“Well, I guess you're talking to him. What do you want?”
“I want to fight.”
When he got close enough, he could see the fading bruises on my face. “I'd say you've done enough fighting already.”
“No,” I said. “The other boys fought. I was what they fought. But I didn't fight them.”
“Why not?”
“I don't know how.”
“So you're looking to get some revenge.”
“I don't want revenge.”
“What do you want?”
Even before the words finished coming out of my mouth, I knew that I was saying things wrong. “I don't want to end up looking like you,” I said.
I estimated that I had angered him, because he said, “Are you fucking with me, kid?”
“No,” I answered. “If I don't learn how to fight, I will get beat up, and I will end up with damage to my face that may become permanent, and it may resemble the permanent damage that you have on your face.”
“Holy ratshit, you don't filter the things out of your mouth, do you?” His jaw was tense. I saw the muscles flexing rapidly. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen years, seven months, and nine days. I was born at 12:35
AM
, at Eagle Ridge Hospital, which is the same place that the ambulance took meâ”
He held up his hand. “Shut up,” he explained. “No wonder you got shitkicked.”
“I wasn't kicked,” I said. “I was punched. I was punched twenty-one times.”
“Can't say I am surprised. You got a mouth.”
“I have autism.”
The Butcher frowned. “You have a what-ism?”
“I'm autistic.”
“You mean pencils and paints and such?”
“I am not
artistic
,” I said. “I have Autistic Spectrum Disorder. It is a neurological condition that affects one in every one hundred and eight people.”
He paused. Then his eyebrows raised with enlightenment. “Like
Rain Man
.”
“The character in
Rain Main
was a stereotype of someone with autism.”
“Can you count cards, then?”
“I don't know.”
“But you're lippy.”
“I have difficulty understanding subtleties in conversation. I interpret things literally. I reply literally.”
The Butcher scratched the grey stubble on his chin and nodded. “And so you pissed someone off. Maybe more than one someone?”
I didn't answer.
A boxer walked over and stood beside the Butcher. He was sweating profusely. His hands were wrapped with brown bandaging. He appeared a little older than me. He looked first at the Butcher, then at me. He nodded. It was Jack. Jack Sweat.
“How did you hurt your hands?” I asked him.
Looking down at his wrapped hands, he said, “Seriously? Are you a retard?”
“No,” I said. “I'm not retarded.”
“He's artistic,” the Butcher said.
“Artistic?” asked Jack.
“I'm autistic,” I corrected.
“So what?”
“He wants to fight,” said the Butcher.
Jack looked at me, at my fading bruises. “Looks like you got your wish.”
The Butcher shook his head. “If you've got a mental thing, then maybe this ain't the right thing for you.”
“Autism isn't brain damage. It's a neurological disorder. Depression is a neurological disorder. You would let depressed people box.”
The Butcher laughed. I believe he inferred that I was making a joke. “They'd be awful slow fighters if they were depressed,” he said and laughed again. Jack laughed.
I turned my lips up and smiled along. This was going well, I thought. At that moment, I realized I should say something humorous.
Which is typically how my conversations implode.
â
I am unable to crack a joke. I am not a humorous person. Bill tells me it's because of my autism, but I know many non-autistic people who are not humorous. Therefore, I suspect it is a condition of my character. I am not funny. Not deliberately, anyway.
I have a large mental repository of riddles and jokes, but they're filed according to their facts, and according to the humour within. If I tell a joke, it will be based on physical similarities with the present.
For instance, on June 2, 2009, Bill put down his newspaper at the breakfast table and shook his head. “Goddamn Christ,” he said. “An Air France plane went down. Two hundred and twenty-eight people were killed.”
He looked directly at me, and I suspected I was supposed to say something. I think I was wrong. I should have said nothing. But I didn't.
I did a search of my memory and returned several things:
The most important relations were then tied together, and the strongest correlation to these three items was a joke that I read two years previous.
“Why do so many husbands hit their wives?” I asked.
“Huh?” My father stared at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Many husbands hit their wives for a reason. Do you know what the reason is?”
“What does thatâ” my father started, then he stopped. “I don't know. Tell me what the reason is, Freddy,” he said.
“Because they just won't listen,” I responded.
My father did not reply. He shook his head slowly and returned to reading his newspaper. At the time, I thought he had obtained the information he was looking for and was satisfied with my answer.
â
Being unable to make spontaneous humour, I try not tell jokes. But sometimes, when I judge the situation as appropriate, I attempt to make a joke.
“They'd be awful slow fighters, if they were depressed,” the Butcher said to Jack, and chuckled.
I said, “What do you call a boxer about to graduate tenth grade?”
He continued smiling. “I give up,” he said.
“Eighteen,” I told him.
His smile froze, then dropped. He stared at me and did not say anything.
I had read several web articles about comedians on stage who have had their jokes greeted by silence. I had an appropriate response at hand.
“Is this mic on?” I said.
I opened my eyes
and I was six. It was midday. My mother, father, and I sat at the kitchen table. I stared at my hands, folded on the table.
“Are we going to have a snack?” I asked hopefully.
“No, Freddy,” my mother said. “We aren't. Instead, you are going to sit with us and we're going to have a conversation.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I want you to tell me a joke.”
Outside, a dog barked. Down the street, I could hear the laughter of playing children.
“I know a lot of jokes,” I said.
“I know,” my mother said.
“I've read books of jokes.”
“Tell us one of those jokes, then,” she said. She brushed some loose hair away from my face.
A joke instantly sprang to mind; I was reminded of it because my mom had brushed away the same loose hair four weeks earlier, while I was watching a news item about complaints that the smell of a pig farm was ruining the pleasure of the people who used a nearby jogging path.
“What's the difference between a woman jogger and Wilbur the Pig?” I asked.
“I don't know, Freddy,” my mother said. She smiled at me, her eyes eager and excited that I was about to tell her a joke. “What's the difference between a woman jogger and Wilbur the Pig?”
“One is a cunning runt,” I replied.
Six seconds passed.
My father burst into laughter and hit the top of the table with his hand. His laughter subsided to a chuckle, and he rubbed his eye. “That was a
doozy
!” he said, chortling.
“I don't know what a doozy is,” I replied.
My mother stared at me. The look of hope was not there anymore.
This particular joke has been an unfinished thread in my mind ever since I heard it. I didn'tâand still don'tâunderstand the punchline. The only reason I said the joke was because it was the first one I found when conducting an internal search.
I'd overheard it the week before my mother asked me to tell her a joke, on a Saturday, when I was at the mall with her, shopping for underwear. Two boys sat on a bench outside the store, and I heard them exchanging jokes and laughing at each.
I didn't understand the point of the joke, but what caught my attention was less the woman jogger and more Wilbur the Pig. After I googled “Wilbur the Pig” and subsequently read
Charlotte's Web
, I understood the joke even less. It was tautological. Wilbur the Pig was the smallest in his litter and, by virtue of being able to speak to spiders, was cunning. Wilbur the Pig was, therefore, a cunning runt. But a jogger wasn't necessary to make this statement true. The question “What's the difference between Friedrich Nietzsche and Wilbur the Pig?” is also answered, “One is a cunning runt.”
This joke remains in my queue of threads. I have not yet understood why it is considered humorous when it is neither sarcastic nor true.
After I told it, my mother stared at me and then, when she understood the joke, she looked away. I have never forgotten the exactness of the moment. It unfolded two things that I eventually came to realize are intrinsic about me.
First, it unfolded how abruptly different I am from other people. It's a joke that I don't understand, whereas everyone I know does. By extension, everyone but me knows why it is (or is not) funny. It outlined just how much my view of the world is at a right angle to everyone else's view of the world.
Second, it unfolded the reason why my mother left. I was a faded hope. I was the look on a face after one realizes all is lost. I was the participation ribbon that never gets hung up but never gets thrown out.
Two weeks after I told this joke, the long rain began. Eight weeks after that, my mother left.
Maybe if I had told a different joke.
I opened my eyes
and I was fourteen. Jack Sweat and the Butcher stared at me, as my joke lay gasping on the floor between us.
At last, the Butcher said, “So you want to fight?”
I said that I did.
“Okay.” He nodded. “Let's see about that.” He turned and walked into the gym, stopped, and motioned for me to follow. “Jimmy, get this kid some gloves!” he called out, and a man brought me white gloves.
I followed the Butcher to where he was taking headgear down from the wall. When he turned and raised it to place on my head, I shrunk back.
“You'll want to wear this for protection,” he said.
I considered it for a moment, then lowered my head and allowed him to put it on.
“Too tight?” he asked me as he did up the chinstrap.
“I don't know,” I said.
He tugged on the strap. “You're good to go. Get in the ring.”
“It's not a ring. It's a square.”
“Get in the square, smartass,” he said.
My gloves were damp with someone else's sweat. This bothered me, but I didn't protest, which surprised me. There were no threads, no questions asking why I was dipping my hands in someone else's sweat.
Meh
, said the threads.
There I was. I had the sweat of one boxer covering my hands, and my head was covered with the sweat of another boxer. Not a thread to be found.
I stepped into the ring, and the Butcher shoved a white mouthguard between my lips. So now I had the sweat of two boxers on my hands and head, and the dried saliva of yet another boxer in my mouth.
“Bite down on it,” he said. “Don't let it go.”
“Whutdoo eyedoo iffeyehafta eeddasamwich?” I said, the mouthguard gripped firmly between my teeth.
“No idea what you said, kid,” said the Butcher. He lifted my left hand and placed it six inches in front of my left cheek. He placed my right hand six inches in front of my right cheek.
“Hold your hands here,” he said. “When the other guy throws a punch, block it with your hands. Then punch back.”
He knelt down and adjusted my stance. My left foot came forward. My right foot went back and out three inches. He said, “Bend your knees,” and I bent my knees. He said, “Not so much,” and I straightened until he said, “Good. Now keep them bent.”
He pointed to my feet. “Keep your front foot pointing to where you're going to punch. When you punch with your left, move your left foot forward. Got it?”
“Yes,” I said.
He held up his hand. “Punch.”
I punched his hand. Then he took my arm and extended it. He turned my fist until the knuckles were parallel with the floor. He pulled my shoulder forward.
“Punch with your shoulder, not your forearm. Lean into it. Twist your wrist as you extend. And punch through your opponent. Don't try to punch the front of his head. Punch the back of his head.”
“Eye can't see the back of hizzhead,” I spat.
He tapped his temple. “See it with your mind, kid. Punch to where the back of his head should be. If his face gets in the way, keep punching through. Now hit my hand.”
I hit his hand again.
“Harder.”
I hit it harder.
“Harder!” he yelled.
I hit it again, with all I had, and knocked him back a step. He lost his balance for a moment, recovered, and looked at me, frowning. “That's good,” he said quietly.
He turned around and stepped out of the ring. “Okay, kid, it's time to go in the deep end of the pool.”
I looked around. “Therez no shwimming pool,” I said.
â
The Butcher rang the bell and pushed me into the centre of the ring. I laboured to consider his instructions and simultaneously implement them. Mostly, I looked at my feet, ensuring they were the correct distance from each other.