My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, apparently, according to some folks on this message board, I’m naive. I’ve basically deluded myself into thinking that people with disabilities can lead full lives without government sponsored sex.

I find it very difficult, and very frustrating to argue with these people, their ideas. They have such a different attitude than mine. They use being disabled as an excuse for not doing some very doable things. A guy actually argued that we can’t have a real social life because we require too much help from the “ABs” (able-bodieds), or because ultimately, we slow down and inconvenience people. Thinking like that is exactly what holds us back, but they’re so stuck in their “disability community,” they don’t understand that things can be different.

This is why I avoid the disability community, it’s too depressing.

Soon, you’ll be asleep. Drugs will travel through a tube and into a vein in your neck, and you’ll go down. It’ll feel like forty year-old scotch, like the best sex you ever had, and you’ll go under, totally lost and happy to be so.

Yet, before the drugs take you, before life fades to black, you wonder about things. You wonder if you’ll wake up again, you wonder where you’ll go if you don’t wake up. You wonder if you’re a good person, if you deserve a return trip to consciousness. Mostly, though, you think about her. You think about her gorgeous brown eyes, the little strand of curly brown hair that dangles behind her ear. You think about her voice, how the sound of it makes you happy. You never hear her enough, you never tire of talking with her. She’s ridiculously smart, endlessly interesting. You think about holding her close, her warmth against your chest. You think about holding her, kissing her, soft and slow-like. You wonder what she thinks about you, if you’ll see her again.

The drugs are hitting you now, and soon you’ll be asleep.

So, in a few hours I’ll be at the hospital getting my monthly trache change. Hopefully, I’ll have something good to write about afterward, or I’ll die and write nothing. كيف تلعب بوكر

If I die before the zombies come, I’m going to be buried. My grave will be marked with a headstone, and on that headstone will be my epitaph…

He died like he lived, lying down.

Or maybe…

Epitaph by Michael Phillips

I hope I died in a really interesting way, something I would have enjoyed writing.

Or even…

If you see him again, shoot him in the head. He’ll go down permanently if you shoot him in the head. Then, you’ve got to burn him.

What do you see on your epitaph?

So, there’s talk of a social program in Zurich to help disabled people get laid, and apparently, I’m mentioned in a discussion about it. Things like this are totally disturbing, and totally frustrating. Honestly, I absolutely cannot stand the “disability community.” In my experience, it’s such a ridiculously fucked up group of people, they accept the wrong things and don’t fight for the right ones. They totally accept stupid conventions like, “disabled people can’t date and have sex because they’re disabled.” Society says it, disabled people accept it, and that’s that. The bar is set low, and disabled people take it. They accept programs that provide a mercy fuck, and don’t understand that we should want and fight for equal footing with society as a whole, equal being the operative word. We’re all really just one community, we’re all people.

I hate disability message boards, especially ones about dating and sex. People say, “oh, I’m disabled, no one will go out with me.” People say, “I’m hideous and I’ll never have sex.” I hate reading these things. I say, you’re not dating because you don’t have proper access to the world. I say, you’re not having sex because your attitude is garbage, have a little confidence. Learned helplessness and low self-esteem are not attractive on anyone.

People with disabilities need access to assistive technology, to personal assistants, to careers, to independence. Given these things, a person with disabilities has the chance to get out and lead a decent life, as much as anyone. If a person has these chances and still wants to hire a prostitute, fine. At least they’re no different than any senator or CEO.

I’m funded for assistive technology and personal assistants, and I gladly take that funding. It lets me contribute to society, I get and I give back. I go out with friends to clubs, bars, restaurants, wherever. I meet new people, I go on dates. A few months after I hired my first assistant, I met an amazing woman and we fell in love. We were together a long time, we had crazy passionate sex. We’re not together now, but at least we had something real. Even if I never find that again, it won’t be for lack of chances, or lack of trying.

I mean, I’m different in that I access the world very differently, but I want the same things as anyone else. I accept that I need help just to leave the house, but given that help I know that I can succeed or fail on my own. I want basic opportunities to live a good life, but I sure as shit don’t want a guaranteed government sponsored fuck.

One day the world will end, our planet will die. There are some very likely ways we’ll meet our demise. Our sun definitely won’t last forever, whether it burns out, or explodes, we’re all dead. It’s also possible that we’ll kill ourselves long before that happens, whether it’s with bombs we use on each other, or pollution that turns our planet against us, suicides of a sort. These are such conventional ways to go, they’re not how I want to go.

When the world ends, I want it to end spectacularly. I want the walking dead to pound at my door, to shatter my windows. I want some rotting living corpse, some living dead girl to hold me close and chew out my throat. I want to feel her cold lips against my neck, her dead hands clutching my shoulders. My blood would pour down my chest, and I’d get sleepy. I’d bleed out happy, knowing that we don’t stop at death. I’d sleep, and I’d wake up.

How do you want us to go?

You can’t breathe. It’s hardware failure, the machine that pumps air into a hose that connects to a hole in your throat is letting you down. That isn’t exactly right, it’s really the hose that’s letting you down, an unexpected disconnection. Air that’s supposed to be rushing into your lungs is rushing nowhere in particular, steady and quiet-like. You’re quiet too, you can’t yell, you can’t move. You’re also quite alone, alone and not breathing.

Taking a moment, after the initial shock fades, you find that you can manage little gulps of air. The muscles in your chest aren’t entirely useless. So, you breathe small breaths, shallow breaths. You know that these breaths will be gone soon enough, that your chest will tire of its job. All you can do is space your breathing, not waste anything in panic. There’s really no reason to panic. Someone will either find you, or they won’t. You’ll either die, or you won’t. You’re strangely calm on these points.

You think about a woman, the one you used to think about to feel safe in these situations. You think about how she’s gone and far away, disconnected. You miss that connection to her more than you miss the connection that would bring air into your lungs. You know it’s ridiculous, but you also know it’s absolutely true. You wonder if you’ll ever feel that kind of connection again. You wonder if you’ll write about this later. You hear air rushing to nowhere, you wait.

Well, I’m back from guest blogging at Ecstatic Days and it was amazing, but I’m a little exhausted. I was definitely nervous that I would suddenly forget how to write and completely embarrass myself, but I didn’t. I managed to hold it together and write consistently decent posts. I wrote about why I write the way I write, tattoos, music, suicide, whatever was on my mind.

I met some really amazing people, fellow writers, I felt very comfortable.  It was a bit surreal discussing my writing with KJ Bishop here and here. She’s an absolutely brilliant writer and author of  The Etched City, one of the best novels I’ve ever read. 

At any rate, I’m home with plenty more to write, but not right now.

So, I’m out with my friend, Sarah and my assistant, Sarah, in Ybor City. Ybor is pretty much entirely bars, clubs and tattoo shops, with a few really good restaurants. لعبة الخيل عبر الانترنت I’m a regular just about everywhere. سباق الخيل مباشر Bartenders know me, waiters know me, the tattoo artists definitely know me.

We’re there on this particular evening for my seventeenth tattoo. It’s one word, “Downer,” etched into my left wrist. Lately, I get my tattoos from a fellow named, Colt, a tattoo artist like his father before him. His mom and dad are usually around the shop, or the bar next-door. It’s an odd little family business, but they’re happier than most nine-to-fivers, it’s obvious they don’t go home and hate each other.

“Downer, like Xanax and shit?” he asks.

I don’t have a computer when I go out, it’s just not practical. Whenever I’m out and about, I talk to people using the alphabet. I should explain, talking with the alphabet involves a person saying each letter of the alphabet and me signaling with my eyebrows when to stop at a particular letter. Then, each letter gets written down in a notebook.

I tell him, “no, it’s a Nirvana song.” I tell him, “but also, I do really like downers.” Morphine, Demerol, we’re old friends. They’re the upside of getting tubes pulled out of and shoved into the hole in my throat. I have this done every five weeks, one doesn’t want their trache getting stale. Still, it’s not a drug tattoo, I have two already. Been there. Done that.

Really, Downer is one of my favorite Nirvana songs. To me, it’s an indictment against insincerity. Downer mocks the fact that we do things and say things because we’re “supposed to,” and not because they’re right, or honest. People pray to God, whether they believe or not. People thank God out of habit or fear, whether He deserves it or not.

I don’t want to live my life pretending to be someone I’m not, simply to fit some arbitrary standard of “normal.” I try to show that in my writing, I try to show that in the words that are etched into my flesh.

Have you ever felt strongly enough about words to consider making them a part of your body? كيف تلعب بلاك جاك

So, I got mentioned at NPR.com. Oh, and look, a pig just flew past my window. I expect the Rapture tomorrow.