Ten Steps to Nanette

“Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented—which is what fear and anxiety do to a person—into something whole.”

—louise bourgeois

Although I was born and bred in Smithton, I was never a local. To be a local you had to be from a family that was at least four generations deep, that’s just the kind of town Smithton is. Although Dad’s family were North West Coasters, it wasn’t west enough to grant us any kind of local status, and Mum was from the Southern Midlands, so she may as well have dropped in from Mars. The big kids had all been born in Tasmania’s capital, Hobart, which, being on the South East corner of the island, is about as far away as you can get from Smithton without getting your feet wet.

I asked if he had seen my review in The New York Times. He told me that he had, before launching into a very long complaint about how ridiculous some of my reviews had become. “I can’t even fit some of them onto one page, double-sided! I think I might have to stop. I’m not made of toner, you know.” Dad has never had to tell me that he was proud of me, he just showed me through the medium of scrapbooking.

Annie burst into tears, and for a brief moment I began to panic that I wasn’t upset, but then I remembered that I was autistic and I finished my snack.

I had learnt to manage my environment better, and had avoided all the usual ASD pitfalls that had drained my reserves in previous years, things like talking to people, and also socialising with people who talk, and not to mention other things like talking to people who talk.

my most favourite of safety nets—thoroughly underestimating myself

Nanette is basically Eat Pray Love for autistic queer folk.

takes a fuck-tonne more effort and energy than “thriving” ever will

my absolute favourite autistic style of communication: wordplay and dad jokes

Nanette had thrown me into a bit of a catch-22 because she was never going to be safe to perform until she was finished, but there was only one place that I would be able to finish my weaving proper, and that was on stage.