on Saturday night I helped Eve get dressed into the most amazing costume for a circus themed party. We went to the costume shop and we got her a large collapsable white top hat with silver and red fringing, a blue leotard with silver fringing and black leggings with big black boots and a large silver wand .. she was dressed as a magician and looked incredible breath taking even! (breath taking as in she completely took my breath away when she winded me with the wand hardy har har)

We bought her a big curly blonde wig and she even had her make up done by a proffessional at the Westfield Shopping Centre. As we sat in our living room before Eve’s friends picked her up I took photos … i love taking photos i take photos of e v e r y t h i n g … it’s my way of being able to make note and remember details about where I have been and the people I have come across … like this photo on my camera taken by of Eve …

birthday boy

I don’t generally like having many photos taken of me but I let her take this one to remember the exact outfit she bought me and keep her sense of style in mind when I go shopping so I know the right things to buy … Similarly If I take photo’s of people I can make notes to go with the pictures such as .. “this is Ed, he has a sister and her name is Tasha and they go to Uni with Eve on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s and to the Paddington Inn Pub on Wednesdays and Saturdays” … that way seeing as they are people I don’t see so regularly I can call upon their pictures and remember little things about them that can be conversation starters …

Any way I’m getting distracted … Eve and I were sitting in the living room before the party when she asked me if I wanted to come …. This made me feel extremely shocked because I don’t think any one has ever asked me to come to a party like this before … of course I go to get togethers with Eve sometimes … but I much prefer being by myself and making music and listening to my Ipod and seeing movies … I don’t like big crowds .. .especially of intoxicated people … festivals are the only thing I can stand because I just find a spot at the back of the stage and sit down and listen by myself …

So the prospect of being invited to this circus party made me want to curl up into the feotal position and have a panic attack …. but Eve was so insistent …. I’m doing a photographic project on my own for my music covers and she thought I could get some cool snaps …

trust me it wasn’t a good idea …

Reminds me of Eve

This was a photo I took in Centennial Park on my walk with Eve

Where do I even begin with EVE my beautiful friend, who has taken me into her home and her life and has taught me so much and been the only person who has ever really understood me or made me feel like I wasn’t an alien that had been dropped on this planet like Tommy Soloman in 3rd Rock From the Sun. I always have loved that show I have the entire series box set dvd’s and watch them repeatedly … I pretty much know everyline to most of the episodes which is a cool party trick (Eve insists it isnt weird)

Eve and I met in 2003 when I completed the HSC at Cranbrook school for Boys (UAI 99.8 not to gloat but just to make sure that there’s no misconception about my level of intellect, mathematically – the purest form of language – and on paper I am very logical and practical and successful – but my social intellect …. lets just say it’s … unique ahaha not even! Evie and I met at Field Day 2003 when I first used my drivers licence ID to actually go to an over 18s event.

Now I know to some AS people this would seem weird because I can’t stand large crowds or sudden sharp or loud noises, or grass for that matter … but I have a passion for dance, house and especially trance music … well you could actually call it an obsession .. most people I’ve met with AS have a similar obsession with a particular subject or technology … Tony Atwood calls it our “specialist subject” … any way this passion goes beyond any fear I may have of these upsetting or uncomfortable encounters … because if you know me you will know I never go ANYWHERE without my Ipod. It is my little piece of sanity in my pocket in a world where everything is a threat to my “normallness” .. if i know I’m going to be in a particularly stressful situation like on the train at peak hour or in the city .. or at a festival I make sure I have my Ipod and I just put on my head phones and lose myself into the world of trance .. Above and Beyond .. OceanLab, Solarstone or Hixxy, Tiesto, Armand Van Buuren or Underworld or the Chemical Brothers … this kind of obsession (and I don’t just go to festivals they headline or concerts they play at, I have in my own beautiful library every single record, cd, box set, limited edition or burnt cd from downloaded music of each and every one of my favourite Dj’s. I collect posters, magazines or interviews of their works and art and I listen to them religeously day in day out to the point where I can verbally describe the tune, tonal quality, rhythm, beat, rise, fall, length or lyrics to any song one may quiz me on … Eve and her friends are pretty much the only people who will listen to my incessant facts because they are all massive druggies (they do ecstacy and cocaine and go to nightclubs and festivals - I tag along but kind of end up on my own any way which I prefer… anyway they get really excited when I recite these kinds of details to them about their favourite songs, it seems like its a game to them .. but its my reason for existing! (Other than the fact that my mother gave birth to me! haha)

All of this however was how I came to meet Eve … I was sitting on a picnic rug by myself (As per usual) listening to Solar Stone’s Seven Cities on my Ipod in between going to see Moochoo and Dizzy Rascal when this girl walked over to me and sat down on my blanket, pulling out one of my earphones. I remember I stood up and absolutely “FREAKED” as Eve recalls it and starting screaming at her and flapping my hands and basically having a panic attack at the blatant invasion of my personal space it took her about 20 minutes to calm me down … she seemed very sorry and nicer than any one I had met before my age .. she had the most amazing calming affect and explained very clearly to me that she was sorry for touching me and my music, very slowly and very straightfoward. She then looked at me and I was staring above her right eye (I can’t make eye contact with people it physically hurts and really makes me uncomfortable) and she asked me something I had never expected to hear “Are you an Aspie?”. I was very uncomfortable that she was talking with such direction and enthusiasm no one really ever had before ..”how did you know that?” I responded .. it turned out her older brother Mitchell had been an Aspie but had committed suicide the year before from depression … we ended up talking for the next hour which was something similiar to a world record for me .. it was as if this girl knew everything about me and she was so normal around me she didnt react weirdly to anything I said or did.

I was confused though .. how did she know I has AS ? She didn’t she just thought I was a “tripper” listening to my Ipod at a festival where there were 15000 people around and musical acts … by myself – she was shocked to find that she had just stumbled across the only other person she’d ever met with AS other than her brother. We ended up going to see all of the other acts that afternoon … I remember I told her her hair was wet from her sweating and she smelt like grass – she laughed and said that wasn’t appropriate to say to someone you just met … i said i was sorry … thats how her many life lessons began. It was incredible she would agree with everything I said from the fact that had she noticed Groove Armada were playing Stanton Warriors and then Stanton Warriors were playing Groove Armada? Or how they had bothed played Born Slippy very sloppily indeed … she never tired from listening to every thing I said .. normally people walk out of conversations with me after about 10 minutes .. they make an excuse I have come to recognize (their eyes get squity and they shuffle around alot and look everywhere but at me which I really don’t mind at all)

Eve was an absolute angel .. she asked for my phone number and gave me hers … I didn’t know why but thanked her politely and said goodbye at the gates and watched her join a big group of very muddy teenagers with large eyes and messy hair – all jumping and moving weirdly …. and she put her hand on her mouth and pushed it out towards me (which I later learnt was blowing me a kiss) and yelled “Ill call you tomorrow” … I’d seen it happen in movies but never to me …

She was the first and last real friend i’ve ever made … that was a day which was filled with light and happiness … and not cloudyness and confusion … Eve was clarity to me …in a muddled world.

And they say Im crazy!

It’s almost daylight Eve will ‘go mental’ at me if she catches me on the computer…

No longer so Dazed and Confused!

Over and Out

M x

Eve has told me that these things take time and that I can’t expect to change over night, but sometimes I wonder whether I really want to change that badly? Sometimes I feel anger that society expects everyone to be the same boring drones and clones and conform and consume and follow the same path and act the same way, well I for one am all about routine … but I am not a conformist, I am not a sheep (obviously I am not a sheep because otherwise if I were my hoofs wouldn’t be able to hit the keys on the key board would they! This is my attempt at a joke … I’ll be here all week ahaha) Some times I feel sad … Why should I be ashamed of my AS qualities and try and hide them and learn to act and behave like everybody else?

Sometimes I feel frustration …. because my whole life has been one big act, and I am the star of the show. Welcome to the greatest show on earth – MATEO’S WORLD starring that freaky aspergers kid who sits at the back of your class! This is a sarcastic joke (it wasn’t very good and it seemed pointless catch my drift non AS people?) I have learnt from a very young age, that behaving the way I do upsets people, it makes people uncomfortable and it makes them go red in the face, frown, yell, lash out, even cry in the worst cases… which has all been very confusing and depressing for me – how do you think you would feel if you went out every day left your house, went to school, uni or work and almost instantly people started whispering about you, making fun of you, or you tried to approach some one to make a conversation with them and you’re met with laughter – but not the good kind … or what if you tried to give some one a hug that looked sad and they slapped you across the face … or even worse punched you so hard that you were taken to hospital? These are only some of the things I have come across in my life when I have “acted” like myself …. so obviously there was something I needed to do to prevent this horrible interaction with normal human beings…I had to learn every day to copy what “normal” people did and said and the way they behaved.

For the last 20 odd years I have been performing in my own show, everything I mostly say and do is one big act. If I go to get my coffee in the morning from Sloanes cafe on Oxford street (you should try their omelette’s Eve thinks they are ‘to die for’ i hope not hahaha but they are amazing) everything I do from the moment I step out of the door I begin to perform.

my front door

This morning I left the house at 8:30 am to get the 378 bus to Sydney Uni … I walk as straight as I can up the pavement (a trick I perfected over the years as I used to walk pigeon footed and was quite awkward which Mawmaw taught me that especially made me stand out from everyone else) I have my Ipod plugged into my ears I press play on OceanLabs “On a good day” and I’m wearing a leather jacket over a white American Apparell T-shirt, blue Lee Jeans and Nike Air Max’s that Eve bought me for my Birthday this year in May. I carry my Maths books in a calico bag which says “IM NOT A PLASTIC BAG” on it in big black letters (this was ironically blatantly obvious to me but apparently it’s a marketing scheme for eco-friendliness thats very in at the moment Lindsay Lohan has one … yes and I know what you have probably all gathered by now Eve gave it to me) I walk into Sloanes cafe and smile at Emily behind the counter and say good morning, I ask her how her weekend was and smile all the way through our short conversation, she already knows i’m having a soy latte with one equal not-too-hot, she promtly stamps my loyalty card (I have one more stamp until my next free coffee!) and I wait in line, thank the nice Italian man Angello behind the counter with another smile and walk on to the bus stop.

Seem like a perfectly normal guy, in a perfectly normal area, doing a perfectly normal morning ritual? Then I have succeeded and shoud be presented for an Oscar for my performance (Eve always jokes that she will have to be nominated for best supporting actress!) Because every detail of what I have just described to you is a learned trait. I wear the most up to date and “cool” clothing (with much help from Eve and her friend Tom Bennett) and I pay particular attention to wearing the latest brands so as not to stand out too much as I never really had any sense of what style was, I would wear whatever Mawmaw bought for me right up until the age of 18 when I met Eve .. and she changed everything…..

What about the conversation in the coffee shop? Well that’s another learned trait … I have watched for many years the art of polite conversation, and who you have those kind of conversations with. A good morning-can-i-please-have-a-blueberry-muffin conversation should be different to a conversation with your family or close friends (if your lucky enough to have any). I have been getting coffee from Emily every morning for 3 months now (the first time exactly 3 days before my 23rd Birthday when I moved into Eve’s house in Underwood Street). Well actually it’s not always Emily sometimes its Barbarra, Angello or Katrina but mostly its Emily on Monday-Friday unless she is sick or away on a holiday. I have learnt the significant details about these people and noted them down in my diary so I wouldn’t forget them, such as how old Emily is, where she hangs out and that she goes to UTS and studies Arts-Law. Or the fact that Angello has two large Bull Mastif’s and walks them on Saturdays in Centennial park and sometimes ties them up outside the cafe. or Barbarra and the fact that she has 4 children under the age of 5 and is always “stressed pet!” (she constantly has her hair flying everywhere and is always pregnant!) or that Katrina is Emilys “best friend” and they go out together to clubs on weekends.

It is these kinds of seemingly mundane details about individuals lives that it is so important to take note of and write down and remember … now some of you might be thinking that this guy is some weird pervert who stalks people! Well ill assure you this is not the case … I actually have to do this to be able to interact with people normally at all. If i can remember just a couple of details about people and continue to see them regularly … that is about as close as I get to friendship or being social … this way I can ask them a set of pre-thought questions that I know will be met with similar answers most days and people begin to understand who I am and how to act around me … and eventually the more people I learn to do this with .. the more “normal” and manageable my life will be … one coffee shop staff team at a time

Hopefully by now anyone who has stumbled across my rambling will have had just a glimpse into how much goes into even the first 15 minutes of my day … just think about the rest of the day for me … 7 days a week …. living in a city where there are 4 point something million people living in the metropoliton area alone … thats a whole lot of note-taking and acting to master … and not every person you come across is as friendly and easy to make conversation with as my local coffee shop staff who have to be nice to everyone!

People constantly change … I like to watch people (not in a freaky vouyeristic way!) but every day I get on the bus and watch the way people react and interact with each other … I constantly am playing the label game “he’s happy, she’s sad, that girl is angry about a text message she just recieved on her phone, that mother with a baby looks tired, that old man is nonplussed to the goings on around him, that woman is frustrated with some one on the phone, shes raising her voice which indicates stress or anger”

See where I’m going here ? (Don’t worry I’m not leaving the computer) every day for me is a guessing game … it’s unpredictable and I can’t stand unpredictability! All I can say is I am so lucky to have Eve in my life … there is only so much Mawmaw could teach me, she’s retired now and my mother has a younger carer called Wendy who is lovely, but my mother couldn’t stand the change in her routine I mean can you blame her, she lived with the same woman for almost 20 years and suddenly theres a new woman there and she only gets to see Mawmaw on Thursdays! I’m getting side tracked (sorry there is just so much information going around right now that I feel I just can’t type down fast enough… Eve was so right this blog is the best way to get out some of the feelings there you go Mawmaw ! that i feel every day but can’t explain to any one properly) which brings me back to Eve!

But I have run out of time today .. she is someone who deserves her own post all together .. she deserves a page! MORE!

I’ll be reportint back tomorrow night

Over and Out Bloggers

M x

It’s a strange thing to begin online documentation of my life, Eve read somewhere that it’s important to write a diary or start a blog or do something thats going to provide a space for one to debrief and self disclose … I’ve never been one to talk much about emotions, probably because I have a significantly more difficult time understanding them compared to most people … the thing is human beings are the most confusing, mindboggling (do you like that word I do) out of order race … nothing they do makes any sort of sense!

Sarcasm:

1. A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.
2. A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule.

Humans are very Ironic

Irony: the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.

These two forms of language are the most infuriating concepts to me, the third most infuriating form of lanuage are indisputably Idioms.

Now let me describe that for those of you who speak ENGLISH (that’s a joke I know you all obviously can speak English) Idioms are those quirky little figures of speech everyone uses in day to day life .. I’ll provide you with some examples:

• Pull yourself together
• Has the cat got your tongue?
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
• You’re lying through your teeth
• You’re talking through your hat
• Keep your eye on the ball
• A flat Battery

Now would someone kindly explain to me (you don’t actually have to Eve already did .. this is a rhetorical question – a question asked soley to produce an effect or to make an assertion and not elicit a reply, as “What is so rare as a day in June?” – another confusing pointless form of speech) why do people say these things … why is the world full of double meanings and oppositions … if some one meant that they were having a bad day why not say it? why is it that I always seem to be confronted by angry faced people raising their voices too close to my face yelling ‘does it LOOK like I’m having a good day MATE?!’ … well no obviously not you dim witted individual .. I feel like saying .. but I really don’t … instead I sit there blankly staring at the furrowed lines on this indivudals brow, they made such an intriguing pattern and the angrier he got the more facinating his forehead became.

If you have any kind of detective skills it’s about here in my introduction that you’ll come to gather that conversation didn’t end well. It actually ended terribly at St Vicents hospital and 5 stitches above my left eye… but I am ‘getting ahead of myself’ (that’s a particularly funny one, how can one be ahead of ones self?) … I should probably explain to any one who is reading a little bit more about myself so it doesn’t look like I’m some crazy person completely ‘shutting down’ the English language (shutting down is a term my friend Eve and her girlfriends use it means to put down or to say that something is bad).

My name is Mateo Cohen – I will give a brief account of how I came to be in this world (I’ll keep it brief as people with AS tend to ramble on and apparently can bore most ‘normal’ people with their rambling, Eve told me this and I found it quite a shock but thats a whole other blog in itself)

I was born at 8:05 on the 25th of the month of May in the year of 1985, which would make me 23 years, 2 months, 2 weeks and 2 days old (or young because I am not old?) To Jada Weiss (28) and Michael Cohen (45). I was born at Paddington Royal Womens Hospital on a partially cloudy day ..it rained lightly until midday. I was raised by my mother and her helper Maria or “maw maw” as she was known to the family. My father Michael Cohen was 17 years older than my mother and was not a member of our household for my childhood. I have no memory of him which I used to consider strange as I am able to remember highly significant details of very early childhood, even partially in infancy.

Mawmaw has told me that my father worked for National Australia Bank and was very prominent in the Eastern Suburbs Jewish Community as a charitable man and was very popular at Sinogogue. I never met him as I have been told he had more children than me and lived with them and his wife.

My mother has what is called Low Functioning Autism which means she is affected by a brain development disorder which means she is unable to interact socially with any one at all and is completely immersed in her own world. Autism is carried strongly through genetics and from my mother I inherited a ‘disorder’ called Aspergers Syndrome which is commonly linked to having many similarities to HFA or High Functioning Autism. AS is part of the Austism spectrum or continuum and in recent years there has been alot more information available on my relatively unknown ‘condition’. (when I say my I don’t mean exclusively it belongs to me!)

I will state quite clearly that I no longer consider AS to be a disorder … I am a highly gifted person (according to Eve) and the most important thing for people to understand is that being different in behavior or character does not define a person as being a freak or a weirdo or eccentric or a loser or any other awful names people feel that they have the right to name me or people like me.

When someone is ‘affected’ by Aspergers it can range from severe cases to more mild attributes, if AS is properly diagnosed in earlier childhood (as I was) the changes in that persons teenage or adult life can be enormous, they can be life changing … so before I go blabbering on about myself for too much longer .. may I put a word of advice down on paper (or on screen) If you or any one you know feels that they may have symtoms of Aspergers Syndrome … don’t be afraid to seek help, see a doctor or a psychiatrist NOW because not being diagnosed properly can ruin a persons life, or literrally end it. I know many people from my support group who have been affected by depression or suicide because they felt they could not ever be a part of society as they were so ashamed or confused about their AS. A proper diagnosis can not only answer the thousands of questions you might have had about why you see things so differently to everyone else but it could also save you or your friends life.

Now that ‘heavy’ stuff is over back to interesting me (haha that’s a bit ‘up myself’ as Eve would say) I grew up in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney at 57 Fitzwilliam Road in Vaucluse, my street was filled with large houses and at the left hand end (if you stood at the top of my driveway and faced north then I would be referring to the left hand side of the street) there was a bridge which led down to a small playground and a netted of beach. Maw Maw used to try to take me to that beach but I hated it .. the feeling of the sand and the dirt and the grass literally made me want to be sick it was painful. I should probably explain that with AS comes a large range of symptoms and idiosyncracies unique to our syndrome … now as much as I am happy to discuss my pride in being unique … not all aspects of AS are glamourous, they are anything but.

I am highly sensitive to touch, taste, smell, sight and sound – my senses are crazy … Eve has decided that they are not to be feared but rather that I am like Clark Kent in Superman … I have a heightened aural sense and can hear peoples whispers from far away sort of thing …. well I wish it were that exciting. Actually due to therapy in the last few years it hasn’t been as bad … but I still carry gloves and ear plugs around with me every day, I never leave the house without them or I could have a panic attack which is not very fun for those around me, and not very good for my young-adult ‘cool’ appearance. I really don’t think I have much chance in getting a girlfriend if Im off flapping all the time and screaming.

This is an example of what I would experience compared to a normal person like Eve. We go to the park, Eve takes off her shoes (I immediately am drawn to her electric blue nail polish sparkling on her tiny toes) and walks across the grass to pat a Golden Retriever which jumps up on her licks her and barks repeatedly whilst the child standing with the dog claps. Eve laughs and does a ‘happy face’ at me before I am up off and running awkwardly (I can’t run I have exceedingly poor motor skills so I sort of shuffle with one arm banging at my side with the other holding my left ear .. as fast as I can .. which isn’t very) Eve walks calmly in front of me and signals for me to listen … she says she is sorry and she makes a ‘sad face’ (I am not ignorant to emotion any more I learnt alot about emotion from my group therapy and from Eve since I turned 18 and moved out of home … Mawmaw used to take emotion cards with us everywhere when I was a child and any time some one was ‘mad’ or ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ I would have to identify the emotion on the cards, for about 15 years I practiced methods like this and it has been a revelation to be able to recognize some of the key emotions people express all day every day … but more on this later) Eve really is sorry .. she is sorry that she forgot how sensitive I am. See that day may seem compeltely normal to any one else, but I watched Eve’s feet walk slowly across the sticky mushy prickly spiky grass, crunching on scratchy velcrowy sand which ‘sent shivers’ up my spine just looking at it … picture if some one put their fingernails on a black board or scratched metal on metal … picture how uncomfortable and weird that makes you feel? times that by 6000 (not really but just mulitply the feeling its a figure of speech) and that is how awful i feel looking at Eve’s bare feet touching grass and sand …. then the dog barking … its short sharp barks sound like planes taking off inside my ear drums and it jumped on her .. I cannot stand being touched unless I decide I want to be .. and the childs claps were like thunder shaking my head… so do you see how something which seems so normal and small to you…. can be so sickening and frightening to me?

The world is an incredibly frightening place to be, it is confusing, it makes little sense and the people in it aren’t much help …. it is very rare that one like myself should find someone like Eve who puts up with my ‘weirdness’ every day and has had the patience to teach me so many things that no one ever has tried to before … What many of you with AS will know or people who know some one with AS … we are generally loners, it is very hard .. almost impossible for us to ‘fit in’ with other people and normal society … Eve jokes that I am ‘socially retarded’ but I don’t think that is a very amusing joke, jokes are supposed to be funny, and not made at some one else’s expense .. but Eve told me this kind of a joke is OK because she is my friend and friends make ‘fun’ or joke about other friends to be ‘funny’ or to ‘pay someone out’ …. this is what I mean when I say the world is CONFUSING! slowly one day at a time (Which is really all one can possibly partake in) I am learning, studying, mimicking and practicing how to recognize humour, happiness, anger, laughter, sadness, grumpyness, cruelty, comedy and friendship. Until I was 17 I didn’t fully even understand that people had emotion or even what emotion was … I was lost in my own head for most of my formative years … it was like I was blind … and I had my eyes closed to the real world around me for 17 years and then one day some one opened them and I could see .. it was very blurry but slowly every year my eyes have cleared a little bit more and I can see the world more clearly .. I hope that makes sense because I wasn’t literrally blind its a figure of speech.

I had better go to bed (I have terrible insomnia – that’s where you can’t sleep because My mind is whirring around and around so fast all the time processing information and unjumbling facts and figures that it never shuts down .. my macbook air shuts down or goes to sleep easier than I do … Eve has written me post-it notes every where “GO TO BED TAO!” …. I have my aspie support group at 9am at Mawmaw’s house – she holds meetings every Thursday which kids and adults living with Aspergers or HFA come to and practice social skills and talk about bad or good things that happened in our week …. my mother will be there which I think is nice becuase I can see her and give her a hug if she’ll let me … Eve is so good at ‘practicing affection’ i call it but she just calles it ‘mooshing’ or cuddles she is very strange sometimes!

Blink, and you’ll miss it!

Over and Out (thats how they said goodbye on the radio’s during the war)

ps: Eve read this blog and took me out for lunch to congratulate me for getting through a whole diary entry without mentioning trance or dance music (it’s my specialist subject but more on that later)

Bye !

Listen to me –> 10GoodForMe.mp3