You are Shane Hollander, and you don't know you're autistic.
At age 26, you don't even know yet how different you are from most people. Your unexamined assumption is that everyone works as hard as you do to get through a regular day. When moments arise that provide evidence to the contrary, you chalk it up to the fact that you care more than other people. And while it's true that you are an exceptionally dedicated person, that's not what makes it hard. Your brain is what makes it hard, but you don't know that.
On a macro level you try to hide the effort it takes to interpret other people's behavior and to downplay the fact that you are always, at least a little bit, thinking about hockey. On a micro level your brain is working overtime to process every bit of sensory information it receives, and you aren't even aware it's happening. You have low latent inhibition, although you've never heard that term. It means the ability to tune out irrelevant sensory information, such as the sensation of clothing on your skin. You've learned to live with it, and the tag in your shirt doesn't bother you exactly, but you're unaware of how many resources your brain is using to make it not bother you. You're unaware of how many resources it's using to sort out the barrage of sights and sounds present in the most mundane of settings. You're unaware how hard it's working just to push through the most basic tasks of figuring out that the car stereo is too loud and the air conditioning is too cold, not the other way around, and when you sometimes turn down the volume because you don't like the air blowing in your face, that's just something to laugh off.
You do like the cold. You've always loved the ice. As a child you loved the way it seemed to generate its own breeze and the way your skin stuck to it, and even though people told you to stop so you learned to stop, secretly you still love it as an adult, that sensation of peeling yourself free and the way your skin stretches. You love every sensation of the rink. It's like it's clearing the cobwebs from your brain. Your gear feels like a cocoon. In another life you wouldn't have liked the feeling of sweat but you're too used to it now to notice. Your brain works hard to tune it out. A hot shower after a game is almost as good as sex.
You love sex. Sex, like hockey, is one of the only times the voice in your head is quiet. You don't like sex with the right type of person, but you've finally accepted that it's something you can't change. You carried that weight for a long time, the shame of feeling good when you weren't supposed to. Now there's a relief like you've never known, allowing yourself to feel good about having sex with a man. You sink into the sensations. They take you over.
You love the sensation of your boyfriend's stubble, that gentle scrape that feels like beautiful sparks in your brain. You rub your face all over it on purpose over and over until your skin is red. Your mom asks you about it. She touches the inflamed places, and her fingertips do not feel good. Your brain works hard to come up with an excuse. It's a reaction to new shaving cream. You lie so much for someone who's not very good at it.
You love it when your boyfriend lays all his weight on you. You love it when he hugs you tightly, and you keep demanding he hold you tighter. He teases you about wanting to be crushed. He doesn't want to hurt you. Once when you were seven years old you squeezed your way in between your mattress and your box spring because you loved the weight covering every inch of your body. Your mom didn't like that, she actually screamed when she found you, so you didn't do it again.
You like smells. You like the smell of your dad's cooking, maybe even more than the taste. You like the smell of sunscreen and boat fuel. You used to breathe in deep at gas stations until your parents told you it was bad for you. You like the smell of your boyfriend's sweat. You like the smell of your own sweat, but you wouldn't ever admit it, because you know that's weird. You like the smell of semen and you know that's even weirder. It's pungent and makes you gag, but you like to gag; you like the strain in your throat and the tears in your eyes. You used to suck a dildo and pretend it was the dick of that man you weren't supposed to love having sex with. You don't do it anymore because it's never as good as the real thing and it doesn't settle your mind the right way.
So there's your sense organs, your eyes and nose and ears and tongue and skin, but there's also your vestibular system (you've always loved getting dizzy) and there's also proprioception (you don't know that word but you love to lift heavy things and you love to push and pull and when you were a kid you used to stomp your feet really hard on asphalt to feel it ricochet up your bones), and there's the difference between hot and cold, between pressure and pain, and there's the sense of time (witness how a sixty-second shift on the ice can feel like twenty minutes but a three-hour game passes in a blink), and your brain is working harder than an average brain on all of these things, powering you through the day, using up so many resources, and you
tired, sometimes, but you believe it's because you are hard worker. (You are. It's true.)
And on days where your brain has worked overtime, and it's running out of things to give, the system begins to malfunction. You don't know that's what's happening. All you know is the lights in the locker room are too bright and your teammates are louder than usual, and the sweat is bothering you after all, and fuck do these guys stink, and the shower is too hot and feels like tiny needles. In an unconscious effort to limit input you walk with your head down so you only see the floor. You don't hear it right away when people speak to you because your ability to process speech has been drained to almost nothing. When someone does succeed in getting your attention, your response is sluggish, your facial expressions jerky as you try to pull up the socially acceptable one. You learned a long, long time ago that hugging your knees to your chest and rocking back and forth was not okay even though it smoothed out the wrinkles in your head, so the option doesn't even cross your mind now, in your mid-twenties. You are not that different from everyone else, you just care more, and you're not happy with how you played tonight. No one can understand what it's like to be you, but that's because you're the best. It's a lonely place to be.
You need your boyfriend. You need him to hold you tightly. He has the power to squeeze every bad feeling right out of you. You want to lay your head on his chest and feel the rumble of his voice. He is hours away from you right now and you won't see him for a few more weeks.
With tremendous effort, monumental effort, you finish out the night and make it home without anyone noticing something's wrong with you.
You're not like everyone else, but you think it's just because you're the best hockey player alive, so of course living feels a little different.
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