What followed was absolute chaos. Pure, unadulterated terror. Those haunted house reaction pictures at the moment of surprise come to life. Girls were shoving each other out of the way but where we were running was unclear. Off the earth? Possibly.
This is about what we as individuals can tolerate comfortably before we’re pushed into emotional discomfort. We try to live in this comfort zone, but that’s impossible, because we’re human beings and rarely fit in any sort of box until we’re dead and literally lying in one.
9. Vial of one year’s worth of eye boogers from a couple at the Museum of Natural & Artificial Ephemerata.
That’s what’s tricky about disabled sexuality: most people, disabled or not or anyplace in between, have no idea how to discuss it. So fear of “saying the wrong thing” takes over instead and the problem feeds itself. We never talk about it because we don’t know how to start.
“But those walls don’t just break down when you stop needing them, and suddenly what was keeping you safe is now hindering personal development. It blows. It’s a whole process of demolition and rebuilding and relearning what all these feelings are, and it is awful and glorious in equal turns.”
“I sent a short, simple message saying that although I didn’t realize it fully until recently, I was indeed bisexual, that this was an undeniable part of my identity, and I could no longer comfortably hide this fact.
He never responded.”
I truly pity people who aren’t evolved enough to celebrate their heritage beyond that of a mass-raping, slave-trading, sex-trafficking murderer with a bad sense of direction.
“There’s nothing more I want to remember than every moment and sensation we shared. Our grinding hips at Queer Cumbia, feeling your drunken sweat drip onto my freshly implanted tits. The way we sloppily made out and smeared our red and burgundy lips all over our mouths, noses, forehead, and neck.”
It was the end of my innocence when I realized that being Black or being Queer in this country could get you killed. This was the time before Hurricane Katrina, before 9/11, before Ferguson. Before. Before. Before.
“I feel as if I am filled to the brim, fit to spill, with how much I love her and how much I resent being a secret. It makes me feel invisible and alone but I stand by her. I stand by her until I can’t anymore. When we break up, I am more determined than ever to come out to my father.”
“…it’s still completely acceptable for disabled people to hate ourselves.”
“How could an incapacitated person feel let alone be sexy, I catch myself thinking. Now, when I have those thoughts, I take out my camera.”
“I think that adopting a dog would make me “less of a sad sack,” according to a journal entry on the day that Marty is picked up by his human mother.”
“Instead of getting medical care, I had a work colleague help me to my hotel room and pour me a tumbler of whiskey. I downed the whiskey with a handful of aspirin and prayed for the pain to stop.”
“It is the weekend Beyoncé releases her “Formation” single and a bad queen has just performed it without breaking a sweat. I am watching the queen and learning that the way not to sweat is to move so little that every move seems like drama. I’ve got the not moving part down, which is how I am here at a club with a roommate whose friends want to meet the Black girl she let live in her house.”
“For a moment, I forgot about the summer of 2015. I forgot about the panic I experienced, the insomnia, the depression. We watched the new season of Orange is the New Black together and by the end of episode 12, it suddenly all came back.”
“Dear Editor: You are cordially invited to have brunch with country music icon Dolly Parton this Sunday, August 7th.”
“I wasn’t in denial, I had just become extremely successful at compartmentalizing difficult emotions that I had no idea what to do with.”
I need to call my “vulnerability thing” what it was: ableism. Internalized, sure, and deliberately kept that way (like it would only cause harm if it got out), but all the same. It made itself at home in me without any right to be there. And it stayed for so long because it looked like other things: perfectionism, intelligence, work ethic, high standards.
“I was unstable and grieving and more suited for a patient friendship than the dramas of new love. But I loved her and in thirst, I acted unlovingly by climbing into a lap in which I wasn’t welcome. My behavior is the definition of obscene.”