Free Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon by Zack Parsons Page B

must be a case of the Asperger’s! I am way smarter than these other people! Must be Asperger’s!”
    Just like that, you have convinced yourself that you are an Internet Aspie. That you are “spergin’.” You are a special dude, with special problems, and special explanations for your total dickhead behavior. Blaming Mom and Dad is old hat; these days you’ve got a new and magical invisible friend to blame for all of your bad behavior and questionable life choices.
    It’s easy to sit in judgment based on my Internet observations, but I had to meet an Internet Aspie. It turned out to be a lot easier than hooking up with the aspartame ladies.
    I’ve been friends with one for the past eight years.
    Andy Ferris is nearly seven feet tall, with a big potato-shaped head and apple cheeks faintly scarred by acne. The corners of his red-lipped mouth are perpetually twisted downward into a frown. Even when he smiles he looks to be sneering uneasily, like the director’s cousin cast to play the villain in an exploitation movie.
    Andy was twenty-two when I met him. His hair was already thinning. By twenty-six he looked like he asked his barber for “the windswept Hitler.” He is an unfortunate victim of bad genetics compounded by aggressively bad hygiene.
    Andy is pudgy and doesn’t really have a firm grasp on how to dress, resulting in T-shirts that fail to cover his stomach. His facial hair is so unpredictable that I have always assumed he times himself while he’s shaving. Irregular patches of dark hairs sprout randomly from his cheek or his chin depending on the day.
    I once invited Andy to a party and he literally stood in the corner. At that event he was a gentle giant cowed by the crowds and intimidated by strangers, but he mingled easily with friends and was capable of conversing at length about any number of his hobbies. Once Andy decided you were his friend, he was generous, loyal, and gregarious.
    Near the beginning of the process of writing this book, I had an instant messaging conversation with Andy during which I let slip that I was devoting part of a chapter to self-diagnosed Asperger’s syndrome. He seemed irritated by the notion.
    “WTF wrong with that?” Andy asked.
    “It seems like a pretty marginal disease to self-diagnose,” I replied. “It takes a doctor to really diagnose something like that.”
    “Doctors don’t know shit,” Andy argued. “I know I got it.”
    The antisocial World of Warcraft –obsessed cat was out of the Lego bag. Although Andy remained hostile to my premise that there was something possibly wrong with self-diagnosing Asperger’s syndrome, he agreed to meet in person and discuss the issue.
    Andy lived alone, finally, in a small one-bedroom apartment in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He had spent the preceding twenty-eight years living with his mother. As I pulled up in the parking lot outside his apartment building, I have to admit I was a little nervous. It was two years since I had seen Andy and I was not sure what to expect.
    Andy answered the door to his apartment wearing an ill-fitting Animaniacs T-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants with a couple of really suspicious holes in the knees. His usually patchy facial hair was replaced with a thin mustache that drooped over his upper lip and a scraggly goatee.
    He was holding a paper plate with a steaming microwave burrito in one hand and in the other he was holding a half-empty two-liter bottle of Dr Pepper. It was a wonder how he managed to turn the doorknob with his hands full. Then my gaze drifted behind his shoulder to the apartment.
    The apartment was a plain white-walled series of boxy rooms with stained off-white carpets. These rooms were chaotically filled with junk. Toys, computer equipment, DVDs, books, empty pop bottles and cans, socks, bags from fast-food restaurants, and basically every other sort of debris you could imagine a jobless homebound nerd amassing.
    I only saw the mess in the living room at first look, but