Ben Lieber is an alumnus of the Chicago DIY punk community, frontman for Secret Agent Bill, and a co-founder of Riot Fest. He writes and performs in New Orleans, where he lives with his two sons and his wife, The Duchess of Milan.
No Regerts
As an autistic dad with autistic kids, I sometimes make blunt, provocative statements—for example: I am fully prepared to pick my son up from jail.
That’s a weird take on family firsts, I admit it. My wife, The Duchess, won’t be pleased with me for sharing this so freely. But she and I are going to have different, and variably gendered, perspectives on this. We suspect she’s got a bit of the tism, but I’m full blown—making decisions has given me concussions. And if I know anything, it’s this: The spirit of defiance against that terrible feeling that your grain grows wrong is fertile ground for bad decisions.
French Fries & Porn
Absent the perpetual expectations of angelic perfection we place on girls, boys do stupid stuff. Sometimes they tantrum and—let’s be honest—they get arrested. We make a big deal about that in this country, regardless of the staggering number of citizens who have had to be on the uncomfortable end of a police interaction. And depending on who you’re talking about, the same crime is either the pillar of their redemption story or their hellish descent. Or they have money and it just disappears.
I was one of the stereotypical Ritalin recipients of the ‘90s, and I did the right thing: I sold it all to my friends who snorted it at parties. And I bought French fries and porn with the proceeds. In retrospect, the problem wasn’t whether or not Ritalin worked—maybe it did. The problem was it didn’t do for me what I really needed a medication to do, which was to make me more like everyone else. We know now that’s just a manifestation of anxiety. In the early ‘90s they didn’t know shit. They saw ADD and that’s what they prescribed for.
That said, we can probably skip to the part where I went to jail—quite a few times actually. Somehow, I was a damn cop magnet. And the things I got arrested for were the pettiest of offenses, like vandalizing public property, peeing in alleys, weed possession… just careless bullshit. But that doesn’t make it meaningless.
These stupid things I went to jail for were all indicative of what I really needed: I vandalized, acted out, and smoked an excessive amount of pot because I desperately needed creative outlet prompts, a medication that worked for me, and a therapist to help strategize my way through world-systems that made no sense to my overworked brain.
Here’s another uncomfortable opinion for auti parents—some of my arrests were pretty great. As evidence, I present to you this highlight from the classic vignette, Ben Gets Arrested on His Way to School By a Chicago K-9 Unit:
Polish Cop [to dog]: Shaddup! Jeezus, dis mutt won’t stahp bahrking!
Me [handcuffed]: [next to him in the front seat] He’s not trained?
PC: He’s trained, but he’s from dah Czech Republic and he dudn’t speak English yet.
Me: Huh. [turns around] AUS! [dog stops barking] Mach Platz! [dog lays down in the corner]
PC: [writes furiously in his notebook]
Me: Sorry, the only other Czech word I know is for “roll over.”
Great story, right? I have a few of those. And that’s something to remind ourselves on the way to bail out our son.
Say Hello
I never actually introduced you to my son. He’s my oldest and he’s a great kid. Considerate, compassionate, generous, creative—and my god, whip smart. He was reading at a fifth grade level by age 4, and on fun afternoons we’d explore the fantastic worlds of exponential math, the square root, and the philosophy of infinity.
Parents like to talk about their advanced kids, but I was genuinely afraid. I’d seen this story play out before: the most extraordinary of my peers falling apart, while their parents collected their kudos for raising such a “special” child. When their children inevitably imploded, I watched them cycle through reckoning—was it our fault? Did we do something wrong? Did we fail them somehow? The answer was: Yeah, probably. Sorry, Charlie.
Looking at my sweet boy is like looking at an enchanted mirror, seeing the future and the past colliding with the present. I see the most wonderful parts of The Duchess—her beauty, generosity of spirit, fierce dedication to friendship—tempered by the most dangerous parts of my imperfect, unbalanced mind.
I see his natural distrust of hierarchy constantly at odds with the stubborn belief that we’re all good at our core.
I watch him hide a rising panic in loud social spaces behind a frozen smile meant to ward off scrutiny.
I see his intricate, immeasurable brain misfiring as tasks collapse under the maddening tornado of obsessive prioritization.
I watch frustration building into rage with that fatal subsidence of the words to explain why and how this all went so badly.
And most heartbreaking of all, I see his petrification of making a mistake.
The boy is me.
If she were here, The Duchess would insist I pause to give myself some grace. He did inherit my marvelous singing voice and a robust constitution. But she and I have really started to realize that both of us come from a long lineage of neurodivergent specimens—ranging from the spacey to the profoundly misanthropic. He also has my reckless lack of concern for misadventure, so yes, I’m pretty sure we’ll be picking him up from jail.
How OK That Is
Being in the wrong is an awful place to be, and acknowledging that you put yourself there is worse. But I honestly can’t think of a better way to express how absolutely OK that is than picking your child up from jail and giving them your complete understanding. Acknowledging the mistake, or just forgiving it, or even holding it to sunlight and giving it its due as a glorious triumph of a perverted sort, is important to me.
Reflecting on my little life-markers where I examined what differentiated my reality and myself, I think about growing up an inner-city punk rock kid and everyone yelling “No Regrets!” They made it their mantra, graffitied their backpacks, yelled it and shook their mohawks. Some brave philosophers have tattooed themselves with the wrong spelling—the ultimate litmus test, in my opinion.
The Duchess recently pointed out that my gravitation towards punk was natural—that its ethos of rebellion and distrust of authority spoke directly to that autistic inclination my son clearly inherited. But “No Regrets” was a ship that sailed without me. I couldn’t reconcile the arrested logic with my longing to be more like everyone else. All I could wonder was: How do you learn without regrets? How do you grow?
I cherish my mistakes. My regrets have shaped me for the better, made my story rich and strange and incredible. I want that for my boy, but that means he’s going to have to find himself in the wrong and climb his own way out. He’s a smart kid with a beautiful heart, not like anyone else in the world. Maybe when it’s his turn, I’ll just tell him it’s his turn, like your old man before you—and he’ll understand.
No regrats, kiddo.
illustrations by Victoria Allen
