Disability Style
by Danielle Sheypuk
On a fall day in 2000, I, an ad-veture-seeking country girl, moved from rural Pennsylvania to the Big Apple. Bright-eyed and fun-loving, having spent all of my 22 years in a wheelchair, I’d tasted independence in college and was oh-so-eager to spread my wings and fly to the unfamiliar, inviting New York City.
“How could her mother let her move to that big city alone?” opined the neighbors. “For
God’s sake, she’s in a wheelchair!” Those were exactly the attitudes I was fleeing. I knew I was capable of a lot more socially and romantically than my small town could offer.
Sure, everyone thought I was going to New York to go to graduate school. But I knew the future had more in store for me. It was time to leave my comfortable, safe life with family to take care of me, and see if I could become an independent, sexual woman like all the able-bodied women around me. It was a challenge and the City called.
So, off I went to a Greenwich Village studio apartment that was way too small for my motorized wheelchair. A friend of a friend became my personal care attendant and the daunting thought of living far from home gradually slipped into a very do-able, exciting reality.
And I started dating. It began with a kiss at 3 a.m. with my blind next-door neighbor who also was a graduate student at New York University. Then, there was a movie date with another graduate student.
Wow, here in the City, it was different. It seemed I could have a 6-inch pink
Mohawk or be attached to my personal assistant with a studded dog collar and leash and no one would notice, never mind that I used a wheelchair.
Feeling braver and excitingly, uniquely different, urged by my wide circle of able-bodied friends who
were doing it, I signed up for the online dating service Match.com. I hesitated at first to post on my profile that I use a wheelchair, afraid no one would respond. But guys did … many, many guys.
I met guys who rejected me on the first date, and guys who missed the part that mentions my wheelchair and, once told, seemed to forget my phone number. Let’s not forget the men who are actually attracted to disability and turned off by able-bodied women — an unusual breed indeed, whom some people consider fetishists.
Some dates said the wheelchair didn’t matter, but apparently they’d envisioned me as a perfectly able-bodied woman, just sitting down. They tried to adjust, but failed. And thankfully, there have been men who acknowledged that disability is just part of me, and it was me they were interested in.
With all the rejection, I question: Is not being able to walk like having bubonic plague? It’s just a disability, I want to say. What’s the big deal? I have so many great friends; why does dating have to be so radically different from friendship?
Sometimes I wonder if I wonder about my disability too much. Does it deserve the blame for my current relationship status (single)? New York City is full of fabulously single women with the “it” job, social life and look, who are lamenting the same thing — so many that they inspired the hit HBO series “Sex and the City.” It seems the City toughens everyone’s dating skin, regardless of age, race, gender or disability.
I see my able-bodied girlfriends struggling to find “the one” and wonder: Am I doomed? Will I decide to compromise my standards if I meet someone who accepts my disability and seems “good enough”? No, I’m going to keep my eyes open for someone compatible with me in mind, body and soul.
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