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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Dear Cary,
I'm 25. Two weeks before my 20th birthday I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; it got progressively more annoying, and I've spent most of my out-of-the-house time in a wheelchair for the last three years. This was damn hard to deal with, I'll admit, lots of time in the counseling office at college, but I'm actually doing better than I would have expected even without the extra added bullshit of a major illness. I have a job I like, a fantastic boyfriend, decent apartment, cute cat.
My only problem, and this might sound really petty, is that people in wheelchairs aren't sexy. Now, I've never thought of myself as sexy or even particularly attractive, but there's something kind of nice about thinking that someone somewhere sees you on the street and thinks you're cute. And I know the boyfriend thinks I'm attractive, tells me all the time, far more compliments than I'm comfortable with, so I shouldn't be complaining in the first place. But when I'm in my chair, wheeling my ass around NYC, I can't help but feel completely asexual, and that's not a good thing to feel. I'm young and thin and I've been told reasonably attractive and funny and such, but I feel like I don't exist.
So, I dunno. Any thoughts? If you have any brilliant ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Nothing Cute to Sign Off With
Dear Nothing Cute,
What is this sexiness that you don't feel as you're wheeling your ass around New York? Is it a feeling you used to get because of how men looked at you, that told you they desire you, and thus that you exist? To live in someone else's mind as something he wishes to possess, or as a symbol of something he wishes to possess, is indeed a kind of existence, but it is existence that depends on the watcher, the follower, the gazer. It is also a kind of power over them, though limited and dependent, because of the value they place on what they see and desire, because of what they might give you in order to possess you, to experience your sexiness directly.
But the power and dependency of being seen and desired is not the only kind of power. There is some other power and sense of existence that does not depend on any other people, but it must be found inside.
I would say that it is possible for someone to exist even though people confer no value on her, but it requires one to turn inward long enough to cultivate an enduring love of self. You must cultivate a tender sense of awe about yourself, so that in your own presence you beam the way a satisfied wife beams in the presence of her husband. Then you have displaced that empty dependency on the kindness of strangers with a limitless source of amusement and pleasure that is yours and yours alone.
And then, because you seem so complete, because there is a kind of invisible fire in you, then people cannot help but notice it and find it sexy.
Now, I know that's abstract, so as a practical matter I would also urge you, while you are busy cultivating this inner fire, to join an organization of other people who use wheelchairs. I think that would help you very much. You may not wish to do it. You may wish to accentuate the differences rather than the similarities. But I think you will find it helpful.
