Eight: I don’t have a conscience
As an undiagnosed autistic person, there was always a need to find an explanation for my personality and behavior.
Midway through my freshman year of college, after an unexpectedly dreary fall semester in Los Angeles, where the darkness and rain surprised me after I allowed myself to believe that every day in LA would be 72 degrees and sunny, I started to make what felt like a group of friends. The group already existed; a guy I had met at orientation the previous summer was living in a dorm and had stitched together a group of what I thought of as characters from his hall. Living on the same floor of the same dormitory seemed to be all that people needed to feel they had something in common. His name was Joe and he wasn’t afraid of people the way I was; he would talk to anybody, introduce himself, ask them questions, just hang out and make small talk. That’s how he met me. When we re-found each other after Thanksgiving break he introduced me to everyone he had befriended in the meantime. The only people I had met so far were the three roommates I was placed with in an off campus apartment (the only remaining option for incoming students who didn’t submit their housing applications on time). Joe was living in a different universe, the one that was pictured in the glossy college brochures, and I wanted to join it. I went to the student housing office and asked if I could move into Joe’s dorm and they said there was a spot opening in the spring.
Months later, after life changed in the way it does so rapidly during those years after puberty, when everyone was back at home for the summer and I had decided not to return to the university in the fall, I missed all those people, in a way. But I was also relieved to be free of the continual companionship, the constant exchanging of thoughts, the ongoing stimulation of the presence of others. I was especially grateful to be free from the disappointment of friendship; the ways that you can’t really trust other people, the inevitable ways that other people let you down or don’t understand you.
I wrote them letters. Email was a thing, but still a novelty that was accessed only occasionally - on trips to the library, for example, when the weekly opening of the electronic inbox provided a rush of excitement that feels so quaint in retrospect. We wrote one another letters on paper. Some people, mostly the women, would decorate the envelopes. Or make envelopes by folding up and taping together discarded photographs. Finding an envelope made of random photographs amid the usual pile of boring things that arrived daily in my parent’s mailbox was so exciting.
After an initial volley of letters back and forth, filled with promise and possibility, it dawned on me that I may never see any of those people again. They all had moved to LA from random suburban enclaves throughout the country, and I was heading for a far corner of New England, completely inaccessible to a young person with no money and an elongated sense of time and space (how is it possible to visit someone in LA if you live in New England when you can’t even figure out how to get from campus to the airport 40 miles away?) The exchange of letters and photos, the idea that we could somehow maintain the essence of all those moments we shared in the hallways, well decorated little rooms, cafeterias and coffee shops, started to evaporate and seem childish and fantastical. The momentary rush of sealing an envelope, stamping it, watching the mailman carry it away, grew dull and exhausting. The excitement of finding a hand-addressed colorful letter with my name on it amid the bland collection of bills and notices in my parent’s mail became onerous and cumbersome. This, after just a few weeks of being home, an amount of time that now seems so insignificant, but back then was a substantial portion of life. In my entire high school career I had experienced only four Junes. After four more, college would be over. The end of that June, with the increasing intensity of the brightness of those long summer days, felt urgent and impatient.
Leigh was not one of the group that I was closest to. It was her roommate, Kit, who attracted most of my attention. I wouldn’t have said this at the time, because I don’t know that I had enough nuance in my ability to discern certain human qualities, but in retrospect Leigh was beautiful. She was soft and alluring, voluptuous and adorable. Dark red wavy hair, gently colored clothing that seemed cozy and welcoming. I enjoyed being around her: her sweetness, her Southern tinged voice, her kind and accepting presence. But I couldn’t overlook the roundness of her form; she had the same extraness to her that I hated so much about myself. The years of eating cookies and CocaCola as freely as I would later consume only carrots and unsweetened fizzy water had a lasting impact on how I saw myself. My adolescent mind immediately labeled her as fat and therefore uninteresting, in the same way I was sure most other people labeled me.
In deciding to write Leigh a letter, I felt the urge to be honest in a way that would provide clarity for the future. We hadn’t been close enough, I thought, to merit keeping in touch, and the letters I had exchanged with others had left me unsatisfied. As the weeks passed, the visceral sensations faded, and the realization of indefinite distance set in, I began to question whether I had actually been friends with Leigh or any of the others. So, on a piece of blank 81/2 by 11 paper, I wrote:
Dear Leigh,
As I thought about sending you a letter I realized the futility of keeping in touch, so I decided that it was probably best not to.
I folded it, put it in an envelope, addressed it to the summer address Leigh had written, along with everyone else, in the beautiful notebook of memories that Kit had made for me, and corralled everyone to sign, to send me off. I put it in the mail and felt satisfied that I was capable of such honesty and openness, perhaps imagining that when she got the letter she would laugh and think about how interesting of a person I was. Or perhaps I thought she would write me back, imploring me to change my mind and reconsider. Or, maybe I was just curious to see what she would do, how she would react (not realizing, I guess, that I would have no way of knowing, unless she were to send me a letter explaining to me how she reacted, which was unlikely if I had thought about it). It didn’t occur to me to think about how she might feel; I only contemplated what she might do. She had become for me, like all the others, a snapshot in a book of memories, confined to the page in which her picture was glued along with the note she had written me:
I remember the first time I saw you on our illustrious cinema floor. I said “Who’s that cute guy?” I am so glad that you’ve been a part of my life and hopefully our time together won’t end now. That sounded stupid but I mean it. I will miss your philosophizing and honesty about everything. I know that your passion for the things you love will take you where you want to go eventually. Never stop writing and make sure that some of that writing comes my way! Don’t forget me - please; because, I won’t ever forget you. Love, Leigh
While it has the qualities typical of high school yearbook goodbyes - the self conscious grappling with cliches, the imploring to maintain the longevity of what would later become fleeting memories, the awkward use of the semicolon - it also conveys genuine feeling, vulnerability, and warmth. Those things were lost on me - the authenticity, the feelings, the longing, the honest expression of emotion.
I imagined Kit putting the book together. Taking photos of everyone, getting them developed, glueing them to the pages of the book, and then taking it around room to room, asking each person to write a note next to their photo. I suspected they felt burdened by the request, or found it silly, pointless. I reduced the labor of this gesture in my mind to an obligation, a formality grudgingly undertaken out of a sense that it was the thing you are supposed to do in this kind of situation. Practice, perhaps, for the day three years from now when everyone would be leaving, setting off with their lives, moving beyond the make believe world that had been protecting and nurturing them, but also holding them back, for so many years.
Many of the notes, as I read them and read between their lines of different colored ink and misspelled words, might as well have said, “I don’t know what to write or why I’m writing anything, but Kit asked me to and she wouldn’t take no for an answer.” It was only fair that I acknowledge the truth of the situation; they were annoyed that they had to acknowledge my departure with this nostalgic silliness.
I never heard back from Leigh. Never saw her again. Never exchanged a letter, email, or phone call. That is, of course, what I indicated my preference was by the letter I sent her, but I didn’t realize that. I called Kit once to say hi, in what turned out to be a rare moment of demonstrating a normal gesture of friendship, and Leigh answered the phone. Turns out they were still roommates. I recognized her voice instantly, so soft and gentle, and I suspect she recognized mine, though I didn’t detect any hint of that. I wanted to say, “It’s me!” and be immersed in the aura of her welcoming southern inflection for however long we could sustain a conversation - maybe hours? I wanted to know what she had been up to, how her acting career was going, what she was doing for money. But I didn’t. I asked if Kit was home, and she said yes.
Kit told me years later that Leigh had been hurt and confused by my note. It was only then that it occured to me that what I had done was not nice, that she wouldn’t have found my note to be a quirky social experiment that she could brush off, or acknowledge the humor of. (“Remember that time you sent me that weird letter?” I might have imagined her reminiscing in the distant future.) I didn’t comprehend that my letter to her could be translated as an abrupt and deliberate ending to our relationship.
I recall one of the guys I hung around in high school, Elisha, telling me once that he didn’t think I had a conscience. I thought of Elisha as a friend, but I don’t know that he thought of me that way; he was one of the people in a close-knit circle that I orbited around but never fully joined. “I don’t think you are a bad person,” he said, “I just think you don’t have a conscience.” It was a winter day, bright sunshine and crisp dry air, with just enough of a breeze to make it uncomfortable. We were sitting on the wall in front of the drama building, where we often sat to eat lunch. Usually there would be a group, but at that moment I think it was just me and him, killing whatever time we had before our next class. I didn’t understand what he meant. I remember thinking it was funny, or vaguely cool. Not having a conscience, perhaps, made me more interesting and differentiated me from all the others. I liked being different. Not having a conscience also sounded extreme, like not having arms, or not having lungs. I thought it would be cool to have some unique characteristic, something that wasn’t obvious but that I could share with people at intimate moments, the kind of moments I saw in movies, like when a guy at a party looks a bit sad and walks out onto the lawn, and a young woman follows him and asks him if he’s alright, and he reveals something tragic about his circumstances, and she showers him with pity and affection.
“It’s nothing, really. It’s just that I - “ I would pause here for dramatic effect as I stared listlessly into the yard, “I don’t have a conscience.” It would take a moment for the gravity of my declaration to sink in before the young woman expressed her sympathy, probably hugging me while she grappled aloud with how challenging my life must be without a conscience.
When Kit told me Leigh had been hurt and confused, I thought of that bright winter afternoon on the wall in front of the drama building. If I had a conscience, I probably would not have sent Leigh that letter. If the idea had occurred to me at all, I would have stopped myself from acting on the thought. If somehow I fought my conscience and sent the letter anyway, I would have done so knowing it was hurtful and mean. But I did send the letter. I don’t know now, and I don’t think I knew then, what my intent was. I didn’t understand the impact of what I did - it didn’t even occur to me to consider the impact. And now, twenty five years later, I feel bad about it. At least, I think I feel bad about it. It’s one memory in a long line of memories where I did something that only later would I realize was hurtful, confusing, surprising, and disappointing to the other people involved.