I hate small talk, and they think I'm cute.
how the autism likes to present itself in my social life, a personal experience.
The part about how I talk
I talk a lot sometimes, usually with the wonderful help of a neurodivergent brain. It’s not like I talk to fill space with empty words. I love talking to educate, elucidate, juxtapose, hypothesize and often—over explain a tiny detail. I’ve come to the point where I embrace it, but I still find myself trying hard not to apologize every time I do it. I really don’t like small talk.
Most times, I actually don’t talk much. I spend most of my days doing things, and while doing them my internal dialogue is always going. I have entire conversations inside, I have entire sessions of problem solving—an eternal self exegesis. Sometimes I begin talking without the context I had within, and my best friend has to ask, “what did you say?” or “what…?” I often reply with, “oh you heard that?” It doesn’t happen much with strangers as I try hard to mask that part, but if I am comfortable and barely masked, it does happen occasionally. Sometimes I don’t want to explain and so I tell her, “cool stuff” and she knows what I mean.
Cool stuff. Here’s one of those tiny details that I will over explain.
The part about taking THC with bestie
One day, it had been months since bestie and I had taken THC together. I was very excited. On THC we mask very little. It’s exciting to be that way with her, I feel incredibly comfortable in those moments. The thing is, as I told my son once, “the autism comes out more when I am stoned.” I was explaining to him that since the tism is more present, then I have to put in more effort to mask if I am in public or around strangers. When I told him this, I was in a patio at a bar. He asked me, “you’re masking now?” and I just replied, yes. This can go into a whole different rabbit hole of discussion, so I’ll pull it back. I bring these examples up because it is important in describing “cool stuff.”
The part when I’m cute at the bar
In the patio, the effort in masking was making me anxious, not the autism. The social element had me excessively worrying that I was being too awkward and in some moments I clearly was. A girl asked me to have a drink with her shortly after that conversation with my son. I go with her and we share some time together listening to the music in the bar and just chatting. The masking at this point is making it very hard to remain relaxed. My social battery starts to dwindle very quickly, and the anxiety is rising—in turn my masking begins to be more obvious. I worry it’s too obvious, so I drop it down a little, she notices and says, “you are so cute!”
I get this a lot from people, even strangers. “You are so cute!” I can no longer count on my hands and feet how many times I’ve been told that. Some have described me as, “baby” and others as, “I’ve never known anyone like you.” I got a couple letters on my corkboard from kind people saying similar things. I found it so odd when I began to notice this occur a lot. I eventually embraced it, okay fuck it I’m cute and interesting.
Here I am, in a bar with a cutie really digging me for being me. However I begin to think. I tell her, “I need to go back with my son and friends, I just wanted to at least talk with you for a bit, you can have my number, maybe we can hang out some time?” We exchange numbers and she’s totally cool with it and waves to me as I skedaddle across the pulsing dance floor like a dork.
My son, bestie and friends are there vibin’ and he asks me, “how it go?” I tell him it was fine, I tell him I was awkward, I tell him how I feel and continue to unload and they see the meltdown coming, I feel it coming, I know it’s coming, goddamit Kalli not here, not now. My eyes well up, bestie is reassuring me I am fine and that the girl likes me and likes me even if I was awkward. That’s the thing though, I don’t want to be cute for being awkward, I just want to be able to socialize like everyone else does. I am so exhausted at this point, and I end up spending the rest of the night annoyed underneath my exterior. I had fun, it wasn’t a bad night, but these moments are hard, and despite my ability to manage, it takes a lot for me to socialize. I prefer the quiet. Unless of course I am allowed to be completely immersed in what I am talking about, such as one of my many interests.
Enter, Cool Stuff.
The part I take bestie for a walk down my brain
Bestie and I unwrap the edibles we picked up, each of us swallow about 10mg of THC and the vibes are extremely chill. We’re in my room listening to music, got cozy lights on, it’s dim, we’re snacking on stuff we picked up at the Qwiki Mart. Her and I always have things to talk about even the most mundane things, which I appreciate about her. Then after about thirty minutes I am suddenly talking in hyper-detail about something she mentioned that triggered a connection to something I am very informed about.
She’s listening very intently, and I catch myself and stop and just say, “cool stuff.” I realize quickly I am like a hundred levels deep into one detail with all its branching connecting details, and stop. Then I say, “oh fuck we’re stoned!” and we both start laughing pretty hard.
She doesn’t know how far I had her and how much further down I could take her, she just knows I started doing the thing. She’s used to it, but when I am not stoned, I do pretty well to rein it in. She asks me, yeah but what’s “cool stuff?” I look at her with a do you really wanna know face and I’m like okay I’ll explain.
Since I can tell her attention is quite focused and I am quite unmasked I indulge her question. I take her from the initial word that triggered it and to what connection it made in my database of brains. I walk her through every single detail, every thought, ever bit of context as to why I chose to say this or think that, and what options exist at a certain moment, and how I decided which dialogue option to go with. The entire path of my logic to simply answer a question.
When I finally hit the end of this path of subfolders and branches, I walk her back upward this cascade of thoughts, ideas, words, patterns and feelings. Gently collapsing them in the order I brought them up. A lot of time has passed by now, likely the weed made it feel even longer to both of us. We reach the surface of this deep dive into my brain process, and say—that’s Cool Stuff.
I explain to her, “and whenever I don’t want to explain something you heard me say that was out of context, or maybe it truly is irrelevant to our conversation, I don’t want to explain all that. So, whenever I say “cool stuff” just know I am not ignoring you, I am sparing you.” Still high as shit, we both laugh with absurd appreciation for what just happened, and we continue the rest of the night having a blast, unmasked and untethered. I hate small talk.
There is more I can say, but…
Cool Stuff.
That’s some cool stuff right there haha. I really enjoyed the insight into some one else’s brain and can definitely empathise with a lot of it.