Moving the furniture

I'm 27 years old, "living independently," and just unable to cope with my 2 favorite diners closing in the span of 1 month. Manor Coffee Shop closed in November and I thought, at least Lucky Penny is still around. Then I happened to read online that LP was closing, but I just told myself it couldn't be true even though the article was from May.

Tonight I'm at LP and I can kind of see that everyone is talking about LP closing, and I want to ignore it and pretend I don't hear it. This is actually kind of embarrassing, that I can't bring myself to make it real by asking Nancy, the waitress, about it. It feels infinitely sad, like I am moving or graduating from college. It just has seen me through a lot of bad times.

It's not a nice restaurant but that has never been my jam.

It's a big place where one section is always closed, except for a few people eating there who I think are employees or their family members. There is a counter. There are copious green, run-down booths, almost always mostly empty when I go for breakfast or dinner. It is full right at lunchtime, but even then it's not packed.

It looks out onto Masonic and Geary through big tall windows. It's a very nice view, especially the underpass. It's one of the closest things in San Francisco to the Connecticut and New York state diners I grew up with, which are often in the middle of a highway. There are lots of nice diners (Manor Coffee Shop among them) that are just in regular buildings in the middle of small quiet streets. But there is something magically transitional about a diner with a parking lot that looks out onto streaming traffic; the sense that it's a space in the middle of a journey.

Autistic people are famously attracted to trains, and anecdotally, I sometimes think we're attracted to diners as well. I'm probably wrong, but I can't help associating both things with the big tug-of-war at the center of my mind. I love short visits to strange places, impulses, fleeting impressions; sleeping on somebody's floor; listening to a stranger's totally unrelatable life story and pretending I understand. But my memory and my processing speed just aren't good enough for me to be able to function in that kind of life. If things aren't exactly where and how I expect, I can't do much.

Trains and diners provide a happy medium where you can watch the world go by while ensconced in a comfortable booth. You get to stay passive and do pretty much the same thing, while people and places rush over you without making the demands that they do when you've actually committed to them. The menu offers lots of possibilities, but laid out and laminated.

This year, I guess, I'll be forced to make good on my plan of getting to know some new diners and visiting them nervously until they don't make me nervous anymore.

Some contenders: Tennessee Grill and Bashful Bull Too, both on Taraval Street; and Hamburger Haven, on Clement. But even though San Francisco doesn't seem like the place for a lot of diners, there are actually tons more options, which is just the kind of freedom I don't like.

///

Woman: When did your father's father die?

Man: James? In 1955. It's funny because I was just thinking about this in the shower today.

Woman: I was thinking about it while we were watching the movie. Because I was thinking about your grandma.

They both have interestingly powerful voices. It's hard to explain it exactly--every phrase just sounds kind of forcefully thrusted, like they're being sarcastic ("because I was THINKING about your GRANDMA"). Can't see woman's face so for some reason was assuming they're just friends, not married, because I'm imagining she's younger than him--she has brown hair and man has white hair. Imagining they are friends who spend a lot of time together because they keep talking about where they will go to eat after Lucky Penny closes. Where's open all the time and always empty and there's always parking, they ask each other.

"I guess it's just progress," she says. "Which I have trouble with. It's like Curly's, how Curly's is nicer now but you had feelings about how it was when it wasn't nice, even though you know that it's nicer now, it just makes you feel sad."

Two people are late but the bus is fine

Even though the San Francisco public transit system is very extensive compared to other cities, I'm having a lot of trouble using it. When I lived in Cincinnati, I was rarely late, but since moving to San Francisco I have been chronically late to work. I almost was fired from one of my early jobs here, and the only reason it hasn't been a bigger problem in the Dream Job is that we're on a very loose schedule. I am nearly always late.

Aside from the problems wheelchair users face on SF buses and trains (which I'm obviously pretty familiar with), the transit system is inaccessible to me as someone with cognitive disabilities, not only because buses and trains don't come at predictable times, but because they don't even have a goal of coming at predictable times. The Muni schedule isn't an actual schedule with times, but just a promise that the 24 Divisadero bus will come every 10 minutes in the afternoon, every 15 minutes in the evening, and so on.

The biggest problem with this is making connections. If my other bus drops me off to catch the 24, I could catch the 24 right away, or I could have 10 minutes to wait. It's hard to plan my commute when I don't know if my transfer will take 0 or 10 minutes. Obvously, in real life the bus doesn't always adhere to the schedule--I could be pleasantly surprised by two 24 buses arriving only minutes apart, or stuck waiting for 15 or 20 or 25 minutes.

This is a huge problem for me as an Autistic person. I can't respond quickly to surprises and changes, or make snap decisions. I mean it's theoretically possible and I try really hard to be more flexible, but there's only so much I can do about the way my brain is. It would be so great to be able to leave for work at the same time every day and know when I would arrive, or to be able to rely on a Google Maps estimate. Instead, after living and working in the same two neighborhoods for almost three years, I am still almost paralyzed by confusion on the way to work.

For example, what if I arrive at the 24 bus stop, and the LED sign says the bus isn't coming for 15 minutes? Now I'll probably be late. I consider walking to Castro Station and trying to catch the 35 bus, because it might happen to come sooner. But sometimes the LED sign is wrong, so as I'm walking along in between bus stops, I see the 24 bus coming by after all. I usually can't process this information fast enough to start running after the bus or trying to get the driver's attention, so I miss the bus and feel stupid because if I had just stayed where I was, I would have caught it and I wouldn't be late.

Or, I am waiting at the 24 bus stop and the sign says 7 minutes, but it suddenly changes to 14 minutes. I'm wondering if the sign is malfunctioning, if the bus is briefly delayed and the sign will go back to 7 minutes when the bus starts again, or if I should try to walk to Castro Station to catch the 35. I sit and wait for a minute because I'm overwhelmed, and the sign goes up to 20 minutes. I decide to walk to Castro Station and when I am just a block away, I see the 35 going by. If I had just made my decision faster instead of sitting at the bus stop, I would have arrived in time to catch the 35.

Or, I have written down the ID number of the Castro Station stop, so I call the transit information number on my phone, and it tells me when the 35 is supposedly coming--a long time from now. I frantically study the bus map for another option, and decide to walk a few blocks and catch the J train, since I see it on the map. When I get there, there aren't even any train tracks and I realize that in my anxiety, I forgot that the J is an underground train in this part of the city.

I feel bad because if I was a little smarter or tried a little harder these things wouldn't happen, but I think we have to admit that our ratio of supercrippery to exhausted hopelessness is maybe set in stone by the mid-twenties. I don't know how much better I'm going to get at handling constant surprises and setbacks; and even though it's usually not a problem at work, I know every time I arrive late, and I feel stupid that I can't succeed at such a simple goal.

The public transit in Cincinnati is pretty spare and slow. If I could have driven to my job, it would have taken a half hour; instead, it took almost two hours because I rode two 35-minute buses with a 30-minute wait between them, and had to walk a little bit to get to work. People I knew acted like this was a shocking and awful commute, but I was almost always on time, and I seriously miss having control over this. It's so frustrating that in San Francisco, I can't just choose to be on time, and nothing seems to work.

The lack of a real schedule annoys me not just because it is inaccessible to me personally, but because it's such a transparent attempt to avoid being held accountable for not being on time. Yes, people who ride Muni know that it is late a lot, but we can't really be aware of how much. If a bus that's supposed to come at 8:00 comes at 8:10, everyone will know the bus is 10 minutes late. But if there's no set time for the bus to arrive, then people won't notice it's late unless they either know when the previous bus arrived, or if they got to the bus stop more than 10 minutes ago.

Last month Muni decided to change the names of a lot of buses, for God knows what reason. I guess it seemed cooler than fixing their actual problems. My favorite bus, the 71, was changed to the 7; the 71L, which has the same route but makes fewer stops, was renamed the 7R. The 16X, a bus with a totally different route, was renamed the 7X, and we can all guess whose dumb ass got on it by accident and ended up wandering around downtown in utter confusion, trying to figure out how to get where I was trying to go. Otherwise no improvements, but I hope they had fun painting the new names on the bus stops (covering up the stop ID numbers half the time and making it harder to call transit information when the LED sign is broken or absent).

We know I'm Autistic and will tolerate anything for public transit--the relaxing sight of a dog's urine slowly dripping along the bus floor and onto some beautiful Doc Martens; the excitement when an old man starts beating up five people because they made fun of his boombox; or the thrill of being offered whisky by a startup intern who looks like he's in third grade. Constant stress, and inconveniencing people who have done a lot for me, is no big deal compared to these treasured moments. But straight talk: if I had the motor skills to ride a bike or a skateboard, I'd be on it like white on rice.

I was going to try and write about this coherently and explain the specific reasons why my disability prevents me from driving but maybe I will do that another time. For now here is a cross-post from tumblr.

hate the assumption that everyone drives

I seriously see people argue that everyone drives/has to drive. um if you couldn’t drive because you would DIE, you would learn that there are other ways of getting around, but not only do they blow, other people constantly ignore or forget that you don’t drive! while I was trying to explain this situation to the scheduling person at my work, I tried to explain that it takes me FOUR HOURS to get to and from work, and she made a little wince face. yeah, sit on the bus for four hours a day and see if all you can say about that is a little wince face.

so here’s the deal, help me out here because I feel like these kind of rules aren’t always set in stone if you actually have a good reason, but like…I’m a supercrip mongoose and there’s nothing I’m worse at than explaining I’m in extreme circumstances. I’m probably going to write a letter and then it’s going to be like “oh just talk to her why did you write a letter lol” (I actually tried to write a letter originally but I got redirected to talking and the little wince face, yeah, NOT HAPPENING AGAIN)

if you have talked to me about my job you might have gotten the impression I hate it. I actually love my job, I have the same job as Hodor. let me rephrase—I love my job WHEN I’M AT WORK.

don’t love that I get paid to work 40 hours a week, but spend 20 more hours riding the bus, for a grand total of SIXTY HOURS. don’t love being home for only 12 hours in between two work nights—go to bed! sleep! wake up! eat and veg out for an hour, feed the mysterious homeless cat, get dressed, go back to work! if you are wondering how I manage showers I would advise you not to come too close to me.

if you talk to me at night when I am about to go to work, you would never get the impression that I love my job, because I fucking hate my job when I wake up at night and I can feel my short period of freedom immediately slipping away from me. I don’t hate work but I hate that I have no fucking time.

so, I was considering asking to work 3 12-hour shifts instead of 5 8-hour shifts. I knew some other people did it and it would save me 8 hours on the bus and give me longer periods of free time. but I didn’t really get around to asking because it wasn’t a huge deal and I didn’t want to change my routine so early.

then this thing starts happening where when I walk to work at night men follow me and stuff. one time this happens when I leave work to go to walgreens at 3 am, and this time other staff notice it because the guy drives into the parking lot to look for me and then drives away when security comes out.

so that morning 2 nurses from the day shift made me go sit in a room with them and gave me a talk about DON’T LEAVE THE PREMISES AT NIGHT, which I swear to God began, “Aw, did you think you were in trouble? Don’t worry, this is for your own good.” I don’t know how much more annoying they would be if they knew I have a disability, but when people don’t consciously know I am disabled they subconsciously perceive that I am 11. in this case, an 11-year-old who’s asking for it!

but stuff also happens to me when I am just walking to work, from the bus, when I have no choice! staff have also concern-trolled when they see me walking to work from the bus stop. “THIS ISN’T A SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD.” oh yeah you think?

anyway after the adventure with the guy in the parking lot, I’ve finally decided fuck this I want to start working 3 12-hour shifts and getting to work WHEN IT IS STILL LIGHT OUT PLEASE.

so…then they told me that only people who work on the independent living floor can have 12-hour shifts and people who work in LTC can only have 8-hour shifts. even though aides who technically work on the independent living floor get assigned to work in LTC all the time. that’s how I met so many people who have 12-hour shifts! so it’s clearly like, a policy/way of doing things and not the way things have to be.

God help me, the first thing I said was, “Oh, well can I work 16-hour shifts then?” and she was like “I’ll get back to you about that next week” and…yeah, fuck me, I would do it if they let me, but I’m still worried.

I was obviously totally unsuccessful at pulling at the heartstrings and explaining how extreme this situation is. I’m not crazy, right? this isn’t just me whimsically asking to work 12-hour shifts because I like the number 12. but…there I was bleating, “but my bus ride is 4 hours” and not hitting on the important ideas like, “MEN FOLLOWING ME IN CARS.”

so I’m probably going to write a letter, but yeah, advice is appreciated because the current form of the letter is pretty angry.