How to read people at a bar by how they hold their drinks

Here.

How to handle a woman talking down to you

Part of having AS is giving off a weakling vibe without meaning to, for the most part not being able to help it. Being naturally clumsy doesn't help. Doubly bad for men, because as Coach Roissy says, girls hate sweet, weak "betas" and love strong "alphas." And that's not just the hot chicks, although it's doubly true of them since of course they have much higher standards/they're not desperate. Long story short: most people don't take you seriously. As Tony Attwood says, you attract two kinds of normal people, mothers (patronizing) or predators (bullies).

That and being slower to pick up social cues or, my point today, adapting to changes in them.

Having a presidential IQ and a professor's vocabulary doesn't change any of that. Life's not fair.

I can tell the difference between a real compliment - like when the guy's guy of a boss says he likes how I now dress up for work, which I've done for about a year (and for a good reason: I get to go out of the office and deal with the public; not bad for an AS person), or the hot (of course taken) part-timer's supermodel smile saying, "You look nice!" - and a fake one.

What about the formerly friendly chubby girl who sees you by the water cooler or copier and says, "What's this? Are you going on a job interview?" A note of sarcasm you never heard from her before. Red alert! You're thrown off your autopilot routine/script for handling this person, a weakness of AS people.

"I'm a ____ (name the job)," stressing the last word, sounding rightly annoyed. Good move so far.

"So what are you ____ (name the job) now?" in the same patronizing tone she probably uses on her five-year-old nephew's claim to be Spider-Man.

AS mistake: assume this cow's still friendly and give a literal if flat answer.

Better: almost getting in her face (walking a step or two closer to her only if you have to), keeping your expression neutral, look her in the eye, and say, "I don't like your tone." (This should work if you keep your tone flat.) Then turn and start to leave.

If this person says, "Well, sor-ry!" or "Well, gah!" (sarcastic), keep walking and don't say anything more. If it's a long, patronizing "sorry" trying to sound all sweet if it's a girl, look her in the eye again (but don't walk back to her), wear the same deadpan expression and use the same neutral tone, and say, "This conversation's over." And walk away.

Front personalities to study and adapt for you: tough-guy movies and TV. (I said adapt. Don't overdo it by acting note for note or it will backfire or you'll get in trouble.) AS men think their wordiness works; it doesn't. Remember, alpha males don't talk a lot. If it wouldn't fit on the Jumbotron in big letters, don't say it.

(An alpha wouldn't give off the vibe to get teased like that either but you can still learn to react like one. Rehearse it until it becomes a habit.)

20/20 hindsight.

You're welcome. :)

What I think this blog's name means

As I didn't name it. I hated the expression "you're finding yourself" when I was a kid; I thought it was patronizing. But it's true. When you have AS you can't really do that until you know about the AS; you're flying blind.

When you know, it doesn't get rid of all your problems - there are still boobytraps like "things coming out wrong" when you try to say them and giving off the wrong body language when you don't mean to (I literally almost got into a fight the first four days at my job because of that; when the guy - heatedly of course - explained what he saw, I understood but didn't tell him, only saying I was sorry... it's for me to know to help me and none of his business).

But it cuts your problems at least in half.

Then like an actor you can take control of the front personalities you've haphazardly tried to build and put on over the years (one article: "I was Sherlock Holmes one month, Groucho Marx the next") and make them work like they're supposed to for a change, because now you know how to work them.

Because you've found center and are really talking from that, just using the fronts.

Front personalities: masks and roles

Article from The Art of Manliness.

Putting on the right act: front personalities and playing roles

Like normals but more, we try to learn a lot about how to act from movies and TV. (Which explains one then-friend's nasty remark seemingly out of nowhere at the time, "You watch far too much television!") So here are a couple of quotes from classic shows to start off this post:

Lou Grant: You know how you usually are?
Ted Baxter: Yeah?
Lou: Don't be that way!

Mindy: Just be yourself!™ (stock advice to normals that's only partly true)
Mork: (Huge smile and exaggerated handshake) Ee-spah!
Mindy: Put on an act.

People with AS have often been compared to aliens in their own cultures and because it's often true, we often love fish-out-of-water comedies like "Mork and Mindy." Anyway, normal and AS, we all do it: role-play our way through life, code-switching for different audiences. (One AS person told me he imagines he's in a movie.)

So, seeing how the normal kids play Starsky and Hutch or whatever, the AS person who doesn't know he has AS tries to do the same with the make-believe characters he identifies with. The trouble is if you don't know what the underlying problem is, it'll backfire. But if you do, it's a valuable coping skill, a talent like the Oscar-winning actors have. (For example Robert DeNiro's really the son of beatnik artists. He used to hang around the Mafia kids and imitate them to blend in. Guess what he's made a successful living at?)

I mention Bobby DeNiro because one of his change-of-pace roles has been one of my personas for 25 years: the seemingly straitlaced 1940s priest he played in True Confessions.

One reason it helps is most of the time your model shows how to act normally: not annoying AS stuff like talking at somebody about only one or two pet subjects.

So here are some types whom AS people have tried on or might like to. They're the resident intellectuals of their worlds, who talk "little professor" style like we do, and are by circumstances foreigners or at least outsiders.

Mr. Spock: the greatest TV sci-fi character ever invented. Unusual-looking; IQ off the charts and sounds it; and because he's half-alien from a people for whom emotions are unknown, he doesn't quite understand or accept his own or others' feelings.

Frasier Crane: Class, speaking in the clipped old Mid-Atlantic style Bill Buckley and George Plimpton had (almost a cultured English accent), smart and showing it off with his big words and cultural references... and he manages to pull it off, even outlasting the other Cheers characters on the air. You weren't supposed to like him at first but you did.

(The character's ex-wife, Lilith Sternin, seems to be an AS stereotype, as outwardly cold as Spock and with a flat robot-like voice that says lots of big words.)

Part of the trouble with trying to play a cool and collected type like these is besides "little professor," another aspect of the AS personality that sandbags us is... we have very short fuses, the tolerance for frustration of a toddler. We throw tantrums. Especially of course if we don't know about the AS. So you can literally be a genius but after the first meltdown you get treated like a five-year-old. Front personality shot to hell.

So... learn about the AS, develop a coping strategy for the frustration and you have a shot.