Preppy blond dude to the rescue!

But I don't need or want rescuing, and he's not my type

Full disclosure: I’ve definitely had moments where a hot person asks me if I need help with something and the reality is that I don’t, actually, but I’ll take the second to grab their hand or touch their shoulder or whatever effortless form this “assistance” takes. I shouldn’t divulge such secrets to the non-disabled masses, but discussing the advantages of having a body that society insists on labeling by limitation will, I hope, start to lesson the presumed “abled-envy” that too many of you assume we have. I don’t know a single non-disabled person I would rather look like or live as. I doubt you’re suprised by this if you know me, but the fact shocks passersby, and I’m not sure why, since they’re looking right at me, and…well.

Before I get to the tale of my hapless knight in the most rusted hole-ridden armor any battle has ever seen, I’ll tell you the story of what inspired me to start this newsletter. I was walking down the street on a beautiful day, one of those rare August days when San Francisco decided it would offer us a real summer: warm air instead of the more characteristic damp cold, a clear blue perfectly-clouded sky instead of the usual soupy fog, general lightness in the air instead of the head-cracking anxiety that seems to pervade this aggressively neurotic town. (I like it here, I do. But it really makes me understand how New Orleanian I am, and that’s a different topic).

I was walking down this idyllic summer street in, I am pleased to say, my very own neighborhood, having just gotten back from the gym (“lookin’ good, feelin’ good”, you know how it is, I hope). I was listening to one of my all-time favorite audio experiences, Pamela des Barres’ timeless memoir I’m with the Band, performed by the endlessly lively Queen of the Groupies herself. I am in love with Pamela des Barres and I have been for 18 years). I was in a fantastic mood, and feeling especially grateful, as I daily do, for the particular headphones that calm my relationship to SF’s anxiety and remake my hours anew. (My partner, a former tech worker and lifelong ‘tech person,’ helped me find the best of the best, and I splurged, because access to music and audiobooks with full sonic integrity is truly vital to my mental health).

An elderly woman stopped me. She started talking. I couldn’t hear her. She made it urgently clear that what she had to say was direly important. She gestured for me to slip my headphones down and I worried: did she need help? I slipped them down as directed, respect your elders etc., and she said, “DO YOU HAVE CEREBRAL PALSY?!””

I was surprised; no one tends to guess correctly unless they have it themselves. “Yes,” I said, somewhat skeptically.

She shoved her phone in front of my face. “I JUST READ THIS,” she declared triumphantly. “LOOK! Botox! Botox MIRACLE CURE.”

I did not have the time, energy, or inclination to discuss the dangers of this so-called cure so I said, “I like my body how it is, goodbye.”

I was going to walk away, the way that white people on the West Coast prefer everyone does, and then she says, “I was just trying to help.”

I turned back around and faced her. “No you weren’t,” I said. “You were not trying to help. You would have helped me if I was carrying something and trying to open a door and struggling to open it because my hands were full and you offered to open the door. What YOU were assuming was that there is something wrong with my body. But there is NOTHING wrong with my body. I work out longer, harder, and more dedicatedly than a LOT of the (here I made VERY AGGRESSIVE, weapon-like finger quotes) ‘able-bodied’ people I know, and the guys that hit on me at the gym? I don’t wear a shirt like this when I’m always in a sports bra — they are HOT. And my partner of ten years? He’s hot too! And a phenomenal cook. It’s a GREAT LIFE.”

I don’t know how much of this Madame heard. She was too busy sputtering, defending herself, trying to get me to understand. “God bless you,” I said. “Goodbye.” I thought that was the end of it, but since she kept trying to get me to see what I refused to see about her wisdom and intent (I remember the phrases “I never meant to” and “things you don’t want to hear”) I screamed.

I mean I really, REALLY screamed. We’re talkin’ horror movie. The air around us was completely still.

THEN I walked away. No one fucked with me for the rest of that day. But there would be another day to come.

The day in question was a remarkably lovely one in every way, funnily enough, especially where interactions with strangers were concerned. I walked past a restaurant’s sidewalk seating where an Asian family including a little girl young enough that she wasn’t forming words that adults could understand was enjoying their food. I heard a sound from the little girl, and could tell by her alert eyes, and the obvious precise intent of the sound (she had been so quiet before!) that she was asking me a familiar question. I stopped.

“You wanna see how these work?” she said.

Her mother smiled at me, with a radiant gratitude I rarely see from white parents. “That would be wonderful,” she said. I demonstrated how I walk, slowly, showing the little girl how the right arm moves with the left leg and vice versa. The child’s eyes were GLUED to me and my endlessly fascinating gait, following my every move with truly sharp observational contemplation. “They help me,” I said. “And I never got hurt.”

“Oh that’s good,” said the mother with genuine empathy. “Thank you so much for doing that, that was so sweet of you.”

I could never properly convey, No problem, you have no idea how refreshing you are.

Later that night, Ian and I decided to go out to dinner to Wildseed, a fancy vegan restaurant with scrumptious offerings that are truly worth the price. I was appreciating the golden lighting and bamboo-chic of the place more enthusiastically than usual as I sipped my watermelon kombucha, eagerly awaiting the beet pâté and plant-based lamb meatballs (I KNOW!) in spicy tomato sauce that we had ordered as our appetizers. Always with notably delicious, warm and flavorful crusty bread.

Then I had to go to the bathroom. This is a pain to do at Wildseed if you’re a person who benefits from elevators, because the elevator door is so close to the kitchen that it seems impossible not to get knocked in the face upon exist. Remembering the disability-unfriendly set up, I felt a new wave of true surprise that I hadn’t gotten smacked in the face with that damn door, and a suddenly vivid flashback of the one time I did get smacked in the face with a door under very similar circumstances and lay on my back, wind knocked out of me, stunned and in considerable pain.

I decided I would take advantage of my burgeoning Laura Croft/Schwarzenegger body and just use the fucking stairs. You know, like a DEFAULT-OF-YOUR-IMAGINATION-TYPE-PERSON person might. I had never felt more confident going down stairs. And we live in a world that aggressively pushes out bodies like mine, so believe me, I’ve gone down a lot of stairs.

“EXCUSE ME CAN I HELP YOU WITH ANYTHING!”

This all-too-enthusiastic burst of chivalry came from — I had to stop on the step and look over my shoulder to see, which is a physically trying move — the blondest milk-feddest bright-creepy-blue-eyes-looking whiteboy ever to appear out of my instantly-crotch-drying anti-wetdreams.

“I don’t need your help,” I said. “And I’m offended that you’d ask me.” (For the record: helping people who are clearly struggling with something physical is, in my opinion, one of the most sacred ways one human being can truly rejoice in their interdependence with other human beings. Helping is not the problem! Everybody needs help sometimes! Condescending assumptions when a person is clearly doin’ their thing without need for YOOOOOOOOOOU is the problem.)

“I’m sorry,” he said, but he didn’t sound like a man too used to having to say that; he could’ve been an AI for how much the dominant systems that oppress the rest of us go dolphinshit for guys like him.

“Be sorry, yes,” I replied. “And don’t make assumptions about disabled people.”

I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to get kicked out of what may or may not remain one of my favorite restaurants in this city. The bathroom in the place is luxurious. It’s so notably lovely, in fact, that one of the first times I entered it, a mother and her very young son were at one of the sinks and the little boy said, “This place has a cool bathroom.” His mother agreed. “Why does it have a cool bathroom?” he asked.

The mother said she didn’t know, it just does, and I have not stopped thinking about this question.