Authors: Matthew Formby
While he spent the next few days with his phone switched off, Luke searched for solace from strangers. On the Friday night he drank in Woecaster but to no avail. He started light but felt too self-conscious Around him were rude men, brawling and shouting, joking in the rudest wit. Luke began to drink more heavily, mixing wines with alcopops, then downing shots 'til he could barely stand. Still he could not draw from himself any insouciance. He wandered the streets, seeing the homeless. Grey and blackened walls and streets were everywhere. There was hardly any greenery and people rushed like soldiers.
He wished he was in Southport. On trips there it had felt so much nicer than here. It was the sea, no doubt, clearing the air. People had a sense of perspective there. Though much smaller, Southport was more open to travellers and to accommodating differences. While Luke awaited his bus home, those not drinking crawled the streets in hoodies. Some had sunglasses and tank tops, even in the cold. Luke saw them look at him like a curiosity for wearing a shirt - he was not a charming fellow to them. Only soft men who were lemons dressed like that in their opinion.
Luke did not like hoodies. They created a bad first impression and increased his sense of anxiety. It was foolish to stereotype all hoodie wearers as criminals but that did not stop them being unbecoming. After centuries of human progress, it was so backwards to take to dressing in large, baggy clothing. Hoodies accentuated masculine features and drew attention away from the finer parts of a human body while adding bulk to its wearer. They were like armour and armour is worn for war.
On the Saturday Luke's feet ached. He realized he needed new shoes. It began to become more painful to him to cut off contact now as he wished he could tell someone of how traumatizing he found buying them. He had gone to a large chain store in Woecaster's centre and found his favourite pair. The assistant had milled around him ominously, smiling blankly while staring dolefully. He told Luke another assistant had gone to get the shoes in Luke's size. Luke would avert his eyes as long as he could but always when he returned them the assistant remained. When his shoes arrived and Luke took them to the till, to his dismay the assistant followed and decided to serve him.
Luke could not think of a thing to say and the assistant peered, waiting. At length he sighed and asked if Luke would like to buy some polish for his shoes. It happened every time. Luke said he already had some and the assistant replied, "Okay. But you know it runs out quick, don't you? Are you sure you don't want some?"
"Yeah, I'm sure," Luke said. He hid his anger from the assistant but it was no doubt obvious all the same. He would have loved to have called his mother to tell her about what happened and be reassured the world was good; but he still felt no one cared. After buying his shoes, he bought some groceries and returned to cook a meal for six. All his cookbooks had recipes for four or six people and so he had grown used to preserving the leftovers in the fridge. He preferred to do it in glass bowls rather than plastic because they kept the taste better.
He made a Mediterranean stew with onions, garlic, courgettes, chickpeas, tomatoes and spices. When he had finished it and ate it, it was delicious and he again wished he could call someone to celebrate it. But he would not. He had to have his principles - he did not want to grow into another soulless personage uselessly filling the world. Nor did he want to endorse the apathy he felt from his family: it was not acceptable. On the Sunday, he reheated a portion of his soup and was shocked. It tasted foul. He tried different vegetables from it and found the culprit. It was the courgettes.
How he wished he could live with other people. It was the bane of a single person. When you cooked with a food like a courgette, it tasted so different upon reheating. Luke could not stomach it and flushed all the leftovers down the toilet. It would be so much easier to have others in his life. Yet his family let him down. And he had tried meeting others with Asperger's - but they were chalk to his cheese. Tucking himself in bed that night, he pondered morosely on his isolation.
People with Asperger's syndrome, he thought, or anyone on the Autistic spectrum must be some of the most vulnerable of all. Unlike most others - be they asylum seekers, marginalized women, religious societies or people from an impoverished income group - those who were Autistic could not easily band together. Even if they tried, the very difficulties of having the condition could make attending protests or arranging direct action nearly impossible. If a person could not communicate their desires easily, how easy it could be to trample upon them or ignore them. And so, Luke felt, most of society did to people like him.
Luke did not know how it felt to be black or a woman, or an immigrant or many other difficult persons it is hard to be yet so many of those groups had voices in the media speaking for them. Even if they were few, they were there. Autistic people had some, true, but they were smaller in number - and in all the comments Luke had seen left after articles about the stigma of Autism, there were dozens of people saying they had no sympathy having known co-workers who were rude and unbearable; not realizing that by not wanting to learn more they were ensuring such difficulties and disagreements continued, as when people are ignorant of a problem they can do nothing to address it.
XXX
It was another long day. Luke's mother had been sent a letter by the local head of NHS commissioning. Responding to the complaint made about Luke's care, she was to organise a meeting to take place to see what funding could be implemented for an individual care plan for him. Captain Kirk gazed down at those who walked past Luke's home. Luke had just placed a life-size cutout of him he had bought on the internet. He could hear people laughing as they passed sometimes which was fun but his neighbours looked very agitated and annoyed when they went by. Luke left early in the morning and boarded the bus to Woecaster. Getting on, he looked for a seat. The bus was full of college students flamboyantly dressed in the latest fashions, leaning backwards and forwards over seats, yelling from one end to the other.
Luke spied a seat near the back and after passing a horde of macho and posturing teenage mails who spoiled for a cockfight, he managed to sit down. He reached into the carrier bag he had brought with him and opened his place in his paperback novel. It was Tess of the D'urbervilles he had carried and he began to read it. A group of girls behind were loudly about The Only Way is Essex and Made in Chelsea behind Luke; they were two staged reality shows that were all the rage. From the way they were being bitchy and deliberately argumentative, they appeared to be imitating the characters on the shows.
"Are you going to town, Leanne?"
"'Course I am. Hey Jey! do you want to come mine on Friday night to watch Little Shop of Horrors?"
"Oh my God, yeah! That is, like, so my dream weekend. No drama, just the four of us, a big pack of popcorn..."
"And singing," sang another girl.
"Oh my God, this bus takes so long to get to town."
"I know, like. Maybe I should do my homework."
Someone gasped. "Oh! Don't even talk to me about college. Mrs Watson is really doing my nut in."
"Did you see Alex last class? He almost started a fight with Harry. I think it's going to kick off today. It's going to be well funny."
The girls continued to talk, one of them speaking at length about her boyfriend. She was complaining about how stupid he was and she spoke in a baritone people raised in poverty often do. Luke flinched at the pitch of her voice. She did not intend it, it was only her nature but it was as though he was being pelted with stones. The journey to Woecaster was of dubious enjoyment from that point on.
Luke needed answers about the complaint. He dialled Jolly's number and waited to hear the unimaginable, heavenly sound of her dulcet tones.
"Hello, Jolly May speaking."
As Jolly picked up the phone she turned a pen around in her fingers, gazing at the blue varnish of her nails. She had not bought much makeup for years but a feeling came upon her to do so yesterday. She was very satisfied with the results.
"Hi Jolly. It's Luke."
Her voice warmed. "Hi."
"I was wondering if you could tell me anymore about my complaint." Waiting for her answer, Luke felt his stomach churn - as though a bowling ball had dropped in it and was rolling along.
Jolly's hair was kneaded into a knotted bun and while her left hand held the phone she began to poke with her right at the bun's recess with her fountain pen.
"There's not really anything more that's happened yet. I've sent out the letter I talked to you about to the trust and I'm awaiting their reply now. It should come soon and then I'll be sharing the reply with you and seeing if we can reach a resolution."
As she spoke Jolly shimmied her spinning chair further away from her colleague. She then turned slightly away, yearning privacy.
Luke continued, "Right. There's something else I need to talk to you about too."
"Alright, sure, what is it?"
"I can't cope with this complaint. Nobody is listening to me. Nobody cares about me."
"Don't be silly, of course people care about you!"
Jolly adjusted the halter straps on her new dress to hide her bra: it was such a pretty dress, not worth spoiling.
Luke's voice rose in a melancholy. "They don't. I'm Mr Nobody. I've had enough! I feel like killing myself."
"Don't say that."
"Well, I'm not saying I'll definitely do it; but I feel like it. Nobody listens."
"Have you told your mental health team?"
"They always treat me awfully. That's precisely why I've made the complaint. I told them and they made fun of me."
"Ah, yeah, I see. I understand. Listen, I will get this sorted though, just leave it with me. I'm confident we'll get a resolution soon."
"Okay, thank you."
"Thanks, Mr Jefferson."
"Bye then."
"Bye," said Jolly as she stared at a bunch of irises on a vase in her desk.
Little else happened for the rest of the day save for one event. In the late afternoon Luke received a phone call.
"Hi, is that Luke Jefferson?"
"Yeah, it is. Who's calling?"
"This is Clara Rose calling, I'm going to be your new social worker for a temporary period."
"Oh, okay. Great."
"Shall we arrange to meet soon?"
"Yeah."
So a meeting was arranged and Luke was introduced to another social worker on the merry-go-round.
XXXI
The next day Luke woke and in his usual routine turned on the computer. His internet habits consisted of checking the news, followed by e-mails and finally clicking on The Rainforest Site. Curiosity struck him. He wondered if Jolly had put anything on the world wide web. He typed in her name on a search engine and saw her name highlighted on a website for a local paragliding group. When he clicked on he read of how she had gone on group outings with the other gliders and there were photographs. Rarely seen birds were pictured, alongside members of the group. There was a photo also of Jolly at a formal function. She was wearing a silk red frock and had titanic blue eyes and a broad smile. Her curved, feminine body demonstrated itself in all its graduations of enlightenment. Luke felt his upper body ache and traced the pain to his heart. Do I love her? he wondered.
If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach maybe that was why Luke had never found love. His childhood was spent blissfully unaware of his food intolerances. The symptoms had remained tame in his youth. They were always there but before puberty came were scarcely noticeable to him. Had his parents or doctor been of a more prying eye and inquisitive mind they would have spotted peculiar behaviour in response to foods in his infancy but few people took an interest in such knowledge at the time. Luke was intolerant to gluten - a protein in wheat, rice and other grains; and casein - a protein in milk and its by-products cheese and yogurt. The two intolerances meant he could not digest food easily. This lead to weight gain, rashes, sore joints, weak muscles, anxiety, poor impulse control, sleeplessness and depression.
Luke only found out about food intolerances in his early twenties after moving to Duldrum. He had been recommended a book by a psychologist called Michael. Luke had met Michael in the twilight of his schooldays in the months before and after he stopped attending. Michael encouraged Luke to developed a further interest in books. Luke's dad had already introduced Luke to some classics and Michael, recognizing that Luke did not fit in with most people and was quite confused about life, asked him to read The Outsider by Albert Camus and The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. He began to realize exactly what it was he felt through these books and started to learn how to articulate his feelings more. He went on to read Catch 22, another novel exploring the intractability of life and Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre which in being about a man who spent too much time alone he could also relate to. After enticing him with engaging and brilliant literature, Michael then steered Luke onto more scientific and objectively useful reading material.
The book he next recommended Luke was written by another young man with Asperger's Syndrome. It was about the gluten free/casein free diet and from the book's descriptions Luke recognized his own problems. Using the information from the book helped Luke to begin to analyze the years of grievances besetting that he had been ignorant of the cause of.
He now understood why after eating food with gluten he was changed to a state of passive mania. In the times he was eating foods with gluten and, to some extent casein, he would feel his eyes narrow, his teeth thrum and his mouth would curl uncomfortably - all of their own volition. He also felt his neck ache terribly if he turned it for long. An assault of pins and needles would strike in the foot at sometime in the day and work its way up, agonizingly, to the leg and would not subside until he used the toilet; these were but a few of the nasty surprises gluten sprang on people like Luke.