RIPPLES
It's exactly forty years since I met the prettiest girl who ever lived. Despite being a fact of absolutely no importance to anyone except myself and, one hopes (deep in the world of dreams and alternative, better, realities), said prettiest girl ever, I feel the event is worthy of commemoration, with all the sad and sombre connotations of that word. Commiseration, then.
This is where the harmful effects of constantly being on the receiving end of denigration become apparent. In order to survive, an autistic person learns to mask his or her true self and mirror the behaviours and expectations of well-adjusted and successful others. I became quite a good mirror, and found my mask in academic achievement. I met said pretty girl at night school, where she was studying history and economics at A level. I had already passed both subjects at A level the previous year, a fact which she found hugely impressive. Finding myself at something of a loose end, being without plans and direction, I decided to study 'Social and Economic History' at the local tech. college a year later. On the first evening, I entered the reception and met one of the girls who had been in my history class the previous two years. She was resiting the history exam, having failed, and expressed surprise I was doing history again, thinking I had also failed. I told her I had passed, but was doing history again. Which puzzled her all the more. We chatted like old friends, exchanging a whole lot more words in ten minutes than we had in the previous two years. As we spoke, one of her friends approached and stood to my left. Petite and pretty, I had to catch my breath as I turned to look at her. It turned out that she had enrolled on the very same course I had enrolled on. Remarkably, by sheer chance and accident, I was standing in reception talking to two incredibly attractive young women, whom I would never have had the courage to approach left to my own devices.
The previous year, I was shaking with nerves when asked to collect the text books off the girls who sat in the backrow of the economics class. Now I was paired with a young woman who was the spitting image of Jane Asher, only with shorter, wavier hair, less red, more chestnut. I took her to the class, having already found the details on the notice board. She was happy to follow, given that my authority, through expertise in history and economics, had been established. We stood waiting alone, in the dark corridor, for a good five minutes, when the thought occured to her that there might be something wrong here. I would have been happy to have carried on talking in the dark all night. History can wait. She decided to check the notice board herself. Sure enough, with all my trademark genius, I had got the timetables for night and day mixed up. It's an easy enough mistake to make, especially for one boasting of an expert eye for detail. She shot off up the stairs to where we ought to be, with me now following in her trail. I took the opportunity to have a good look at her from behind. For all that I found her forthright and formidable, she was petite, five feet or so, but neither frail nor delicate. She was also quick and alert, all business. She moved at quite some pace. I found out that she already had a job, as a secretary-cum-personal assistant of some description, but with managerial possibilities. She had left school after 'O' levels and had spent two years working. She was now doing 'A' levels to further her managerial ambitions. There was a theory around at the time that both the history and economics A levels were good ones for aspiring managers to acquire.
Happily, she overlooked the usual occurence of one of those 'misunderstandings' that have littered my life and sat next to me in class. Maybe the time we spent alone in the dark corridor had been something of a bonding experience. She was certainly impressed by the fact I had already obtained the history and economics A levels she was now, somewhat nervously, embarking on. You always tend to idolize and idealise the people you like. I put her high on a pedestel. I didn't appreciate how much she did likewise with me at the time (think how nervous you are when embarking on a new course, and how impressed you are by those who have been there and done it. I'd been there and done it. And was someone well worth knowing when it came to essays and course work).
I had got off to such a flying start that, frankly, I switched immediately into my normal mode of auto-pilot, settling for a status quo that, compared to my normal experiences with girls, was Paradise well and truly found. In the two years in the years form I barely exchanged more than the odd sentence with the girls in the economics and history classes. Mumbles, really. And now I was sat next to a Jane-Asher lookalike. Even more remarkably, she seemed to genuinely like me as a person, listened to me when I spoke, laughed at my jokes, accompanied me to the canteen at break. I would also chaperone her as she waited in the car park for her dad to pick her up. Should we be talking too long, her dad would flash his car lights, causing me to flee as though I had been caught in the act of violating his daughter. It was a case of my very guilty subconscious mind giving me away. Not to matter. She evidently found my little eccentricities quite endearing. And amusing.
Of course, being me, I missed every cue in the book. She would cup her hands and whisper things she had found out about me into the ears of fellow group members, right in front of my face. I never did find out what these 'secrets' were, and didn't dare ask in case they weren't true. I like to incite the imagination. The significance of the fact that she was evidently asking people she knew about me didn't register with me. She would giggle at my antics and witticisms. Who wouldn't? Ever the class clown, I had always thought myself incredibly funny (ignoring the fact that opinion was always most decidedly divided on this). Looking back, she was incredibly flirtaceous, in a girly sort of way. I sat back and enjoyed the interest. I was enjoying the calls so much I never bothered with the responses.
In time, she started to enquire about my future plans for university - and whether I had any. Only long after – as in decades – did the obvious truth dawn on me that she wasn't remotely interested in my ambitions to go away to university to study history at degree level. She was employed and staying in town and was ascertaining if she featured in any way in my plans for the future. Wracked with self-doubt, I tended to see her as incredibly smart and sorted. It was only in time that I came to see the extent to which she thought me highly intelligent. On occasions during classes she would challenge the tutor by way of appeal to me. She evidently thought me impressive. She was asking one question in order to obtain an answer to another question. Being literal-minded, I answered in kind. I also fell into masking and mirroring, performing the part of being a legitimate student, doing and saying 'the right thing.' I was adding another 'A' level to the 'A' levels I already had, which defined me as academic. I felt the need to prove I wasn't an imposter, and respond to her as an academic. If she asked about university, I replied by showing off my knowledge of universities, likewise with respect to degree courses and subjects. I remained firmly focused on exams and academic plans, missing entirely that she was really trying to excavate the reason why - despite already having enough 'A' levels to enter university - I had failed to make any applications. The truth is that I wasn't an academic, was studying history at 'A' level again because I liked history. I didn't have any academic ambitions and didn't want to do a degree. I should have told her, making is clear I was staying home. We could have exchanged contact details. I missed a golden opportunity here when I was trying to raise a football team. We used to hire the court at the local swimming baths and play five-a-side, between ourselves or against other teams. We started to lose members owing to work commitments (and girlfriends, frankly - baffling, I know). I set out to recruit a couple of members of the history class at night school. She was with me at break as I discussed it with my new recruit, and she said her dad plays for the works' team and is always interested in finding new teams. He would be happy to play or give us a game. I didn't respond, just acknowledged the information and remained silent. I was still thinking as though we were at school, and not eighteen, finding the prospect of playing football with grown men somewhat anomalous. More than that, though, I missed the opportunity to swap contact details and get to know her dad personally, beyond fleeing his presence in the car park.
I was socially inept throughout it all, remaining entirely in my mask, performing the role of academic swot to perfection. I saw her last in the week of June 11-15 1984, with the two exams bringing the course to a conclusion. I come alive in competitive exam, and remember swaggering around the room. She followed me in and sat behind me. It struck me, for the first time, just how young and girlish she was behind the very self-contained presence. She filled her desk with pens and spare pens, the odd pencil and pencil sharpener, a rubber, lucky charms and gonks, the odd crystal, mints, sweets, everything. I made a joke about her being well prepared and, deadly earnest, she offered me a mint, hand shaking,,then a sweet. She had always struck me as very mature, much more than I was. But I was in my element on exam day, and she was incredibly nervous. Again, I missed it, and instead of offering reassurance, swaggered away as top-dog in the class. Insufferable. By this stage she must have thought me utterly indifferent to her charms. I mask well, and cultivate an external neutrality in order to contain my inner emotions.
I was right to be confident (callous). I earned a grade 'A' distinction, went to university forty miles away, and never saw her again.
I hated university life, realised my mistake immediately, hung on for a couple of months, and then returned in a desperate attempt to reclaim the lost, but still recent, past. I enrolled at college again to do yet another 'A' level in the desperate hope of lightening striking twice. As deluded as that plan may have been, it nearly paid off. Except that I ran not into the pretty girl of my dreams but one of the mature students who had been in the class, Mrs B. the mother of an old school friend. So close yet so far from Paradise, as Elvis sang. Mrs B. asked me my exam results, then asked me how my friend had done. I said I'd not seen her since the exams. A look of genuine puzzlement came across the woman's face. 'No? We all thought you two were an item,' she said. I don't know what could have given her that idea, all that sitting together in class and at break etc. Even then, I was so focused on showing off my 'A' grade that the significance of her words completely passed me by. We had been close all year, so it was natural for people to have imagined that we were indeed an item. Had I the tenth of the wit of others, we may well could have been.
But that brings me to my point. Struggles at school, struggles with fitting in, falling behind others with respect to 'normal' patterns and rhythms of development, damage your confidence, especially when – as is the case for too many autistic people – developmental difficulties are accompanied by physical, verbal, and emotional bullying. Even at that young age, even having finally come good at 'A' level, I could never believe that I was that good, or that life could get that good. Always the need to prove yourself, validate your existence, keep passing exams, despite having obtained more certificates than is strictly necessary. You don't need a certificate to be who you are and to enjoy life. And you don't need certificates to take part in life's patterns of call-and-response.
I would compare it to the card game Pontoon, the object of which is to accumulate cards as near to the value of 21 as you dare. In meeting this pretty girl, completely by accident, I had hit 10, and in getting to know her reached the heights of 13, even 14. The problem is that I tend to make the most of every little thing that comes my way, extracting such joy as to fail to see that more could very easily be possible. I thought the year I spent with her to be such the perfect Paradise that I scored it the perfect 21, and didn't dare ask for more in case I bust. I remember as exams approached, signalling the end of the academic year, thinking that the time is coming when I wouldn't see her again. If it occasionally occurred to me to let her know I'd like to keep in touch (even ask her out (to where and for what, I had no idea)), I would quickly abandon the idea as a hopeless delusion on my part. I decided, at the age of eighteen, that life just never gets that good. Long before the final days came I was reconciled to saying goodbye to her. I bought the Phil Collins single 'Against All Odds' some time in the summer of 1984, after the exams. Originally titled 'How Can You Just Sit There?', it perfectly encapsulates how passively I let this girl slip out of my life. I was already embarked on a life of regrets. And this one was the biggest of all, followed by the decision to enter the academic world.
How can I just let you walk away?
Just let you leave without a trace ...
How can you just walk away from me?
When all I can do is watch you leave
S otake a look at me now, oh there's just an empty space
And there's nothin' left here to remind me
Just the memory of your face
Ooh,take a look at me now, well there's just an empty space
And you coming back to me is against the odds
And that's what I've got to face
I wish, I could just make you turn around
And so on and so forth. My return to college in the hope of meeting her again really was against all odds but, as the meeting with Mrs B. who was also a fellow classmate shows, not impossible. It was an act of desperation after the event, though, when courage in the creation of events of your own choosing and willing is required.
My considered advice to autistic people is this: don't get trapped in the past, constantly reliving a life of accumulated regrets. Instead of regrets about a past that cannot be changed, learn your lesson and instead see possibilities for a future worth having in the present. They will be there. Switch the focus from a dead past to a living present.
That said ... she was indeed very 'pretty.' It's not memories playing tricks. And not just physically; she had a very nice manner and was a very calm and reassuring presence. There were no ragged edges about her. Something struck me about her conversation, she was a very refined young woman, entirely innocent of cynicism, edginess, and vulgarity. I never once heard her swear. She seemed to be much older than me but, looking back, I can see now that she was very sweet, in the best sense of the word. She may well have been as shy as I was, and liked me because I made her as comfortable as she made me. She was also very level-headed, had made sure to get and keep a decent job, studying further on that basis. It's really the approach I should have taken, instead of disappearing in academia for a life of endless studying that was to lead nowhere.
I remember September 1983 very well indeed. I suddenly had money in my pockets, and spent nearly all of it in the local record stores. I decided to investigate Genesis and was immediately bowled over. I bought Duke this month, then the new self-titled album. Most of all, though, I associate 1983-1984 with the band's A Trick of the Tail and And Then There Were Three. There is a track from 'Trick' which is almost perfect, Ripples. The lyric is based on the poem 'Bluegirls,' which I don't like at all on account of its central premise, which ties beauty to youth. I feel sure that my 'Blue Girl' would have grown even more beautiful in time. I'd have loved the chance to have grown beautifully together with her in a mutual growth. And she was indeed 'far lovelier than any of you.' In my mind's eye she is forever that perfect image of beauty I met forty years ago. But I have no doubt she would have grown lovelier still with every passing year. Years I spent studying.
Blue Girls by John Crowe Ransom
Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward
Under the towers of your seminary,
Go listen to your teachers old and contrary
Without believing a word.
Tie the white fillets then about your hair
And think no more of what will come to pass
Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass
And chattering on the air.
Practise your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;
And I will cry with my loud lips and publish
Beauty which all our powers shall never establish,
It is so frail.
For I could tell you a story which is true;
I know a lady with a terrible tongue,
Blear eyes fallen from blue,
All her perfections tarnished—yet it is not long
Since she was lovelier than any of you.'
The identification of beauty with youth strikes me as false and shallow. Be that as it may, the song Ripples continues to evoke sad emotional memories of a time now long gone, a time of impossible possibility.
The lyrics to the song I Won't Send Roses contain are much more truthful:
And should I love you, you would be the last to know.
I won't send roses,
and roses suit you so.
