My mother taught me to mourn at death, my grandma taught me to be nice to dogs, my grandpa how to empathize with the disabled. These lessons and many others have formed a strange Quilt-man comprised of ideas and sentiments, which is with me at all times. He moves with a soft awkwardness. He could be decimated like a stack of pillows with a push of the hand. But who would I have then?
Once I saw a young man collapse at an airport in Chicago. Everyone stood around staring at him. I turned to Quilt-man and asked him, “What should I do?” Quilt-man looked at me with his button eyes and said, “Give him everything.” I ran over to the young man and unemotionally talked him through what was happening and determined he was having some kind of insulin issue. By then about 60 people had gathered around watching or taking video, nobody had helped him. An airport worker was strolling by and I intercepted him, and he called an ambulance which took the man to a hospital.
I sat down and was thankful that I have a Quilt-man. Apparently nobody else in the Chicago terminal has a Quilt-man.
I’ll catch myself thinking about violence, kinship, etc., and remember that I have hundreds of things to be sentimental about. These are all the patches on Quilt-man, too many to count. Shouldn’t I be thinking about those things? Should I call my mom? I look at Quilt-man, who just sits there waiting like an old doll, and wonder, Shouldn’t I be him?
I hear from Christians, Let Jesus into your heart. He’s in Quilt-man’s heart. A lot of things are. I ask Quilt-man what it means, and he has no idea. He’s just Quilt-man, not a philosopher. I hear the news say, Don’t be prejudiced. Quilt-man is not prejudiced. I ask Quilt-man what it means, but he just points to one of his patches and says, “This one, I think. I have so many.”
Quilt-man has been with me since I can remember. I should know him better than anyone else, but he’s the most foreign person. I can tell you where most patches came from, I can refer to them when dealing with people, but I can’t tell you what most of them mean. It might be worth contemplating.
I can easily grab Quilt-man by the neck and threaten to rip his eyes out and remove all his stuffing. I can destroy the entire patchwork right now. Following me around as if I’m not sentimental, not empathetic. But if I destroyed Quilt-man, would I help people at the airport? I wonder if other Autistics have their own Quilt-men and -women.
I wonder if Manic-Schizoids don’t have Quilt-men, if they have some kind of a ghost instead, spectral and etherial, less material and less objective. Ether is combination of everything in the universe, coalescing into one gaseous vapor that trails a person around and tells them amazing things and makes them laugh. But Ether-man never discloses where his knowledge comes from. Ether-man is more prophetic and knowledgeable, he’s extremely close and comforting, but he’s terrifyingly obtuse. You can talk to him and hear his voice. He tells you not to eat raddishes anymore, or go sleep outside. It’s so real it’s embarrassing, so you just tell people you have your reasons. You’ve kept him from the world as much as possible, but you’re getting older and he’s getting louder. Can’t you retire him? Where do you get these things from, Ether-man?
You can’t know. Ether-man is a lightning rod. If you become a lightning rod, you die.
Because I have a Quilt-man, knowledge and wisdom don’t come easily to me. I don’t follow my gut. Quilt-man shakes his floppy index finger at that. I don’t copy people. I don’t intuit. I can’t find my way around town after living here 6 years. Everything I know is through brute-force input, processing, note-taking, organization, and application. Each conversation has a timer based on hundreds of variables: if you’re this kind of person in this context at this place, I will speak for x minutes and wait y minutes while you talk, and we will have z number of exchanges until the conversation can be comfortably closed out. All my walk paths have a set number of steps and angles to keep in line with powers of 2 and avoid lines stretching out from any surface edges. All stairs counted and all symmetries religiously maintained. It makes you feel mentally retarded because 99% of everything else goes under your radar. You should’ve seen me in basketball, wandering around on the court when everyone else was running the defensive routine. My coach was pretty understanding. I think Quilt-man might be the most understanding of all, though.
On 3 occasions in my life, Quilt-man was at a loss for what to do. So he stepped aside, and I felt my bones take over, filled with some chemical that wouldn’t take no for an answer. Their actions defy cross-examination. They just do what they do, and those 3 moments have defined me as a stuntman, man, and father. I hope there are more of them.
I sometimes ask, What if I just retired Quilt-man entirely? But I’m not ready for this. Maybe I never will be, but I now know that I have substance. I have bones which are real, and I am not Quilt-Man, and I never will be. Quilt-man meanwhile assuringly looks on, anticipating his own retirement someday so he can finally move away from this incredibly difficult adult he’s stuck with. I would like to help Quilt-man retire. He seems so tired. After all, he is old as humanity itself.
Leave a Reply