I truly don't remember why I searched or found Andy Kaufman. I've wracked my brain and there isn't any reason other than he appeared in my brain and I searched. I didn't know how to react when I found him. So I became him.
A little background: if neurodivergence were neurodivergent, then they'd still think me weird. I've been an absorber all my life and always will be. Whoever is next to me is who I become. Sometimes folks eventually think it's duplicitous but it's not. It's really the only existence I've ever known.
Some people I absorb stick around, some treat me as a motel to accomplish something and then go about their business. I've mentioned it before but I don't know if they are alive or dead that really doesn't seem to matter. Which is odd until you hear the story, and then you'll understand but in a way that you can't really explain to anybody.
Well to be honest the story starts way before then but I also have zero sense of time. I was 6 yesterday and 42 today, I don't even know its like everybody else decided on some arbitrary nonsense and I was like . But I digress.
In any case here I am with a plastic wrapped $250 copy of "The Huey Williams Story" that I've had for 6 months. The plastic is thick, industrial gauge. It glares under the kitchen light.
There will be large sections of this that are boring. Just remember that Moby Dick wasn't a book about a man harnessing his demons, it was a clandestine whaling manual when such information was no longer allowed. Basically a manual of how to kill whale secrets designed as a novel. Please feel free to skip the technical parts if you'd like.
So I have to tell you that I am functionally illiterate. But I can absorb people through their objects.
Now you think I'm weird. Well I've only ever met one more of me.
He was a cashier at a gas station in Reno. I bought a pack of gum. He didn't look at me. He looked through me. He handed me the change and for a second, our fingers touched. Static shock. Not the rug kind. The universe-tearing kind. I saw his whole life in a nanosecond. He saw mine. We both recoiled. He put up a "Closed" sign and walked out the back door. I never saw him again.