Posted: 1/6/2008 at 01:06 PM
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Like any normal, healthy, well adjusted 22 year old I spend a fair amount of time thinking about sex and talking about sex with my friends. Frankly, I would be worried if I wasn't. This past July I got an IM from this guy I used to know. I went to camp with him for 1 summer and the last time I've spoken to him was at my 16th birthday party. I don't think that he knows I have CP, but I'm willing to bet he's spent some time in my wheelchair. My wheelchair was at camp for the purpose of off camp field trips, but other then that it had a nice home behind the rock climbing wall. For the first few weeks of camp no one knew it was there, but one day I finally needed it and for some reason everyone immediately thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Most nights people would take it out from behind the rock climbing wall and take rides in it. Most of the 10th and 11th graders as well as our associated staff that summer took multiple rides in my chair.
So the guy IMs me and very quickly into the conversation says "I don't mean to sound rude or f*cked up or anything, but can you have sex?" To which I replied "You're not rude, yes I can have sex, but I choose not to." My friends were more outraged about it then I was. The way I feel, if people have questions I'd rather they just be upfront and ask.
I've never doubted that I could have sex. I have the same parts "down there" as everyone else. They look the same as everyone else's and they work the same as everyone else's. Mostly I just wondered about who I was going to have sex with. I'm not the kind of person who is going to go out and have sex for the sake of having sex. #1 getting an STI is not my idea of fun and #2 I want it to mean something. In order for sex to mean something that means that I'd have to be in a relationship with someone. But who would want to be in a relationship with me? I can't drive so every time we went on a date he'd have to pick me up. And if we ever went on the kind of date where I needed my wheelchair, he'd have to put it in the trunk for me. I can't lift it. He'd have to do everything, and who'd want to do that? Now of course that's not true. I'm not completely helpless, but it sure felt like it.
Then my thoughts focused on the practicality of having sex. I have inconvenient spasticity issues. The tightest muscles in my entire body are my inner thigh muscles. So the only thing I could think of was how painful sex would be for me. But I just decided I wasn't planning to have sex any time soon (back to that boyfriend issue) so I would cross that bridge when I came to it.
For Chanukah I got a $30 gift card to borders from my mom's cousin. I was waiting for that to get 2 books that I've really wanted. The first was The Rider's Fitness Program and the second was The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability, which was FINALLY rereleased a little over a month ago. They came in the mail from Amazon on Friday. I've read a few chapters of The Ultimate Guide to Sex and honestly, the book hasn't told me anything about sex that I haven't already heard. I took Sexuality in a Diverse Society. I didn't have a choice, unless I don't want to graduate. But The Ultimate Guide to Sex does have one very important thing in it that my sex class textbook doesn't have--real stories about real people with disabilities who have real sex lives. I don't have the book with me, but I believe my sex class textbook has two paragraphs about CP in the chapter that talks about disorders that lead to sexual dysfunction. How's that for an ego boost? The Ultimate Guide to Sex talks about people with disabilities who have lesbian sex, who have threesomes, I could go on, but you get the idea. And the authors didn't just interview one person for the book, they interviewed a lot of people. Defiantly a confidence booster. If people wanted to have sex with all these people then someone's bound to want to have sex with me eventually.
Usually when I go somewhere where there are lots of cute single Jewish college boys I find a chair against the wall or something and hope that no one looks at me or talks to me (other then the people I went with of course). Maybe next time I'll actually talk to someone. Not that I've really done much the last 3 days, unless grocery shopping counts as something that is, but I've been feeling very sexy. In reality I'm not as bad of a catch as I've spent years thinking that I am. I'm smart, I work out frequently, I know where I want to be in my life (even if I'm far from there right now), I've been told that I'm witty, and as I've recently started dressing better and putting on makeup more often, I've decided I'm really good looking. So I have a waddle. It probably attracts attention to my butt. That could work for me...
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you go girl. Way to go Ms. Cheryl, Keep up the good work and put yourself out there. You have a wonderful personality from what I have read. You are a very beautiful woman. I have many friends with CP and some have partners and vice versa if you have any questions are curious about anything let me know and we can chat about it. Hang in there you are a real winner and you have some major spunkittude about you.
Big Hugz,
VUR
Disability certainly complicates the dating scene, but it isn't always a deal breaker at all!
Most of my girlfriends have had disabilities themselves of one sort of another (so far i have a record of a handful of people with dwarfism, a deaf girl, and a quad). Sometimes (but not always), people with disabilities are more open minded about dating others with disabilities. It's something to think about.
I think this is somewhat humorous. So I'm at my best friends' house and I brought one of them the book and it's just hanging out on the coffee table like a coffee table book
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