My ancestor (born circa 1720) was a matchstick saleswoman. Her name was Gillette, same as the razor brand. I try to live up to her legacy

........ Good god. I am now suffering from acute second-hand embarrassment

I totally understand the desire to not derail the conversation about his work by showing a photo of his disguise.

Describing his book like he did though, pretty arrogant yeah.

Rebels. Fuck me. Say what you want about the tenets of the Empire, at least it's an ethos

I didn't realize this was the onion for the longest time and I was pretty unfazed tbh

And where would arrested convicts be held?

Why, in the batcave, of course

Yeah I'm not even stepping a toenail outside

This feels good to read. I'm at the point where I reduce the masking gradually, and I find it relaxing. I also came to realize how taxing it was... I think I can handle being different now, with all that entails

Good on you ! I was never able to overcome this. I was lucky to meet my wife who is just as awkward, otherwise it's safe to say I wouldn't have had the courage to ask anybody out until much later in life. I remember a high school classmate telling me more or less verbatim what you said above : "ask, if she says no, so what?" unfortunately that never helped. Some of us were simply too shy, too far removed from social norms, or perhaps too autistic to act on that. Human interactions are a mystery to some of us. In fact, what he said made things worse for me, because it made me realize just how developmentally late I was, and seeing how easy it was for some people to get over the initial apprehension furthered my feelings of isolation.

I don't know if I'm autistic but I've always functioned this way too. I can't understand subtext. Things have to be spelled out for me, I never understood why communication shouldn't simply be as clear as it can be. Experience gave me some clues, though, so I can do the translation myself in some (most?) cases, but I feel it's never going to be intuitive at all.

I looked this woman into the windows of her soul, and I says......

I'm not sure where you're seeing antisemitism here.