Weddings and Differences

This past weekend my cousin got married. I'm very happy for the girl and wish the best for her. We're close in age and she's always been one of my favorite cousins. I got excited when I heard about the wedding; I looked forward to the festivities and the fact that she was moving on to a new phase in her life.

I'm usually anti-shopping but I got really excited about prepping for this wedding. To hell with the bland white fitted shirt and tie! I went with a rather flashy purple with a stripped purple tie. I matched it with a pair of checkered black skater shoes (the only shoes that will fit with my ankle brace) and a matching belt. Add contacts, a few accessories, plus my cane. By the time I was done I thought I looked rather dapper if I do say so myself. Not overly gay, I was just gay enough to set myself apart from the crowd.

Oh so fancy!

I got on the dance floor at the reception and showed off my crippled white man dance. Since I come from a large family of people who can't dance I blended right in, oddly enough. Each of my family members has one move that they use over and over. My uncle's involves keeping his hands limp, waving them from side to side and swaying his hips to the beat. My brother pulled out the dice throw. I used my leg like a third leg and danced to the one Rihanna song they play as well as a few pop tunes when they weren't playing Bruce Springsteen (the DJ catered to every age group).

I'm out to my extended family but they try and act like they don't notice. And for the most part they don't really care. Even the most conservative out my already conservative religious just try and act as though they don't know or don't care. The only one to mention the fact that I recently came out of the closet the entire weekend was my uncle who threw it into a joke. He confronts everything upfront with an off-color joke then asks you how you're doing. He even asked the boy I was with last time I saw my uncle, my now ex-boyfriend. I prefer this method to beating around the bush endlessly.

The only benefit that being out to the clan is that with me the majority of my family will skip the probing questions on my love life. I don't have to explain that no I don't have a girlfriend and I'm not in the market. +1 evasion skills! All I had to do was make them uncomfortable with my sexual orientation.

 

+1 evasion skills

I love coming to visit the greater clan (31 first cousins, just for reference) but they give my life a little perspective, especially seeing many relatives my age falling into nuclear families. I'm from a Catholic family so lots of babies are everywhere. The pressure is building to go get married and have lots of kids. It is nice to be in the NONE OF THE ABOVE category. I think I want kids down the line but they don't just happen for a gay couple. They take work and planning. As an ex of mine once said “Gay men can't get each other pregnant but that doesn't mean we won't keep trying!”

Having a gimp leg has diverted some of the negative energy I'm sure is brewing. They don't know how to deal with me as a gay man so they focus on my improved balance and walking skills. This is one place where playing the cripple card has it's benefits. Play it where you can I guess.

I guess my point is that though I had fun at my cousin's wedding it reminded me that I'm outside that slice of American life, because of a disability or sexuality. At least it was interesting to see the heterosexual in their natural habitat.

Jeans, a Swimsuit, and a Wheelchair

One side affect of not using your core muscles, your abs and obliques, is that these areas begin to lose their hold on your stomach. This was what I experienced when I lost the ability to walk and was confined to a wheelchair for over two years. Slowly, you will develop what my family and I have nicknamed "Wheelchair Belly", a very particularly body shape that makes it easy to identify how long someone has been in a wheelchair (my disabled friends who have spent any time in a wheelchair will likely know what I'm talking about). I was particularly conscious of it because I had started so skinny, almost unhealthy looking.

My old image of myself began to blur...

In two years time I went from a 32'' to a 40'' waist. I did my physical therapy and I tried to stay in shape but to no avail. I had a lower injury (paraplegic), paralyzed from about my waist at my worst, so I never underwent the body transformation that you will see in someone who is quadriplegic. Even so we live in a world that is constantly bombarding us with images of the ideal body, and mine just wasn't it.

                   So this is why I'm not picking up more guys. I need a WATCH! 

Wait... nobody wears watches anymore.

This is especially true in the gay community, where youth is idolized and those who are out of shape are often seen as somewhat inferior. This is not true of all gay men out there but a broad generalization about the community. You can see it's mark everywhere.

Last summer I went to a gay pride festival on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was an amazing time, in general. I was excited to say the least about it; I even enlisted the help of a art-talented friend to help my rainbowize my wheelchair. At this point in my recovery I was using my leg brace but I was still using my wheelchair to travel any significant distance. The event was almost entirely on grass and it was annoying to get around but with the help of the friend I went with I managed.

Rainbowized Wheelchair

One of the booths they had at the event was a swimwear booth. They of course were selling the type of suits that only gay men can seem to be able to pull off. And of course to emphasize the point the company had hired several scrumptious individuals, fit boys with six packs and tans, to show off the rather skimpy merchandise. To say the least they made an impression.

They all looked pretty much like this. Scrumptious indeed...

To cut a long story short both my friend and I bought a pair. He managed to pull his off rather well I thought. As for mine, I felt incredibly self conscious. Not only had I never worn so revealing an outfit, I was still pastey-white, as I never got back my skin color after months indoors following my accident; added to this were all the scars from my multiple surgeries. The icing on the cake was the wheelchair belly, which made me feel like I had a neon sign over my head "Gay Cripple! Come See The Show!" This is not to say that everyone at the event was an adonis; far from it. Eventually I overcame my initial fears and wore the suit anyway.

The feeling of being on display didn't go away and to a certain extent it still hasn't. This isn't news for anyone: gay, straight, male, female, disabled, or able bodied. We all feel the imposing weight of what we feel we should look like, making us to feel like we are are not measuring up. We live in an image conscious world and there isn't a way around it.

Words to live by.

It's true that looks shouldn't be important, that it is the person inside that matters. Big surprise, this idea is hard to put into practice. We need to remember that no matter how we look if we don't feel good about ourselves we will always find flaws, the cracks in the armor we put up. A movie I watched on Netflix, The Adonis Factor, talks about the gay community and how we put image before everything else in our lives. This entry is more or less a confession of how I let that mindset take over.

I'm happy to say that now that I'm walking full time my wheelchair belly is starting to ebb a little. It's not gone (two years is a long time to wash away) but it's on its way. I even dropped two inches off my waist, the first backward size change I've had in over two years. Even if I do manage to change back to the boy I was (unlikely in any event) I don't want to forget what it feels like to be an outsider, to be on display. For only when you are on the outside looking in do you realize how fake and superficial that kind of attitude can be. While I still don't mind the eye candy, I don't spend as much time wishing I was one of those twinks in a speedo. In the end it's the happiness we make for ourselves, not our looks, that determine how happy we are at the end of the day.

Now all I need are a new pair of jeans...

 The real reason gays are so into fashion: Those that aren't well dressed are attacked by GAY NINJAS!

Disability Online

http://www.disabilityonline.org.uk/

This is a shout out to one page that has supported me through everything I've gone through, Disability Online. I originally found them through their facebook page. A forum for advise, support, and random gay disabled fun, they provide some practical advice:

As a Gay Disabled man there can be double Prejudice and this can be soul destroying; I found that attending everyday centres for information I felt sometimes that I wasn’t being helped the way that I would have expected and also had a feeling that I was on my own. As a gay man we all know only too well the pit falls that we face in the LGBT community which can include Homophobia.

The LGBT community is also known to be prejudiced against many different groups, not the least of which being the disabled, the old, different racial groups, different body types... the list goes on. Well here we are and it is time to stand together as one. I for one am going to stand proud, declaring myself a proud gay man. And if prejudiced queen or two doesn't like it, I can think of a few wonderful places they can go jump. So be proud of who you are, ignore the haters, and have a blast! In the end, nothing really annoys them more.

Welcome to Gay Turtle Walkabout

This is an offshoot of my main blog The Turtle Walks, where I document my recovery from paralyzed to limping around with a cane. If you liked the posts about dancing and going to the clubs you'll LOVE this one. If not don't waste your time because this is more of that. But if you do, hit the like button ====>

So what's it like to be a disabled gay man? Here's an sample from when I first came out of the closet.

The original version

This is my way of coming out to those I know. Many of you already knew, heard rumors, heard through facebook, but now here it is from the horse's mouth. I am gay.

Big woop, now on to the important stuff. 

Even before the accident I felt like an outsider looking in. I tried my entire life not to be noticed, to fit in, to be somewhere in the middle of everyone. So much so that life took me completely by surprise when I suddenly became the focus of everyone's attention. After a lifetime of trying to blend in this was hell.

A friend of mine I met in rehab was in a chair and thankfully went on to get full use of his legs back. He told me that he was looked at differently in each stage of his recovery. Before he was unnoticed. While he was in the chair he was looked at with pity, looked down upon. When he moved on to the leg brace he was looked at with sympathy but with less judgment that he was helpless.

It still drives me nuts sometimes how I'm never out of people's attention, my own mini spotlight. When I'm not in my chair I'm using my leg brace which makes a loudish groaning noise every step. Kids stare especially, since they haven't learned society's way of staring, averting eyes, stare, avert eyes... it's more direct and allows me to address the issue much more easily. Sometimes I just want to want to scream to scream at people "yes I'm in a chair/using a leg brace. Take a picture it'll last longer." But I was raised to be polite so I try and be nice. As I was coming out of the locker room today in my wheelchair going to the pool, a little kid asked me "why are you in a wheelchair?" within 2 seconds of seeing me. This way I can at least get the issue off the table immediately and don't have to worry about the pressure to be awkwardly polite.

I feel I have an obligation, to myself and to those around me. I secretly wished someone out there would out me, force me to be honest with myself and those around me. But I have to take on some courage and do this myself. Since I'm in the spotlight already, I can show people that it's okay to be different, it's okay to walk in the light. I was terrified that I would have to stand up and be honest but now people can know that there is life after an accident, life after the closet. Now the statistic I've heard so often stated is that 1 in 10 men are gay. Now if that is true there are more people in the closet than most people can imagine; they should have someone to look out to and see a world where it is okay to be different.