It's not necessarily true that I had no friends as a child. I had several, in fact. But I tended to make friendships based on different things than most people do. It's not often that I can fill someone's need, but my earliest friendships formed on need. Mutual need, most of the time.
Mr. Paise was a refuge to me, and I was the closest he could come to the son he never had. I was also a loyal employee, and possibly a means to disprove the opinions of his friends. I know that sounds weird, but I have reason to believe that Mr. Paise was going through some sort of late-life rebellion. Hiring a well-known worthless punk kid and keeping him on for several years was an act of rebellion. I'd like to believe he also kept me on because he liked me, but he wasn't very good at expressing affection.
To Mrs. Gomez, I was a last-ditch symbol of hope. She was a burnt-out math teacher, and I'm sure it's easy enough for math teachers to lose enthusiasm for life. Every school day for 30-plus years her classroom filled up with students who wanted to be anywhere else - even science or art class - and weren't afraid to say so. I was the kid who came out of nowhere and said, "I know I can do math, and I've been secretly teaching myself, but I'd really appreciate it if you help me." I was a good student - when I wasn't seething with frustration, I was teeming with the enthusiasm Mrs. Gomez never saw in her official students. I became her pet project. She's the one responsible for getting me into college.
She and my various employers were the strongest influences in my life back then. I can't count Mr. Hojke or the Buck brothers as actual friends, but Mr. Johns the plumber stood out, as well. He genuinely liked me, I'm pretty sure. He taught his life-lessons in ways that I couldn't miss. Among them were that I could do things for myself and shouldn't hide behind the excuses that had been forced upon me. And that by doing things, I could become better and more valuable than I was. If I hadn't learned those things when I did, I fully believe I'd be dead by now. Or living in some run-down shack in abject poverty.
However, those three friendships were based on something that still makes me uncomfortable. All of those people had holes in their lives they allowed me to fill, but they chose me out of pity. My lot in life was so low that any help they offered me was a considerable step up. Helping somebody worse off than you always makes you feel better, and I was an effortlessly easy subject for that. I don't want to resent any of them for it, so I try not to think about it in those terms. I helped them, too. They had emptiness that needed filling, too. And I certainly wouldn't wish those friendships had never happened, because if they hadn't, then what? My positive social interactions would have been limited to Portia. I love Portia and she's always been fun to have around, but she's only one person.
Getting accepted to college was the first really major accomplishment in my life, in some ways, but when I left home I stopped finding that sort of relationship. For the first time in my life, I was truly alone - even my contact with Portia was limited to infrequent phone calls. I tried to alleviate my loneliness, but my role had changed too much. I was no longer a known charity case; I was a strange young face in a sea of strange young faces. I was anonymous, but still ugly and ungraceful. So, in a way, I disappeared... or at least, that's how it felt. There was no reason for anyone to pay attention to me, and the more alienated I felt, the less opportunity I gave the people around me.
I got to be very alienated. Sometimes I felt like a ghost, going through the motions of life unnoticed by the living and not having any effect on the world. Sometimes I felt more like some grotesque rodent, having to slink and tiptoe for fear that someone would come after me with a broom. If anyone did acknowledge me, I became so obsessed with not letting them hurt me that they'd get frustrated and give up. Nobody truly believed I was human, not even me (okay, literally they knew I was Homo sapiens, because alternatives are scarce, but that's as far as it extended).
Then I met Reg, and things changed. I didn't notice the change at first. Obviously people avoided him as much as they avoided me, but he handled social isolation a lot better than me. "Of course he did," you may say. "He lives in his own little world." I knew that. I knew how strange and unapproachable and autistic he seemed... I'm not totally clueless. But one day he let me into his own little world, and I realized that he and I had a lot in common. Here was another ghost. So what else could I do but ally myself with him, especially since he showed signs of encouraging me?
Or maybe that was just my imagination, my long-neglected inner hope trying to see some action again. If anyone wonders how our relationship developed in the first place (and I'm sure people wonder), that's how. I persisted because I simply couldn't accept that Reg was truly unreachable, and I guess it was the right thing to do.
And, I don't know, I think he liked having me around right from the beginning. He's not into taking initiatives for himself, and sometimes you have to physically drag him if you want him to follow you, but he didn't totally ignore me, either. Although his version of latching wasn't quite as thorough, we latched onto each other. We gradually learned each other's weaknesses and helped each other deal with those things. For me, it was mostly fine-motor things like opening jars or handling keys, or general emotional things like just being there while I panicked. In return, I kept track of those mundane things he chronically forgets, listening for him when people had something to tell him, and handling unexpected changes in the routine. It worked. We filled each other's needs, and there wasn't any pity.
I got to know him as a person. It was a very slow and difficult process, but there is a person inside of him, and I learned how to see it. When I first found Reg's humanness, I was relieved. I'd been afraid of that same thing everyone else believed - that there wasn't any. That he really was just a hollow shell who could solve complex equations in an otherwise inactive mind.
Then something else happened, something I still can't quite explain. In fact, something that contradicted itself. Sometimes the only thing scarier than a freak is two freaks, and we reacted accordingly by becoming shyer. Or at least I did. Well, I do think Reg has gotten less inclined to go to public places over the years, but I guess I can't prove that that's why.
But at the same time, when we got together we got less untouchable. Some people, mostly people who saw us around campus, started to talk to us. To me, mostly. I can't say any of them became friends, but they'd say hi when they saw us and many of them even called us by name. A few of the regulars in the chem lab where I had work-study, for instance, and several of our classmates and my dorm mates. Reg already had some kind of relationship with most of his professors; I don't know who arranged it, but they had a system to supply him with notes and extra help. When I started accompanying him, they'd stop and chat with me. I learned small talk from them.
Reg rented a room in the house of some middle-aged lady; I never did find out whether she was an aunt or a stranger or what, or how Reg paid his rent. She was friendly enough and loved small talk, too, but she wasn't forthcoming with useful information. But she still surpassed my expectations. When he and I got our apartment together, she helped us pack his things and gave us sandwiches, and that was the last we saw of her.
I noticed something that's probably obvious to the rest of you: the more I talked to people (and the more people I talked to), the better I got at it. And the better I got at it, the more people wanted to talk to me. I found it overwhelming at times; it got to be so that at any given time, I had five or ten acquaintances I could count on to ask me, "How are you?" every time they saw me. That's kind of a lot for an untouchable. At the same time, Reg and I got to know each other really well. Yeah, intimately well. It was too bad I couldn't apply what I learned from him to other people I knew. I still wish people would be more like Reg so I could relate to them better. But they aren't.
I guess, in time, people started thinking of me as "normal." Okay, maybe not exactly normal, but certainly more normal than they had considered me before. I don't know how or why, or when it crept up on me. And I know... nobody's ever come out and said it to me, but I know they're thinking it. I know they wonder what someone like me is doing with someone like Reg.
There's not a lot I can say if I'm not asked this question directly, and even if I were, I'd be at a loss, I'm sure. But if I were to answer, first I'd question what they mean by, "someone like me." What the hell do they know about me, and what I'm like, and what kind of person I should be with? What have I done lately that makes me deserve their respect more than I did eleven or twelve years ago? What makes me less of a freak than I was then? If I always had the potential to be "normal," then where were all these people back then, back when I wasn't worth anyone's time but Reg's?
The fact is, I needed Reg back then. Only he could have helped me go from the person I was then to the person I am now. I'm even glad that he's a man; I can't imagine caring for a woman the way I care for him. I doubt I would have approached him in the first place if he were a woman. I'm sorry if anyone has a problem with that, or with him not being "normal." If Reg hasn't changed the way I have, it's because he's already normal - for him. I was the broken one.
Maybe that's what scares me about the prospect of people liking me. If they start liking me too much, eventually somebody might come out and tell me I could do better. What if someone, like, likes me? I'm afraid I won't be able to deal with that. I don't want to do better. Reg invested a lot in me, more than any of you can imagine. I've given a lot of myself to him, too. We've spent over a decade learning how to get everything just right. I can't just throw that away, even if I wanted to. And I don't want to, anyway. I may be self-destructive, but sabotaging our relationship is far beyond even my level of self-destruction. Reg and I, man, we're inseparable now. We're an entity, in a way. I like it like that. I'm happy that people see me as more approachable and likable than before, but I'm not going to discard the person who got me to this point. I shouldn't have to.
I just need a good way of saying so when people suggest it. Or even better, a way of showing so when they think it, so they never feel they have to suggest it.