The room was noisy and a chicken coup. People mingled, glasses in hand, smiley, interested heads bobbing. My husband Chris and I hugged our chairs in a quiet, rather solitary space outside of the hub-bub. A waitress came around with canapes. It sounds like canned apes, but no, in fact its little hors d’oeuvres – kind of said, ‘horses doovers’ – consisting of mini pastry things with artistically stuffed contents, and pretty much all but one shaslik containing dairy and or gluten. No snackos for me then.

I’d been invited to attend a Short Film Celebration by Film Victoria this week and they were kind enough to allow me to bring Chris along. It featured two poignant, wonderful short Australian films, Poetry (about teens, compromise, alienation and self honesty), and Dugong (about homecoming and reconciling) and announced the two short films which succeeded in gaining development funding in the 2007 rounds.

It was just as well that they allowed Chris along, because I think I’d have wandered in like the local bag lady (but better dressed), dropped a few social clangers as befits a person with autism whose language issues fit with Semantic Pragmatic Language Disorder.

I’m the type to introduce myself to your earrings, say you have pretty eyes or funny colored hair. Sounds tame enough? That’s because I am chanting silently “don’t mention their height, their age or ask if they’re a man or a woman”.

I did pretty well really, I didn’t even mention earrings, eyes or hair (but a woman with bright red hair kept jumping out like a beacon saying ‘chandeliers over here’).
In fact considering my butt was glued to a space on the quiet and solitary peripheries, we did manage to meet 5 people in this room of about 200.

The first was a kindly, sweet young woman called Jen. She was an actress, 17, and pretty as a magazine cutout. I held back from conversation starters about her strikingly unusual beauty or her strange wristband (or was it a bangle, I have no idea) and instead we talked a bit about acting, from an actors perspective and from a writers. Eventually, off into the throng she went, eaten up by noise and movement somewhere in the chatty chicken coop.

Next we met a lovely lady, friendly, down to earth. Oh, ‘I’m just a mum’, she said. Well, this was a good catch, I thought, I have language skills many mothers would forgive.

Her son was starring with his dog in one of the wonderful short films that night, Dugong (and he was excellent in it, so was the dog). If you’ve ever been the sibling left behind or the one who ‘hit the road’, then Dugong is certainly for you. And it was certainly a film for me, being the estranged loner who left behind a little brother (aged 8) I’d imprinted on and with my departure was left a strange void, a changed life, and one so very unresolved. So the film moved me and the acting was superb. It’s gone into the Aspen Film Festival and it deserves it. I wish all involved wonderful luck with it.

This lovely mum talked about ‘networking’ and I asked for definition, eventually explaining I was autistic. Then she suddenly recognised me from the Insight program (as that autistic woman). She wanted to introduce us to her other two sons, one an engineer and the other an Australian animator, screenwriter, director, and all round ARTism guy, Adam Elliot, who won the Oscar for his fabulously poignant, Harvie Crumpet. Off she pottered into the noisy hub bub and disappeared as if eaten by the crowd or perhaps had become a canape.

She returned telling us Adam had said, ‘bring them over’. She’d
told him, “I’m not sure they can” (because he was in the hub of the noise).
When I heard this I said, no, I can do this, no problem. But as I began to enter the peripheries of the hub my hand covered my ear, I began to struggle and tic, holding my beads in my mouth, my arms pulled into my chest, fingers curled, eyes wide but I kept smiling (this is both useful and problematic depending on the situation).

‘I’m ok’, I said.

‘No you’re not’, said Chris, come on.

So I went back to my seat away from the hub. Eventually, Adam saw us and came over. I told him Harvie Crumpet was fab. Harvey was out in the foyer in a glass cabinet next to Oscar. Adam was a lovely bloke, as tangible and down to earth as his mum. His brother had nice eyes and a nice gentle earthy feel to him. But I didn’t say so and besides, its even more strange for a woman to start conversation with strangers one has no intention of sleeping with by telling them they have nice eyes and a pleasant feel to them! I’ve at least learned THAT much in terms of pragmatics.

The more steps I make in gaining more than scripted social language and relying on stored topic, the more I see I’m worlds apart. Thing is, one can’t opt out of society forever whilst waiting to magically lose a semantic/pragmatic language disorder and information processing challenge… it’s like praying for the moon. Once one is in one’s 40s fact is, its jump in or miss out, so it really doesn’t matter if one fits or functions, all that matters is one was invited. And, sure, such events are pretty inaccessible to people with autism (BYO GF/CF diet, ear protection, conversation translator and intervenor, and advocacy introduction card just in case).

I’m fairly good at controlling myself whilst talking or moving. But standing still and quiet is not my forte. That’s when I switch to all other/no self and the hub bub gets like a tide creeping towards me to engulf me. Low key but present nevertheless, I ticced now and then, I had anxiety postures and I think I stood out a bit because nobody else had these things. This made it a challenge.

Also fear to introduce myself as my pragmatic skills are poor. I’m face blind. If I met someone once and then they met me on the other side of the room wearing a jacket or holding something different to the first meeting, I’d likely not recognize them. I can’t tell when people are busy or talking (can’t process own expression and them simultaneously much), don’t know a smooth way to introduce myself naturally, tend to say strange things.

Spoke to a woman on the escalator, asked about her name, told her I thought her name tag said William, that her name was William… that sort of thing… Its normal for me to thing to tell someone they are pretty, short, old, have nice hair, and I have to remember constantly this is NOT ok to start conversations with… etc.

In the autie world everyone knows I’m Donna so its ok, but in the world of non-autie strangers they don’t, so I intro myself. You can feel them struggling, its their posture and they resemble how dogs look when you converse with them. If I see them perplexed I intro the ‘A’ word. Chris says this is the right thing to do, that I DO have to intro the ‘A’ word or they remain confused about my style. Getting away with it as a teenager or naive 20 something is very different when one is in one’s 40s.

The aftermath is always strange. With little simultaneous capacity to process self and other, one is rather gripped with dread, unable to fathom just how obnoxious or foot-in-mouth one was, so having a ‘reflectee’ is useful to ask whether one managed passably, left an awful impression or an ok one. The debriefing always ends then same. Ultimately one is what one is and who one is. It’s futile to see a successful apple as a failed orange, so the conclusion is always – well, I did my best.

🙂 Donna Williams

http://www.donnawilliams.net

author, artist, composer, screenwriter