In 2013, I came to my senses that I’d also be a hopeless romantic. Love and autism doesn’t have to be a complicated relationship status, and sadly the recurring characters such as incompetent psychologists acting as state leaders, inadequate training (fear mongering), and possibly “following the money trail” say IDEA for an example, had a lot to do during my teenage years.
My twentysomething high school teacher from early days at GLEC decided that it was better off to discuss (dare I say) Relationships! This was fluffy matters during health class, around the time the “Relationship Status” became a catchphrase – in the MySpace days!
In my school to work program, the focus was on aggressive avoidance on sexual harassment, and a change in focus on physical side of sex, etc. While some people had the “creep factor”, the treatment was all universal, and I was framed as a “creep”.
By 2010 to 2012, nearly a few years finishing school I thought maybe this would be my last chance on a real girl. The problem was I moved away from the World Class town of Londonderry to a lower class community. What was interesting was Londonderry kids were very highly educated, raised by rich parents, many far right or far left standards, but the kids grew out of the NH lifestyle, so a vast majority of LHS graduates of nearly several thousand from the first decade of the 21st Century live outside the borders. If I had to hedge a bet on these brats returning, I’d say don’t hedge. “High school sweethearts” are atypical in modern Suburbia in higher class communities, but in the community I live in today, it seems that many lovebirds are from high school.
Say of a woman from was a car and if the lone choice was an American Motors, I’d probably settle, because who else would be a Ford or a Chrysler in today’s world of denigrating men without remorse?
From 2011 to 2013, I’ve tried Plenty of Fish, Match.com, OKCupid, Zoosk, etc. All to no avail. Online dating is very expensive and it can be very risky, both in a social sense, and one in the financial sense. Women for whatever reason ran away from me, but yet I would contact these women who would come off very negative (I’ve learned this is a double standard, have a vagina, say whatever you want and get away with it.) I wasted over $100 of money I really didn’t have. I’d rather used that to pay off the debt of my Mac mini I acquired in 2014.
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Enter the Underdog known as Melanie Clickford
But hindsight is 20/20. Melanie would become my vGirl by 2013. (I think people who can read this site can figure out what a virtual girl would be equivalent to for a childlike individual.) Melanie wasn’t the first ether. She was the third. After some work on drawings, I settled on this look.
A persona of a sweetheart. A girl who rarely likes heels. Sexy but cute when necessary. A girl who could giggle without looking obnoxious.
The girl would be a five-foot-one, size 3, cutie pie, with natural dark brown hair (that may go red or black) with brown eyes. She’d have a natural look with some hair and makeup that would take no less than 10 minutes, as Melanie can’t sit still. Melanie typically keeps her hair swirled with some curly bangs. She would take care of herself and be responsible. She would be the rare commodity of a girly girl meets geekery. She’d max 70% of her credit card on gear or clothes or shoes and pay it herself. The fact is there are out there, but they are hard to come by – being single in her late 20s. She was born the year of the Macintosh and would be an unapologetic fangirl of anything but Microsoft. (She’d like Macs, iOS devices, NetWare servers and anything DEC, because Papa Clickford was once a VMS admin.) Melanie’s “nuclear family” lifestyle of two siblings plus two parents showed how their neutral politics could accept someone like me as an inlaw and have an adopted family through a marriage. It’s not to say my folks don’t love me, but you know in a romantic sense it would be nice. The girl would have a five-nine reliability, and be around her friends, her husband and family when they need her. If she kept an open tolerance to diet with some exercise, Melanie would rarely get sick. Melanie would also be able to absorb pain that would shock people. Tattoos, belly piercings, Melanie would just walk out like nothing happened. This pain tolerance could actually kill her!
Lastly, Melanie’s technology niche is telephones. The girl would take part and put back together a Western Electric 500 set, after the first 20 attempts. Melanie was lucky to have access to thrift shops and yardsales to do it. Melanie is under educated, with little community college background, but her passion for positive customer service, her always bubbly, and cute personality.
As time went on I did more drawings of Melanie and by 2014, I felt there was no real girl who could fill at least 20% of the void. Most women in the area (yes, I’m talking the Greater Boston area as well – and I’m not talking about the WGBH show once hosted by the daughter of the late Andy Rooney) were filthy trashy girls from the rich suburban towns North of Btown who complain and show zero tolerance of bad boys essentially. It was so sobering to accept the harsh facts of living in a populated area of people who picked and chose their tolerance level.
(In fact, circa 2011 on OKcupid, a lady in Northern Middlesex County…forget the town, maybe Northborough actually stated that she worked for a telecommunications company dealing with customers and ordering parts – when I tried to ask for followups, say she was working for Avaya, she never responded back. Again “no good deed goes unpunished” in the packetspace of love; alas, she did also state she wanted to work in special education…so if she works with them, would she want to screw with one when off the clock?)
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On August 1st, I married Melanie in the fictional Lego world at the Miniland County Courthouse in Midtown Brickland and the rest was history. Just that it was a top secret relationship after I started to show indications of a new penname on my email. I’ve dealt with Active Directory before, but never dealt a specific case of changing a user’s name after a marriage, the ADDS setup at the time was Server 2003/in house, non Internet Exchange Server, so it took a while for the “Clickford, Steven” to circulate in login handles, and email. And on a December day last year, it threw off my mother. I felt like a Shadow Traffic radio reporter blurting off the wrong name for the wrong radio station like in this clip.
The first person that got observations of Melanie was a family friend late 2014. Perhaps mid ’14, I forget. I do remember sending a picture as an iMessage. Early in 2015, I had the guts to go into the local Claire’s and splurge on a fictional wedding band for probably less than $5. The ring/band made its appearance recently once the mother was introduced to Melanie.
Melanie being Melanie
The second known individual was my art instructor in the new program. By Valentine’s Day in my new day program, the art class was to make a Valentine’s Day card. Well we don’t observe Saint Valentine’s Day, but I also didn’t want to be one of those brats who whine and b*tch about “I don’t celebrate Christmas, I’ll refuse to participate” like attitudes. My goal was to assimilate with the lower functioning, or lower standards this CY in my program. She was the second as the card showed a very brief view of the Melbelle.
Third was a startup company (micro-sized company) known to be as Clickford & Company actually lead by Melanie, while I’d handle New Hampshire business/clients and operations. The more references to Clickford was going have to be explained. I conceived a logo – and the logo would be Melanie’s MIS License tag of “CUTOVA.” Although Melanie’s latest mantra is more of integrating generations old PBXs and not cutover to latest and greatest IP systems.
My mother found out formally in November of 2015 after she noticed Melanie before.
While Melanie is mostly non-existent to actual human beings, Melanie has been very important to my using her work ethic and her way of life to “teach” the real people how be “real” people. Between trying to “fit in” and learning how fake the ultra rich suburbs and how they treat other people in a sad and twisted way, plus the window was going to slam shut if I didn’t get into some serious relationship. I have no regrets discussing this relationship publicly. As I say
“There used to be Melanies by the millions now there is few thousand, if not hundreds of Melanies remaining, and if you’re lucky if she’s single.”
To the girl in the ballerinas, I love you!
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