5 Reasons why Going on a Date with that Disabled Dude will be totally worth it

A few months ago, a young man who read one of my posts on dating and disability started chatting with me via social media.   Like myself, he has Cerebral Palsy and is Queer (sidebar: whenever Queer Crips find each other it’s pretty amaze balls, because we’re out there, but we very rarely connect with one another).   He told me that my writing was like he was reading his life on the page.  I am of course, extremely humbled that my few words could have such an impact on my fellow Queer Crips.   As we continued talking, he said something that touched me in a way that almost two months later, I can’t shake.  

He told me in no uncertain terms, that not once had anyone ever told him that he was sexy.   As a result of this, he hated his disability and all that it had essentially ‘robbed’ him of.   As cripples of every colour and creed – we’ve all had days where we be like, “For serious?  If I could just walk, I’d score me some c**k”.  

The more I thought about what he said and its effects, I thought people probably just don’t realize how fucking awesome we disabled dudes (I was gonna type dudettes here, but this is not a 1987 episode of Full House; to my Gimpy Gals, I love you too) are.

Time someone tells them, right? 

Also, in doing research for this piece (note: despite my academic credentials, by ‘research’ I mean Googling the term ‘disabled dating – super profesh, right?) I found that the main question being posed was

Would you/could you date someone with a disability? 

 

The major problem with how this question is presented is this: automatically the question suggests that there is some sort of risk in dating a disabled person (ummmm, isn’t there a risk in dating ANYONE?).   The phrasing of the question accesses one’s fear around disability above all else.   While it is okay to be apprehensive (being around so much awesome all at once can be overwhelming), the question should in fact be the statement:

“You SHOULD Date someone with a Disability!”

 

Well, of course you should.  We are no better or worse than other options (true fact though, I AM BETTER).  That said, I want to review some reasons that make a date with a cripple really amazeballs:

1.   Looking for Something Different:

I’m pretty sure that every T-Swifty song ever, is based on her desire to find something new, exciting and different.  If you scroll on through any internet dating website, what do you see: “Looking for a guy not like the rest”.   Lastly, I’m sure that the gals on Girls bemoan their quest for different dudes (aside from the fact that program makes apathy oddly amazing) each and every week.

Well, if different is what you want crips got you covered.  What could be more different than your date rolling in the bar through the backdoor in their tricked out 300 lbs. chariot?  Don’t lie, as you watch them coming towards you commanding their chair with confidence – you can’t help but getting a tingle in your nether regions.    Jokes aside, cripples have a different appreciation for the world; we can offer you a different perspective than all those wannabe frat/sorority girls or “young professionals” (can we review this term please – it’s business speak for douche, right?) ever could.

2.   Crip Humour:

On the handful of dates I have been on, people have told me that I have a sick, yet hilarious sense of humour.  I call myself a cripple pretty openly and make fun of the hilariously honest things that happen as a result of my disability… This won’t be the case for all of us, but I think once you see how deliciously dirty disability can in fact be, you’ll be glad you said yes to that “cripple coffee”.

3.   Friendtendant Freebies:

For the record, “friendtendant” is a combo of friend + attendant that occurs when your friends help you out with crip stuff.   It has happened a few times now where people will blindly assume that my dates are my caregivers.   (Before all my fellow crips reading this go up in arms about how someone might use me because of this, not to worry.  Dates: if you want to date me simply to get a free movie, we have other things we prob should discuss.)  In these instances, we have received free movie tickets, meals, etc.   Go ahead.  I’ll totes pretend that you are my caregiver!  When has free shit EVER been turned down? 

4.    Cripple Connection:

It goes without saying that the majority of people are simply unaware to some of the things that we crips have to contend with.  One of the benefits about going on a crip-tastical adventure date with us is that you will see this firsthand.    You wanna go to that hip new karaoke bar, but it isn’t noticeably accessible… fear not, let’s fight through the throngs of drunken college kids (who by day are “young professionals”) belting out the words to Don’t Stop Believing so that we can get in the club and duet the shit out of some 80s pop.     My point being that you will begin to understand my reality that much better, and see that I can still party, it just takes a wee bit more planning.

5.   We’re All Bad at this Shizz:  

The most important thing you will learn on our date is this: while you may be sitting there trying to mind your P’s and Q’s as to what is PC with respect to my CP, what you should know is that I also haven’t a clue what I am doing, and may also be really shit at this dating thing.  True fact: I have no clue what the f**k I am doing!

So, there you have it.   Ask me out for that coffee, the worst that could happen is that I would have a spasm and accidentally throw it in your face, just before we go into our free movie.   After you wipe the whipped mocha out your eyes they could be open to a whole new possibility.  Not too shabby, eh?

Functionality or Fucktionality: Why Sexual Function needs to be considered in Occupational and Physical Therapies for Disabled People

Ever since I was 6 years old, I have been working with physical and occupational therapists.   I never really liked it when they came around, as they would make me do exercises that strengthened my abilities, but took me away from my friends and playtime.  

Ugh. 

As I got older and began to understand how important they were in my life, I did my best to do the work so that, as they put it, I could “normally complete the activities of daily living.”    I had learned that I could open doors, hold a fork, and do other tasks to assist in my daily life.   Everybody seemed very pleased that I was gaining my independence in this way, and as a wheelchair user with “severely sexy” disabilities resulting from Cerebral Palsy, I was happy that I had the freedom to do some things myself… except fucking.

I was with a new lover one night, and we were engaged in a pretty hot session.  Amid the moans of agreement and pleasure, my lover yelled out: “Put it in me and thrust it deep!”   I paused (froze in terror is a more accurate description).   I wanted to oblige him, and I definitely wanted to fuck him.   I told him to guide me in (read: put me inside himself, because my spastic body couldn’t).   Once inside, he looked at me expectantly, waiting for something to happen.   I tried as hard as I could to thrust myself into him; I used all my spasticity in an attempt to propel my cock forward, while maintaining a sexy, satisfied composure.   Okay, if anybody had been watching or filming this scene, it would have looked ridiculous and impossible to replicate.   There we were; me beneath him, grunting and flailing about trying desperately to do him, while he looked down at me with the unmistakable disappointment on his face wherein he understood that I was “actually disabled.”   I remember that even though we finished playing, he wasn’t happy with the outcome by any means, and neither was I.  

At my next Occupational Therapy appointment, I was meeting a new therapist that I was slated to be working with.   I was kind of excited this time around because she was young, and I felt as though maybe I could be honest with her about what I really wanted help with.   We went through the typical roster of questions about my disability, my function, my abilities, and finally we came to the question about what I wanted from our time together.  What were my goals?  As she asked this, there was a glint in my eye – I had to go for it.   I told her that I wanted to gain functionality in one very specific area: I wanted to learn how I could, as a disabled man, thrust.   I was about as frank as I could be with her, so that there was no confusion as to what I was after.   Her face went beet red and I could tell that this was entirely out of her wheelhouse.     She admitted that she had never been asked this before, and didn’t know if there were any resources available for me.  Our session ended quickly, and I never brought it up with her again.   I felt as though my sexuality had been denied, and I had no place to turn.

Experiences such as this happen to the disabled community on a daily basis.  The systems that we rely on the most to thrive and function in society; the people who first begin to show us how our bodies actually work and what they are indeed capable of, fail to see as full, vibrant beings.   They, like so many others don’t consider that for us to be fully functional, we may want to learn how to fuck, felate or fist our partners as the sexy, seated sensual lovers that we are.

It is really unfortunate that the sexual education for the disabled community (if there is any offered at all) doesn’t even explain how sexuality and disability are intertwined within each other.  There is no guidebook or seminar on how a wheelchair user engages with their own body or others, or what going through puberty as a Queer Cripple is like. The sexual health component that talks about disability begins and ends with the risks associated if we engage in sexuality as members of a vulnerable population.   As we all know, there are so many more layers to it than that.

We need to start engaging with the Occupational Therapists and Physical Therapists to give them the tools to educate the disabled community on how their bodies work in the bedroom.   We ought to have seminars, videos, books and classes that prepare all up and coming therapists (who have been bludgeoned by the medical model of disability) that prepare them for what living with a disability is actually like in and out of the bedroom.  Trust me, it would have been super helpful when I started fucking other people to know what my actual abilities were, rather than to find out by consistently feeling ashamed and unworthy in the moment itself.    I would have had so much more sexual confidence if my Occupational and Physical Therapy team opened up the possibilities for me as a disabled man.

I want all Occupational and Physical Therapists, as well as soon to be students to know one thing: I am very happy that because of you I learned to hold a spoon all by myself when I was younger.  Now that I am a sort of well adjusted Queer Cripple adultish, I’d like to learn how to position myself to spoon with someone, and I’d like to be able to ask you about it.  My “fucktionality” should be just as important as my functionality.