John McCoy

The Radical Left City Mouse & the Very Good Country Mouse

A City Mouse once visited a relative who lived in the country. For lunch the Country Mouse took his elite East Coast cousin to the local Cracker Barrel for Country Fried Steak with a side of Onion Petals. The City Mouse ate very sparingly, nibbling at a plate of Impossible Sausage, and drinking her coffee black—even though, as the waitress noted, there was plenty of sugar and creamer right there on the table.

After the meal the two had a long talk, or rather the Country Mouse talked about how much of a hellscape the City in which his cousin lived was. They then went to bed in a nest in an abandoned building in the nearby town’s main street, which had fallen on hard times since the steel wool factory closed.

The next day the City Mouse asked the Country Mouse where he was getting his information about the City. She said that in the 20 years she’d lived there, she had never experienced any of the things the Country Mouse had so vividly described. “Sure, there are rats there, but there are rats here, too—we spent last night running away from them when they wanted our nest.”

“There is so much hate in your heart,” said the Country Mouse. “Even so, I will come to your City to see the desolation first hand.”

They hopped aboard a commuter train and soon found themselves on the street where the City Mouse lived. Strolling through the bright lights, they passed a bodega where there were many foods that maybe a Marxist would like, such as felafel and French salad dressing. The Country Mouse noticed that many of the people shopping there were not the right color for people to be. “This whole place is on fire,” he said. The City Mouse looked around, confused.

“I don’t understand, are we looking at the same—”

“COMMUNISTS!” yelled the Country Mouse, pointing at a pair of hipsters riding fixie bikes. “Sodom and Gomorrah!” he added, as a couple of male mice scampered by—they weren’t holding hands or anything, but he could tell. Just then a chonky cat exited the bodega and waddled up to the mice. “Hey guys—” the cat began, and the Country Mouse pulled out his firearm, an XLV (45) derringer.

“Whoa, whoa, take it easy!” said the City Mouse. “I know this cat, he’s my neighbor.”

“Pervert!” said the Country Mouse. “This is why we need to bring in the National Mouse Guard, to teach you a less—I mean, to stop all the crime!”

“What crime?” his cousin asked, but the Country Mouse was already scampering away.

He avoided the train because honestly, what sort of reasonable mice would ever put themselves through that horror. It took him weeks, but finally, with aching paws, he arrived back in the Country, where he was immediately eaten by a stray dog.

Moral: They’re not sending their best mice.

Yeah, it’s called a disability

I got my autism diagnosis at a weird time: about a month and a half before the Global Pandemic. One day I was learning why I isolate myself, the next day the whole world was isolating right along with me. During the following year of lockdown and social distancing, many housebound folks, mostly young adults, turned to inward reflection, mostly in the form of obsessively Googling psychological disorders (perhaps at the behest of whomever was trapped in the same apartment with them). This in turn resulted in a wave of self-diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorder, and of online communities promoting awareness and proclaiming the legitimacy and strength of autistic minds.

Around the same time there was a host of television shows starring autistic people: Love on the Spectrum, As We See It, Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Patience. There have been novels like Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, which doesn’t explicitly say that its protagonist is on the spectrum, but it’s pretty obvious. Autistic creators exploded on YouTube. The sheer variety of new representation stood in contrast to the dominant stereotypes of Rain Man and The Big Bang Theory.

Like I said, it was a weird time to get a diagnosis. I found it strangely comforting that my disorder landed me at the cool kids’ table. I’m not really a joiner, and I had never been part of a zeitgeist before. But with the movement came a backlash from skeptics who questioned whether all this generational tism was real, or just a validating bandwagon for the chronically “quirky.” This was mixed in with class and race issues, as many saw the trend as a white, middle-class thing. A whole genre of you’re-not-really-autistic videos emerged on TikTok, and there’s even a SubReddit called FakeDisorderCringe in which users accuse and mock people allegedly feigning neurodivergence to get attention.

Along with all criticism from outside the autistic community there has been a major divide within. On one side there exists an autistic cohort believes that their neurology should be recognized by society-at-large as legitimate and even beneficial. These have maxims like “autism is a super power.” On the other side, caregivers for those whose autistic presentation that renders them non-verbal, shut off, and otherwise incapable of self-support feel that “autism chic” belittles their painful experience. The discourse can get pretty heavy, and communities who would seem like natural allies are instead entrenched combatants.

I have some sympathy for both groups. For those us with “high-functioning” ASD (like me), we may be happy with ourselves as we are, we also deal daily with the stress of a world not made for us. It makes sense to look for not only accommodation but also for appreciation. It’s only been very recently that the clinical definition of autism has been broadly enough applied that most of us could even understand who we are. And that’s liberating, and worth celebrating. But when autism comes with extreme care needs—what many people still label as “real” autism—that is a real burden and a real loss, and beyond deserving empathy and systemic support, caregivers should not be faulted for mourning. (This doesn’t excuse those who credulously believe pseudoscientific claims about vaccines or Tylenol.)

As for me, I was labeled a “gifted” child in grade school and got put ahead in math and art. Also teachers let me get away with a lot of nonsense. I have had more intense and rewarding interests than would fill many lifetimes. I am a quick learner and eager to learn. I notice small things that others miss or making connections that others find insightful. But also: I have trouble staying close to friends and even to family. I can be oblivious to the most obvious social cues. If something doesn’t interest me, I can’t make myself remember it. And I can be rude or hurtful to people and only realize later. So is autism on the whole a plus or a minus? Is it an alternative way of thinking, or is it a disorder, like the DSM-5 names it?

Since my diagnosis I’ve read quite a few books on autism and they can be broken down into three categories: memoirs of autistic people, particularly those who got a surprise diagnosis (you’re reading one of these right now); therapeutic or self-help guides, some written by psychologists and some not (these can be full of dicey advice); and the rare book that examines what Autism with a capital A means, socially, aesthetically, or even teleologically.

One book I found engaging, but also frustrating, is the academic monograph Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness, by M. Remi Yergeau, who teaches at Carleton University. This is a dense book, not for the fainthearted. Yergeau’s subject, as given in the title, is what they call the “rhetoric” of autism. And here I have to be very careful in what I write, because “rhetoric” is a complex subject with specific and varied meanings in philosophy and linguistics, and because my wife literally wrote a book on the subject. (I myself am not a philosopher and have a tendency to use a word to mean “just what I choose it to mean.“)

Yergeau uses “rhetoric” in the sense of “the manners of communication used by a cultural group,” and their contention is that while autism has traditionally been seen as a barrier to interpersonal connection, autistic behavior (even when non-intentional) is in fact its own set of social rules that challenge assumptions of what is effective, or even permissible, expression. This makes autism analogous to queerness, which likewise stands as a counter to mainstream assumptions of the borders of gender and sexuality. And if this paragraph makes your head hurt, then I’ve successfully duplicated the experience of reading Yergeau.

This book is helpful to me, if only for a feeling of validation. I have often felt that my inability often to convey the state of my head or my heart was more a matter of a lack of understanding on the part of whomever I’m talking to than a defect on my part. There are times when there is no good way to describe the feelings I’m having because allistic society never made the right words. But I don’t know that I’m fully on board with Yergeau. I remain unconvinced that my stims are an expression of my culture, or that my inability to look someone in the eye is simply an alternative mode of discourse. Some things are simply flaws.

Everything is relative. From an autistic standpoint, “normal” comes with its own pathologies. To play autistic devil’s advocate: normies don’t know how to plainly say what they mean, but they get offended when you don’t take their opaque hints. They lack the ability to passionately engage with an interest and instead of being authentic they follow trends. They are needy and their feelings are easily hurt. They can’t handle being alone for long. I could go on.

Would I change myself to be not autistic if I could? No, of course not. It’s built so deeply into how my mind works that in its absence I would be a completely different person. I like many things about being autistic. But autism’s not all trains and dinosaurs. It’s also anxiety, and isolation, and an inability to choose what to watch next on Netflix.

Speaking of which: the original Love on the Spectrum was an Australian production and was only later given a U.S. version. (Netflix retroactively calls the original series Love on the Spectrum: Australia, which, first of all, rude.) While I have mixed emotions about the show, there is one scene from the Australian version that has been stuck in my mind since I first saw it. There was a participant, Olivia, who was a member of a theatrical company for people with disabilities. During one break in a rehearsal of A Midsummer Night’s Dream her director called her out for joyfully jumping around on stage, and she defensively replied “Yeah, it’s called a disability.”

And that’s the thing. ASD brings joy and shame, jumping and hiding. It’s a blessing and a curse. In that way, it’s just like being human.

Safe & non-toxic

Back in the days when Halloween was primarily a night for kids to knock on doors to get stray change and popcorn balls; back before the holiday morphed into an excuse for young adults to dress as sexy versions of 90’s cartoons and get their slutty drink on; that is, back in the 70s, store-bought costumes were crap. They consisted of thin vacuum-formed plastic masks and silkscreened bodysuits which were made of a mystery fabric that was not quite muslin, not quite plastic, but 100% flammable. Eventually even this material was deemed too costly to produce and the suits were made entirely from vinyl, lending them all the drape of a deflated beach ball. These were the ubiquitous licensed character costumes made by Ben Cooper, inc., which, defying all reason, are highly collectable today. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

Ben Cooper brand costumes: bring them up the next time a Gen-Xer complains about how everything was better back when.

Of course, there were kids and parents who wished to avoid paying a whopping three bucks for commercially-produced outfits that were only marginally recognizable (owing to the fact that they had the characters’ names emblazoned on their chests). For the non-conformists, costumes of hoboes, pirates, ghosts, and mummies were good options because you could make them out of last year’s ratty clothes and sheets and felt and other bits of stuff lying around (toilet paper was often involved). But for the true weirdos, those who aspired to be something scary or gross for Halloween, there was only one game in town, and that was the Imagineering line of makeup and prosthetics. They were cheep, funky, grungy, and surprisingly effective, especially when it came to making gaping wounds and the like, and I loved them so much.

Instead of selling full costumes of specific characters, the Imagineering line consisted of theatrical building blocks you could mix and match. There were evil teeth and fake fingers. There was fake blood and tooth blackout. And there were small pallets of ingenious stage makeup, such as Scar Stuf™, a mixture of beeswax and cotton fibers that seemed like it couldn’t possibly work but which did in fact produce startlingly realistic scars, wounds, and other abrasions.

For much of my childhood I was limited to the pointy teeth and fake blood. I was not particularly flush as a kid, and while most items in the Imagineering line ran 50-75 cents, that was still a lot for me. Until one October—maybe ’78 or ’79—when I finally had some income of my own from delivering The Peoria Journal Star (afternoon edition). That year I finally splurged on a pair of Evil Eyes, the prosthetic eyes that GLOWED IN THE DARK. In light they were just a couple of ovals of plastic but in complete darkness, they were Fire from the Very Depths of Hhell. To maximize the glow effect, I would hold the plastic eyes under my reading lamp—a gooseneck 75 watt lamp clipped to the headboard of my top-level bunk bed—for about five minutes. Then I would run to the darkest place in the house (mostly under a blanket in my closet) and stare in horror at the glowing orbs until they faded into blackness. Of course, like all glow-in-the-dark toys, the magic was over far too soon, and the best effect could only be achieved by holding the eyes a long time as close as I could to the incandescent bulb, which was blisteringly hot. To save my fingertips, I took to placing the eyes on my bed and bending the lamp down as close as I could. One day I decided I would get the best glow ever by bringing the lamp down so that the hood touched my quilt and the bulb pressed against the eyes, shutting the precious lumens in entirely. Pleased with this set-up, I went off to get a snack before I would take the eyes into the dark.

Two hours later, my mother came into the living room where I was sitting reading and asked if I smelled something funny. My father also was alarmed. We walked down the hall and it became apparent that thin black smoke was coming out of my bedroom door. When we entered there was a cloudy, oily plume coming from under my lamp, which was still directly on my quilt. My father grabbed a sock to push away the lamp, which had deformed from the heat. We were greeted with a massive billow of inky miasma; and underneath, a soupy, sticky mess of plastic making tendrils from the bulb to the quilt, which now had a smoldering hole in one block. My shocked parents asked me what on Earth I had been doing and I was at a loss to explain myself. Secretly, all I could think of was if there were a way to block out the windows because holy hell, those goopy, melted eyes would’ve glowed like the sun.