A few days ago, I was in a queue for a cashpoint machine in a shopping precinct. The man in front of me was withdrawing some notes, and as I looked at him, two simultainious thoughts collided in my head. One was "Someone in a wheelchair". The other was "Oh, he's rather sexy".
He was about 25, and would have stood maybe 6 foot, but had minor difficulty reaching up to the console. His neatly cropped hair and the grooming of his pleasantly regular features showed that he took care over his appearance. His strong back and shoulder muscles worked under his teeshirt as he fumbled the card, cash and wallet into place - perhaps he'd got muscles pushing the wheels.
His hairless legs didn't move, but they didn't look immobile or atrophied - they looked like he could run for miles. He was wearing football shorts a size too small, that snugly traced the curve of his buttocks.
Yes, I probably looked at him a little too hard, but if he'd once looked around I'd have been overcome with embarassment. He wheeled over to a young lady who was waiting by a lamppost - she was about the same age, slim and ablebodied. I felt a quite unwarrented twinge of disappointment as he craned his neck up to kiss her on the lips.
At the end of my street there's a run-down care home for people with multiple disabilities. I pass it every time I visit the co-op, and there's often a middle aged man outside, begging. He moves like a chimpanzee - a kind of loping half-crouch - and he speaks in a lax bark when asking for money for a cup of tea. He gets 50p or a pound from my pocket.
The rest of the steet is about one third care homes for the elderly, and from the age of 4 I grew up with their inhabitants shuffling along the street, muttering to themselves - occasionally shouting.
When I was 6 there was a girl with severe learning difficulties, living in an adjoining street. She lived with her father, who somehow juggled a fulltime job with being her fulltime carer. She tried to befriend me and I could see she was lonely, but I refused because I was afraid of the way she drooled all the time.
Around a street corner is a guest house run by a stupid but good-hearted man, and his wife who went deaf in early middle age. He's become quite proficient in sign language, but I can only catch the gist of their conversations.
At university I befriended a deaf student and learned some BSL (British Sign Language) to help communicate, but I never got good at using it.
There's a boy with what looks like a very severe form of Neuro Fibro Matosis, often to be seen on the street chatting merrily with friends his own age.
There's an elderly man who used to work as a solicitor. One side of his face looks like it's half melted and then reset. The first time I saw it I was 18, and we passed by chance on some stairs - I saw him for two seconds and was in a state of hyperventillating terror for ten minutes.
At about the same age, I got involved with a man who had cerebral palsy. He was a sometime mentor to me, when we weren't having sex or endless discussions about music.
We both knew a folksinger who's career as a racing jockey was terminated by sudden total blindness. This fellow had the most wandering, groping hands in the world, and the most reckless libido.
One of the most powerful political speakers I've heard is Pat Stack. He has one arm and no legs due to a thalidomide pregnancy. I once worked out a route for him, so his wheelchair could get from the train station to a meeting hall without encountering stairs, cobbles or bumps.
The producer of the play I was in a week ago has Multiple Sclerosis. We developed a cordial mutual dislike.
At university there was a student with an artificial leg that made me nervous because it looks so almost like a real one.
There was also a navel engineer who'd become an artist after being confined to a wheelchair and deprived of most speech by an accident that snapped his spine. His car and motorised wheelchair were equipped with the most wonderful thunderbirds-like contraptions to enable him to get around and communicate.
Yes, there's been no shortage of people with various disabilities around throughout my life. I've admired some, been friends with a few, and occasionally more than friends.
So why does it still make me feel awkward?
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Reactions to disabilities are pretty interesting. As a woman with an obvious disability (1 leg & crutches), I am acutely aware of how people view me differently, and also of my own reactions when I see a person with disabilities.
ReplyDeleteI think that some part of people's reactions to the disabled is deeper than psychology and reflects the fundamental wiring of our brains. Other aspects are learned, developmenal artifacts, or are determined by culture.
A plurality of heterosexual men probably look at me as less sexual and less desireable than the average woman, although there is a definite group who are strongly attracted to me sexually like a moth to a candle because of my leg. Go figure.
I sometimes feel awkward with disabled people. I don't really think of myself that way because I percieve myself as having no important functional limitations. I don't understand why I sometimes feel awkward, why I don't identify as disabled.
Your feelings are pretty normal. But some of us gimps are desperate to be treated as "normal" and desperate to be loved. So don't be shy next time you see a sexy guy in a chair.
That was interesting.
-Astrid