2005-10-02 - 9:38 a.m.
Recently I asked my former teacher from BioMed: Community Health 168-9 �Pathology to Power: Disability, Health & Community�, the best class I ever took, if this journal would be of interest to students this year. Although I didn�t write as often until after that semester was over, my entries were apparently amusing enough to the teaching assistants and classmates who read them to give my journal a place on the class website�s �Distractions� page. After all, this is a chronicle of the lived experience of disability. And it should always be remembered by students that disability is not something that happens �out there�, but a presence in every arena of life, even within the ivy-covered hallowed halls of a university.
Until relatively recently, students with disabilities weren�t much of a part of college experience. Oh sure, there was Helen Keller 100 years ago � blind, deaf, endlessly patient, saintly, waiting to get fucked in heaven (as said in one of our readings that looked at Helen Keller and Frida Kahlo as opposing approaches to disability and passion) � but she had Annie Sullivan there with her in school 24/7. But at Brown now, there are students far more disabled than I am. Their ability to negotiate the academic environment independently is made far easier by modern technologies. Imagine what a pain it was communicating with a professor before email. More than that, social values have changed completely. Imagine a pre-ADA world in which someone in a wheelchair couldn�t get up an uncut curb and it was considered okay for others to just shake their heads at this pointless effort anyway. Why doesn�t that crip just stay home?
In class once, someone asked why they didn�t really know people with disabilities. I realized it was because there hadn�t been much opportunity for shared experience. The non-disabled just didn�t normally encounter the disabled in their daily life. It�s sort of like how white Americans didn�t normally interact with blacks as peers in pre-civil rights society. Learning that African-Americans are just regular people just didn�t usually happen. (I suppose a white person could have made some forced, disingenuous effort: �Say, you�re black! Wanna go to lunch?�) Shared participation in life is the great connector and my feeling is that people with disabilities are simply becoming a more regular presence in all aspects of the world.
My teacher asked me if I would be willing to speak with this year�s class. I�m going to a wedding in New York and then a wedding in Boston the next weekend. So in between, I�ll get to talk to the class! The subject for that week (Oct. 12th) is disability and sex. Fortunately sex is a topic I know something about, or at least pretend to. It is furthermore something all regular-age undergrads should be interested in (well, the sex part anyway�). There will be several other guest speakers that week. Perhaps we can all debate just who has more sex. Well, I don�t really know and honestly I�m a little nervous about being a presenter on the other side of the classroom.
Looking through my old entries, I notice there�s a whole thread here about romance. It develops so nicely to a happy ending (well, not actually an ending, but the start of a new phase in my life) that it almost seems too good to be true. I start off brooding about my top 5 ex-girlfriends (although I didn�t write about this until much later), saying farewell to my longterm relationship, and struggle with the idea that, now that I�m a gimp, I should put the whole romance element of life behind me and call it a day. Eventually I realize I�m still a part of the world, desires and all. I start asking people out and dating.
Eventually I realized I was still dateable. I started seeing someone and we kissed. And most magically, I re-encountered a top 5 ex I�d dated in high school and we got back together. We�re still together. Hell, I hope we always will be. I�ll write an entry soon about who she is and why I love her so. That same teacher once told us relationships that start after the onset of disability in one partner actually have a lower rate of break-up/divorce than relationships between people without disabilities. I guess this gave me such hope at a time I badly needed it that I emailed the teacher to ask if it was really true. She pointed out that if it weren�t true, she wouldn�t have said it.
While disability is now just a part of my life and so is an element in many entries, there are some having to do specifically with aspects of it, either MS in particular or gimpiness more generally. (And I should note that I sometimes refer to myself as �gimp� or �crip�. I think this kind of cuts the tension people sometimes feel about whether it�s okay to talk about my pretty blindingly obvious disability. However, I think these terms are okay for someone with a disability to use, but not for someone without; it�s kind of like black people and �nigger�. So of course my disability is an open topic, just don�t call me �gimp� or I�ll kick your ass with my one good leg.)
So check out �Patriots Day�, �my girl Laura�, �the space between� (I see a lot more of this now that I use a wheelchair), �Federal Give-A-Gimp-A-Job Program!�, �Job Fair�, �one year of gimpiness�, �scootering�, �MS friends�, �wheelchair�, �dismissed from dinner�, �solidarity�, or �disability and faith�. I notice there�s also a bunch of entries about the endgame of my career at Brown you might find amusing: �home stretch�, �bring the pain�, �it�s gonna be alright�, �done�, �a solemn promise�, and even �the next generation�. And of course the �Brown fight song�.
Anyway, poke around here. I hope most of my entries are compelling or at least decently written. And check back. I�m going to keep writing, promise. Maybe I�ll see you on October 12th.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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