School was a place to escape… from.
Cold open:
Mrs. Sharding calls me up to the front…
I’m the third one to face this Catholic school ritual…
The first two… burst into tears. After she announces to the class… they cheated…
Her voice, a cold, blue-steel razor blade, commands me, “Read it.”
I manage to mumble,Man in backyard night Reached toward a star in sky It burned his closed handUtter silence.
Like…
in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-scream-Alien
quiet.
She asks, like she did to shame the other boys, “Class, what do you think of this haiku?”
That was the first time the system labeled my wonder… a crime.
Conversations with Theo
So. I’m at the Shalom Center in Bloomington, Indiana.
University town.
Trees.
Bike paths.
Cute shops.
Parking meters to discourage the riffraff. Like me…
I’m in line for a free breakfast. Looking down the long queue toward the steam table. Late Fall, 2011.
“Damn. All the instant oatmeal’s gone…” I mumble out loud. A lot. “That shit settles my ulcer…”
See, I just got off the ancient school bus that Genesis Project works as a shuttle. For the night shelter they used to run for the homeless. Safely placed out on the outskirts near the Indiana University football stadium.
We sleep on cots in a big tent. 8pm to 6am. Every morning they drop us off at Shalom for breakfast. In the early dark, March to November every year.
Rest of the day? We’re on the street. I usually hang at the library… cuz, internet. But librarians politely kick you out if you’re caught napping. Or meditating…
Wow, that was embarrassing.
But right now…
The library’s about
a 6-block walk,
some scrambled eggs,
and a public shower away…
The next guy in line looks like he just fell out of bed… in the early 70s. Army fatigues. Knitted rainbow dread cap over scraggly grey hair. Thin guy. Musta heard me cuss out the oatmeal.
“Yes. Depends on donations.” He doesn’t look at me… directly. Little bird glances. At my face. My hands. “The good stuff comes and… goes.”
I offer, “Yeah. Sounds like, ya know… life.” Okay. I was a wannabe class clown. But wise cracks did help me survive 2nd grade.
The white Rasta warrior peers into my eyes… real quick.
Then goes hazy a moment… like he’s lost inside.
Then… cracks the goofiest grin I ever saw on the streets.
“You’re okay.” He shuffles down the line. I shuffle behind him.
“You too.” I’m genially honest. Not trying to be funny.
I like homeless folks. I never understood social status anyways. Maybe cuz I’m autistic… maybe cuz I’m ADHD too. Most homeless don’t pay much attention to the pecking order either. Bob Dylan wrote about the street, “When ya ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.”
Homeless know EVERYONE’s just a pink slip away from nothin’ to lose.
Me and Rasta end up at the same round lunch table…
It wobbles awkwardly
back in the corner.
Wrapped in
black & white vinyl floors &
aqua cement walls.
Cold.
Like a crypt.
“I’m Johnny,” I stretch out my hand. “Been on the street a coupla weeks.”
He disappears inside. Comes back with another smile. “My name is Theo. I have been on the streets off… and on… since grad school.”
As I remember, he’d set off to be a psych researcher. Cracked up before his orals.
I casually toss off that I’d done grad school in English Lit at Columbia. Couldn’t finish the last term. Burned out, never handed in a thesis.
We had a lot in common.
We swap grad school war stories a minute… way more fun than dodging crabby librarians. So we hang.
We get into what a blast it is just to discover new shit.
Any new shit.
Academic or not.
ANY shit.
If it was cool…
The crowd’s thinning around us. The staff pointedly busses the table right next to ours… But we still got stuff to chew over about school.
And we aren’t talking about bliss in school. 40 years after. In the homeless shelter…
We’re talking schoolyard bullies.
Talking teachers… who bully.
And school systems with only two tracks.
Counselors either shoehorn kids
into college for professional careers…
or reassure us the world really needs
more mechanics & beauticians.
Theo shares he was a wreck long before he hit grad school. Grammar school, high school? So stressful he basically slept most of the time at home. Recovering, not from school work… from dealing with teachers and classmates.
“Later, jobs were the same,” he says.
Theo gazes over at the dining room steamtable. All elbows and brushes. Every shift I ever worked, kitchen staff ALWAYS want to clock out… first.
“I learn best on my own. No humans… teachers, bosses…”
That strikes a chord. But… I’m not sure what to share.
I start, “By the time I washed out of my third graduate program…” My feelings about school are pretty jumbled. “Well, I started to have thoughts.”
“Oh?” Theo puts a finger to his chin. Almost like a comic panel, captioned, He focused intently.
“Yeah. School counselor after school counselor told me, ‘You could do anything… based on your test scores.’”
I look down at my empty plate. “They were wrong. Way wrong.”
Theo says nothing. He has gentle hands. Folds them in his lap. Gazes at me. Says… nothing.
Uncanny…
My calm mask starts to slip. Motormouthing thoughts I’ve had over and over and over…
I go, “Maybe S.A.Ts, GREs? Maybe they’ve got NOTHING to do with academic success. Multiple choice tests didn’t teach me how to write papers… to please an instructor… make connections to open opportunities… bond with a mentor…”
“Maybe…” Theo is hesitant. He looks away.
Then speaks low and soft. “Maybe school doesn’t teach genius. Maybe… it’s elsewhere…”
He looks around at the two other tables still occupied by homeless peers. The volunteer staff eager to head out after breakfast. Two other “guest” tables engaged in excited, boisterous conversation.
What an odd comment.
“Maybe… it’s elsewhere…?”
I had every advantage.
Yup. Everything. EveryTHING our biased society favors.
Race.
Gender.
High-achieving, professional parents.
“Gifted” IQ. Education.
Decent looks.
Heterosexual presentation… back then… mostly…
But here’s the thing…. the very reason RED alerts shoulda been going off. Across everybody’s child-protective screen.
With every privilege handed me… I failed to thrive.
BIG freakin’ time. Longest job… two years. Outta dozens of jobs in 45 years working. Not what ya call a productive citizen.
So, Suddenly Last Summer… or in my case, November 2011… I snap to attention.
Maybe… it’s elsewhere…? Theo sounds like he’s headed toward crucial territory.
“You know… I never wanted to teach.” He blurts out, in the middle of my best story. Then he looks away. “Or run a department. I just wanted to research. I wanted to use my brain. But the uncanny thing…?”
A man of few words. And many pauses… … …
“I have jobs sometimes. For… a while.” He makes his quick side-eye at my face. “But I don’t like the jobs where I use my brain.”
Then quietly, “I like the repetitive ones. I like factories… janitor.” Pause. “I have time to think. I’m in a different place.”
And there it was.
Two homeless guys.
Both crazy, more than likely.
Both “failures,” demonstrably.
Neurodivergent, near certainly.
He knew it.
I didn’t.
For another 5 years…
But here we are, strangers. Talking joy. Openly. Unashamedly. First time in our lives. In a homeless center.
It was a strange moment for me… A shock of recognition.
I’ll get back to Theo and the Shalom Center after a bit.
But first, I need you to hear this flashback…
School? A Place to Escape… from. For this Autistic.
Mrs. Sharding calls me up to the front. Grabs my shoulders and turns me to face my 4th grade classmates.
Something’s wrong here.
I’m the third one to face this Catholic school ritual.
The first two she calls up… both schoolyard tough guys… burst into tears. After she announces to the class that she gave them F’s for the haiku assignment. Cuz, she said, they cheated. Copied something from a book. “Plagiarism,” she names it.
Now? Her voice, a cold blue-steel razor blade, commands me, “Read it.” Thrusting my offending assignment paper in my face.
I take it from her hand. I manage to mumble,
Man in backyard night
Reached toward a star in sky
It burned his closed hand
Utter silence.
Like…
in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-scream–Alien
quiet.
She asks, like she did to shame the other boys, “Class, what do you think of this haiku?”
But the class is stone silent. Like me, they know exactly what’s coming. It’s Spring. We’d already had nearly a year of Mrs. Sharding.
This is so unfair. She thinks I cheated.
But… I see the scene clear.
I’m splayed out on our garage roof
the summer before,
escaping the heat that night.
Outside our subdivision ranch
on the Western edge
of Rochester, Minnesota.
Prairie frontier…
That morning, I finished my copy of Bester’s sci-fi classic, The Stars My Destination. I look up at Venus hanging in the deep blue sky. I flash on hero Gully Foyle floating in Black Space. And he’s on fire…
I reach out toward that Evening Star…
If I touch it… would it burn my hand?
That sense of… wonder… gifted me my Haiku later that fall.
So I spew words at Sharding, “I did too write it!”
The class roars.
/heading Escape
School was a place to escape… from.
Here’s some background.
Kindergarten?
1958?
Teachers…
I had two.
In two different cities.
Syracuse and Valley Stream, New York. Cuz my dad graduated with an MBA from SU, got a job, and we moved to Long Island. 280 miles, a river, a bay, and two amazing arching suspension bridges away.
Teachers in both school systems reported to my mother I was unusually creative. Maybe smart.
First grade? I was that kid who always raised his hand. That’s what my parents told me to do. It actually worked. For a while…
But by the end of 2nd, teachers weren’t digging the raised-hand thing so much.
I never sat still. I never stopped talking. I read all my textbooks during the first month. So… ya know, I got bored.
The first time I made a comment that cracked the class up? It was all over. No teacher was safe ever again.
In other words, an average hyperlexic, read-a-book-a-day “auDHD” childhood… Then my first IQ test came in. Off the charts of Stanford-Binet.
I got labeled a smart ass by teachers and classmates.
I got sexually attacked by a group of boys in that parochial-school bathroom.
I got physically attacked on that parish-school playground.
I got chronic constipation in that parish-school classroom.
Cuz I’m scared and can’t go back to that parish-school stall…
where they caught me out.
But the Nun is more concerned about me “talking in class.” So I do time next to her desk, kneeling on hardwood floors. Til I cry from the pain. And get permission to return to my seat.
Over and over.
3rd grade. Rochester, Minnesota. I finally learn to space out. No more keeping myself awake… by talking. And to escape screaming boredom… I teach myself to squeeze my belly so hard I get nosebleeds. And escape to the Nurse’s office.
Over and over. Til Doc Ebert cauterizes my nose.
4th grade. I freak my whole world out. I score 2nd-semester–college reading level on a standardized test. Followed by parent-teacher-admin conferences. A lot of “What shall we do with him?” From all sides of that table.
My parents fight letting me skip grades. It was a “philosophy” for them. If yer kid’s immature, hold ’em back until he “gets along” with peers. And my poor parish school has no other enrichment programs.
So I win the official “Boy Genius Too Lazy To Live up to His Potential” Contest. First prize? Parental disappointment… every report card.
Over and over.
So 8 more years of dissociative boredom yawn before my graduation. And 8 waking hours of daily recovery… alone in my bedroom.
That’s why… Theo lives on… inside me.
Between my ears… in my heart.
A dozen adult years later.
After my single encounter with him.
Counted in minutes.
“I was on a PhD track. Now, I’m on the street.” Theo pauses. “That’s a lot of different people… and situations.”
Longer pause. It doesn’t seem like drama. More like sincere effort, puzzling out a thought.
He repeats… softly, “May be… there’s genius everywhere.”
Gimme some time. I need to marinate on his thought before I go on. But I got more Theo to share with you shortly…
- If this excerpt grabbed you… more here: The Book: Frag by Frag.
This is Fragment 10 of my upcoming autobiography, Autistic Noir, arriving Fall 2026.
I’m building a book out loud. Frag by frag. Just like I lived it.
The Next Act
Don’t trust a corporate algorithm’s decision about whether you get to see the next excerpt or not.
Join my Substack for free… and the next fragment comes straight to your inbox. And you get a free digital download of my complete poetry chapbook.
Why I Write My Autobiography
I’m only an expert on my own life. Born 1953, diagnosed at 63. Your mileage will vary.
Individual marginalized voices speaking truth out loud? They build bridges to mainstream readers. Think Malcolm X. Think Maya Angelou. Think Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness.
This Fall, I hope to deliver that kind of impact, that power with Autistic Noir: My Autistic Life is My Art. For our neurodivergent community.
Since 2019 I’ve published a quarter of a million words. Over half the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Gotta be a pony somewhere in that shit.
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