Wearing My "Weirdness" On My Sleeve

And my ongoing internal debate as to whether it's "a condition" I need to do something about.

Maud Stevens Wagner, tattoo artist, circa 1907. The Plaza Gallery, Los Angeles. Via Wikimedia Commons.

I’m too desperate to prevent an authoritarian coup to make too much noise about this, but between us: I don’t love that the Dems have taken to using “weird” as a sort of slur in their campaign messaging.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to accept myself as a weirdo, someone who has always felt and behaved differently from most of the people I know. I wrote a whole damn book about it. And when I was struggling to muster the courage to complete the manuscript—in which I spell out the many ways I’m slightly strange—for encouragement, I almost got the word “weirdo” tattooed on my arm in the American Typewriter font, also used in my first tattoo.

Almost. Then it occurred to me it was a little too much truth in advertising, like alienatingly so, and instead had the tattoo artist recreate my juvenile crayon drawing of a typewriter.

Since the book was published two years ago, I’ve received many emails and snail-mail letters from readers who relate, which has made feel less weird. It’s also made me wonder whether weirdness is actually the norm, and everyone who seems “normal” is just fronting. But then a few readers who identify as being “on the spectrum” reached out asking whether I’d ever considered getting tested for high-functioning autism. I told them I’d actually thought about it a lot—that it’s something I’ve regularly debated whether to pursue.

On the one hand, it could be useful to have a concrete explanation for, say, my not being able to understand why anyone would want all the “normal” things in life that most people pursue; or my parents’ contention that as a baby, I didn’t like to be held; or the way I’m rendered nearly homicidal when people make certain sounds around me (so, misophonia, despite my enjoying certain types of ASMR); or my habit of counting to myself in certain situations (which I’d previously associated with the eating disorder I struggled with in my teens and early 20s, although now I hear eating disorders are associated with autism); or the resting worry face my family makes fun of me for; or my near pathological aversions to certain foods, and certain types of lighting.

There’s a much repeated family story about the time my little sister burst into my bedroom looking to play on some overcast afternoon when I was about 10, and asked why I was sitting in the near-dark. My dead serious response: “I don’t like artificial light.” (When my sister impersonates me saying it, she employs the flat intonation of the suicidal woman “Allan” hits on at The Whitney in Play it Again Sam.) Honestly, her rendering of it is hilarious. I’m sorry to say that more often than not I didn’t want to play, preferring to be alone in my room with my imagination and a notebook to write in, which mustn’t have been much fun for a spunky kid like my sister. Back then I already felt different, which is what drove me to start writing in the first place.

On the other hand, do I want to pathologize being me? Would that lead people to treat me differently? Dismiss me? Discriminate against me? And if I were diagnosed with autism or some other flavor of neurodivergence, would I want to medicate it away, or otherwise treat it? Probably not.

***

I’ve been thinking about all of this even more since reading “What My Adult Autism Diagnosis Finally Explained,” Mary H.K. Choi’s excellent recent essay in The Cut, and listening to A.J. Daulerio’s interview with her on

The Small Bow

Podcast. Choi was diagnosed with autism at 43, and it helped her and everyone around her to understand why she behaves in the various slightly-off ways she does. It made me begin to reconsider seeking a diagnosis myself, although I’m still not sure.

On the podcast, Choi mentioned some free online tests on the Embrace Autism website, and as soon as I was done listening, I took one. I scored a 39—apparently scores over 32 are associated with autism—and honestly, I was minimizing my responses. (Is this a version of “masking”?)

The online test feels way too informal and vague an inquiry to take too seriously. But my score kind of tracks. Or is this just what it is to be a creative weirdo? Recently I saw some post on social media suggesting that all creative people are at least somewhat neurodivergent—that it’s the well from which creativity springs.

***

In the end I’m glad I didn’t get the word “weirdo” tattooed on my arm. Besides, in certain places I travel, having tattoos at all is enough to telegraph to people that that’s what I am.

For instance, a family member’s funeral during a July heatwave, when it’s too hot to cover your arms with your jacket, so you wind up with a bunch of Jewish elders staring at your ink with their mouths open. Or a meeting with a very strait-laced, now high-society friend I hadn’t seen in years—also during a heatwave. As I approached the restaurant table where she awaited me, sweating, I blurted, “I have tattoos now!” to perhaps mitigate her reaction. It reminded me of “cousin” Richie in the “Forks” episode of The Bear, Season 2 (ep. 7), when he informs people, “I wear suits now!” but minus the pride.

The cherry blossoms on the cover of my memoir—which I drew in crayon—correspond to my second tattoo, cherry blossoms on my left shoulder, which I got around my 51st birthday.

Not that I’m ashamed of my tattoos. I’m not at all, even if I get self-conscious about them in certain company. Honestly, I fucking love my tattoos. Sometimes, in between tasks, I find myself just staring at my arms and admiring them.

One of the things I like best about my tattoos is they remind me to let it all hang out, when it comes to being myself in the world. To stop pretending I’m normal, or like other people, when it’s not the case. In that way, they keep me honest. For some reason, beginning in my late 40s, I put on the outside what I’d struggled for so long to hide on the inside—that I’m kind of weird.

It’s something about me I’m not so sure I want to formally diagnose, or fix. But it’s also not something I want to be considered as having in common with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.