Ellis Jamieson
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The sun, when it finds us between the building cracks, beats down and burns us with its glare like an unimpressed local at the sight of dawdling awestruck foreigners. Too many sightseers stop and ogle the aptly named tourist traps, causing blockages and sending us down different veins, only to end up back where we started. In the end, I succumb to one such trap for the sake of self-preservation. When met with a bulwark of bumbling tourists, I turn quickly and zone out of the madness, relaxing my muscles to the sight of notebooks: soft leather embossed with gold; hard covers in bright colours and finished with gold clasps; old-fashioned, uneven, browned pages; and ones neatly sliced with corners so sharp they could be weaponised. There are quills and fountain pens. There are wax seals in all colours with all the letters of the alphabet engraved on their gold-coin bases. I try to count them, but luckily I can’t, so I get to start again.
Eventually, the human barricade moves on. You take my hand.
The canals that whisper through the winding tunnel streets barely make a sound. They creep up on us and jump out at the end of alleys, teasing us with toxic blue that calls to us as though it harbours sirens. If I jumped in and let the water swallow me, would the sound of rushing water help, or would it gurgle in Italian?
You tell me my face is pale, and suggest we stop for lunch. It’s too hot.
The food – except the complimentary (mandatory) bread which tastes and feels like dissolving cardboard – is divine. I know that pizza prosciutto e funghi means ham and mushroom pizza, and so that is all I have, grateful that my go-to comfort food is their national dish. But when a waitress tries to banter and make me say it out loud instead of simply pointing, I feel the nauseating wave of horror, fear and anger swallow my throat and grip my eyes. Nothing comes out of my mouth. You both try to laugh it off. Eventually, she leaves with our order.
In the sun-trap courtyard, the sun glares at me, licking the sticky sun cream sweat off my skin. I pick my fingers. Drink my unnecessarily expensive water. Listen unwillingly to the sudden shouts of laughter from nearby tables. The tables are glass and reflect the light into my brain like a knock-out punch. Open or closed, my eyes burn, but at least when I close them I can see the notebooks.
You ask if I’m alright. I nod. I don’t want to not be. This is our holiday – our first foreign holiday. I have to enjoy it. I can’t spoil it for you. You sympathise. It’s very crowded. You know I don’t like crowds.
After lunch, more streets. More hunting down historic sights to join the shoals of netted humans waiting to get in. More decisions about where to turn and trying to remember if we’ve been here before. More people trying to pull us in their shops and sell us the same over-priced souvenirs as the shop before. More saying no. More trying not to be touched or bumped. More discomfort in my Scottish clothes in the Italian heat because the fabrics that I can wear don’t work here. More wondering why this tiny city is so damned loud and overwhelming, and more wondering why the fuck I’m like this. I’m ruining everything. In the end, you suggest we find a place to sit and stop for ice cream.
The square we end up in is surrounded by shops which are surrounded by people. Silver metal chairs and tables gleam like they’re made of sunlight. Even the loan of your sunglasses doesn’t stop them stabbing me.
No seat is good. Everywhere I try, people walk behind me: chatting, laughing, shouting, bumping. There is no such thing as cars here, so instead of the reliable roar of engines to overwhelm my senses, I am swallowed by the unfamiliar rumble of a hundred crammed-in voices weaving between each other like blood cells in a shaken vial. By all accounts, it should be peaceful – the type of sounds you’d find on youtube to play as background noise while you write – but my nerves grind against it.
I don’t know what I want – what would help – if I need to eat or drink or pee or all three. My body isn’t talking to me. It’s screaming. My nerves feel like electric eels, and all of them are biting. I want to scream. But I am silent. I don’t want to look stupid…
I try my best. I keep stony still and silent. Then, I’m done. I feel my walls fracture and the venetian mask slipping. I stand up. Announce that I’m going home – back to the apartment.
You ask if I’m ok. I say yes and that you should stay – enjoy your day. I’m not feeling well.
I leave quickly, hoping I’m heading in the right direction. I push through people, darting between them and shoving with my shoulder where required – better me with intent than waiting for that nails-on-chalkboard unexpected brush-by. When I get far enough away that I’ve lost you, I find a dark doorway to dart into and burst. For a minute, I heave and sob and let the panic beat me. I ignore the stares. No one stops. I shake. I wail. I groan out the sensation of pain rippling around me – it and I playing whack-a-mole with each other: me to make it stop and it to stop me. I play the game. Rub my arms. Curl up. Clutch my head. Shake it out. Then, I take a huge breath, bite down hard and swallow it. Think of notebooks and writing and getting lost in a world that makes sense that I can’t over-sense and where I am in control and safe and calm. I look up. Piazza San Marco →. I take a deep breath, wipe my face, step out into the frey and march.
When you arrive home, I am mid-meltdown. Tears, shaking, sobbing, mute. It will be a long night trying to regulate my body in this strange place that smells of white tiles and heat and cold minimalism and mosquitoes, and for you too, dealing with what I know looks like insanity. You want to help. It’s frustrating for us both that I can’t tell you what I need.
When I come back to myself enough, I spy on the bedside table, a small, neatly folded paper bag, sealed with a sticker. I reach out, open it, and find a small, leather notebook with a simple golden E embossed on the cover. Looking at it calms me, and my heart feels sore. Tired. I feel shame… I don’t deserve this. My bad behaviour has ruined our holiday.
My inner adult stops me. Firm. Gentle. They’ve grown stronger these past few years, lifting the weight of my past off my inner child’s shoulders. I hear them hug me. Autism is not bad behaviour and we don’t need this shame. We’re not bad. We’re not broken. It’s ok. It’s ok. And I begin to cry again.
Later, when the storm has passed, and we’re back on Scottish soil in the dreich smur, moping drone of pessimistic voices, and scent of McDonald’s and Greggs; when we’re back home in our guddle of a flat, coorie-ing into our cosy blankets, and washing the holiday smell off our sunburnt skin in our janky shower, I decide what to do with my notebook.
I will turn it into a home for happy moments. I will make notes about everything us. Rather than being a souvenir, and a reminder of everything different and difficult and stupidly distressing, I will make it all about the moments that make us smile and all the memories that, when we’re old and grey, we may have forgotten. I will make notes that keep the real me with the real you, so when either of us are sad or lost or overwhelmed, we know where to go.
I will anchor myself in notes of us, so that even when everything is different, I know I’m ok.
Ellis Jamieson is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent writer, based in the north of Scotland. They enjoy working next to their fire with at least three beverages on the go, while the winds howl outside. Their work has previously been published in Shoreline of Infinity, Briefly Write, Bacopa Literary Review, Parliament Literary Journal, Coin-operated press, and on Yorick Radio Productions Podcasts. They are also the winner of the 2023 Prose Purple Flash Fiction Award, and were longlisted for the Emerging Writer Award 2023.
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