Stim4Stim S1E1 transcript

[music]

CHARLIE: Let’s explain the concept of this podcast a little bit. I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk shit about Netflix — -

ZACK: We absolutely are.

CHARLIE: … But there was a show that was about autistic adults dating, and I guess being zoo animals, that they have less social skills than other quote-unquote normal people. So this podcast is a response to that. And I think our tagline right now is “autistic people fuck.”

ZACK: Yep.

CHARLIE: And we’re here to talk about that, and tell you all the reasons how and why that’s true, in our lives, in the lives of our listeners and our friends, and in the lives of our guests when we do eventually have people on the podcast. And we are going to be structured, we’re going to have guests, we’re going to take questions, give advice, hopefully not lead these people astray, but we’re also going to fuck around and have fun.

ZACK: Absolutely.

CHARLIE: Because the two of us, as autistic people, we love to perform, we love to talk to each other, talk to our partners, entertain in our lives and on the Internet and onstage and I think this is a really good way to showcase that and to give autistic people something honest, something funny and something that makes them feel like they’re part of this, I guess.

ZACK: 100 percent. And we, Charlie and I have discussed this in a private conversation when we were pitching what we wanted this show to be about to one another, and I brought up something that friend of the show and must-follow on Twitter Nicole Cliffe said about this particular Netflix program, “Love on the Spectrum,” which is that the show talks a lot about how to essentially train yourself not to talk about trains to a potential partner, but it doesn’t really talk about how great it is to find a partner who actually wants to hear about trains, and we are the show for people who want to find a partner who wants to hear about trains.

CHARLIE: Yeah. And I’m sure we’re going to delve into our special interests, because we both have them, and we have shared special interests, which are making fun of Boston, making fun of Italians and cringing at electoral politics.

ZACK: Oh God. And if we had done this a little earlier, we could have gotten when I was covering the Democratic National Convention, and when you had that viral moment with the big plate of calamari representing Rhode Island, you almost had the intersection of all three of those.

CHARLIE: Oh my God. That would have been incredible but hindsight and timing.

ZACK: Yeah. That chef, who insists he is entirely apolitical, actually follows me on Twitter, he seems like a really nice guy.

CHARLIE: Oh, good!

ZACK: Which is good. I am sick of both the asshole TV detective and the asshole TV chef. We need more nice chefs.

[music]

ZACK: Well, for those of you who may not have the context for the little chirping that we’re hearing on your end, you want to tell us a little bit about Paris?

CHARLIE: Oh yeah, Paris is the greatest thing to almost come out of this pandemic. I moved into a studio apartment on Christmas Eve of 2019 and for all of January I was so lonely, I was doing so poorly, and then February 1, I bought a cockatiel and here he is, and he’s so happy and we’re so happy, and we’ve just been locked up 24/7 because of COVID, and I already have existing chronic illnesses and I may or may not be a shut-in while also being a working artist, so we’re just in each other’s faces 24/7 and he is perfect and I give him so many gifts all the time. I give him roses and mint and eucalyptus and I recently gave him some mini-pumpkins, because it’s gourd season, and he was terrified. He was so scared, he was like a child in the 1930s, just afraid of jack-o-lanterns and Frankenstein or Nosferatu or whatever the fuck. But he was terrified of these tiny, tiny two-inch-tall pumpkins, and then he conquered them. Then he started chewing on them and realizing that they’re food, so we’re good now.

ZACK: We’re proud of you, Paris.

CHARLIE: We’re so proud of you, Paris!

ZACK: Hell yeah.

CHARLIE: He’s eating a hair tie right now.

ZACK: And one thing that we talked about that we also want to discuss at a later date, sort of tying in with the general theme of the podcast, is just how valuable an animal companion can specifically be to an autistic person, especially during a time like this, when you’re basically stuck in the social arrangement you found yourself in in March or so, it can be way more than a pet in terms of what it offers you, in terms of companionship.

CHARLIE: Absolutely. And he has gotten sick a couple times during this pandemic and he’s just so fundamental to my life, like I’ve had other things go wrong, where my medications aren’t right, my computer broke, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing compares to my partner in crime, best friend slash son slash parent, he’s a little bit of a parent to me, nothing compares to him being at less-than-optimal health. I’ve had so many meltdowns about him and he is a sickly boy and that’s why I just get him gifts constantly, because he is my little mini-God and he rules my life, and right now he’s being very noisy with a bell. Pets are such an essential thing to autistic people because, despite what the larger narratives are out there, that we don’t have empathy, we can’t love, we can’t maintain eye contact, we can’t touch our loved ones, animal companionship is just so essential for our well-being.

ZACK: Absolutely. And I am just going to pause here to note that our audience can’t see this, we’re on a video call, so Charlie can, and I just want to make clear that my listening face involves a People’s Eyebrow and it might make it seem like I’m judging or something and I just wanted to make absolutely clear that I’m not, because first and foremost this is going to try to be a judgment-free zone in general. But also I absolutely understand what you’re saying. We have two rescue cats, two big dumb couch-cushion cats, and I don’t know where we would be without them, Raychel and I. Because as much as we love each other, their ridiculous selves I feel like really ground us and make it seem like even if we are in a shitty mood, we just, we always feel like almost like “Into the Woods” [singing] children will listen, and we’ve got to set a good example for our big, dumb, constantly hungry children and I really think that has with our relationship, with us saying anything we can’t take back, particularly.

CHARLIE: Do you think that your cats are almost like buffers? I don’t want to say buffers, because that makes it sound like conflict, but just having two other beings in the house and playing off of your cats, does that help sort of keep things nice and smooth?

ZACK: Partly. And it’s weird, we have had to move with them several times and I really feel that there is a sense between us that… a partner you move two misbehaving indoor cats with is someone you better be with for the long haul, because that is a real bonding experience. When we moved to our current house and were vacating our apartment, I just remember that we took the cats last and they had been freaking out as the apartment slowly emptied, and so we were driving them… it was only about 20, 25 minutes, in these little carriers and they were freaking out inside them, but they weren’t like yowling or anything, they were just making this really plaintive, mournful sound that sounded like “Yoooooo! Yooooo!” And we felt really bad for them, but at the same time, the onomatopoeia of it has become sort of like an inside joke with us, and we will occasionally just go “Yooooo!” to one another when we’re in that mood where we’re feeling kind of sad but we’re ready kind of make a joke out of it. So yes, I guess, is the short answer to your question.

CHARLIE: That actually reminds me that I’m kind of a nightmare Tinder date, I think, and I actually did have a Hinge date that I brought back to the apartment early, early on in having Paris, and of course before the pandemic and everything locked down. And Paris needs to hear my voice, so he will make peeps and he expects me to make peeps back, and so we’ll just have this feedback loop of peeping at each other. And at that time, I wasn’t sure how to have guests in our space, so I was just so obsessed, of course, with my bird, and this guy who graciously ordered UberEats was just sort of like a blanket or a prop or something else on my bed but you know, Paris was the real star. I was hanging out with Paris.

ZACK: Hell yeah. And that actually makes me think of… Raychel was saying the other day that she had read the actual “meow” sounds, cats just make those for the benefit of humans and when they’re actually talking to each other they just make those little weird chirpy noises. And our little girl tabby Tessie makes those noises to Raychel all the time, and so she really feels a sense of companionship with Tessie, because she essentially treats her as Mama Cat when she does that.

CHARLIE: Aww.

ZACK: But yeah. So we’ve started and stoppd recording this a few times for the benefit of the audience but our future episodes will eb more structure than this, this is largely a dry run and, we felt, very important to… most of Charlie and my communication over the years has been online, and so we just wanted to take a little time to sort of establish the rapport and the I guess chemistry, for lack of a better word, for riffing purpose that we have, in a setting where we’re actually talking to one another. So that’s another reason why this is important for us to do an intro episode.

CHARLIE: I’m so sorry Paris is so loud. That’s gonna be a theme. That’s not going away with structure.

ZACK: Yeah. You know, again, anyone who is listening to this, and anyone who’s going to be talking to us, I feel like they understand the essential nature of someone, so I figure they’re getting what they paid for.

CHARLIE: He’s a co-host.

ZACK: Hell yeah. If we ever get mascots, or if we ever get t-shirts or anything, there’ll be a little cartoon Paris on them.

CHARLIE: Someone did actually make me fan art of Paris for our joint birthdays, because we’re both Cancers, and that’s sort of what confirmed that I needed to get him. So many people have drawn him and paid tribute to him in various ways and yeah, we did receive fan art that we can probably use for something in the future.

ZACK: Hell yeah.

CHARLIE: We may not be qualified to give life advice, we’re not therapists, we’re not couples counselors, but I firmly believe that autistic people are the authorities on our own lives. And I’m going to say that again because Paris was calling out to people walking below. We’re not experts, but in the sense of [Paris squawking] Stop! Okay, I need our editor to leave this in, because he’s just being so difficult. Autistic people are the experts on our own lives and things like “Love on the Spectrum” take that autonomy away. The phenomenon of Autism Parents in general, where they are the ones who are beleaguered, and they are also the ones who are somehow experts and feel emboldened to shout the rest of us down … we have so much status quo to push up against. There really aren’t narratives out there that involve autistic people being honest about sex. The tagline for this podcast that people have been volleying around on Twitter is “autistic people fuck.’ And we do! Because we’re people.

ZACK: Absolutely. And I think that a lot of the time people don’t understand that there is a, not a particularly fine line, I think it’s a particularly broad line, between the idea that there’s a big difference that we’ve got going on and the fact that we are still full human beings. I mean, am I making sense? Again, this episode is largely us feeling things out but it’s important to me for people to understand that we are not just like everybody else but that does not mean we are beyond your comprehension, especially if we’re taking the time to explain ourselves, like we are doing with this very podcast.

CHARLIE: And furthermore, I think there is an assumption about an inability to consent, which I’m sure we can dedicate multiple episodes to. Because there’s this fucking narrative that we are perpetual children. And with “Love on the Spectrum” interviewing people’s parents about their love lives, it’s just… such a violence, honestly, to treat us like we are only children and that’s all we’re ever gonna be. Personally, I wasn’t raised knowing that I’m autistic, no one had any idea, so my experience of dating while autistic started kind of consciously at like 23. I wasn’t being told “Oh, quiet hands, you need to do eye contact to relate to other people,” that sort of thing, I just had to, I don’t know, go through any other adult’s version of knowing who I am and how to advocate for myself.

ZACK: Sure. And I think that autism isn’t all we are, obviously, but it’s a big part of who we are, and I think that one of the most empowering things a person can have is to know a big chunk of who they are, and a lot of things you can just figure out from there if you are empowered in that way. By the time I met my wife when I was 18 or 19, I knew that I was autistic and I was able to be up front with her about that. And I think that a lot of things about me took some getting used to for her but I think that maybe understanding that about me led her to give me more of a chance than she might have otherwise. And obviously now we are, I’ve been told, disgustingly adorable, and that had to start with one of us… well, with both of us giving the other a chance, and I’m really grateful for that and I’m really grateful that I was in a position to self-advocate to the point where I could put her in a position to give me a chance.

CHARLIE: Yep. And I think that everybody is weird, and everybody has to adjust to a partner’s weirdness.

ZACK: Yep. And to be clear, we’re doing this specifically for autistic and neuroatypical people, but I absolutely think, probably, there are a lot of neurotypical people who can learn something from listening to us. And you know, even if they can’t, we’ve been listening to them tell us our business for however many years, so turnabout is fair play, I guess.

CHARLIE: Yeah. I mean hopefully we’re able to impart sort of the emotional intelligence we’ve had to learn, and in some cases we are a little more conscious about our communication with others, because we’ve had to actually intentionally work at it, whereas neurotypical people maybe have absorbed social scripts and social mores a little more passively.

ZACK: Yeah, 100 percent. I’m glad you brought that up because it’s almost like the metaphor I would use is inherited wealth versus we’re like these little kids in Horatio Alger books, that’s my first of many deep-cut references, hopefully, these scrappy underdogs who hustled for everything they had, it’s just that we’re hustling for is social skills.

CHARLIE: Yeah. And I’m not gonna say I’m better than people who aren’t autistic, but also I am.

ZACK: Yeah. For anyone listening, that is the official editorial position of the Stim4Stim podcast.