Old, Gay, & Autistic

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Life is full of surprises. I just grew up & found myself young in a time when to be gay was trendy, still wicked, & fun. It was the late 1970s & life just got wilder until HIV/AIDS bashed it flat. Life for me was horrible at the time. A victim of violent crime as I was stabbed in a hit & run robbery. It was discovered I had malignant melanoma, a cancer issue that has plagued many decades since. But, of course I never knew of my Asperger's & why boys liked me & I never responded. I just did not know how to read the body language. There was no help in those days & I developed into an unhappy, isolated gay man living alone. Eventually, I settled for less than best & just lived. I helped out during the worst years of the AIDS pandemic during the 1990s, but made no friends. People just found me weird. The Gay community could be cloistered & judgemental as everyone can be. For a long time I was bitter about this but as I age I have become more understanding of how people who feel threatened often attack more vulnerable people. People like me with autism. Today, for many it seems better although the atrocious murders of gay men in countries where religion has made the population insane is deplorable. I am coming out of my shell. The world is seriously sick, not just with Covid-19 but with Global Warming & social problems. It seems to me that we must engage now to help make things better. What do you think?

Another Old gay autistic here. I can identify with everything you wrote and more. I have known that I was gay since forever, but only got my diagnosis for ASD after my wife insisted that I be evaluated. Yeah, while you were involved in the gay community and helping out, I opted for straight privilege. I don't interact much with the gay community, as I have obligations at home. But, I am trying to be more genuine, as I approach 70. Yeah, society has done a job on us alright.

Max

One could be bitter, but that is pointless in a society that is falling apart. When we were younger we thought there was going to be a future. Instead we got religion in various forms & neoliberalism thrown at us. I got cancer, I eventually had my ASD diagnosis; I had abuse from family & colleagues since year blot.
What to do? Move forward - Just Keep Going! - my motto. I try the best I can but I do not do anything for rewards as that just brings the crazymakers out. Eventually, I hope to get some housing commission accommodation in a larger city away from the pettiness of the regions of Australia. I do not like country people, they are boors & full of their self-importance. They are conservative & cannot see they are being used by the Right to bash them over the head. I keep busy with gardening, painting pictures, & I make YouTube videos under #artfulaspie. People bother me & I have all the stims & direct communication problems of Asperger's. However, I also recognize that I do better online & I do not want to be totally isolated. If I was rich, I would buy a little block of land & build a ferrous-cement house & keep a horse, a dog, several cats, & chooks (chickens depending where you live). That is unlikely, so I will try this site to talk to others. The world is in a mess & I resent younger generations blaming Baby Boomers for the problems. That is like saying the sum of all problems is in the hands of a race, creed, or time - young people are not up to much. I was a school teacher for a while & I know how idle they can be. Instead of believing all their social media nonsense they need to work on better ways to overcome the powerful lobbies that stymied our generation. Always I had some older person telling me how wrong I was & I should behave in a certain way & be grateful? Really!? I watch them die now & think what legacy did I get? No, the world has always been run by powerful groups of narrow-minded types out to protect their interests. Yea?

Yes, it's pointless to be bitter. It just makes for more stress and feeling bad. Besides, we tend to suppose evil intent, when it's statistically unlikely that that is always the case. I equated religion to magic when I was little. I suppose that's the way my religious educators saw it. It has no relation to my current spiritually, but I guess that you've got to start somewhere in learning your spirituality. Sorry to hear about you cancer and abusive family and colleagues. Well, at least you have an ASD diagnosis, so it's not all bad
Move forward is a good motto. We can complain about the past and worry about the future, but that doesn't get anything done. Life is a process of learning and growing. Our minds should be on what we can do now, to improve our lot. And I found that moving from whoop-whoop to the city allowed me to be more free of the constraints of conservatism and disapproval. BUt you always take your childhood with you, it seems, wherever you go. I'll have to take a look at your youtube. What do you paint? Do you raise vegetables for your own consumption?

I have communication problems too. It's very clear in my head what I want to say, but when I try to express myself in front of somebody else, I tend to tell details before I make my subject clear, and I often lose track of what I'm talking about because I'm trying to read the other person's emotions, and I can't always do that, and sometimes I get it wrong. So I do not usually enjoy face to face with people. Even online texting or telephone, I Have the same problem. Interestingly, I feel that I express myself well in writing, but I edit a whole lot. Real time talk does not give me time to edit and craft my delivery.

You say that if you were rich, you'd have a ferrous cement house built and keep chickens and stuff. But earlier, you said that you needed to get out of the country and live in a more enlightened place like a city.
I think that the younger generation always blames the older generation. And they make some really good points in doing so. Sometimes I think that older generations can't do as well as the more enlightened younger. I think that's an effect of the heritage of knowledge that a current generation passes on to subsequent generations. Younger people do better, because they begin with a knowledge heritage which has been enriched by all older generations. So it's always easy for the younger to see the mistakes of the older. Not so easy to see, might be the life improvements that we enjoy, which were not available to older generations. So yes, we can blame our parents for their mistakes, but making mistakes is what grows knowledge and improves the human condition. Honest mistakes are good. We gotta give older generations a break, and recognize the good as well as the bad that has been passed down to us.

Max

Thank you for replying. Let me clarify my location stand. If I was rich I would move to some land & live the hippy lifestyle rather in the fashion of the Radical Faeries movement. However, I presently live in a very hot tropical regional city which is slowly killing me. I would move South to a cooler city where I can access the medical care I need. So, one is a pipe dream & the other is inconvenient. One can be quite alone in a city. My health requires constant attention. I grow a few herbs & the occasional vegetable, but frankly they are cheaper to buy. I grow blooms, any sorts that stand up to the intense heat here.
People in the flesh bother me. I stumble in speech & need a script to read. I have stims & when overwhelmed with noise I go quite crazy. There is noise everywhere whether country or city. As I age I am becoming more sensitive, I thought it would ease off? Instead, I am told the evidence suggests some Aspies develop stronger responses as they age.
I paint landscapes, still-life, portraits, & imaginary creatures which I used to make in clay. I made a name for myself but it all fell apart as people who were jealous attacked me. I just did not know how to handle it. People can be very ungracious. The local gay scene collapsed years ago because everything is online. Or you have to be in a capital city. This does not bother me as I am typical of my type of autism & have become quite asexual. However, part of me still thinks as a gay man which is why I posted. I get very annoyed with women in particular who tell me they cannot see any differences in me as though it is a compliment. It is insulting & denies my diversity. When I was younger I was told I looked & spoke like a girl. Always I was told not to be cute & grow up! But if I asserted myself I was being difficult. Stupid! It seems many Aspergians do not age within themselves as they find navigating other's emotions hard, that has been my experience. Last night Google collapsed across Australia, & going online was impossible. It is okay now. I wish I could believe people learn by their mistakes. Every day I see the same trouble happening around the world as people do the same dumb things. I remember saying to my demented mother about her constant marrying of men that were similar in the hope she would get a different result. The world is in meltdown, not just from Covid-19 but from ecological decline & people still want to burn fossil fuels & grow populations? Does not make sense to me. History shows us very clearly that generations do not learn from previous mistakes - how many wars are going on presently? Around 300+ if you search it. Okay, I am off to a doctor now. If there is no Google meltdown I will look in tonight, I am writing this at 9.24am Au ST, but I prefer late at night.

Why do you suppose that people turned against you and attacked your art and stuff? I think that happens when people don't understand, or worse yet, understand incorrectly. Then again, maybe if you expressed your personal demons in your art, you did it so well, it scared other people too. Sometimes, it's an arduous process trying to get understood. I think back to my school days and the endless bullying. Sometimes I wonder if the jibes and cruel words were, perhaps, the manner in which boys kid each other as a prelude to friendship. I wonder if what I perceived as bullying was really an offer to interact to see what the other person was like. When I think back, I can recall observing boys kid each other, sometimes quite cruelly, yet form some kind of personal connection amid the insults and cruel words. But I perceived it as ill intent, and I was hurt by it, and as an adult, that hurt has melted into my personality and affected all of my relationships with others. I take it that you count nobody among your close personal friends? I'm not the sort that has any close in person friends who I spend any amount of time with. And, my family matters are such that I don't have much free time anyway. But I do have a loyal wife and a wonderful, albeit multiply handicapped, 30 year old son. He is blind, autistic, and awaiting a kidney for transplant currently; also a number of lesser handicaps which, altogether make life on his own impossible for him. But I am pretty happy in my lot. Only thing is lack of male companionship makes me sad sometimes. But, as you can see, I'm working on that.
Max

In no way will I accept that people are testing one out? That makes no sense & is cruel. They were bullies, that is all. Giving them a place just allows them to vent their problems out on others. I have no time for them.
Jealousy is common in the arts. It is a profession that attracts some of the most cloistered, narrow-minded fools one can imagine. There is an old expression concerned with universities that is relevant here: 'The battles are so vicious because the rewards are so small!'
You certainly have a complicated life. I do not believe we are given 'stuff' to test us. Makes no sense to me in a universe where a rogue comet could cause a mass wipe-out of most species. We endure, then we die. Something to look forward to? I am presently watching the weather. Down south has been major beach erosion never before seen. The Monsoon is building with a number of cyclones in the north. I live in a place that had a major flood event 2 years ago, 80% of buildings were damaged, people died, & it is thought 2 billion animals both native & domesticated were drowned! Then we all had bush fires, then floods again, then Coronavirus - what a world?!
I do not worry about not being part of any scene, especially the gay scene because they were an excluding lot. I met some awful, racist, & rude people who were not interested in guys with disabilities, or who were different.
Writing on sites like this is enough for me - after all I have a cat

I thought to add a YouTube video here which has some gay humour in it: