And Then of Course ...

RAW LANGUAGE IN POST NOT ONCE OR TWICE BUT OFTEN

Naughty Rating #$%@

Post is part of the Valenties, Let's talk about sex blogging day

It was my first real outing in my new power wheelchair. Joe had sent me to pick up some bread and I found a couple of loaves that looked perfect. They needed to be sliced so I lined up at the counter behind a woman, of a certain age, who turned and looked down at me with an expression that told me that she hadn't had a good shit in years. She looked away, then back, then away again. Finally, as the clerk was taking time filling her order, she turned to me and said, "You know what I've always wondered about you people ...?"

Now I immediately knew that by 'you people' she didn't mean 'gay people' or 'bright people' or 'working people' or any possibility other than 'disabled people'. I smiled my nicest smile and said, "And what would that be?" She took the package from the clerk and I handed my loaves over to be sliced. She paused waiting for me to finish then said, "What do you do to fill all the hours in the day?"

I coulda said that I worked. I coulda said that I spent time with friends. I coulda said a lot of things. But I didn't. I said, "All I can say is thank heaven's for televison and food ... and then of course, there's the fucking." Her face fell and I think she may just have had that good shit she'd needed these last many years. She glared at me and said, "How dare you speak to me that way?"

I said, "You asked."

Then she full on glowered, "Well, looking at you, I believe about the television and food ..."

I said, "If you don't believe me about sex, smell my breath."

An unpleasant interchange ended but you should have seen the shiny eyes of the woman who cut my bread.

After having lived with the gay stereotype for the first half of my life, you know the 'gotta fuck em all, one at a time or in a group ...' stereotype, it looks like I'm going to live the next half of my life with the idea that disabled people are as sexual as potted plants. I get tired of having to reassure others, strangers whom I owe nothing to, that I am fully human, that I have hopes, dreams, a job and a sex drive that still has a bit of gas, a stick shift and manual transmission.

Why is it that when people see the wheelchair they can't even imagine someone paying me for work, asking me for my opinion, or using me as a sex toy? Why is it so hard to believe that disabled people can want, can lust, can ply someone with alcohol and flattery? Why is it so hard to believe that I may have a full day of enterprise, of entertainment and of intercouse? How can we have come to believe that there are some who are human, in name only?

So, I don't regret what I said in the store. I know I shook her up. I know she thinks I'm crude. But big deal, enough with worrying about what other people think of me.

It's time they worry about what I THINK of them.

(And by the by, I get terrific service from the ladies in the bakery section. One even winks at me)