Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [67]
“Oh, and I went to a psychologist, and she said I have Asperger’s syndrome.”
I think I don’t hear him. “What?”
“She said I’ve had it my whole life, and it explains why people think I’m weird.”
I try to get him to slow down. “Wait a minute, what? Why did you see a psychologist? What is this thing called again?”
He tells me the name again and spells it (because I thought it was “Ass-Burger”) and then says, “I gotta run.” And he is gone.
I go online to read about this condition, which my brother suddenly has, which sounds like a sandwich made from donkey flesh.
Asperger’s syndrome was named for Hans Asperger, a Viennese physician who published a paper in 1944 describing autisticlike behavior in several young boys. But it wasn’t until 1994 that Asperger’s syndrome was added to the DSM IV, and only in the past few years has AS been recognized by professionals and parents. So for fifty years, these kids were driving their families insane, undiagnosed, and wanting to chase trains in the car. And now, suddenly, Asperger’s syndrome is chic. Bill Gates is said to have Asperger’s. It is also suspected that the condition afflicted Albert Einstein. It is associated with geniuses, and this is why Manhattan parents are often secretly thrilled to have their bratty, brainy, introverted children diagnosed with this condition. It is the first trendy thing ever to occur in the atmosphere surrounding my brother.
People with Asperger’s tend to be obsessed with trains and cars. My brother’s first word was “car.” He owns a car dealership that fixes high-end automobiles. And all his life his walls (and now office) have been hung with pictures of trains. Check.
People with Asperger’s tend to have “fanciful vocabularies.” Immediately, I know exactly what this means. When my brother’s dog is happy, he describes it as “tail up.” As in, “Yup. Dog-o is tail up ninety percent of the time.” He also speaks of Fire Lizards. These, he claims, are employed in shops by glass artisans. They sleep on the floor in the work area, and then the glass blower steps on the Fire Lizard’s tail, and it exhales fire, which the artist uses to melt and shape the glass.
The more I read about this condition, the more I read about my brother, an individual unlike anybody I have ever met before. Clearly, not only does my brother have Asperger’s syndrome, he is the poster boy for it. A lack of interest in other people. Avoidance of eye-to-eye contact. A lack of social skills. Check, check, check.
It was a list. But when you combine the elements on the list, the result is a person most kindly described as “extremely eccentric.”
A weight has been lifted. And I understand why sometimes people speak in clichés because sometimes there is simply no other way to describe something. A weight has been lifted. It’s not all my fault. I’m not retarded. Or slow. It’s him. It’s always been him. And nobody knew it.
My next emotion is one of protection. I will now beat the shit out of anybody who is mean to my big, lumbering brother with his unusual, one-in-a-trillion brain.
Animals gravitate toward my brother. All farm animals, including chickens, dogs, and cats, as well as zoo animals such as tigers and llamas. My brother photographs animals, and in every picture the animal’s nose is pressed nearly to the lens, its eyes soft and loving. I see these pictures, and it is proof to me that my brother is wholly good.
Six months after I met Dennis, when I felt more serious about him than I’d ever felt about anybody, I brought him to Massachusetts to meet my brother. I’d warned him beforehand. “He’s very abrupt. He has no social skills, so don’t take it personally. My brother’s going to ask you too many personal questions and maybe not give you eye contact.”
Dennis was nervous.
We took the train, and when we pulled into the station and walked down the stairs, I saw my brother’s Rolls Royce (chosen not for its snob appeal but rather for its machinery, its