Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s

Robison states throughout his memoir that he has trouble with names. His brother is “Snort” and then “Varmint;” his parents are “Slave” and “Stupid;” his first wife is “Little Bear;” and his son is “Cubby.” He insists on purely logical, functional names for people and objects (“dog,” “house,” “Unit One”). In fact, he cannot abide or use names that do not serve this purpose. The paradox is that, as an engineer, he relies on his creativity, but when it comes to names, nothing other than practical and efficient will do. His impersonal relationship with names is “perfectly reasonable” to him, and he can’t understand why his coworker Martha would object to being called “Chubster” or why someone from Montague, Massachusetts, wouldn’t want to be called a “Montagoonian.” To Robison, a name isn’t something that belongs to the person, something fixed in the public consciousness as a matter of social utility, but rather something he should be free to modify as he sees fit. Likewise, he has trouble with the social etiquette surrounding labels and classifications. For example, he can’t distinguish between saying “Bob’s an attorney” and “Bob’s queer.” Both are accurate and functional descriptions, so why should one be acceptable and the other offensive?

Robison ponders his lifelong difficulty with romantic relationships. Like most people, his challenges stem from fear of rejection, but his strict Aspergian logic throws additional complications into the mix. Choosing a mate is a two-way street. Both parties must agree to choose mutually, and because of his fear of rejection, he admits he is content to be chosen rather than to choose.

He is now on his second marriage. His wife Martha makes him happier than he’s ever been, but doubts still nag at him. What if he could be happier? What if there is yet a better choice out there? Martha is one of three sisters (he refers to them as Units One, Two, and Three); maybe one of her sisters would have been a better choice. He poses this question openly to Martha, but he finds her vague response (“Depends on who you ask” [249]) unsettling. He doesn’t understand why she won’t reassure him with a definitive Yes, I’m the best one.

He compares choosing a mate to choosing a car, setting forth a complex calculus of conditions. If three people each buy a different model car, and each person thinks they chose the best one, it stands to reason that one car will ultimately prove to be superior. So how does he know he chose the best sister? He is further confused by people’s reactions to his logic. If we use a rational system of analysis to choose a car, he reasons, why not use a similar system when choosing a mate? And why are people offended when he suggests this? Although Robison is quite happy in his current marriage, he can’t help second-guessing himself.

Robison contemplates the randomness of marital success. Why do some marriages succeed while others fail? Using his second marriage as anecdotal evidence, he suggests that his marriage to Martha works because she understands him. She knows how to read his emotions even when he doesn’t express them, which eliminates those small misunderstandings that can turn into larger conflicts. She also acts as a bridge between him and the outside world, helping him to understand the nuances of human behavior that have so often confounded him. She is patient with his tics and eccentricities, never asking him to stop the behavior that she knows is perfectly natural for him. When he asks her to pet or scratch him like a dog—he even refers to her hands as “paws”—she obliges because she understands physical touch calms him. Finally, he likes sleeping in a “pile” with pillows on top of him or with Martha pressed up against him. Ultimately, Martha’s tolerance and understanding are key factors in the success of their marriage.

Robison, now the parent of teenager, looks for a better school district for his son. He decides on Amherst, the town where he grew up. Despite the many negative associations the town carries, Amherst is a completely different experience 30 years later. As a child, he had few friends, his school wanted him gone, and his home life was disastrous. Now he discovers that “the bad people from my youth had all vanished” (260). He and Martha build a house there, and his brother Augusten (he changed his name when he was 18) and his partner build one next door.

As he adjusts to life in Amherst with his new understanding of his Asperger’s, he finds people are friendly and accepting, not scary. He reestablishes some old friendships, and they invite him to a UMass basketball game. He has negative memories of school sports, but he goes anyway. He sits with his friends, who explain the rules of the game to him, and although he doesn’t understand it all, it doesn’t matter. Realizing he doesn’t have to know everything is a revelation to him. He has friends to help and support him, and he finally understands, “This is what life is like for normal people” (262). His return to Amherst is his opportunity to turn a negative experience into a positive one, and as a new member of the UMass Athletic Association, the basketball team makes the playoffs for the first time in years.

Robison has been fascinated by trains his entire life, and now he shares that fascination with his son Cubby. They bond over their shared interest in transportation technology, and he takes Cubby to the train yards to watch the huge engines in action. One day they drive to Middlefield to watch freight trains pass through a stretch of the Berkshire Mountains. Robison explains the mechanics of diesel engines as the trains climb and descend the mountain pass. Appropriately, Robison’s favorite book as a child was The Little Engine That Could. He used the train’s mantra—I think I can! I think I can!—as a soothing counterpoint to the negative voices, both internal and external, that he heard every day. He also notes how his physical tics (head bobbing, rocking back and forth) began during this part of his life, as he imagined himself as the Little Engine, huffing its way up the hill. The voices he heard as a child that told him he’s not good enough have morphed into adult voices that encourage him to relax with a cocktail or medication. He can avoid those temptations through his belief in his own work ethic. When confronting future challenges, he finds his past successes are effective motivation.

Robison compares the Epilogue to an encore at a rock concert. He uses it to give himself and the reader closure and to “[make] peace with [his] parents” (273). He and his father, whom Robison admits he treats “harshly” in the memoir, barely speak except for birthdays and holidays. His father lives with his second wife Judy in a secluded house in the Massachusetts woods. One day, while chopping wood, he is bitten by a brown recluse spider. His finger turns gangrenous, and he is rushed to the hospital. Although he recovers, a series of other health issues befall him: He breaks his hip and back falling down the stairs; years of drinking and arthritis medication have taken a toll on his liver, and his belly swells to the size of a “beach ball.” Robison realizes his father is dying. He and Cubby sit with him in the hospital, and Robison asks his father to recall any happy times from his childhood. To his surprise, his father remembers many: a trip to a train museum in Philadelphia; the day Robison learned to ride a bike; a vacation to Valley Forge National Historical Park. Robison realizes that the abuse he suffered as a child had blocked out all the good memories.

As his father’s health declines, Robison and Judy bring him home from the hospital to spend his final days in familiar surroundings. Robison and Cubby dig his father’s tractor out of the snow and drive it up to the house so he can see it one last time. Robison visits his father every day until his death in 2005. Following his father’s death, childhood memories flood Robison’s mind. He writes, “In place of my father, I have my memories” (280).

He also resolves his past issues with his mother. He credits her, a poet and writer, with his creativity. Although her mental health problems made writing nearly impossible for her, she passed those talents on to her two sons, both successful memoirists. In the end he acknowledges that both his parents were “exceptionally intelligent, articulate, and creative” (281), and they did their best under difficult circumstances. With his past reconciled, Robison looks to the future, anticipating the day when Cubby takes his own son “to the train yard to watch the locomotives” (282).