Things That Run in Families. Like Haemorrhoids.

There are some physical characteristics that run in families. Aquiline noses, blonde hair, blue eyes. My family got haemorrhoids.

We never actually discussed this unfortunate genetic inheritance, of course, but there was always a tell-tale stampede for the padded chairs whenever the wider family got together.

When I first came into my birthright – what I like to think of as the family pile – I hadn’t even heard of haemorrhoids and I had absolutely no idea why my rear end felt like somebody was impaling me with a red-hot spike. I mentioned it to Vanessa, who suggested I saw a doctor. Ridiculous.

We eventually settled on her going to the chemist, describing the symptoms, and seeing if they had anything that helped. She came back with two tubes of cream. One said it was for haemorrhoids but on no account should it be used on a rash and the other said it was for a rash but on no account should it be used on haemorrhoids. Brilliant. So now I needed to know which I had.

I decided to take a look, which was not easy. I eventually found that by squatting over a shaving mirror and shining my angle-poise desk light in a low arc, I got a reasonable look. At first, I gave myself a God-awful fright since I forgot that my shaving mirror is heavily magnified on one side. But once I have turned it over to the side with normal-magnification, I was fine.

The only trouble was, this was the first time I had ever had a really good stare at my rear-end. It looked pretty red and raw but I had nothing to compare it with. This might be how it always looked. What the hell did a normal rear-end look like.

It was some days later still that I had my brainwave. Internet porn. There must be loads of naked rear-ends on there that I could carefully analyse in the comfort of my own home. There were and I did. For the record, it was a rash and it cleared up a couple of weeks with the correct cream. But, to this day, I swear I am the only person in the world who has put ‘Butt F**king’ into Google purely for medical reasons.

For the Love of a Fish…

When I was young, I begged and begged my parents for a pet. In the end, I got given a gerbil and, because they are better backed up by a mate (aren’t we all?) I got two. Both were females as having any more pattering of tiny feet was verboten.

I truly loved my gerbils. And they were the first creatures ever to give me unconditional love in return. At least, it was a lot closer to love than anything else that was on offer. My gerbils didn’t mind how odd I behaved, provided I let them out for a run now and again and kept their cage clean. Wish humans were as easy as that.

When they died, I buried them. A few years later, I accidentally dug them up again and marvelled at the delicacy of their remains. This was met by horror by my parents and, on the basis it could be flushed down the toilet when it was dead, the next pet I got given was a fish. It wasn’t quite so cuddly as a gerbil, and a run out of his tank meant the bath, but I got to love it nonetheless.

I called my fish Sylvester as he was not a goldfish but a silverfish. Tongue-twisting alliteration was something I enjoyed but nobody else seemed to. For the rest of my family, he was simply “the fish”. Now Sylvester was an incredibly long-lived fish and, when I went away to university, he was still going strong. In fact, it was a delight having him as it meant someone in the house was genuinely pleased to see me when I returned. He didn’t exactly show it but I’m not really into all that hugging business anyway so that was fine.

One of those weekends, I came down to breakfast to find my mother enjoying a slice of toast and a coffee. I nodded an acknowledgement and got on with finding myself something to eat. It was only then did my mother speak to inform me that the fish was dead.

He was too. Lying just in front of where my mother was eating. He’d obviously jumped out of his tank in the night. Maybe he thought he would go find the bath on his own, although I’m not sure he’d have managed the taps.

I asked my mother if she had tried to revive him but she gave a snort as if to say I should count my blessings she wasn’t eating him on her toast. It was then that I performed my miracle.

Peeling Sylvester up from the Formica worktop, and costing him several rows of scales in the process, I held my poor little fish in my hands. Then I took him over to the sink. I filled the basin, and put him in. I wasn’t too sure what you did regarding these resurrection matters so I merely span him around in the water and called on the Almighty to give him his life back. I must have been heard as, a few moments later, Sylvester started swimming around. I lifted him up, dusted him off, and popped him back into his tank. My mother screamed. The old bringing-the-fish-back-from-the-dead thing had clearly got her spooked.

Unfortunately, thereafter my resurrected fish went up in everyone’s estimation and, by the time I next came home, he had been requisitioned by the rest of the household. He now had a different name, a different history, and, most assuredly, had very little to do with me. Sometimes, when everyone else was out of the room, I’d lean over his tank and call “Sylvester”. He used to see me and flip over onto his back. It was our little joke.

Reincarnated or not, Sylvester (under his new nom-de-plume) was not immortal. One weekend I was informed that my beloved fish had definitely and finally gone. Did he have a burial worthy of his miraculous self? Or a cremation to match those of Greek myth? Nope. Flushed down the toilet was his end. But at least I wouldn’t be exhuming the remains.

An Interview with a Psychiatrist. A Vampire Would Have Been Better.

Readers of my last blog will know that I’m officially MAD – that’s the medical condition I’ve apparently got – which is slightly better than being a FRUITCAKE I suppose, but not by much.

As you will have read last time, I had dutifully been dragged to the doctor and been given some happy pills. For a week, I was marginally less suicidal, which has to be counted a success, until they slowly stopped working and I was back to my usual deadbeat self.

Vanessa suggested I saw a psychiatrist, who may be better able to help me than a general practice doctor. I told her, in no uncertain terms that, emphatically, unequivocally, I would not be seeing a psychiatrist. I raised my voice and flapped my arms around to emphasise the point – I always feel that helps. I told her there was categorically nothing in life I would rather do less than see a psychiatrist. If she insisted then it would be my cold and putrefying corpse she’d have to drag there. I was absolutely, totally, and unequivocally not going. Ever. Period. End of discussion. Don’t ever raise the subject again.

The next day we got in the car to travel to my appointment with the psychiatrist.

The clinic looked like a converted lock-up garage, although they had made an effort inside by dimming the lights to provide a relaxed ambiance (or perhaps it was to hide the oil spills). This meant that I couldn’t see properly to fill in the form they gave me but I took a stab at what was required and did my best. Vanessa took it back to the reception and, after a quick query that I really did have a postcode as a first name, we were called in.

Naturally, Vanessa left me the chair against the wall, furthest from the psychiatrist. Slick.

We started by filling out another form. The psychiatrist asked in which hospital I was born. Well, I went in as a foetus and had a bit on my mind when I came out, so I can’t actually remember. He suggested it was probably the Queen Margaret. I bowed to what I assumed was his superior knowledge and agreed. But then I realised that the only Queen Margaret I could think of was the consort of King Henry VI in the fifteenth century. It must have been a hell of an old hospital.

He asked if I did drugs. I thought that was sweet as I was feeling particularly tense but decided it was probably inappropriate in the clinic so declined.

He asked about the psychiatric history of my blood family. I said they were madder than a pack of loons in a wet sack. He pressed me for details of any medication they took. I said I didn’t know as they were usually confined to the funny farm when they were at their worst.

The psychiatrist nodded sagely and suggested I had a predisposition to depression as an inheritance from my barking mad family. “It’s in your genes”, he said. Naturally, I looked down at my jeans and concluded that this psychiatrist must be of the Freudian school.

He then asked if I had suicidal thoughts. I was going to say that it was the only thing that kept me sane but decided it wasn’t the best argument I could come up with.

He then asked me what I was looking for from him. I replied, honestly, that I had no wish to see him and had been dragged there, under protest, by Vanessa who thought he might be able to help. I was told afterwards that the slightly startled expression on his face was indeed a slightly startled expression.

He asked about the tablets I was on and, at their best, how they made me feel. He suggested, as doctors always do, that I use a scale of one to ten. I wanted to say 4.72 but decided it might be best to round it up to five. He then asked if I had ever felt anxious before getting depressed, particularly with my Aspergers. Only every day I’ve ever lived.

He then asked if I had a good social group. Er, not exactly. Friends? Er, well…. He asked when was the last time I saw people socially. ‘About 5…’, I said. He wrote it down. ‘Years’, I added. And there was that startled look again.

The upshot was that he gave me a shed-load more tablets. I am now on four different types of anti-depressant. I’m not sure what the record is but that must be pretty close. I asked when I might be able to come off them. He was tactful but the inference was: when I’m dead.

The last thing the psychiatrist said as we left the lock-up garage was that he eventually wants to get me anxiety free. Yeah, Doc, I’d like to see an elephant fly. But I don’t think either’s going to happen any time soon.

Going MAD, Quietly

Attentive readers will notice that it’s now July and my last post was at Christmas. I would like to say this is because I’ve been snowed under with all the fun things that I am told life can hold but, sadly, that would not be true. The fact is, I’ve been going slowly (and now entirely officially) MAD.

I won’t bore you with all the stressful events the last 18 months or so have brought. If nothing else, I’d then have very little to write about for the rest of the year. But, gradually and inexorably, they have taken their toll on my sanity and wellbeing, which, let’s be honest, wasn’t particularly peachy to begin with.

It started with a general feeling that life was not altogether as rosy as it could be and ended with a realisation that only a box of matches and several gallons of high-octane fuel could really sort out the mess that life had become.

I started to pay more attention to those adverts placed by emotional support groups. But when I saw a headline that said: “Feeling Suicidal – Get Help Now” I honestly expected to read the details of a rope-maker, or at the very least the address of a gun shop. But all it suggested was a chat on the telephone. Now, I don’t do telephones and I don’t do chats, so I did the next best thing and hoped it would all go away*.

It didn’t. It got worse. Eventually, and the deciding factor for me to call in the cavalry, was insomnia. I now entirely understand why sleep deprivation is a method of torture. It is not pretty. All those hours and all those thoughts. It was time to whistle up the 9^th.

I told Vanessa enough was enough and that she had to call one of those chat lines and get me some help. Instead, she decided to contact a doctor.

I vacillated about going for a while until, after one particularly sleepless night, I could take it no more. Vanessa made all the necessary arrangements – which included a lengthy and very frank discussion with the doctor of my myriad idiosyncrasies and quoibles – and we were off. The receptionist asked how long we wanted the appointment to be. I said 10 minutes. We were in there an hour.

I needed startlingly little prompting as I recalled the horror of the last year and a half. The doctor listened attentively with a few sympathetic interjections here and there. Somewhat surprisingly, she was still dry-eyed when I finished. Actually, she was positively elated as she told me I had a textbook case of Mixed Anxiety and Depression. That’s apparently a good thing. But I will leave you to work out the acronym of my latest condition.

So, I’m now on these great little pills that are supposed to make me happy. Sort of. They’re also designed to help me sleep. Sort of. But, best of all, they come with two pages of closely-typed side-effects, the worst of which seems to lead to instant death. Hell, if the anxiety doesn’t get me, maybe the tablets will.

Nevertheless, I am now the proud owner of two conditions that are mentioned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (at least, in Edition IV they were). I believe that earns me a mauve rosette.

As for my new, and not entirely welcome, state you might wonder how I feel about it. In all truthfulness, I’m not exactly mad about it.

* I’m not advocating anyone else suffers in silence – far from it. If anything rings a bell in this piece, see a doctor or, if you’re braver than I’ll ever be, call the Samaritans helpline. It’s 08457 90 90 90 in the UK. I’ve since found out that even silent calls are fine, if they help.

The Christmas Sparkle That Lasts All Year

As someone with Aspergers, I usually think most decisions through to a very lengthy and involved conclusion. Unfortunately, this train of thought, although extensive and detailed, does not always take in the bigger picture. Which is why, one Christmas several years ago, I stood before a discounted job-lot of seasonal wrapping paper and decided it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I reasoned that, with the two-dozen rolls they were selling, I could wrap all of Vanessa’s Christmas presents for the next ten years or so and save myself both time and money. Brilliant.

The paper itself was a tasteful shade of red. Well, tasteful if neon and glow-in-the-dark colours are your thing. I thought it was perfect. It was also covered in glitter, which amplified the red to give a dazzling, sparkly, and slightly drug-crazed-vision feel. Maybe I’d slip some migraine tablets in with Vanessa’s first present, just in case. It was only with hindsight that I realised I should have reflected on why the store-owner wanted to get rid of it at such a knock down price in the first place. He even threw in a few more rolls for free.

When it came to wrapping, I laid out a sheet of the paper, cut it to size, and lifted it up. Beneath was a rectangle of glitter, about half an inch thick. Clearly, the glue used to stick the damn stuff was more Teflon than Araldite. I persevered. Soon, the entire wrapping table, the floor, the lower portion of the walls, and even a few spots on the ceiling were covered in red glitter. I fetched a dustpan and brush to sweep some of the excess blizzard but this only served to send it bouncing into the air, where it stuck on every surface with a static charge. I looked down at my clothes. They looked like the sort of outfit Dorothy would chose to go with her shoes. I got the vacuum cleaner. It managed to clear a small area so that the colour of the carpet began to show through but was soon covered itself. Vanessa arrived home and asked whether maybe a glitter factory had exploded nearby.

On Christmas Day, when Vanessa came to open her presents, we both braved the wrapping paper with the same stoicism that the Bedouin brave a sandstorm. Cover eyes, mouth, and nose, and avoid breathing deeply. The industrial extractor we fitted above the present-opening surface helped but the house still resembled a psychedelic seventies-style discothèque once we had finished.

Since that day, we have renovated the house, completely gutting the interior. We took the floors out, hacked the plaster off the walls. We even took the bloody roof off. And I still find bits of red glitter remaining. I imagine if there was a nuclear holocaust the cockroaches – or whatever creature it is that can withstand a nuclear blast – will awake in a post-apocalyptic world to find it covered in red glitter. Everything else having been confined to oblivion.

After Christmas, we took the wrapping paper to a barn, where I came up with a cunning plan. Anyone who upsets us during the year – and let’s face it, I’ve got Aspergers, that’s pretty much everyone – gets a present from us wrapped in red glitter paper. We wrap it outside, in the lowest field next to the river, and immediately put it into the back of my truck for carriage to the Post Office. The glitter doesn’t come within a mile of the house and we rub ourselves down with alcohol wipes afterward. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, and with 15 rolls still out there, we’ve got plenty to go round.

The Day My Secretary Turned into a Zombie

One aspect of Aspergers that should be entirely positive is our complete and total honesty and our willingness, indeed almost need, to be helpful. What could go wrong with that attitude?

Lots, as it turns out. Like being asked whether someone looks fat in a dress they are wearing. I realised early on that “Yes” often received an adverse reaction. It was completely and totally honest but clearly lacked that other criteria: helpfulness. So I modified my answer to: “Yes, but I wouldn’t worry as you’ll look just as fat in anything else”. To my bewilderment, this didn’t go down well either. Maybe I needed to show I cared. Demonstrating empathy is something we find hard. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we always look as if we don’t care. Next time I tell someone they look fat maybe I should have a pained expression, like it’s a bad thing.

I once had an opportunity to bring all three criteria into play when my one-time secretary – we’ll call her Mary for all the usual reasons, like, that’s her name – arrived for work looking ghastly. I say ‘secretary’ but, in reality, I was too junior to have a designated secretary but Mary did my typing and made me a drink now and again. I liked her enormously and, despite her being several decades older than me, we always got on. So I was genuinely concerned when she walked in early one morning looking like she was about to drop dead of Ebola. Mary usually belied – what I thought then – was her advanced age and looked fabulous, so her current state was of immediate concern.

My initial reaction was honest, helpful and, above all, delivered as if I cared. “My God!” I almost shouted, “You look awful. What in God’s name is wrong?” Mary smiled wanly and sat at her desk, directly opposite mine. She resembled a zombie.

“Are you ill?” I pressed, “A disease? Has it been coming on long?”

Mary sighed and replied, “I was late leaving the house this morning...” Before she could finish, I cut her off.

“Fair enough,” I allowed severely, “but to arrive looking as bad as you do. You shouldn’t have even got out of bed. You look truly hideous and you need to take whatever it is seriously. Go home. See a doctor. Maybe an undertaker too. Best be prepared.”

At this point, a colleague walked over. He looked at Mary, looked at me, and told me not to be so unkind.

“Unkind!” I spluttered, “Mary looks as if she might die any moment and you say I’m being unkind. My God man, just look at her.”

He did. And so did I. Mary had taken out her make-up bag and was applying some powder to her face. She finished her earlier sentence...

“I was late leaving the house this morning… and I didn’t have time to put my make-up on”.

Make up? You mean… No! I was utterly flummoxed. I then proceeded to watch Mary turn from an extra from the Night of the Living Dead to the gorgeous individual we all knew and loved. Incredible.

But I wasn’t going to let it rest there. “You look much better,” I allowed, “But for pity's sake, never do that again. I can’t take the shock.”

And, to her credit, she never did.

No Miami but a Whole Load of Vice

Sometimes, Aspergers can make something that is completely daft appear, well, completely sane. Like the time my friend Graham (yes, that’s his name) and I visited our local nightclub when we were teenagers. Graham was, as a lot of my friends were, a tiny bit autistic. I knew him from the school computer group. Enough said.

Knowing that our only attempt to breed successfully was to attend social gatherings, we occasionally visited the flesh centres that were the local nightclubs. By visiting a specific club - for which we were technically 8 years too young - we could commandeer one of its many darkened booths and, fending off the inevitable comments about our sexuality, slink back to the shadows when it all got too much.

Around the time we visited the nightclub, the television schedule was reeling to the phenomenon of Miami Vice. At least, mine was. Since I was fair-haired, had a face full of stubble, and tended towards pastel shades, I was Crocket. Graham, blessed with dark skin and a line of natty suits, was Tubbs. Yes, it was daft but read the first line again.

The evening we visited the nightclub, we were already in persona. Graham wore a soft grey chalk-stripe suit and I had more pastel on me than a piece of Degas art. Naturally, I wasn’t wearing any socks either. I drove the short hop from our sheltered countryside houses into the heaving metropolis that was our local town. I think we may have even stopped at a traffic light, it was that frenetic. All through the journey, we played my Miami Vice music cassette, recorded from a friend’s vinyl record. Oh yes. Not only were we vice cops, we were pirate vice cops. Could we be any cooler?

Actually, Graham decided that we could. There was the usual queue into the nightclub with a long line of people snaking along the pavement. We had to drive past them to park the car. Graham suggested that we lower the windows (I had fitted my car with electric boxes to replace the winding mechanism, which, to us, made it feel like we were on the space shuttle) and cruise slowly past the queue while playing the theme music to Miami Vice, extremely loud.

I pointed out that the theme music was at the beginning of the cassette and we were nearing its end but that was solved by pulling over some metres from the crowd and rewinding. I am sure a few people might have glanced over at the small red Vauxhall Nova blocking all the traffic while two flustered geeks furiously pressed the rewind button on the cassette unit again and again in the vain hope it might make it go faster. But they surely had no idea what was coming next.

With the first cords blaring out of the open windows (half-open on my side as the winding mechanism didn’t always work), we approached the crowd. Graham hung his arm out of the window as we had seen Tubbs do in an episode the previous weekend. He then came up with his second great idea of the evening.

“Mike,” he shouted above the blare of the music, “stick your sunglasses on”. I protested that I could barely see anyway with all the dazzling lights from the nightclub interfering with my night vision but Graham was insistent. It would make us look über-cool.

I stuck my shades on and, as predicted, all went immediately black. There was a tiny amount of light from the nightclub door and, in my increasing, and very literal, blind panic, I careered toward it. Graham, oblivious to our direction of travel, concentrated on simultaneously looking cool, while stopping his eardrums from bursting with the racket that was emanating from the stereo. I am not sure whether it was when we mounted the curb that I realised there was a problem or when people began screaming. Deciding that coolness will only take me so far in life, I removed my sunglasses. I had a line of people immediately to the left of my car, each of whom had been forced to flatten themselves against the wall of the nightclub when my car mounted the pavement. Graham continued to ham it up by shouting “Yo” to as many angry faces as he could.

I turned the wheel and my car left the pavement and re-joined the road. I decided to forgo the sunglasses whilst I entered the car park and found a space. I looked at Graham, who was beaming. “That was so cool”, he assured me. It took many years before doubts began to surface.