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The hard part for me is that people don’t like what I say a lot of times, or how I say it. People tell me I don’t talk enough, but when I do talk, they freak out over what I said. I just want to say the right thing, but it doesn’t always come out the way they like it. All of a sudden, since I was this surf star who deals with filmers and writers and photographers, I had to learn when to say something, and when not to. When I did say something, I had to stop worrying about what people thought. I always worry what people think about me, even though they think I don’t give a shit with the way I sometimes look away. I always want to say the right thing.
Carolyn would show me ways to shake people’s hands when I meet them, or wait until it was my turn to eat at a group dinner, when to talk and not talk at meetings, how to handle crowds when I had to handle them, things like that. She did this over and over, and I would copy her. Just like I copied Cheyne’s surfing style so that I could surf like him.
Once Clay finished with the 2007 Triple Crown of Surfing, he flew home and started his new life as a diagnosed Aspie. Jill bought him a book, All Cats Have Asperger’s. Simply written and illustrated by Kathy Hoopman, the book focuses on fifty-five characteristics of Asperger’s syndrome that are also common to house cats—an interesting correlation, since many people have noted the feline dexterity of Clay’s acrobatics in the water. However, when Hoopman adds up her list of cat traits—dislikes loud noises, tendency to be aloof, extreme awareness of surroundings, need to move to the beat of their own drum—the similarities to Asperger’s take shape and color.
Clay started reading the book and slowly absorbed the explanation of each characteristic. As he did, his self-awareness grew. He realized the ways in which Asperger’s syndrome can be seen as a gift—a major revelation after a lifetime spent being ostracized, bullied, and chided for his way of seeing and maneuvering in a strange world that was totally out of his control. To this day, when he’s in Maui and feels confused or uncertain about a life situation, he picks up the book, which sits on the family coffee table.
“Some people would say I’m an expert at surfing. So that’s my gift,” Clay says. “We all have a gift. I don’t know how I would live without surfing. I don’t want to know. I feel like I’ll die if I don’t surf. I have to surf. Because of that, I try to know as much as I can about boards, waves, riding waves, and the ocean.”
The next step was to find bridges between the more challenging Asperger’s traits and the ability to live comfortably and peacefully in a world that felt alien half the time. “When it’s known someone has Asperger’s when they’re young, you have them with a behavior specialist that teaches them social skills, such as sticking out their hand and saying, ‘Pleased to meet you,’” Jackson explains. “It becomes an automatic response in that situation. They will continue to do that if they learn that young. You can teach them to say things like, ‘You look nice.’ Generally, they won’t go so far as to say, ‘How was your day?’ because they’re not going to listen to the answer.”
The first time Clay met with Jackson, he was constantly traveling, which is always a harrowing experience for someone who doesn’t consider paying attention to details like boarding times and gate numbers a priority—if he considers them at all. “Can you imagine Clay, when he’s sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, leaving here and going to Tahiti, going to all these airports on his own, and getting somewhere, jumping on these boats, going to islands?” she asks, her eyebrows rising. “With Asperger’s, one of the primary characteristics is high anxiety. He’s trying to keep it in, but his anxiety is right there, he’s overwhelmed, he’s going to this place . . . to me, it’s just incredible.”
Carolyn focused on Clay’s interpersonal communication skills, always a challenge with Aspies. “She asked me a bunch of questions,” Clay recalls. “I did the same thing to her that I do to other people that ask me too many questions: I just went to another place. It’s hard to know what to do when all these questions come at me. If someone has these questions that are really stupid, like, ‘What’s it like to have Asperger’s?’ I just think they’re barneys and tune them out.”
When Clay said essentially the same thing to Jackson, she objected. “No, you have to give them a response,” she told him.
“We practiced over and over,” Clay says. “I said what she told me to say—‘Let me think about this a while’—and then ‘a while’ would be like a minute. Or forever. Or I would totally forget about it, move on.”
“With Asperger’s, they have delayed responses,” Jackson says. “You and I can have a conversation, but you cannot have this kind of conversation with Clay. Because he does certain things, people have this expectation that he’s not going to need external prompts to help carry a conversation, but he does need them.”
Another session dealt with Clay’s reactions and responses when something angered him. Despite his inner anxiety, he comes across as mellow and laid-back, a guy with the aloha spirit that travelers covet when they fly to Hawaii. However, when he gets angry, he simmers. One of three things then happens: he surfs the anger out of his system; he figures out what angered him, calms down, and carries on; or he “sees red.” It doesn’t take long for him to hit the boiling point.
“I know I am not very good dealing when I’m pissed,” he says. “When I travel, or have to run around doing things I don’t usually do, I need to chill. I need to go into my room, put on my headphones, and chill. Or surf. Sometimes I can’t.”
“It’s like the cork in the wine bottle: sometimes it’s going to pop,” Jackson adds.
What happens when it pops? “I see red, I melt down, I lose it—and then I’m over it,” he says.
“He doesn’t have a filter, so if he becomes overstimulated, or there’s a lot of people, or if he doesn’t want to be there for his sponsor, he’s going to say ‘Fuck you’ to those people,” Jackson explains. “If someone passing by wants his autograph and he doesn’t want to give one, he’ll just look at them. He’s not a mean guy, but this is an immediate response as a coping mechanism to get his space. That’s all he wants—to have some space.”
The increased attention from media and fans created a different challenge: how to deal with a blunt, unfiltered honesty that causes him to sometimes blurt out exactly how he feels. When running on his natural rhythms, he doesn’t stop to concern himself about others’ feelings, the situation, whether or not his comments are politically correct, or the consequences that might come down the line. The reason? Those behavior checks and balances, natural responses for the general population, are not wired into his brain. He has to acquire those behaviors the only way that can possibly work for Aspies—through exhaustive repetition.
“People don’t like what I say a lot of times, or how I say it,” Clay explains. “People tell me I don’t talk enough, but when I do talk, they freak out over what I said. I just want to say the right thing, but it doesn’t always come out the way they like it. Since I was this surf star who deals with filmers and writers and photographers, I had to learn when to say something, and when not to. I had to stop worrying about what people thought. I always worry what people think about me, even though they think I don’t give a shit sometimes. I always want to say the right thing, and I always want to do the right thing.”
“He will always tell the truth,” Jackson says. “When you ask him a question, if he answers it, it’s going to be the truth. Sometimes people don’t really want the truth.”
Asperger’s syndrome also presented a challenge for Clay when it came to storytelling, or “talking story,” as they say in Hawaii. While most people can present concepts, share experiences, and even work through personal difficulties by using story as an illustration or metaphor, Clay cannot. He can’t make the connections. “Clay will listen, and he laughs, but a lot of times he won’t get the story. That’s what a lot of people don’t realize: he doesn’t fully understand the story,” Jackson says. “But he’ll see other people laugh, and he will laugh. If he has something on his mind, what he’ll do is say, ‘Yeah, that’s what it was like for me . . . right? Is that right?’ He’s looking for validation of what he says, because he can’t give himself that validation.”
Clay’s self-awareness sessions with Jackson covered the simplest gestures and expressions that most people typically learn and master as children—but not those with Asperger’s or autism. “Carolyn would show me ways to shake people’s hands when I meet them, or wait until it was my turn to eat at a group dinner, when to talk and not talk at meetings, how to handle crowds when I had to handle them, things like that,” Clay recalls. “She did this over and over, and I would copy her. Just like the way I copied Cheyne’s surfing style so that I could surf like him.”
“It goes for when he tries to read someone’s face too,” Jill says. “He’s masterful at modeling facial expressions. He has to be; that’s how he tries to understand what you mean when you raise your eyebrows, blink a lot, or smile in the middle of a serious discussion. After he talks with someone and gets an expression that puzzles him, he’ll ask me or a friend, ‘What does he mean when his face does this?’ Then he makes the face, usually a spot-on imitation, and I tell him something like, ‘That’s the face of someone who is open, honest, and really respects you.’”
“I find it continually fascinating how Clay, and others in the spectrum, model facial and body expressions,” Mary Anna Waldrop Enriquez says. “That’s their way of trying to figure out the social cues—what your intentions are, if you’re a kind person or not, how they can best relate to you. It’s like, when you raise your eyebrows, you’d better stop and consider what you’re going to say.
“People in the spectrum don’t operate like that, and our mistake is that we expect them to. That’s fascinating. Where is the disconnect in synapses in the brain? And how do they push it over to the other side of the brain, to what’s important and non-important?”
Clay’s sessions with Jackson, his study of All Cats Have Asperger’s, and his closer adherence to the nutritional and fitness suggestions laid out by Drs. Bhakta and Linden began to show. Clay grew more conscientious when he communicated with others, and more knowledgeable about his gifts and challenges. Sometimes the learned behaviors and changed habits would stick. However, because they were not automatic responses or didn’t embed in his brain to become second nature, he had to work at them constantly. Talk about a profound case of “practice, practice, and practice.”
“Clay became more interested in eating healthier, watching diet, lifting weights, working out, more interested in his health,” Varnes says. “I think the weight of the world came off his shoulders, and his mom’s, when they got the diagnosis, and now he just wanted to focus on the goals we were setting out.
“Clay will do anything you want him to do. If you get him one-on-one, and you take care of all the logistical things that he has trouble handling—that a lot of people have trouble handling, for that matter—he’s great. He’ll turn it on. But you gotta get him there.”
Another challenge faced Clay post-diagnosis: how to better relate to his girlfriend at the time, Alicia Yamada. They met while surfing, when Clay was fifteen and she was seventeen. When people asked him questions or wanted to talk extensively with him, she would answer and take care of business. They were constantly together. Jill liked Alicia right away, but Gino’s skepticism, from the very beginning, would hurt his relationship with Clay. “They both thought she was a little too old for me, but she was nice, and she loved surfing, and that’s really all I cared about. If you’re nice and you like surfing, I’m stoked,” Clay remembers. “But when it comes to knowing what chicks like or how they do things . . .”
“Clay had no idea,” Jill says. “None at all. Kids with Asperger’s are always in their own worlds, and these are worlds other people can’t get into all the way. Especially girls. He knew nothing about how to relate to girls, as a boyfriend, and the girl needed to understand that she would always come second to surfing. That’s not what you want if you’re a girl. To this day, I believe that he can have relationships only because the two girls he’s been with, Alicia and Jade [Barton], are so into surfing. And he’s a really good-looking kid, tall, dark, green eyes, one of the world’s best surfers . . . what girl wouldn’t like that? But without surfing, I don’t know that he’d ever have a relationship. They are hard enough for the rest of us”—she pauses and chuckles—“but really, really hard for people on the spectrum.”
When Jackson worked with Clay, Alicia didn’t join him—at first. However, as their fights grew, Jill insisted that they visit Jackson together. “He did not have the skills to make her feel important to him,” Jackson explains. “She was important to him, but he couldn’t show it. Luckily, Alicia didn’t have a lot of needs; most girls do. She accepted Clay for who he was.”
One day Jackson asked him, “Is Alicia going to pick you up today?”
“Yeah.”
“So when she does, I want you to say, ‘You look nice today, Alicia.’”
“Okay.”
“And then tell her another nice thing or two . . . some sort of compliment.”
“Okay.”
They walked out of Jackson’s house. Alicia was there to pick up Clay, who smiled as he walked toward the truck. “You look nice Alicia today,” he said, transposing the last two words. He added something about possibly going out on a date.
Alicia grew excited. “Where did that come from?”
“‘Wow, that felt really good,’ Alicia told me,” Jackson says. “And she told Clay that too. But it wasn’t something he was going to follow up on. His brain isn’t wired to do so.
“So I was teaching him ways to have empathy with others. How do you think someone else felt? Can you understand why they feel the way they do? Can you be there with their feelings, regardless of your own? He won’t go that far. That’s a very common by-product of Asperger’s.”
About fifteen months after Clay’s diagnosis, a new set of issues arose that reached beyond the purview of Jill and Carolyn Jackson: his growing protests over having to travel for surf contests and video shoots, a necessity of any professional surfer’s livelihood. Besides surfing itself, making videos was what he loved to do more than any other thing in the professional surfing world—not to mention that videos had made him a global star—but he hated the travel involved.
Jill and Jackson turned to Dr. Tony Attwood. They sent the results of Clay’s PET scans, QEEG and other tests, the diagnosis from Dr. Bhakta, and Jackson’s notes to Attwood’s Australia office. He wrote back, in part:
I had an opportunity to discuss Clay’s current situation and diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome with his mother, Jill, and Carolyn, his behavioral specialist, on 27 March 2009. It appears that Clay has cut back on his professional or competitive surfing and I am concerned if he should stop all competitive surfing. I think his experience over the last year or so has indicated the maximum amount of travel and competitions that he can cope with, but I do not think that the alternative of no competitions would be appropriate, as surfing is an essential part of Clay’s life and self-identity and he enjoys some of the aspects of competitions.
His mother described Clay as having significant sleep problems and it may be worthwhile to refer Clay to a sleep clinic to see if this has significant effect on his mood and abilities. He may also benefit from strategies to encourage relaxation such as meditation, and it would also be valuable to incorporate his girlfriend in the support network that he has to reduce stress.
Professor Tony Attwood
Jill and Clay began to treat Attwood’s words as gospel when it came to the future direction of his surfing career. Furthermore, his Quiksilver contract emphasized not only contests but free surfing. Since it was easily Clay’s largest endorsement deal—and one of the largest contracts for any surfer—he began gravitating toward free surfing, which would prove to be a pivotal turn in his life.
The difference between the two styles? Freedom, as Clay sees it. “With contest surfing, you have to show up on a schedule, surf twenty- or thirty-minute heats, and score as many points as you can,” he explains. “You have to catch enough waves to get your scores and do the moves judges want to see. You have to watch your opponents, who are always playing head games. I hate that. People are haters when they do that. Sometimes I even paddle away from them, out of the contest zone, catch some waves on my own.
“Free surfing is part of my gift from Asperger’s. I paddle out, catch all the waves I want, and no one keeps score. A lot of times no one even sees what I do, because I’m alone. It’s just me and the ocean. And maybe a sea turtle.”
The world was about to be reminded of Clay’s free-surfing prowess in the water—and learn about his difficulties out of it.