Advantages to Being a High-Functioning Autistic

written 17 April 2004
for David, who understands

you are automatically exempt from that boring, mundane thing called a job.

the government will take pity on you and give you money (hopefully).

you don't have to bother with condoms or birth control because you are guaranteed to remain a virgin until at least 25.

nobody will believe you have any sort of creative ability (case in point: first poetry by an autistic not published until 1985, first autobiography by an autistic not published until 1986, first fiction not published until 1994), so you can create whatever the hell you like.

people like oliver sacks and morley safer will come to interview you because you are a fascinating freak whose very existence prompts people to question the definition of humanity.

people will adore you because humanity is constantly craving stories of People Who Succeeded Against All Odds.

you will ensure that the doctors' families will never go hungry because you will be passed around from specialist to specialist like some exotic plant someone found in the rainforest.

the anonymity of your condition in the media because there are no cops, doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, artists, authors, musicians, cartoonists, students, or next-door neighbors with autism on any dramas, sitcoms, movies, comic strips, or manga.

you will never develop a $1,000-a-week drug habit because you are guaranteed to become pathologically obsessed with something or another.

you will never have to take marijuana or LSD to heighten your creative ability because you have weird shit lurking in your psyche to work with anyway.

the honor of being included in revised, tenth and eleventh edition art, literary, and science history books — in 2084.

you will never be fucked up (literally and figuratively) by that terrible thing called romantic love.

you will never have to deal with the embarrassment of being labeled "beautiful," because people think you are too strange to be beautiful.

you will never be a divorcee because you only have a 1 in 11 chance of getting married in this society (according to one study).

you always have the option of going to europe and japan like so many other pissed-off american expatriates, but you will probably be even less accepted there.

you can always speak your mind. you have a mind. and a heart.