Switching Time: Aspergers Style

Post Reply New Topic

This was written years ago, before I knew what Aspergers was; this is also a pretty long post, folks...sorry:

".....I couldn’t survive without my imagination.
.....It’s as crucial to keeping me alive as my blood, my head, my heart.
.....My imagination’s a lot like a DVR in the way it archives memories; it records my life with vivid, crystal-clarity, including all emotions tied to real events. It’s almost a diary, stocked like a Blockbuster Video, with aisles of recordings that start with my earliest recollections. The shelves are clean & orderly, organized by event & emotional impact, and their subjects are prominently labeled: Fiction, Drama, Comedy, Real Life, and in a guarded, segregated corner, Blooper Reels.
.....Blooper Reels.
.....Though funny-sounding on the surface, those reels can often be dangerous. As I said, they’re recorded to the last palpability, and most are unedited, & free of self-delusion. The Bloopers include my DUI, and the tricks that I met which ended very badly. Most importantly, those recordings house my near-misses, the men whose paths I wanted to cross, but never got to know because drinking pushed them away.
.....I guess it would be easier, if the shelves didn’t mirror my conscience. They have too many videos that are labeled “Uncensored,” and though I try to forget those particular titles, they’re often played on the in-house TV while I browse for inspiration. The cold-honest truth is that the best ideas come from my imagination’s most defended places; the only way to erase the tapes is to watch them a final time.
.....And the uncensored tapes, the saddest of them all, must always be viewed when sober…"


I believe I can explain longterm/undiagnosed Aspergers with the same clarity that Temple Grandin used in describing Autism. But even more importantly, I believe my Aspergers allows me to tangibly describe "love"...and how emotion & anger become trapped in visual-memory. I also believe I am in possession of a pivotal Aspergers case-study: a 14-year obsession that made it all the way to John Scognamiglio (the chief editor at Kensington Publishers), but was passed on because both he & myself mistook it for fiction.

Before I share my project, I need to tell you about my life. I'm a 42 year old gay man, a recovering alcoholic, and my story gets a little uncomfortable in places. Please understand, everything below directly relates to Aspergers Syndrome; with the public forum in mind, I've kept it as polite as possible.

My life, in bullet points:

1. Extreme childhood loneliness, and clear signs of Tourettes/Apergers by age 5 (that were mistaken for gay flamboyance by homophobic parents).

2. Ages 5-8: Ongoing shame from my parents (over my mannerisms/behavior). I suspect that this was most likely from my Mother's own childhood sexual abuse/guilt, and my Father's disappointment over his only son being gay. (I later learned that my Father had been "treated" for homosexual urges in the early 1960s...and that he was an alcoholic, who had been sober only 8 years.)

3. Age 9: My parents' refusal to accept my/any homosexuality becomes a public topic at home. I'm sent to a psychiatrist to "fix" my urges (while at the same time, my sister - a lesbian - desperately hides her sexuality). There are many, many fights between my parents during this time...most of which were about me.

4. Age 10, 1980: In an emotional attempt to connect with my Father, I admit that I'm "lonely" (after a verbal fight with him). This admission backfires, and he yells at my Mother before leaving the house in his car; she fears he's going to fall off the wagon and blames me for his mood/departure. Mother drives away to find him. I'm left alone to absorb all this...which leads me to the kitchen - where I attempt to cut my wrists. But something stops me - a forced calm, a restraint that I use to this day (especially around screaming children). I suspect that from that moment on, I began a lifetime of "flickering" between imagination & reality (using my Aspergers-Imagination to cope with real life). The near-suicide attempt came & went unnoticed, but in the following years, I began to consciously "change my appearance," lowering my voice, restraining my ticks/twitches, and later (in high school) losing 80lbs in 4 months to change my physical appearance. I quite literally, "became a different person."

5. I left home at 18, failed college, and started drinking. I began my rebellious 20s in the closeted world of rural gay bars, in the early 1990s...and later in Chicago, during the fear/grief of pre-cocktail HIV/AIDS. My sister took the opposite route; she went to school out of state and studied until she got her Masters; she also played/excelled in sports, stopping only when she ruptured her Achilles tendon. Both my sister & I lived our lives "hard," but in different ways.

6. Age 28: My lifestyle & hereditary alcoholism (of which I was in denial) led to a DUI in 1998. With the laws at the time, I got through the experience easily; I forced the episode out of my mind the moment I got my license back.

7. 1999-2006: Numerous attempts to "escape" my Imagination...including sudden moves to Arizona & Illinois, and many visits to psychiatrists (for depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and crippling adherence to obsessive routines/cleaning). I continued to drink, though I was skilled at controlling my intake/planned benders (and hiding their effects). For anyone who saw me, I was a responsible, functioning adult. I also became aware that I actively "played characters" at home, at work, and wherever I was at - in a much different way than normal people.

8. 1996-Present: I've explored and grown comfortable with a lifelong interest in the "true" gay leather scene, where the emphasis is really about "rules of conduct" and "codes of safe behavior," rather than sexual stereotypes. Oddly enough, with it's roleplaying & fantasy, the leather community is the one social situation where my Aspergers works to my advantage.

9. 1994-2009: A continuing pattern of 2-year relationships (4 total), with each ending badly and followed by periods of binge drinking & anonymous sex. Sometime in 2003/2004 (when I began to work at a bookstore), I found a title on "Borderline Personality Disorder." I began to research psychiatric illnesses, because I knew in my gut that something wasn't right.

10. 2004: My sister's life partner committed suicide unexpectedly, which brought back the memories of my own childhood attempt...and caused years of my own repressed anger to surface. The anger was "dangerous," and as it had to GO somewhere, I vented it into a project I'd been working on since 1996: writing my first novel, a work of reality-inspired-fiction, "Goodbye to Beekman Place." From texts to online chatting, from writing emails to crafting a novel, WORDS have always been the one place I can speak with clarity & confidence; while writing GTBP, I often sat at my computer and watched as the curser left behind an unfamiliar trail of words...

(Remember that.)

11. 2004-2008: I made repeated attempts to attend AA meetings, knowing my once-functional alcoholism had grown out of control. All attempts failed because I could never actively-participate in AA discussions for three reasons: A, I was in denial; B, As an Aspie, I "observed & reacted to" meetings (rather than actively participating); and C, I feared my gay-themed drinking stories would upset the conservative group. Regardless of excuses/rationalizations, I knew deep down that drinking was taking over my life...and I couldn't stop it on my own. GTBP reflected this fact, and I drew from my own guilt/shame to portray the main character's alcoholic denial.

12. Also from 2004-2008, I made repeated attempts to join/participate in writing groups (both online and in person), to share rough drafts of GTBP. These meetings were "productive failures" (in a similar way to AA), though they did teach me how to accept/give criticism...and ultimately helped me complete/submit my 1st book. GTBP made it all the way to John Scognamiglio, the chief editor at Kensington Publishers - before it was passed on.

13. 2009: Inevitably, I got a 2nd DUI, which forced me into sobriety for the first time in 14 years. As ugly as DUI's are, the experience was crucial in shattering my Aspergers-Imagination; in the days that immediately followed, I could actually SEE how my Imagination worked: I saw it's computers scramble to "process" the sudden loss of alcohol-routine...and then fail completely, flushing me out like Neo in the Matrix. I literally felt like I had woken in "someone else's life," and the knowledge, shame, and waves of unlocked memories grew overwhelming...along with thoughts of suicide. A month later, as my Imagination returned in stages, I began court-mandated alcoholism treatment, careful to stay in the present.

14. 2010: I attended/completed treatment for most of the year, where I learned about addiction - and took responsibility for my actions. The knowledge from my classes was easily paired to a lifetime of memories; I'm an alcoholic, and I can't drink again. But in addition to learning about addiction, I started to realize that something was genuinely "different" about me. In a rare moment of candidness, I told my Mother, "My brain doesn't process information like most people. It doesn't get from Point A to Point B like everyone else." Those words were hauntingly familiar to me, as I'd told her the very same thing 30 years before, after sobbing to my Father, just before she left me alone...

15. New Years Day, 2010: Backing up a few months, I was the only sober guy at a buddy's New Years Eve party in Chicago; I helped him clean his apartment the morning after, and we turned on the TV for a little background noise. We flipped on HBO, in time to catch "Temple Grandin: Thinking in Pictures." And despite my love of cleaning, the movie caught my attention, and by the time the movie was over, I was literally...NUMB.

You know where this is going...the film led to her books, which led to "Look Me in the Eye," "Running With Scissors," and "Dry." More formal Autism/Aspergers titles followed, as well as a slew of online research. Suddenly, it all made perfect sense...and the emotion that followed was intense as when I wrote GTBP. It was my Mother of all people who led me to this site; "There's a guy on American Idol," she said. "He has Aspergers and Torrettes...but you should hear him SING."

Indeed, we ALL sing in many different ways, and we all have stories to tell...some more difficult than others. For me, my own story is recorded in "Goodbye to Beekman Place"...not in the work, itself - but in the life of it's author, while writing it.

GTBP took me FOURTEEN YEARS to write, and as a work of fiction it's complicated & confusing, hard to for the reader to follow. But it was for many years, a story that mirrored both Aspergers and alcoholism; it's real story is of this writer's imagination...and how I found my voice, and sang with words to finally escape...

But still, GTBP made it all the way to a publisher based on its plot alone. And when you factor in my personal story (unknown at the time of submission), the novel screams undiagnosed Aspergers...and the tragedy of being trapped, like John Cusack in "Being John Malkovich."

I know how to put Aspergers in terms most readers can easily understand. When you combine reasonable writing skill, personal story, and ability to coherently self-reflect, I genuinely believe that Goodbye to Beekman Place is a pivotal Aspergers case-study...a book that with professional editing and commentary from a psychiatric professional will hold its own against Grandin's "Emergence" and Baer's "Switching Time."

I'm looking for a co-author who understands my vision.

This post was a long one...thanks for reading!

It seems like you have an interesting story.

How many words/pages is it?

Have you tried submitting it to an agent? I've heard that most publishers do not take unsolicited manuscripts, and an agent would be able to hook you up with an editor, but it'd be great to do as much editing as you can first.

Good luck!

It's 479 pages; I never did a word count. Yes, I attempted agents, and had a two-week interaction with the Gloria Stern agency; but I also had one of those one-in-a-million direct-to-publisher queries, that resulted in a manuscript request. And as far as editing goes, what I need is for a psychiatrist to actually REMOVE content; my story is waaaay too complicated - like Temple Grandin's college paper on her squeeze machine.

Here's the basic premise of Goodbye to Beekman Place:

In 1980 Peoria Illinois, a young gay man is murdered in the old Beekman Place hotel. The murder is brutal & sexual, and the killer left behind two unexplainable clues: Coca-Cola, circa 1903 (when cocaine was used) and Mrs Winslows Soothing Clove Cigarettes (a brand defunct since 1890) - both as fresh as though they were made today. With no answers, no witnesses, and no match to fingerprints, the murder is never solved.

Flash-forward to present day. Frankie Downs (40, gay, alcoholic, a writer for Old Places magazine) arrives at Beekman Place to do a feature on the old hotel. During his tour, we learn of the hotel's strange past...and Frankie gets drunk, passing out cold. A few hours later, Frankie attends a lobby reception after sobering up; he hits it off with a young male tenant, and the two have consensual sex...after which, Frankie leaves at 3am. The following morning, the tenant is found dead...same scene, same Coke & cigarettes, same MO as 31 year before; but now the police have a suspect: Frankie...and to make matters worse, his fingerprints ALSO match the 1980 killing. Only Frankie is NOT the killer, and the murder-mystery begins...

The original idea was to have an ensemble cast of interconnected characters, all participating in a fast-paced, Preston/Child-style mystery. But as the story progressed, secrets were revealed about the characters' lives that actually overshadowed the common investigation. Midway through the book, the murders took second-stage, as the characters themselves became more important...and it was revealed that they've been trapped in a story, rewritten so many times, it's perfect. (Think "trapped in Aspergers routine.")

There was also a change of locale; the book opens in Peoria/Chicago, but moves into "Radio World" (a 1920s amusement park which is governed by an omnipresent computer; think: the author's Aspergers Imagination)...meaning that the original mystery was only a ruse, meant to lure the reader deeper into the book. (The imagination is trapped, and is trying to reach into the real world for help.) Once in RW, the characters communicate directly to the reader; they beg the reader to help them escape, and to read between the lines of the story and find an answer "that's hidden in plain sight."

And it all revolves around an old hotel that keeps memories in every room, "as fresh as though they were made today..." (Think: Apergers memory.)

Not exactly Nora Roberts...

Hey guys.

I'm posting again.

Please look up my 2/24/2013 Wrong Planet post entitled "Schizotypal Personality Disorder & Goodbye to Beekman Place."