BETAMAXNOMATES

I’m a shop-boy no longer. Monday week, I am leaving the fashion industry behind for the glamorous world of residential care for the autistic. I’m a carer now. A carer. Say it softly with a sigh, smile, maybe a tilt of the head. I care. I put others before myself.
I’m like a hip-hop Mother Teresa (only less of the evilness), a true ghetto Florence Nightingale. I’m a modern day good Somalian, or whatever it was that helped Jesus in the fairytale. Jesus: he were a good bloke. Carpenter too – his sister died from anorexia. Very sad. He was OK though – true to the force, he saved the galaxy in the end.

I’m feeling quite happy overall. There’s a chance then that this journal will, correspondingly, become less interesting. It’ll still be Day Month Year of course - only now with added earnestness. Even now I reckon it’s at least 30% more sincere - bordering on smug - and, given that I have found what you might describe as a ‘higher’ calling in life, you’re apt to see a marked decrease in the kind of crass and insulting junk that previously passed for humour in this blog.
Or perhaps not. Only time – and Kate Winslet’s ever-fluctuating waistline – will tell.

This is the first job I’ve ever had where, I expect, I will be compelled to do more than adequately. And obviously one of the main attractions of a job such as this is that the work is so rewarding. Financially, that is. But also fulfilling - fulfilling my wallet with dirty big wads of cash! LOL!!!111$$$$$$$YAY!!!!!!!!!!1111$$$$$$$$
Joking aside though, I am quite daunted by the challenge this new path presents. On paper, my job essentially involves ensuring that these people (five altogether, all roughly my age, all male) remember to eat, wash, and generally do something more constructive with their time than sitting in a corner drawing concentric circles on a page. The word my new boss used though was ‘support’ – my job really is not to attempt to cure or to forcibly modify these guys behaviours - rather to help them live with their autism.

I was lucky enough to meet some of my potential customers, I mean, ‘clients’, on Wednesday. Suffice to say, they were pretty fucking weird.
The popular stereotype of the autistic temperament as jabbering neurotic or taciturn savant – as informed mostly by movies like Rain Man and books like the (very excellent) Curious Incident – was checked at the door. All, bar one, have IQ’s well below average and only the most rudimentary of language. One is what’s known as an ‘elective mute’, meaning he chooses not to talk when in care. When he’s at home, apparently, he’s exceptionally vocal, but since this mostly involves him hurling abuse at his mother, it’s a welcome mercy that he keeps his mouth shut in the house.

Four live together in one house, though they hardly interact. The most severe case is only capable of making these hoarse grunting noises that, to me, sounded like the walkie-talkie krrssh-type noise you make when you’re a kid playing some game that involves pretending to have walkie-talkies - Airport Security and Indians maybe. One, given his propensity for violent outbursts, suicide attempts, larceny, and other maladaptive behaviours ranking high on the Courtney Love Scale of Anti-Sociality, has to live alone, with three carers present at all times.

This is going to be… interesting, to say the absolute least. The houses, both in Maynooth, are very nice, which is important since I’ll often have to sleep over there, though whether they’ll be ready for me dancing around in my dressing gown to Like A Prayer-era Madonna at seven in the morning remains to be seen. Sometimes, I’ve been told, we’ll be going for outings, beyond the bounds of Autistic Castle (TM Some people funnier than me) but, so long as all children and animals are kept at a safe distance, the monsters will do you no harm.

I’ve so much more I want to write about this – and I know you’re all just hanging on my every word, gormless monitor slugs that you are – but I’m really very tired now.
I still have another week of stultifying non-work to endure at my current job, but it’ll all be worth it when I finally get my chance to tell the bosses what I really think of them. Will I square up to them, face to face, and with no holding back, just tell it like it is? Ha! Snowballs chance, my friend. But will I talk trash all about them on a website they’ll never see? Hell yes! Well, maybe – actually probably won’t risk it, they know where I live.
On second thoughts: DAVID UR GAY! SUSAN UR FAT N EVRYBODY H8S U HAHAHAHA!!!!!
Please don't kill me.

Jeez Louise (a co-worker of mine and straight-up hoochie), I’m reading over this entry and some of it’s been a bit ‘heavy going’. Wreckin’ the buzz, like.

Here’s a picture of Jake Gyllenhaal’s naked torso: