Not Another First Time Story
Rom-Coms Made Me a Stalker
As an autistic kid in a small town, I creeped out my very first crush
“Whether a gesture is alarming or charming depends on how it’s received.” Ted Mosby delivered this sage advice in the last season of How I Met Your Mother, about 15 years too late by my timing. It’s known as the “Dobler/Dahmer theory”: The idea that any romantic gesture can be perceived as coming from a Dobler (as in, Lloyd, from Say Anything) or a Dahmer (the Milwaukee Monster).
There’s a fine line between those two, a tightrope I fell off long ago — the first time I fell in love.
Adolescence is a lonely place; it is emptier still in a small town where you don’t belong. I grew up in a village of 6,000 people. They lived in red brick houses, backed onto fields and surrounded by stretches of woodland. It was kind of town so bored of itself it makes news of its residents. By the time I was 13, I had lived there all my life, I knew everyone by name, and I still didn’t understand a single one of them.
I couldn’t get along with anyone for long. Sooner or later, I’d say something odd, or miss a social cue. Then, a vague and uncanny expression would wash over their face, and they’d be gone.
In the world of…
