Thu, 31 Jul 2014, 11:21

Alex, being Aspergic, is the most objective of all of us. He shows a remarkable genius for analysing a situation, even one he is caught right up in (as long as it doesn’t directly involve his own welfare, when he can be quite bafflingly blind to his own good…) as an academic, a researcher, an unbiased observer might.

And, therefore, of making the most logical response.

He also has an affinity with Gatsby, probably because Gatsby is a bit autistic too. They are clever in some of the same areas. And still friends. He went to Gatsby’s fiftieth birthday party a few years ago.

Alex, however, has been extremely fortunate. He wasn’t diagnosed early, by today’s terms. But he had some indication by his teens that he was “differently wired”. Aged eighteen, met Professor Simon Baron-Cohen. By his twenties knew definitely that he stood a little outside the herd. So he taught himself to become bilingual. Learnt how to blend in with neurotypical camouflage. (More or less, much of the time. Just his bright blue braces; or mad swirling hair; or twirling flashing unobtrusive water-squirting bow tie… or propensity to read AA Milne, giving all the voices, when everyone else has become too drunk to object… almost, occasionally, giving him away.) Whilst also exploiting the advantages of his other way of being.

As far as I know, Gatsby never had this benefit.

Alex also seems endlessly forgiving. (The rôle Ben took, when we were going through the trauma of homelessness as a result of the church in Oxford.) Indeed, Alex has never made an enemy of anyone.

(Except in a possibly uniquely-neurotypically-normal moment, an ex-girlfriend.)

So it was particularly striking that Alex, too, joined in trying to get Gatsby to see sense.

He wrote a longish – epic, by Alex’s standards – email to Gatsby in response to mine.

He acceded (much more generously than I would) that Gatsby had no particular blame, save that of being far too much in love. That his “faults” were hardly his fault at all, aside from the fault of being besotted. That his main crime was the crime of having no judgement, because he was too infatuated.

And then – utterly, innocently, gloriously unaware how offensive all his excuses for Gatsby’s behaviour might be to the man himself in such a situation, viewing himself as Bink’s shining-armoured saviour as he did – Alex spelt out how Gatsby had been duped by love. How Alex’s beloved sister’s illness had created a rift between herself and her parents which he, Gatsby, was unwittingly playing right into.

Alex articulated this with the evocative expression that, “She has now demonised Anne to the extent that such a person could hardly exist”.

He explained why Bink’s therapist, Helen, was the best possible person to advise us. Going to some lengths to marshal the clinical evidence, since that’s what geeks like Alex and indeed Gatsby should surely be able to understand.

And finished by inviting any better suggestions from Jay Gatsby himself.

As with everything it fell, of course, on deaf ears.

None so blind as them that won’t hear.