The brain is my wife’s favorite organ, one she studied for years even prior to medical school, and she speaks of it with the kind of passion and reverence I normally reserve for Judith Light. When we met, she could tell I was neurologically “different,” which means less than you might think. “Different” brains, like bad childhoods and pretty much everything else that’s currently having a prolonged (and occasionally irksome) cultural moment, are a dime a dozen. Possessing one makes you no more virtuous or villainous than anyone else, no matter what the Internet tells us. Heck, most of you reading this right now probably have unusual brains—who else enjoys Afterschool Specials that much?!
Nevertheless, in the early days of befriending and then dating a physician, I often felt strangely vulnerable. It reminded me of how tennis players describe the brutal solitude of the court in exposing their deficiencies. (Pete Sampras, a master chronicler of this, said “It’s one-on-one out there, man. There ain’t no hiding. I can’t pass the ball.”) Before our first date, I laid my cards on the table: the lifelong history of IBD, the surgeries, the related conditions. And, less importantly, a former partner’s insistence, equal parts bitter and rueful, that I was autistic and therefore at least partially defective.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
