How I Became an Autistic Performer at 4... Then Acted My Life

I’m writing an autobiography… out loud. Building a book. Fragment by fragment. Just like I lived it.

So, I zigzag down this narrow wooden aisle. Row after row of maybe a couple hundred screaming kids… and shouting adults. Squeezed into wooden folding chairs. Each one tired of waiting for the party to start…

All of them brushing against my left hand as I hurry past.
Bumping repeatedly into the concrete block wall up against my right shoulder.
It’s tight.
Turn-sideways tight.

So, me… trying to sprint faster & faster toward the Boys’ Room. I take a turn left across the front of the auditorium audience. A little too fast. A little too wide. And my cape furls out behind me.

Someone in the crowd sings out, “It’s Zorro!”

And the place erupts in… cheers??!

Confusing as hell. This was First Grade. New kid in school. And, ya know… autistic.

Not a lot of cheers in my life.

This is the one that goes way back. It’s Fall 1959. My family had moved to Valley Stream, Long Island in the Spring before… mid-semester kindergarten.

We’ve moved a lot already. Five times before Long Island. Each move a little harder than the last for me. In my second school system, I’m still in shellshock when I hit First. Not really participating in class. Largely alone in the schoolyard.

Now, understand… throughout my childhood, “making friends” was my parents’ eternal mission. For me.

“I discover cosplay. Never went to a Trekkie Con dressed as Spock. I just cosplayed… my whole life.”

Where all the kids…
from all the local neighborhood public schools…
are now yelling.
Waiting for some kind of…
balloon animal maker or educational puppet show to begin.
Smearing paper plates of pastel-colored frosting across their faces.
Dropping the boring cupcake remains on the floor.
Reaching for more.
To deafening echoes in the combo gym-and-auditorium all the local schools share…

And, at this exact moment, I gotta pee.

Now, my mother had made a costume for me. Zorro was my favorite Saturday morning show. And well, it was a big thing back then for kids across the nation.

There were store-bought Zorro capes and masks. If you hunted among the Frankensteins and Draculas in the drugstore. But we didn’t really have the money for those.

So, my mother fired up her ancient black Singer sewing machine. She gave the belt wheel a quick turn… And sewed me up a long, flowing, black cape. And it really did tie at my neck.

Then to finish the costume, she walked me the few blocks to Kresge’s on Rockaway Avenue. A dark narrow store filled with wooden bins of cheap goods. What my grandparents called a “nickel store.” But my parents called a 5-and-10. Think, a cross between Dollar Tree and Family Dollar in 2026.

Anyway, she picked out a black cowboy hat, black yarn for a whip… and of course that famous black mask.

I discover cosplay. Never went to a Trekkie Con dressed as Spock. I just cosplayed… my whole life.

That was… weird. Why’d they do that. I check the stage. Nope, no balloon guy.

Shrug. I make my way to the Boys’ Room. Do my business in the stall. But, something begins to dawn on me in there… Did they just shout, Zorro?!

So, when I cross the audience on my way back, Let me try something. What if…

I furl my cape again. And they laugh and hoot… again.

Acceptance… Confidence... Energy… Control.

I feel…huge. I feel bigger than…. the whole… gym.

I. Am. Gonna... Explode.

I sit down red-faced. And fucking beaming.

That’s the exact moment in the Cosmos… I got the Bug.

I’m 4 years old, living in Endicott, New York. In my basement, I decide to make a show where I pretend to be dead. Kinda like Twilight Zone.

I invite the Hoopers next door and a couple of other neighbor kids. Together we lift the heavy steel hatch covering the stairs leading down to the cellar door. Then we single-file down, navigating around the coal bin in the gloomy light and musty air. And we do this sort of play.

I’m lying on the concrete in the darkest, dampest dirt floor corner. Dressed up in my blue Church jacket. And I tell everybody to make a circle around me and say stuff over my corpse. Like a funeral.

Then everybody else takes their own turns on the floor. And we talk about them.

They love it.

Later in 4th grade, when I lived in Rochester, Minnesota, a neighbor had a basement that his parents converted into a survival shelter. For atom bombs.

So it had an angled entryway. You go down a short, narrow, unlit concrete hallway. At the end, you turn right. Suddenly you’re in absolute freaking Blackness.

And supposedly safe…
from any kinda radiation beaming into
the large room in which
you’re trying to avoid dying.
Surrounded by “safe” food
hermetically sealed in boxes.

Yeah... Looked like a natural stage to me.

So I put on “Halloween” horror show after horror show in it. And I charge the kids a nickel… later a quarter… to come to my show.

I’m thinking…
I get to dream up something.
I get to show them my dream… like I see it.
They love it.
And I can get enough quarters to make the next dream…
I wanna do it…
I’m gonna do it.

But right about that time… my friend’s mom kinda started feeling iffy about us in her basement. Unsupervised. And… the money.

So I move my little performances to my own basement, a couple houses down. Not as perfect, maybe. No angled hallway to save us from atomic war. So… no true dark to lose yourself in.

But I could keep doing what I want. More shows.

“We’re talking opening the Doors of Perception. No drugs… just flooding my neurology.”

Uh, like… one time. I stuff my younger brother into a corpse outfit. Some navy pajamas of mine. You can’t tell he’s inside. He looks like a fake dummy cuz I stuffed his sleeves and legs with torn newspaper. And then I pour ketchup all over them. Like he’s chopped up.

And… for their quarter, neighbor kids get to see one little scene that was a little scary, then a second little scene that was a little scarier. And then…

We end up at my brother’s “corpse.” And he does his part. Jump up and scream. You know, go boo, and stuff.

And they ran out of there shrieking. Loving every minute of it.

Those are my earliest memories of performing.

As a singer, as a singer/songwriter, as a writer, as a this, and as a what-the-freak that.

Even though I could completely fall apart with too much input. Lights. Loud sound. Close quarters. Too many fucking humans.

Cuz I learned in childhood… in the right place, time, company… I soar right past the point of panic and meltdown.

I lose everything but the performance. I lose the room. I lose myself.

I trip balls. We’re talking opening the Doors of Perception. No drugs… just flooding my neurology.

Once upon a time, I performed for that amazing moment. Of connection. Cuz I felt safe.

I performed for control.
When they’re laughing… you know you’re not in trouble.

I performed for acceptance.
Maybe some of them even like you.

I performed for confidence.
If something has worked before… with a slight tweak, maybe it will work again?
Maybe better?

And I performed to manage my energy. Up to a point…
I don’t have to weigh every word against eyes that narrow… or get dull… I got a script.
I choose where I can perform comfortably… sound, light, a known crowd.
I don’t have to please 8 people at once… or 4… or 2…
It’s a room. One thing to focus on. Not fifty humans. If there’s a laugh or two in that room? More will follow.

When I get energy, confidence, acceptance, and frankly… control? When I keep that balance? And it clicks?

I lose everything but the performance. I lose the room. I lose myself.

“Safe, in control, in that DIY space, I can perform comfortably. I just gotta don my new cape.”

Too much. Recovery after any performance became too much. Maybe age. Maybe too little return. Maybe fear.

I want... I need... my non-neurodivergent friends, allies... parents... to feel this. Like I do. In the gut.

Sure, everyone puts on a brave face to work a room. But autistic “masking”? Like I wrote a while back...

It’s a different animal. Just like everybody gets sad sometimes. But clinical depression? That’s another beast… altogether.

I’d like to think that late diagnosis… and a lot of thinking… and even more rest… helped me see a new... old... direction.

Flashing back on how I once connected with my body.
Like when I was a kid.
4-year-old me happiest… all by myself.
Ferociously cataloging my dinosaur cards.
Before I lost touch with my own feelings… and limits.
First at home… then school… then work.
Busy trying to meet everybody else’s need… for me to meet their expectations.

Now somehow … alone? In my 70s, I can recover some of those passionate joys. No audience. In my office. In front of my keyboard. In my rigged-up video studio… scrounged from my box of old tech trash.

Safe, in control, in that DIY space, I can perform comfortably. I just gotta don my new cape. My stage name…
And impersonate Johnny Profane.
From his script.
He’s the guy who always knows the right thing to say.
With the right cocked eyebrow.
And meaningful pause in the middle.
And plays guitar like that guy on the radio.
I listen real close to his station playing in my head.
And I do what I hear him do.

But I’m not an imposter. I’m an impersonator. Now, slowly disrobing.

There was a price to pay for performing. So ever since diagnosis… the rooms got ever smaller. Now it may just be me, dogs, and my cat.

But performing still gets me up. Every damn morning.

• If this excerpt grabbed you… more here: The Book: Frag by Frag.

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I’m only an expert on my own life. Born 1953, diagnosed at 63. Your mileage will vary.

Individual marginalized voices speaking truth out loud? They build bridges to mainstream readers. Think Malcolm X. Think Maya Angelou. Think Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness.

This Fall, I hope to deliver that kind of impact, that power with My Autistic Life is My Art. For our neurodivergent community.

Since 2019 I’ve published a quarter of a million words. Over half the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Gotta be a pony somewhere in that shit.