at 2 P.M. and their mouths hang agape like cartoon characters, their eyes light up as I present the idea of a life where you’re your own boss and you control every second of every day and don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time, or wake up at an ungodly hour which ultimately leads to a heart attack. Wow, it eludes them. They’re really lost.
Somehow, I don’t think they’ll ever be my friends.
Not only do I not have the privilege of paying rent- I don’t have the privilege of moving anywhere else because Denver is all I’ve ever known and all I’ll ever know. I can’t leave. I can’t just pack up and head to Seattle or wherever if the rent gets too high. I don’t think I’d ever like Seattle. I’m going to die here. Maybe I’ll die homeless. I don’t know. Can the world accommodate me? It depends. If it can’t, fuck it.
And people tell me- my purported friends tell me- no, Nic, you can buy a car and fall in love and fly out to Portland and do anything if you just set your mind to it. You can live a normal life as a normal person! You can blend in easily, you have complete control over your behavior!
To which I would argue: Well, if you’re a slave to Capitalism, if every second of your waking life is so concerned and preoccupied with the pursuit of money, which is ultimately a human construct, if you lack autonomy, and you admit that there are systems beyond your control which prevent you from living an optimal life- how is my autism any different? How can I stop?
A generation which claims to value consent doesn’t value consent in the slightest, and in fact actively works against it.
My generation is full of narcotics. Before my friend left me today, I refrained from going all in on this shit, because I wanted to retain a semblance of decency. I can’t hold back. People these days drink too much. I’m sick of seeing it, I’m sick of seeing everyone smoking and everyone puffing and everyone chugging and glugging. Holy shit, it puts me in a slump.
And I don’t really care if anyone drinks a lot- as I said, I respect personal autonomy and consent and responsibility, and what people do with their own bodies is their own business. But have you ever been in a dive bar? The place sucks, the crowd is all wasted and they’re slurring their consonants together like mash and it’s a depression haven. I can’t be optimistic in a place like that, no matter how hard I try. I have to admit, as much as I regret to, that my external environment does affect me and if everyone is breaking glasses and grabbing ass, I’m not in the best of moods.
I’m in a generation that complains about the price of food, and how they can’t eat out, and refuse the offer of a $1.00 hot dog, and then proceed to drive to a brewery and purchase an $8 bottle of Pilsner. I wonder why my generation is economically broken, why nobody can afford rent. Gee, I wonder where all this rent money is going to all the time. It’s almost as if having a completely depressant-fueled economy with particularly expensive depressants is a bad idea.
God, I hate alcohol. It ruins marriages, friendships, relationships of any kind- it makes guys beat up their wives, domestic abuse up the wazoo, children grow distant from their parents, people drink the shit until their blood is a slurry- and for what? A piss-tasting drink? Just drink some grapefruit juice, for fuck’s sake drink some grapefruit juice, it’s healthy and it tastes great and it keeps you alive, it’s the elixir of life. Pomegranate juice, fucker, V-8, cheap nice juices full of vitamins and nutrition. No, lemme drink the piss ferment. Yeah, that’s relatable to me.
I lost a friend today, and I realized that I can’t make everyone happy, and I don’t need to because art is the only therapy I have at my immediate disposal, all the time, my trusty word processor is my best friend and here it is, 0 degrees fahrenheit in the middle of a cold, bitter winter and my food is getting cold on the floor at 2:41 A.M. while I type this out, fingers clackin’ away, clack clack clack- because this is what I do to live, to made do with the nonsense of society, I don’t drink, I write and I express myself because sweet caroline you know the world could use some more of that- honesty-
I pick up a copy of “Modern Drunkard” Magazine in the dive bar and I turn it over in my hands, the cover is A.I. Art and the articles inside are all A.I. art, it all looks like shit, it looks like trash because it is, and I don’t need to hurt anyone’s feelings because nobody fucking drew it, but the editors of “Modern Drunkard” Magazine don’t care what type of art they use because they have no standards and all their readers are drunk, and this is the type of asshat content that passes for journalism in this broken hellscape. A.I. is for fascists.
Up yours, Modern Drunkard! Two bold, stoic middle fingers! You think it’s funny to write 64 issues of a magazine about a practice as detrimental as alcohol, one which statistically takes so many lives? How about Bleach Drinker’s monthly? How about Rat Poison Connoisseur's Annual? How about you eat the contents of a toilet as a reward for your shitty alcohol-oriented magazine that’s all about how cool you think it is to drink crap. Damn, how relatable it is to chug and glug yourself into the gutter. Not as if any of the rich assholes who run the thing have actually dealt with crippling alcohol dependency, of course. They’re only the merchants of death.
Oh, wow, Modern Drunkard. You’re so cool for having an article that’s just shitty lines of text spat out by a robot pretending to be Ernest Hemingway. Yes, I guarantee, if Ernest Hemingway were around today, if he saw that you resurrected his corpse like that, I betcha he’d be mighty proud of how everything’s turned out, and how he’s become a patron saint for your breed of fake, faux-intellectual alcohol connoisseur. Fuck you, Modern Drunkard. You’re the breaking point, the point of no return. Your pages, littered with gaudy crap, content that’s utter mush, is enough to cause me to doubt what I’ve been doing by trying to placate everyone all these years. A man can only take so much.
You can only suppress free expression so long before the play is over and all the actors have left the stage and the real world begins.
I mean, fuck me, I tried. I tried to play the game and I just can’t. I can’t play the game anymore because it’s stacked against me, I’m at a direct disadvantage, I’m in a world I can’t relate to in any capacity and the harder I try to relate to it the less I do. So there’s no point anymore. There’s no point, if all my friends are going to be hostile towards me, of trying to please them. I’ll make new friends, and then they’ll leave, and the one true constant in my life will be the act of creation, of nonstop endless self-expression, because it’s all I can do and it’s all I know how to do, and this is my life.
Certain demographics and types of people simply aren’t compatible with me, and the fewer I have the further I’ll rescind into the shadows. Good. I don’t need it. Full steam ahead, let the lightning sizzle, let the kettle burn and have the stars burn into my flesh and my teeth radiate ultraviolet, let it take its course.