All Things Must Pass

A couple weeks ago, a post in my social media feed quickly caught my attention. 

Alan Arkin was dead. 

After confirming the veracity of the announcement, I posted on Facebook, "Oh my God. Alan Arkin died," and punctuated the news with a "sad" emoji. Acquaintances, friends, and family responded with condolences that would have suggested to the casual observer that I had just announced the death of a close friend. But I didn't know Alan Arkin. In fact, I had never even met him. However, it would be dishonest for me to say that I didn't feel some sense of loss.

While I didn't mourn Alan Arkin's death in the way someone close to him would (I didn't even cry about it), I did feel the sense that this new reality was something I would need to make an effort to accept. For the past thirty years, I have harbored a deep amount of respect and admiration for Alan Arkin not just as an actor, but as a human being. My appreciation of his unique qualities has only evolved since I first discovered his work at the age of twelve. As an adolescent with grandiose dreams of working in the entertainment industry (in my case, as an animator) his dedication, focus, and passion for his work fascinated and inspired me. As a teenager and continuing into adulthood, I grew to appreciate his intelligence, forthrightness, and pointed observations about humanity.

I first discovered Alan Arkin in August of 1993 during a 5:15 AM airing of the Cold War-era classic The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! While darkness loomed outside and the rest of my family slept, I watched one of the main characters in the film in deep fascination. A mustachioed Russian naval officer in a black leather jacket crept around an island off the coast of Massachusetts in search of a boat to dislodge a submarine that had run aground. He nervously poked his head around corners, groaned comically as a window closed on him as he tried to climb through it, growled in exasperation, barked frustrated orders in Russian at the other sailors, and threatened to shoot members of an American family "to small pieces". The quirkiness appealed to me. Even for this type of character, he was portrayed in a manner that was refreshing and unusual. I had no idea who his actor was, and I didn't recognize him from any other films. 

"Who is this guy?" I wondered. "He's funny. How does he do what he does in this movie? Is he still alive? If so, is he still making movies?" I later found out that the actor's name was Alan Arkin and that both of my parents had already long enjoyed his work. He was still performing, and I learned that he had portrayed the father in Edward Scissorhands and the mechanic in The Rocketeer, both films that many kids my age had seen. Although somewhat popular among members of my parents' generation, his name was virtually unknown among mine because he was not the type of actor that would typically appeal to adolescents and teenagers.  He was neither a twenty-something sex symbol like Jason Priestely for adolescent girls to drool over, nor a hotshot like Arnold Schwarzenegger for boys to cheer on in action movies. Rather, Alan Arkin was a balding sixty-year-old who, as I would learn years later, approached acting as an art form and not a way to appeal to the masses; he couldn't have cared less about popular culture. 

About a year after I first discovered The Russians are Coming!, I read an article about Alan Arkin in the 1967 edition of Current Biography. I was captivated by the fact that he had been determined to become an actor since the age of five. It seemed that his dream encompassed every facet of his life: as a little boy, he even once announced to his playmates, "Let's play circus. I'll be everything." I found this degree of intense focus relatable; I was passionate about storytelling in the form of animation and writing, and I often locked myself in my room for several hours to do both. I greatly admired Alan Arkin's passion and drive, and was also impressed that he wrote children's books and taught himself how to play several musical instruments. He was obviously interested in a lot of different art forms, and he even stated that always having a project to work on was important to him. I saw Alan Arkin as a role model, someone who I looked up to and wanted to emulate, feelings that my mother incorrectly interpreted as me having a crush on him-- but I suppose that's what mothers do.

Finally, in December of 1994, I wrote Alan Arkin a letter. Although I wasn't planning on pursuing a career as an actor, acting was one of my hobbies and I wanted to try out for my school's upcoming production of Guys and Dolls. I asked Arkin for advice on this as well as what guidance he'd give to young actors in general. Although I knew logically that I should not hold out any hope that he would write back, I was still deeply invested in the possibility, a type of intense focus typical of me as someone on the autism spectrum. After a while it seemed like I was never going to get a response, and I felt stupid for caring so much about receiving one. However, in February of 1995, just as I was beginning to accept that my communication would go unanswered, I received a reply. I still remember with great clarity the rush I felt when I opened the mailbox that day and saw "A. ARKIN" handwritten on the return address.  Rather than a generic, impersonal letter that one might expect from a busy actor, Alan Arkin's response was filled with kindness, honesty, sincerity, encouragement, and humor. I knew that I would always value the letter, and I have since kept it safe in a long manilla envelope. Today, I treasure it more than ever. 

I have recently come to realize that Alan Arkin is the rare example of a celebrity that I only have a higher opinion of the more I learn. Listening to him speak about acting as well as various social and political issues betrays a high intelligence and an intellectual side. I have also heard stories that speak to him as a person of high integrity. On the set of Going in Style, Arkin's co-star Morgan Freeman tried to look up the skirt of one of the female production assistants-- that is, until Alan Arkin stepped in and told him to stop. Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine fame related stories on Instagram from when she was a child, about how he was always looking out for her on the set of the movie. For example, he once ordered "cut" and shouted, "Get her mother!" when he misinterpreted her crying as genuine distress rather than acting. 

I think about my evolution of respect for Alan Arkin over various stages of my life. My admiration for him as a diverse and well-rounded individual is now a long cry from the simple "Who is this guy? He's funny!" thoughts I had as a twelve-year-old back in the summer of 1993. I grew to see and appreciate-- albeit admittedly from a distance-- the kind of versatile, intelligent, and ethical man that he was. I posted on social media, "I am so overwhelmed with respect for this guy. What a role model Alan Arkin is to the world-- as a human being and as an actor." I still can't believe that he's dead and, as I said before, I do feel some sense of loss. 

All things must pass, but Alan Arkin's memory will live on.

As Nature Made Me: The Aspie Who Was Raised as a Neurotypical: Part I- Fixing Me

...Brenda [Reimer] was now living a life in which every instinct had to be denied, repressed, hidden: at dances, at parties, in the classroom, and on the street. "I was like a robot," he [Brenda, now David Reimer] says, describing the playacting that his day-to-day, moment-to-moment survival now entailed. "You're so careful to look normal, but you don't want to go overboard. You're saying to yourself, This looks like an appropriate time to smile. So you smile. This looks like an appropriate time to cross your legs. So you cross your legs. You're always thinking one step ahead, like in a chess game."
It was a chess game Brenda was losing.

This passage is from the book As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto. This book tells the true story of David Reimer, a genetic male who was reassigned and raised as female named Brenda after a botched circumcision destroyed his penis. Dr. John Money, who championed the idea that gender identity is learned, not innate, supervised then-Brenda's sex reassignment and trumpeted this grand experiment as a success. It was, however, a terrific failure. Despite the fact that Brenda was reared as a girl from just under two years of age, "she" never felt like a girl. Even when "she" tried to fit in as a girl, "she" failed miserably. When Brenda learned that "she" was biologically male, at age fourteen, "she" immediately reverted to living as a boy. 

The point of today's post is not gender identity specifically (but that will be addressed somewhat) but rather something in the above passage that resonates with me: "Brenda was living a life in which every instinct had to be repressed, denied, hidden..." This has been my life with Asperger's Syndrome, particularly growing up. By the time I was a teenager, I got the message that who I was was not okay. I tried so very hard to be socially appropriate, but each time I failed miserably. People told me that I joked around too much, so I tried to be serious. But then if I tried to be serious I would inevitably say something that "makes no sense" and end up making people uncomfortable. In the best case scenario, I would do neither and end up being a total stiff, doing my best to keep the real me hidden so I wouldn't put people off. But I put people off anyway: who wants to be around a stiff?

Every day in school, no matter what I did, I was shunned, taunted, and sometimes even physically attacked. Telling my parents made the situation worse. They tried to fix me. That is, they nitpicked every little thing about me because, hey, every little thing about me somehow rubbed people the wrong way. Often, my mother in particular told me what not to do:

"Don't talk about Alan Arkin movies. You can't expect the other girls to be interested in Alan Arkin." So? The girls can't expect me to be interested in makeup.

"Don't talk about cartoons. That's not what kids your age are interested in. It's juvenile! You're fourteen years old!" But that's what I'm passionately interested in. I'm going to be an animator when I grow up. I'm going to make the kind of weird, absurdist cartoons that you aren't thrilled that I enjoy watching.

"You can't go to school dressed like that. You look like a boy!" But I want to look like a boy. Well, more like a tomboy, because that's what I am. But girls are expected to outgrow that stage by age twelve, so I'd better keep my mouth shut about it and pretend I have no idea what Mom means by that. I'd better not tell anybody that I know this is never going to change.

Then came my mother's advice of what to do:

"Why can't you talk about what the other girls talk about?" Because the other girls talk about boys, clothes, and makeup. They flip through Teen magazines going, "And he's cute. And he's cute. And he's cute. And he's cute..." Snore. 

"You need to learn how to make small talk. Talk about the teachers and ask what the other kids think of them." So on the first day of 8th grade I asked some other girls, "What do you think of Mr. Henry? It was so funny today when he went on about chewing gum in class and made those noises like he was cracking gum." But it felt so phony coming out of me, like I was reading from a script. And I think the other kids knew it.

"You need to learn to wear what's in style." What's in style are low-cut shirts and super-tight jeans. Wearing those things makes me feel very mortified and self-conscious. I like T-shirts and looser-fitting jeans.

From both of my parents came this gem:

"You have such a great figure and such beautiful hair. Girls would kill to look like you." I'm glad that I'm skinny, but not for reasons that you think. Skinnier people live longer. And it fits the tomboy image I have of myself. As for my hair, I hate it. It sticks out like Doc from Back to the Future. It takes me an hour to wash it and dry it. I want to cut it off and get a more tomboyish looking haircut. But I'm not allowed to because as a fourteen-year-old girl, I should love my hair and do my best to look like a model, because that is the normal psychology of a fourteen-year-old girl.

My parents tried their best to fix me, and when I resisted, they called me stubborn. They chalked up my resistance not to strength and self-awareness but to my being a teenager who thought she "knew everything". And it wasn't that I didn't try. I tried out Teen magazine in fifth grade. I couldn't get into the articles about the latest teen hunks and fashion tips. As I said, I tried the small talk about the teachers, but it was phony. And it was exhausting. In some ways this isn't terribly different than what poor David Reimer went through when he was growing up. How can you live your life when everything you say and do is subject to scrutiny and judgment?

Or how about what you think? Stay tuned for "Part II- Thoughtcrime". 

SEX! Now That I Have Your Attention, Read this Blog Post!

If you've landed here because of the word "sex", I'm sorry to disappoint that this is not a blog post meant to titillate you. But hey, the title got your attention, right? And that's exactly the point. Sex is something that is so heavily ingrained in our society, penetrating both the conscious and unconscious bits of our brains. In fact, that is the point of this long blog post: it is a huge part of everybody's lives. 

Well, almost everybody's. Believe it or not, there are exceptions to the rule.

Only in the past ten years (or less, perhaps) has society begun to accept the notion of life being on a spectrum. There's the autism spectrum, of course, which this blog was created to address. Even more recently-- I think in 2007 specifically-- did we begin to learn that gender exists on a spectrum, well beyond the binary that humankind has believed it to be (in most cultures) for thousands of years. I identify as a tomboy, somewhere in the middle of that gender spectrum. And finally, sex is found to exist on a spectrum, and I don't mean the gay-straight spectrum (though that is another spectrum that is becoming more accepted). It's a spectrum that includes being very sexually inclined at one end to being asexual at the other end.

The funny thing is that many of the same liberal, open-minded people who accept the autism spectrum, the sexual orientation spectrum, and even the gender spectrum-- one of the most difficult ideas for people to accept-- have an enormously difficult time accepting the sexual/asexual spectrum. Some people-- including professionals-- don't accept that it's a spectrum, believing that it's unthinkable that anybody could not have an interest in sex or at least a reduced interest in sex unless they have been abused in some way or unless there is something psychologically wrong with them. Sometime in the past decade, many people have been coming out as asexual. Yes, that's right. These are people who have no interest in sex. Some of them are interested in romantic relationships without sex, but some are not even interested in romantic relationships.

Then there are the demisexuals, who are in the middle of the spectrum. They're not sexual in the conventional sense, nor are they asexual (however, some people consider demisexuality to be a subset of asexuality). What is demisexuality? Well, before I define it, let's look at how most people experience romantic infatuation. First, a woman (or a gay man) might see a man and find him attractive. "Hey, that guy is cute. I'm going to go over and say hello". They say hello. The man might be interested in the woman (or the other man) because he finds her (or him) attractive. They know nothing about each other, but they continue to talk, trying to get to know each other as lust intensifies and tension builds. Depending on their inclinations and personal beliefs, they might have sex that very night. Or they might date first and have sex a few days, weeks, or months later. If infatuation usually didn't work out that way, many of us would not have been born.

Demisexuals experience infatuation in the exact opposite way, the way that I experience it: I am a demisexual. First I meet a guy and start talking to him as a friend. Nothing else is on my mind except that we're just talking, getting to know each other as friends. After I start to get to know the guy, I might find something attractive in his personality and then develop a crush. Only after I become infatuated with the guy as a person do thoughts of, "Wow, he's really cute!" enter my mind. And only sometime after that do the lustful thoughts finally surface. For this reason, online dating would never work for me.

For years I had chalked up my experiences to part of having Asperger's Syndrome, but only a few months ago did I learn that there was a term for my sexual orientation: demisexual. I have only experienced eight crushes (the last was in 2008), and only one reciprocated, back when I was 18. We did not "officially" date, let alone have sex: he was from Germany and only in the U.S. temporarily. We were friends with (limited) benefits, meaning we "fooled around" a little and that was it. I wasn't ready for sex at the time, and he didn't push me. If we had met more recently (I'm 33), I might have felt differently.

Last week I was at a Boston-area Meetup for people who identify as asexual and demisexual. Some of these people have had sex, some haven't yet, and some never will. One guy there had Asperger's Syndrome (many people with AS are asexual or demisexual), and another was a transgender man. The group was a nice blend of people, some representing more than one spectrum. We all found it cathartic to talk about our experiences: we all grew up wondering why everybody was always obsessed with getting dates and getting laid and why our parents-- sorry, our mothers-- were so worried about us. 

All of us had eerily similar stories about invasive questions our mothers had asked us. For example, when I was fourteen, my favorite actor was Alan Arkin and I was obsessed with some of his movies. Oh, so of course I must have had a crush on the then-sixty-year-old man. At least in my mother's perception. One night we rented Catch-22. My mother said, "We're going to watch Catch-22 with Alan Arkin-- sexy Alan Arkin." Then my mother suddenly asked, "Julie, what traits do you find attractive in boys?" Years later, when I told Dad this story, he told me, "You should have said 'Mom, you have the subtlety of a hand grenade.'" Other awkward, hand grenade-subtlety questions and comments from Mom included, "Look at [insert male celebrity's name here]. He's so cute. Don't you think?"; "Have you ever had a crush? Are you sure you haven't?" which later became "Have you ever had a crush? Are you sure you have?"; and "Are you sure you're not gay?". These questions made me feel worse, like there was something wrong with me. Others in the group felt the same way.

All of us in the group had one very specific experience in common: Growing up we were very uncomfortable with the topic of sex. It has been my experience that kids on the autism spectrum (and, according to psychologist Tony Attwood), girls especially are very uncomfortable with the topic of sex. These asexual/demisexual people, on the autism spectrum or not, had also been very uncomfortable (we eventually got over it). None of us could articulate why. But I have two ideas: 

1) Parents of kids with Asperger's sometimes get very uncomfortable with the things their children are obsessed with. My mother was very uncomfortable with my obsession with The Addams Family movie when I was 11-12. This was because she didn't understand why. Isn't it natural that people for whom sex is not on their radar, if at all, feel uncomfortable that the whole world seems to be obsessed with sex? 

When our mothers had tried to figure us out, they only made things worse. Universally, our mothers told us what a beautiful thing sex is between two people who loved each other. All of us had had the same reaction: "I don't feel the same way, but I'm expected to. And Mom is practically demanding I feel this way. There must be something wrong with me. And I must be narrow-minded for not feeling this way!"

2) For girls specifically, I think the pervasive objectification of women in movies does not help. In movies, sex is often depicted as a service that women give to men. And often women in movies are love/sexual interests first, characters second. I don't believe in censorship, but I think this aspect of movies is an important issue to discuss (perhaps in another blog post) and how it affects girls with Asperger's in particular. I think as a kid I must have thought on some level that I was supposed to eventually be like these women. It's harder as a kid with Asperger's to sort out these messages. 

At the Meetup, all of us recounted dealing with misunderstandings about asexuality/demisexuality in our adult lives. The women, myself included, were tired of going to their OB/GYNs and having to explain, "No, I'm not repressed; no, I wasn't abused; no I'm not religious; it just hasn't happened yet and I'm not losing any sleep over it." Likewise, we women also expressed frustration at the inevitable, patronizing response to this comment: "Oh, that's wonderful! You're waiting for the right person," as if our not-having-yet-been-laid status is due to discipline rather than a different set of inclinations. It's like praising a skinny person for being disciplined when the reality is that she may just not be as interested in food, not because she is a hardcore athlete.

And no, we're not afraid of sex, nor are we narrow-minded about it. Narrow-minded is an educator at the LGBTQ center in Manhattan telling me that I must have some "issue" because I can count on my fingers the number of crushes I've had.

Oh, and another misunderstanding is that we have some moral agenda. No, we are just differently inclined. We respect the inclinations of others as long as consenting adults are involved. We are sex-positive people who are just not as into sex as most others.

List Your Obsessions!

Since the past couple posts have been a bit dark, I figured this week's post ought to have more levity. I invite you to list the things you've been obsessed with over the years. Now, one important thing to realize is that everybody defines "obsession" differently. I personally have a very extreme definition of what constitutes obsession. By the way I define it, I stopped getting obsessed with things in the summer of 1995 when I was about to turn fifteen. After that, I got obsessed with people on whom I had a crush (that will be the topic of next week's post). That can be a royal pain, so let's focus on the obsessions that have been mostly fun and harmless.


Here is my list!

• Fall 1986- late 1987 (age 6-7): Sesame Street
• Fall 1986- late 1988 (age 6-8): Tom & Jerry
• Winter 1986 (age 6): Santa Claus: The Movie and anything related to Santa Claus.
• Late 1988- Late 1989 (age 8-9): DuckTales
• Late 1989- Spring 1991 (age 9-10): Back to the Future trilogy
• Spring-Fall 1991 (age 10): The Simpsons
• Fall 1991-Summer 1993 (age 11-12): The Addams Family movie
• Summer 1993-Summer 1995 (age 12-14): The Russians are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!/Anything related to actor Alan Arkin
• Summer 1994 (age 13): The Rocketeer (another movie with Alan Arkin)