Double Dribble

I must have been 7 years old when the kids from across the street invited me over to their house across the street to play basketball. There were about 6 kids playing and during the game as young kids will do they started running with the ball and dribbling with both hands. I protested “You can’t do that. Double dribble.” Nobody listened and they proceeded to play the same way. Then when they would run and take 6 steps before shooting I would call traveling and yet still nobody cared. I got really upset. This is not how you play the game. I had watched basketball on TV and there are rules. You just can’t do that. I got all upset, first that they weren’t playing by the rules and second, no one would listen to me. I went across the street and complained to my dad. I told him what was going on and explained that they weren’t playing by the rules. When I explained to him they weren’t playing by NBA rules he told me they were playing by driveway rules. “What’s driveway rules?” I asked. “It’s their driveway. They make up the rules.”

This episode is symptomatic of what would plague me for the next several decades of my life. I always expected people to play by the rules. I was always playing by my own set of rules while other people often play by their own. I could never understand that and this would be the source of many a frustration for me throughout my life. Whenever people don’t follow the rules whether they be actual written rules or my own set of ethical rules I get judgmental, frustrated and obnoxious. I just don’t get it.

Some 35 years later I heard a vital sentence that would help me deal with people who play by their own rules. It is better to be in right relation than to be right. I got caught up in justifiable anger time and time again in my life. Until I started to realize that the anger did not serve me. What good is it to be right if you are angry and your relationships with people suffer? Trying to teach people a lesson, or just keeping my frustration to myself leaves me angry, unsettled and often dominates my mind. It’s like I give people free rent in my head.

The lesson I have learned in life is that I need to change myself. Trying to change the world around me is an exhausting and futile effort. It is much easier to change yourself than it is to change the world. There are almost 8 billion people in the world, changing them all is not going to happen but I can change one person, myself, and that would be enough.

Friend Zone Rule-Act Like She/he may Like You

This one is about one of many “driveway rules” that I have. A driveway rule is an unspoken rule of etiquette that you bring into a social situation. We expect people to behave a certain way and we conduct ourselves in a certain manner based on this rule of etiquette. Many of our life’s frustrations arise because of these ‘driveway rules”. I hope you enjoy and please feel free to comment.

As we’ve established I have a whole code of conduct which I have lived by my whole life and often I get frustrated because what I think should be common courtesies extended to other people are in fact, not that common. It brings up a whole level of frustration because in short, without delving into a whole sermon of its own I feel that often doing the right thing gets the wrong results. As you can imagine these have surfaced way too many times when it comes to dating relationships or just opposite sex relations where it has not been established either way where the friendship is going. There is too often that quiet place in a friendship where neither of you has had the discussion about your intentions for the relationship. In other words you are in that awkward place known as the friend zone.

I am not talking about when either or both of you are in established relationships and you just happen to be friends. I am talking about when you and the other person are both single and open to the possibility of a relationship. What happens when you decide to spend time together, but you are not dating and someone of the opposite sex interacts with you? How does one handle this? Well, my rule of thumb was always “act like she may like you” when in her presence. Show her enough respect for her feelings, given that you don’t know where she is coming from you should be sensitive to her and treat her as if she may have an interest in you. I think we need to put others first sometimes and this would be one of those times. This should go both ways in my opinion.

Back in the early to mid 90’s my old high school friend Jean and I decided to hang out with two girls we had known awhile. One was Natalie and the other was Renee. At this time Natalie and I were not flirting with each and our relationship had no sexual tension to it. Jean was also her friend and my intuition told me that Jean had an interest in her. Renee was a friend of Jean’s and Natalies so the four of us went out roller skating one night. At one point Natalie and Renee were in the rink skating while Jean and I were talking to each other on the sidelines. I saw Natalie and Renee go over to two guys in the rink and flirt with them. Natalie was a tremendous flirt and she got their phone numbers. Knowing the two personalities, this was all on Natalie and Renee just went along with it.

Since I had no interest in Natalie at this time I was upset for Jean. I thought it was messed up to flirt with other guys in front of him. She should be respectful of his feelings. Maybe this was her way of sending a message. Perhaps she had already told Jean she was not interested in him in that way. I really don’t know but I read it as disrespectful to his feelings. Yes, she can date other guys, yes, she can tell him about it and yes, she can get phone numbers, but I always thought while she was physically in his presence she should respect his attraction for him. Don’t pick up on other guys when you go out with him. If she gets a boyfriend or whatever then yes of course they can all hang out together. I believe this moment is when I decided I would not do this kind of thing to a girl. It was insensitive. Sometimes I just can’t fathom how self-centered and insensitive people can be at times.

To complicate matters Renee and I started to become friends on our own. We would talk on the phone and eventually start doing things together, just the two of us. One night we decided to go to one of my favorite bars. Renee and I are hanging out at the bar and it is a pretty crowded night. There was a man there about 15 years older than her and he approached our table. He is courteous and everything and starts asking if we are together. We let him know we are not dating and he eventually talks to her privately and gets her phone number. I had no romantic interest in Renee, so I didn’t really give a shit but I was minorly bothered because she didn’t know that. We had never discussed it. And I knew that if I were put in the same situation I would not take another woman’s phone # while in her presence, because I really didn’t know going into that night what her intentions were. Renee and the man, Wayne, ended up dating each other for a little while. But in my mind Renee had now established that it was okay for me to pursue other women in her presence because she pursued another guy in my presence. I believe in a single standard, I will treat you the way you treat me. I was now free to flirt at my own discretion around her. I know that two wrongs don’t make a right but she never said it was wrong so if I do the same to her then in her mind it isn’t wrong.

Let’s fast forward a few months now. Renee and I go out again to the bar. Her and Wayne are now over because as it turns out Wayne was a player and she had the wrong idea about the nature of their relationship. She thought they were exclusive and he was just dating her and would see other women. They had slept together and she was heartbroken over him. So Renee and I are sitting at the bar and I notice a really attractive lady dancing. I make eye contact with her and we start talking a little bit. Well, this friend has a friend and the two ladies are now talking to me while Renee is there. The lady who also happened to be much older than me asks me if Renee and I are together and I say no she is not my girlfriend and she asks me if Renee knows this because apparently Renee is giving some seriously jealous looks over our way. I had no idea Renee had any kind of feelings for me.

To complicate matters the friend of the woman who was flirting with me now starts flirting with me. Out of the blue she asks me for a kiss. Well, she was thinking like a small kiss on the lips and I was thinking I would just go for it so I planted her with a big ole frenchy. She said the kiss was very wet and it felt like I kind of messed it all up. Oh well, but, wait, there’s more. So after getting the impression that the friend was not into the kiss the two of them start saying we could go to this other bar and have a lot of fun together and I am thinking the other friend is trying to have at me. Well, I was down with kissing another woman in front of Renee because her actions established it was okay to flirt and pick up but I wouldn’t just leave her there without me and let her fend for herself. We took a cab there and I wasn’t going to abandon her. I still had some ethics. So who knows what those two ladies had in mind but I let the opportunity slip and I left the bar with Renee because that was the gentlemanly thing to do. I never saw the other two ladies again.

So shortly after this happens I am on the phone with the aforementioned Natalie. At this point in time we have become good friends and Natalie asks me if I have something to tell her. I said no, I had not mentioned the night at the bar because it was just a fun one off. It was pretty insignificant and I didn’t have a tendency to kiss and tell with my female friends. She told me Renee was grossed out by the kiss. And we talked shortly about it. Anyhow a week later Renee is telling me how she would be okay with us dating. I didn’t want to date Renee but I am thinking wait a minute, now after you saw me kiss another woman you have an interest in me? What the hell? Is that what it takes for a woman to show an interest? And after that Natalie starts talking about us dating. So what I got out of this was that I can go along act like a complete gentleman, show both ladies respect while in their presence, do the right thing as it were and as soon as they see that I can get another woman all of a sudden I become attractive to them. This just doesn’t go well with me because doing the right thing was not getting me the right results but macking on another woman that was going to get me the girl. Man, life was frustrating. Another instance of driveway rules, I act one way and people act another. And as soon as I played by their rules, I got their attention.

You can purchase my book of memoirs The Driveway Rules at the following link:

https://store.bookbaby.com/book/The-Driveway-Rules

Requited Love

In part 6 of The Shawna years I discover what I was truly seeking from Shawna. In this one I recall one of the truly fulfilling moments of our friendship. I realize what had triggered me from part 3 The I Love You Conundrum. When it comes to true love who comes first? Read on and find out what happens next.

It is now the middle of 1996 and I am out of Job corps living in downtown San Diego on my own. For the first time in my life I am living independently. Making ends meet by working 35 hours a week and 6 dollars an hour. I couldn’t afford much so I was living in a residential hotel in a room so small it would make a prisoner complain. But it was all mine. Even though I had to go down the hall to take a shower, in a private room of course, I was proud to be on my own.

Shawna and Tim were still together and both at Job Corps. We still kept in touch and one day she decided to come over with Tim to visit me. Tim and I got along great so there was no tension between us. I think that when Shawna told Tim that I was the reason they got back together it smoothed our relationship. She let him know in no uncertain terms that he would have been done for if I hadn’t talked her back into getting back with him. Tim was great to her. I liked him for her so being that I loved her and wanted the best for her it was only right that I think of her and not myself and let her know she was making a mistake. Once Tim knew I was not some asshole male friend waiting for his opportunity to swoop on in like a vulture he knew he could trust me. He was old enough to know that a lot of guys who are just friends will take the first chance they get to denigrate the current boyfriend so that they can have a shot at a girl. But that is not me. I believe that love does the right thing and love is not supposed to be selfish. Sometimes Shawna and I would go out to a movie on our own and Tim was like “Did you enjoy the movie?” And he was totally cool, he never gave me any kind of crap nor did I give him any. Having Tim as her boyfriend allowed me to be happy for Shawna which in and of itself had a lot of value to me so I will always like Tim for that.

Tim and Shawna come over to my not so deluxe apartment in the sky and Shawna had been drinking a little bit. She wasn’t drunk by any means but she was feeling it a little bit. So here we are some 13 months after we had met, some 7 months after I first told her I loved her and with Tim right there she tells me”I love you,Marc.” Nice timing, Shawna, real nice. I said nothing. This was really awkward for me. Tim is right there, what will he think? So of course having said nothing Shawna repeats herself “Did you hear that Marc? I love you.” Sometimes I just think the Universe is out to fuck me, and this was one of those times. I sheepishly told her ” I love you too.”

That moment meant a lot to me. I had secretly been stewing for 7 months about her not telling me she loved me after I told her. All of those feelings I had about not being valued the same as others had come to the surface. I wondered why Rachel got an I love you and I didn’t. I had thought about an old fried Natalie who knew me for years and had never hugged me and then met my friend and within 20 minutes when they said goodbye she hugged him. These kind of things make me feel like I am some sort of an asshole. These things make me feel undervalued. Instances like these make me feel like women. although the like me, they enjoy being my friend don’t have a real connection to me. Natalie is the reason I was triggered by Shawna’s missing I love you from months ago. These things anger me. But anger is just hurt covered up with several blankets. Her I love you although awkward and poorly timed was what I needed. I needed to know I meant something to her.

A Split-Second Decision

I feel like I should post this one now after the last post. This is the second post about Shawna. It may be better if you get the whole 7 part story in order. Jaime was a girlfriend that I mourned hard over. It hit and hurt me deeply. But Shawna was a love, where the loss lingered with me for a long time. I couldn’t get over her. Too many what if’s to process. Too much questioning of myself. So here it is part 2 of my great romantic debacle, A Split-Second Decision. Let me know what you think.

This one takes place a little while after I had returned from seeing Jaime. As I knew would happen Jaime and I were intimate on the weekend I went to see her. Having rethought the whole idea about seeing other people I had decided that we should be exclusive. It was not right for me to be physically involved with more than 1 woman at a time. It hurt everybody involved. When I got back to Job Corps I explained to Shawna how Jaime and I were now exclusive. I felt really good about my prior decision to hold off starting anything with Shawna. That would have just killed our friendship right then and there. Did Chester tell Shawna about our conversation? I will never know. Shawna and I never discussed it. Since I had never kissed Shawna or even told her of any interest in her then as far as I knew I was exonerated of any wrong-doing.

Another week had passed by and Shawna did not let on at all that she may have been upset about me getting together with Jaime. Nothing had changed between the two of us, and there was never any discussion about us being anything other than friends. We still hung out all the time. We still ate all of our meals together and we were still growing closer everyday. She was nothing but supportive of me. Because the relationship with Jaime was so tumultuous, I really valued having someone to talk about Jaime with. Very quickly my relationship with Shawna became very important to me.

One day when I was in my dorm the phone rang in the hallway. It was right around dinner time and Shawna would come and get me and on occasion she would yell for me and I would come down and go to dinner with her. I answered the phone and it was Jaime. We talked for a little bit and I heard the familiar voice of Shawna yell from downstairs. “MAAAARC” she yelled. At that second I had a decision to make. I could continue my conversation with Jaime or run downstairs to Shawna to be with her. What would I do?

I had never really given it any consideration before, who would I choose in an instant? I had loved Jaime for about 14 months at this point and knew Shawna for just about 5 weeks. Jaime deserved my loyalty, no question about it. So why would this have even crossed my mind? Sometimes you don’t know where your heart really lies until you get tested and this was one of those times. I choose to go to Shawna, which surprised me immensely. I had no idea how strongly I felt about her, up until that moment.

I told Jaime immediately that I had to go and why. And of course she was not very pleased about it. I had no explanation for choosing her. What can one really say? All I said was I have to go, Shawna wants me. I knew it was wrong the second I said it. I went downstairs to see Shawna and we went our way to the dining hall. I walked on like nothing had happened. At that moment I knew my heart had changed, I knew that Shawna was the one. The problem is, Shawna didn’t know. I did not tell her what happened. I was not comfortable letting on just how strongly my connection was with her. She had no idea I choose her over Jaime, all she knew was that she called and I came running. Shortly after Jaime and I broke up. She kissed somebody else. After all that crap we went through seeing other people and then finally becoming exclusive again. All of those struggles and I finally give her what she wanted all along,to be exclusive again and she messes around. I was devastated and I was pissed. But I should have seen it coming. I mean, emotionally speaking you could say I cheated on her. To choose Shawna over her like I did in that moment, that was not right of me. I should not have hurt her like that. I had a split-second decision to make and I made one.

What About Shawna?

Shawna was a very prominent friend of mine in the mid nineties. So prominent that I actually have a whole chapter dedicated to my relationship with her. There are seven entries in this chapter, aptly named The Shawna Years. I think those with autism will be able to relate to how I handled the various situations that came up in this story. My honesty and instincts to be forthright should ring as familiar. My unassuming nature and naivete should resonate with those on the spectrum. It is fun to look back at this entry and see how I responded to things and just wonder, what if someone else were in my shoes? Things would have unfolded so differently. But alas, I know that in the end things worked out exactly as they were meant to be.

In the year 1995 I was 23 years old and had absolutely no career perspectives in front of me and I made the decision to go to Job Corps. I signed up in October of 1994 and I had a girlfriend but since most of my prior relationships fizzled out shortly I figured by the time I was due to leave in January that relationship would be over. I was dead wrong. Although I lived in the bay area in Northern California they sent me to Imperial beach, California because it was there that they had an Accounting program I could get into. So I went to Job Corps although Jaime and I were still very much attached to one another but I thought it was best to go so I could do something about my future. Not only did I leave her behind but I made the foolish decision that we should see other people. This decision would turn out to be very painful. It was at Job Corps, San Diego Job Corps as it was called because of its proximity to that city, that I met Shawna, who would turn out to be the great love of my twenties.

But alas, love is often complicated and this most certainly was. In early May my good friend Chester introduced me to Shawna. At Job corps you live on campus so in effect it becomes a college like atmosphere although people are learning trades or getting their GED. The campus atmosphere and social life that I never experienced through college I would experience at Job Corps. The three of us had breakfast together at the cafeteria and instantly Shawna and I hit it off. There was no tension, it was an easy friendship and soon we were just inseparable. We always ate together and hung out after classes and what I liked about her was that I always felt appreciated around her, I always felt important to her. There was no gamesmanship, no hard to get, no guessing as to where I stood and I appreciated that. At the time I was not dating anybody on campus but I still kept in touch with Jaime. Although she and I were not exclusive there was still a very deep connection to her. I was by no means over her. Occasionally we would still see each other with me flying to see her or her doing the same.

Before Shawna got to Job Corps I had dated a girl named Lisa and that lasted about 5 weeks. One of the issues was that I was really pining over Jaime and I couldn’t really give Lisa the sole focus she deserved because my heart was elsewhere. And, as I have a tendency to be honest, she knew completely about Jaime, so this was not going to work. About 3 weeks into my friendship with Shawna the possibility of us dating came to the forefront. I remember talking about girls on campus and I said that it was hard for me to find somebody to date because all of the girls that liked me were ugly. Lisa was not ugly but at the time I had no legitimate prospects as I was nowhere near being attracted to any of the girls who had taken a liking to me. Shawna was very offended and said “Excuse me.” Apparently I struck a nerve. I had to clarify, “What I mean, is that the girls who like me romantically are ugly.”

Later on Chester who was there for this conversation talked about it. I mentioned that Shawna had gotten really offended and explained to him that I had assumed Shawna was not romantically interested in me. It is 100% natural for me to assume a girl is not interested in me. It is my default setting if you were. Chester said in a voice that indicated he knew something said “You assumed.” I then turned the subject to Jaime and explained to him that I was going to see her on the weekend which was a few days away at this point. He then asked me “What about Shawna? Do you like her?” This was complicated. Yes would be the short answer. I told him that I did like her but I didn’t want to start anything with her when I knew I was going to see Jaime on the weekend especially knowing that I would sleep with her. I had learned my lesson from dating Lisa and I didn’t want to put myself or Jaime or Shawna through such complications.

When I look back at that conversation I wonder how other guys would have handled it. For me, I had no instinct to be anything but honest about the situation. My fallback position is to come from a place of honesty. Nobody is 100% honest, I am not claiming that. However, I don’t choose dishonesty in every single instance where being honest is uncomfortable or inconvenient. Being dishonest is not something I take lightly or abuse, although it seems to make life easier for some people. Sometimes doing the right thing gets the wrong results and I can live with that. I wasn’t going to hide what was going on with Jaime and the thought of starting something with Shawna, not telling Jaime, sleeping with her and then coming back to Job Corps and making up some bullshit about nothing happened, well, that is just not in my reality. The fact that some guys would have done that didn’t even enter my brain until much, much later. So, as I said I would I went to see Jaime and I slept with her that weekend.

Love what you are reading? You can purchase my book The Driveway Rules here:

https://store.bookbaby.com/book/The-Driveway-Rules

Moving Forward

Hi all,

My name is Marc and I am a 47 year old man living with Asperger’s syndrome. So let me tell you a little something about Asperger’s. Those who live with Asperger’s have a very difficult journey ahead of themselves. Bullshit. Our struggle is much greater than that of the average person. Bullshit. For some reason God picked on us, God just hates us. Bullshit. My life would be better if I was neurotypical. Bullshit.

These are some of the old attitudes I used to have about my life. I am here to tell you that everybody had their own challenges in life. Some people deal with food addiction, divorced parents, physical abuse,sexual abuse, emotional abuse, gambling problems, I could go on ad infinitum. Your recovery and your growth starts with your attitude.

My life is not fucked. I have it no worse than anybody else. My future is in my hands. My blog will be about both my personal experiences and how Asperger’s has affected me and also about being a recovering alcoholic. I hope to inspire you and I hope to empower you.