|
I’m
a 23-year-old straight male. Due to a rare autoimmune attack
three years ago, I have been indefinitely confined to a wheelchair,
paralyzed from the waist down. I was never sexually active
before the attack, so now I’m left to face my sexual future
from a significantly altered perspective. The important thing
to remember is that I can still engage in sex. I can’t speak
for all men that use wheelchairs, but I think a common misconception
that many people have is that we automatically can’t have
sex. I have always been very healthy and, aside from being
in a chair, I still am. I would like to pursue physical relationships
with women, but how do I let them know I can still perform
without just coming out and saying it? “Hey, nice to meet
you. I can still have sex, by the way. So, read anything interesting
lately?” There’s no casual way of approaching the subject.
Perhaps I should just bypass the tentative and the apprehensive
altogether. Are there any wheelchair fetishists out there
I should know about?
—Have
A New Desire Inside Can Anyone Please Perform Erotic Deeds?
P.S. Sorry, I couldn’t resist the acronym my sign-off would
create.
“Many
people think ‘paralyzed from the waist down’ means ‘turned
into a block of ice down there,’” the authors of The Ultimate
Guide to Sex and Disability—Miriam Kaufman, Cory Silverberg,
and Fran Odette—wrote in a group e-mail. (We’ll call the authors
KSO for short.) That paralyzed folks don’t have blocks of
ice in their pants is something we fully ambulatory idiots
can go our whole lives without learning. “[Non-paralyzed people]
have been raised to believe that it isn’t polite to ever ask
a person with a disability anything about their disability,
let alone about sex,” says KSO, “at least when they’re sober.”
So how do you let a woman know you’re ready, willing, and
able to bone her brains out? “The most important thing is
to see yourself as a sexual being and put out that vibe when
you are in the kind of places where you might meet someone,”
says KSO. “All those things people do, like making eye contact
and smiling (sensuously, mysteriously, impishly), get the
message across (staring at breasts doesn’t usually get the
desired effect). A comment like ‘I can do anything in this
chair except climb stairs,’ can also be useful. It might be
a good idea to take someone on a first date to see Murderball,”
a film about athletes in wheelchairs, “as it has some
fairly frank discussions about sex. It may not be in theaters
much longer, but you’ll be able to rent it soon!”
As for wheelchair fetishists, HANDICAPPED, they’re out there
and KSO has some good news for you: “They tend to be straight
women looking for guys who use wheelchairs.” Straight women—they’re
just a bunch of kinky, sex-crazed freaks, huh?
 |
I’m
a 27-year-old man with cerebral palsy and a longtime reader
who is hoping you can help me. I am dating a woman who also
has CP, and if you don’t know much about this disability let
me give you a short rundown: It can affect balance and muscle
tension, which renders all conventional movement void. So
think outside the box, man. We have run into some difficulty
when it comes to having sex. (I know what you’re thinking:
I don’t need the mental image of two gimpy people getting
it on in my head. But, hey, we need to get freaky too.) Our
bodies don’t move like other people’s; we are both in wheelchairs
and while sitting is no problem, my stiff legs make the missionary
position impossible. We have invented ways to get each other
off, but as far as doing the deed we are stumped. We have
tried many different positions, but we can’t get the angle
right. We have looked all over the place for help, including
the Internet, with little luck. There doesn’t seem to be much
info out there for us.
—Getting
Irritated (with) Missionary Position
You gimps seem to have a knack for acronym creation, GIMP,
nice work. OK, on to the advice:
“Things
do get more complicated when both partners have disabilities,”
writes KSO. “Some positions that have worked for other people
are: (1) On your sides facing each other, with one of her
legs over you. (2) On your sides facing in the same direction—this
is a particularly good one if her legs are also stiff. And
if either of you takes medication to relax your muscles, you
might want to ask your doctor if it is safe to take an extra
dose before having sex.”
“Many
people use a hand to guide the penis into the vagina, and
if you both have problems controlling hand movements, getting
started will take extra patience,” says KSO. “And keep in
mind that intercourse is not necessarily the be-all and end-all
sexual experience.”
I
am 14 years old and I live in South East London. I am currently
suffering from loneliness and I need someone to love. I’m
not lonely in the sense of not having friends or family, because
I have a lot of both.
But right now, I feel that I don’t have a life. Sad, right?
Some people may think I am too young for a boyfriend, but
I just need a friend who is a boy. But I’m disabled. I have
cerebral palsy—well, a form of it called hemiplegia—which
affects the right side of my body. It seems to me that everybody
has a boyfriend except me. Everyone’s lives are moving forward
and I’m being left behind. If things continue like this I
fear I’ll only have my love of reading. Please, please help
me find a boyfriend.
—Loveless
And So Sad
“I
know you will find this hard to believe,” writes KSO, “but
many girls your age, with and without disabilities, are going
through the same thing. Everybody does not have a boyfriend,
even if it seems like this to you.”
So what do you do? Well, I would advise you to indulge your
love of reading for now and trust that love will find you
eventually, just as it eventually found GIMP—but it may take
some time. “There are going to be guys who will only see your
disability, or who will assume that you aren’t a sexual person,”
says KSO, “but more 14-year-old boys will do that than 21-year-old
guys because people mature as they get older.” So you may
have to wait—and that’s the same advice I’ve given to scores
of able-bodied teenagers over the years, LASS.
Still, there are some steps you can take now, says KSO. “If
your group of friends is all girls, maybe it’s time to expand.
Your girlfriends may be feeling the same way you are and be
happy to invite some guys to eat lunch with you. Finding people
with similar interests is also a good place to start—school
clubs, after-school activities, and volunteer work are good
places to meet guys that you can connect with.”
A final word of warning: “Remember that because you are feeling
so needy,” says KSO, “you are vulnerable to someone who just
wants to have sex with you and isn’t really interested in
being a boyfriend. If someone says that you should have sex
with him because no one else is ever going to want to, run
the other way!”
mail@savagelove.net
|
Columns
& Opinions
