After I lost in the mall fighting game tournament, I went down the escalators and into the GameStop. I didn’t know the dyed-hair girl would be there. So now, because of her, I am up on the mall roof ready to jump off the side. Long drop, sudden stop. Well, at least, that’s what Tooty the mall-roof owl decoy says I’ll do. Tooty tells me what I will do all the time. He professes that he knows who I am, and it makes sense because Tooty is always watching. He perches on the roof of Chesapeake Square Mall all day and all night. He scares away pipsqueak birds who love to shit everywhere, since Tooty is the guardian of the mall Hooters. He protects the men below on the pavement who hornily waddle chubbed-in-the-pants into Hooters. Tooty is the King of Hooters. He could be the company logo on a highway billboard, the way he’s always watching. So it makes sense he knows who I am, because he is a voyeur, and any good voyeur must know who he watches. He has been watching me, and for a long time, I felt Tooty knew who I am, and knew what violence I am capable of in a GameStop, because Tooty knows I am autistic.

Now you know who I am, too. You know because you know what word to call me. You already have a hunch about what happened with me and the girl in the GameStop, since now you know I am autistic. There are other words for me, if you’d like. For instance, basement dweller. Or neckbeard or incel, or school shooter, even though I’ve never held a gun. Yet these titles aren’t true enough, except autistic. So call me an autist. But not because of what Dr. Fullerton signed into law after Mom doctor-shopped me around, after I bludgeoned a school bully with a locker padlock. None of that is proof of autism. Anyone can get diagnosed, and plenty enough self-diagnose these days, because they don’t know what real autism is. You only know true autism once you lose a video game tournament and you go up on the mall roof, and an owl tells you that you will commit violence in GameStop against a beautiful cashier woman.

She is a nerd enough. She’s the one who works weekday evenings with the teal bangs, and the dimples. She has that goth-punk look, too. The fishnets on her legs squeeze her snowy thigh flesh like a plump grocery store turkey in poultry netting, and she has the pink gauges in her earlobes, too, that probably stink really nice. On her bicep, there’s a tattoo of Kirby. He’s tiny and pink and smiling, but also devilishly brandishing a bloody steak knife. A perfect tattoo for my kind of girl. Then this girl is just the right amount of heavyset. Her ass spilled from over the stool she sat on. Before I went into the GameStop after the tournament, I hadn’t talked to her. Tooty says it is normal for an autistic to not speak to women.

I can’t talk well to women. When I arrived after the tournament in the GameStop, I ignored her. I pretended she was not there. No one was around except us. I thought maybe I should just leave. In the 1700s I wouldn’t be permitted in the room with her alone. I thumbed at a manga in a corner to alleviate my anxiety. I hadn’t read the new issue yet, Dragon Ball Super #47, since the new series just sucks. My old high school acquaintance, a scrawny Jewfro kid, had once laughed at me for having only seen Dragon Ball Z. After that I pirated too much anime onto the family PC to spite him, and if I still talked to the Jewfro kid he’d agree the new series is ass. The fights drag on longer than even the original series, and Jiren, the new antagonist, the gray-matter alien jacked on space steroids and spandexed like a power ranger, is so lacking in a narrative way. I stood turning the manga pages unimpressed at the artwork from the new mangaka. Skipping the fights, I scanned for the fanservice instead—for the new green alien girl character with her hung-out cleavage in her battle armor. From the side of my eyes, I peeked at the counter girl. Seeing if she might have similar cleavage. I could tell she was looking at me for some reason. Then she started talking to me. 

Anything I can help you find? she asked. And she is just the kind to do something like that, ask a guy what he could find in her store. What am I saying? All women do this. And men too. 

I shivered with her words going into me. Her voice has that bratty sound like one of my early cartoon crushes, Misty from Pokemon, with that tsundere spunk.

I am awful.

But she sounded genuinely interested. I turned to face her. I wonder now if my face, as I looked at her, revealed my longing to see her chest in better detail. I strained, clenched, not to look at her boobs. I tried to make my face look blank. I meant to say something to her. I was going to say something sure and pat, casual. Like No, I’m good, thanks though. Performatively I’d scan the retro game section, finger around for a game missing from my collection, then dip out the store. Tooty would say this is the right thing for an autistic to do. But she had this sweet look to her. I’d never fart and dip with her around. I’m sure she smelled nice, too, like strawberry cake—like Kirby-style shortcake perfumes, despite me never being close enough to smell her. I’d sniff the seat of her chair if I had the chance because she looked like she loved me. 

She was still looking at me when I didn’t say anything when I should have. I thought to ask her for her number right then, but that’d be awful. Maybe I could have a normal conversation, even though I am an autist, as Tooty says. But before I could speak, she asked:

“Did you just come from that tournament over there?”

After that I couldn’t stop talking. From across the room, I spoke to her over the racks of Five Nights at Freddy’s plushies and the Nintendo gacha capsules in their bins, spilling with so much autistic rhetoric of the night I’d had, and without me moving an inch, my legs and other motors shutting down to better allow my flapping autistic mouth. I said: 

“I did, I did. From over at GameWorks and it was bullshit, total bullshit. You know? But I’m sure you’ve sold a few copies of this one, Righteous, you know, the game with the cowboy cane guy and the Duke Nukem gun guy and Sen the Snake Man and Lucky, the femme fatale, right? It’s just been, I dunno. A lot for me. I got knocked out. It’s the biggest tournament! But these guys, from out of here, not from around here, from Richmond, they came down and I didn’t know a thing about them. They’re bad bad bad. Real toxic guys. Don’t shake hands or fist-bump or nothing, and they must got some secret to them. But I main Gus, you know, the army guy with the eyepatch, you know. He’s a Zoner, right. You know what a Zoner is? Well, the Zoner throws fireballs, right. He stands on the other side of the stage and throws sonic booms and shit at you. He has these punches and kicks that shoot out like a gun. He throws stuff, so the opponent gets hit. Some people say that’s lame. It's really not though. They say, You’re so lame throwing stuff at me from so far away! Let me play the game, a buddy of mine Johns. BUT it’s actually a time-tested method of fighting and for competitive players, right. Something people have written book-length stuff on, on the Wikis, if I’m being honest. I’m no monkey, no gorilla. I have to condition my opponent, right? I’m a thinking, cognitive player. I adapt. I pay attention. I am a reactive player and well, I’m sure you know, you know—since you have the Kirby tattoo after all. And whatever else. You work here, right? Haha. Well, you see, those guys who showed up to the tournament are so fucking lame. They wouldn’t have beaten me if I learned their habits. They’re gimmicky as fuck. No fundamentals. They play so lame and so bad, I swear, and, anyway. They play those fucking broken characters. Oh, I cannot wait for a fucking patch. They’re screwed something wild, I know, when Daisuke nerfs fucking Akira and Golfer. Oh, man. They just have about everything in their kit. Just about everything. Have you seen the memes? Oh my fucking god bro. There’s this meme, like, about Akira, and how people say he sucks. But really, the competitive players know he doesn’t. Cringe. Like, sure, his health is so fucking low. A glass cannon. But an aerial fireball? Are you fucking kidding me? Fucked up. Braindead. He could, in the old games, even retreat, jump back and throw the fireball. How are you supposed to establish your fucking offense with that in the way? So he just spams it and spams it. Total flowchart kind of character. And, anyway, like, how is a guy with such good frame data supposed to have an aerial fireball? And he’s plus on everything I swear to god. It’s these legacy characters that got real problems and I know, I know Gus is a legacy character and all, but really: Akira has always been a fucked up character. You know they had to ban him in the old game? You could only get him with a cheat code. Well this sweaty dude, this like, and I know since you’re cool, you’ll probably not mind me saying, this sweaty Asian guy, haha, just a loser-looking guy, was playing him. Total mess of a guy. Stank like rank but he had a cool shirt though, I’ll give him that, Yu Yu Hockey Show, great classic anime, if you haven’t watched it yet. Same guy who did Hunter X Hunter; Togashi; the GOAT. Love the Chimera Ant arc. But. Yeah. I didn’t win the tournament. I got to say, I shouldn’t be going 0-2 like that. I come all the time, but, yeah, I’m gonna go home and lab out some more stuff. I saw on Twitter that the patch leaked and I’m almost certain Akira and Golfer are getting nerfed into the ground. But anyway. You’re cool. Haha. Anyway, I’m definitely gonna get them next time, you know what I mean? Hahah.”

She had sat there watching me. She said, Oh, wow. She looked down. She looked up. She tried to conjure a response. She had nothing good. She said, That’s sure something for sure. Well, well. Damn.

#

I ran out of the store coughing. In GameStop, I should have had the words to ease out of the moment. I should have spared her and I a minute of dignity. I should have transitioned out of the store with grace. But I didn’t and I ran instead. I was a little baby autistic boy, so I ran away. 

Tooty the King of Hooters said this was the obvious outcome. Tooty said, Of course! Tooty said, What else did you think would happen? Because you are an autist. And I have been, until now, in the position to believe him. The GameStop girl changed me.

The dyed-hair girl called out to me. As I ran, she went after me, and she called out to me. She called, Wait, it’s alright. She called, Come on back dude, what's wrong?

She called. She called out to me: the twisted autist freak. My autistic heart beat faster with her words: what's wrong? 

Usually I’d go see Tooty after something like that. But I didn’t. Instead I went home. And since then, her words have stayed with me. Now that I am a few days removed, I know that she really, really didn’t know what was wrong. She didn’t know why our meeting in GameStop had gone awry, because she didn’t know what I am, despite what Tooty says! Even though I felt it was so obvious, she didn't see me as autistic. She saw me as something more.

 GameStop girl has planted in me a germ of liberation. She is beautiful and warm and thick in all the right places, and now, after us being alone together, I only hate. I have no hate for her—but for Tooty the Owl. My rage has carried me to the mall roof.

#

Tooty and I are above the Hooters. The air is thick and hot and Tooty is staring at me. He is aloof, and a judge. With his unmoving saucer eyes, he says everything everyone who knows I am autistic thinks: 

You will kill yourself; you will kill the GameStop girl with a gun and a bullet; you will shoot up a school; you will burn down the mall with gasoline in the stairwell; you will slink back into your hole and watch YouTube and xvideos hentai until you croak; you will do all of these things in some simultaneous dimension, literally and figuratively, and you will never be someone who is anything but wrong. You will kill and then you’ll die. That is all, he says. And before I went to GameStop I would have believed him. 

Above the Hooters, I take Tooty in my autistic hands. I rip him from the mall roof banister. I hold Tooty above my autistic head. From my autistic heart, I scream, and I throw Tooty overboard, and Tooty is a bird who cannot fly, and so Tooty is a lie. Tooty falls, and Tooty has a long drop, sudden stop. Tooty breaks into a million pieces. 

#

Now that he is gone, I know he was right about one thing: I am capable of violence, just not the way he thought. Instead of committing violence against myself or school students or girls, I am only violent against owl decoys. So, for the most part, I don’t believe in what Tooty said anymore. And I don’t care what you think anymore either. Sure, you can call me autistic. You can call me whatever you want. But it won't matter what you call me, because I won’t let you control me ever again. Instead I’m gonna go back down to GameStop. I’m gonna go ask my girl her name.