2007-01-15 - 11:03 a.m.
I transitioned to this a few months ago, but it’s sometimes impossible to sense at the moment it happens. I am now Geoff 8.7. Like software, I think I progress through versions, with point upgrades and full upgrades. I first decided (or realized) this ascension was taking place a few years ago, but I’ve retroactively identified all the versions I’ve gone through.
Geoff 1.x was childhood Geoff, when I was little. Geoff 2.x was Geoff at Saint Ann’s School (or maybe just me in high school; it’s a little unclear this far back). Geoff 3.x was me at Harvard for college round 1 (I guess Geoff 3.2 was when I went to San Francisco for the year 1993-94 in between stints at school). Geoff 4.x was the dark days I spent being purposeless after I failed out of school (say mid-1995 to later 1998).
Geoff 5.x began when I started to get myself back together. I moved to the North End of Boston. This move was in no small part because I recognized (subconsciously at least) that Cambridge, where I lived was a haven for the bright-but-crazy and I’d never develop normalcy unless I left it, even just to go across the river to Boston. I picked the North End to live in because it initially reminded me of the Brooklyn of my youth (how wrong I was; by the time I left it reminded me more of Italian-American Disneyland…)
I got a serious girlfriend. I stopped random freelance work on small indie films and started taking regular day jobs, first as a temp and then for a real estate developer, where I discovered my interest in urbanism. In some ways, this pulling myself back on track was the toughest iteration I’ve been through. (Of course, it’s a damn good thing I did it.)
Then I got sick and progressed to Geoff 6.x. Looking back, I can see I had a growing dissatisfaction with what I was doing at the start of this phase. I think I was tired of muddling along with a mediocre, low-paying job. I wanted to be an Ivy Leaguer again. I restarted college at Brown during this iteration; perhaps that was Geoff 6.5. Maybe 6.6 was second semester and 6.7 and 6.8 were when I lived in Boston with Alithea, commuting down to Brown.
Being sick was at first just a kick in the head; I didn’t have any serious physical symptoms yet. But in late spring 2004, I developed visible disability. Alithea soon left me (doubtless thinking “Wait a minute – I didn’t sign on for this…”) and I moved back to Providence. I started life as an identifiable crip, living by myself in a small, Brown-owned apartment and working for the summer at the Providence Plan.
I was Geoff 7.0. Geoff 7.1 was the first semester and Geoff 7.2 was the second. During these phases, I came to terms with my disability and learned better how to negotiate moving through the world. Geoff 7.5 started when I graduated and shortly thereafter re-met Nya. This was the phase when we first fell back in love. We went to Lilydale together, where I met Nya’s family. Later we lived together for a month in Denver.
Moving to Chicago marked the start of Geoff 8.0. A few months later, some of the coldness of reality set in and I became Geoff 8.1. In pretty quick succession, the weather turned cold, I found out the truth about Social Security disability benefits, and I got turned down to participate in an experimental MS treatment. Geoff 8.5 began when Nya and I got engaged. Geoff 8.6 started when we became homos.
Now I’m Geoff 8.7. I didn’t realize what was happening at the time, but when we went to DC for my friend’s wedding, I was having a very serious flare-up of my MS. It left residual damage. Like now I can no longer walk, even by grabbing onto walls and furniture like I used to. Now I use a motorized wheelchair and we’ve rearranged the furniture to make this easier.
I actually bought the powerchair over the summer and just didn’t use it. It was being advertised on craigslist for super-cheap and I figured I should get it for someday, just in case. Good thing I did; best $200 I ever spent. The guy selling it said it had been used by his father who was now deceased. He had MS and wanted the chair to be passed on to a young person with MS. I said I was happy to volunteer.
It’s from like 1999 and originally cost thousands of dollars, so I guess I got a good deal. But it annoyingly doesn’t work in the rain. There’s all kinds of electrical hardware just hanging out in the open. So I still use my manual chair in bad weather. It also irritatingly doesn’t fit under a table. Back in the day, it was decided that since standard table height is 30”, wheelchair arm height should also be 30”. These days many wheelchairs have diagonal corners on the arms, so there’s room to slide under a table, but this one does not.
Still, these are relatively minor quibbles. Generally, I’m extremely happy with the chair and the independence it gives me. Nya’s happy too, since using it means there are far fewer opportunities for me to fall down and maybe hurt myself. And I can travel quite far when I use it outside. I never really was very good at pushing my chair around by hand.
I don’t know if there’ll be any more point upgrades to Geoff 8.x. But I’m very much looking forward to Geoff 9.0 when I marry Nya.
© 2007 Geoff Gladstone
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