Denied Accessible Housing, Part Two

Last time, I discussed the travails my college roommate Tabby and I went through to find accessible housing. Naturally, because of her disability, we ran into some trouble.  I think we left off with the apartment manager who called Tabby’s powerchair “a cart” last time, so without further adieu, here’s Inaccessible Housing 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The ironic thing is, I don’t think cart-lady meant to be malicious. In fact, most people don’t, which is a fact Tabby has pointed out many a time. It may very well be that the movie “My Left Foot” is her only point of reference for cerebral palsy. In that movie, Christy Brown’s brothers did in fact pull him around in a cart. However, his disability was more severe was Tabby’s is, Tabby got around on her own (motor) power, Tabby is female, and this wasn’t a coal town in 1930’s Ireland. I don’t know what it is about cerebral palsy that makes people lump everyone together, with no varying degrees of severity. There are shades of cerebral palsy. (Not to be confused with Shades of Cerebral Palsy, the BDSM porno.)

The actual apartment complex we were turned away from was popular with students, and right in the middle of town, with a “Now Leasing” sign up front. I won’t use its real name, I’ll call it…Crappy Gardens. We went into the front office, met the manager, who was a blond middle aged woman, and laid out our list of needs: ground floor with two bedrooms. The manager made a face like we were her abrasive mother-in-law dropping in for an extended visit: annoyed mixed with panicked.

No, they didn’t have anything like that. No checking on the computer, or at least pretending to. At least have the decency to act like you care enough to try before telling us no anyway. We thought that since she was the manager, she would know her complex without having to check, so we moved on.

Crappy Gardens was at the front of a side street with about five other apartment complexes behind it, with names like the Hacienda, or Nicer Gardens. The entire street was covered with “Check Us Out” signs. We decided to try the next one, but couldn’t find the leasing office. We decided to head back to Crappy Gardens’ office to ask for directions. I remember we felt hesitant to go in, because we did not feel partticularly welcome there. Each time we visited, we weren’t there for longer than a minute.

We went back in, and got upgraded from mother-in-law to IRS audit. This time, I think panicking was winning out. What about the other apartment complexes, Tabby asked. It turned out the same office controlled all six complexes (complexes being a set of about three or four buildings each), and no, there were no available apartments in any of those either.  Oddly, Tabby and I didn’t rise up in outrage and demand to call HUD right that moment to call her out on her outrageous lie. At the time, we started to feel like kids who have been marched back to the store to return candy they stole: in the wrong, and oddly ashamed. Not to mention that we put out and inconvenienced this nice grown-up. We went home.

A few days later, I called Crappy Gardens, pretended to be someone else, and got a different receptionist. I told her I needed a two-bedroom on the ground level and she said to come by for a tour of the available apartment any time during business hours.

Next time: Why Tabby didn’t turn them in to HUD.

That Time My Friend and I Were Denied Housing, Part One

I talked to my friend Tabea the other day. (In this blog, names have been changed to protect the adorable.) We keep in touch regularly even though we no longer live in the same town, and she was telling me about how she went to a museum and ran into difficulties because of her power chair. As you might remember, Tabby is my former college roommate with cerebral palsy who I once walked in on changing. Ah, memories.

Tabby went to a museum and found herself dealing with the usual accessibility problems: the search for non-stair exits, taking elevators that get stuck, drunk people who lean on the back of chair.

“My life was so eventful when we lived together,” I laugh.

“Screw you,” she says, but she’s laughing as well. We both have a shared storehouse of disability horror stories from the time we lived together in a crappy apartment in Central California. If I had to choose our most memorable one, I’d say it was the time we went apartment-hunting.

Not every difficulty was due to people’s reactions to her disability, if I’m being honest. There was the apartment we called the “Haunted Apartment” because it was eerily perfect on paper- two bedrooms for $450 a month, where do you find an apartment like that outside of the 1950’s? -but when I visited it it was fifteen feet from the train tracks. That’s not hyperbole. Then there was the time we decided to walk all across town without any planning- just set out one day and walked til we got to the freeway, it occurring to us too late that we’d have to double back in the end- and stop at random apartments with “Now Renting” or “Check Us Out” signs.

“We got exercise that day.” For some reason I imagined her getting exercise as well.

“Not me,” Tabby corrects me. “I exercised my finger,” she said, referring to her powerchair joystick. It’s the kind of forgetting about her disability that I do, and I can’t decide if it’s from love or stupidity on my part. Tabby chooses to interpret it as deep affection for her unique personhood outside of her disability. “I feel loved,” she beamed that time I took us to a restaurant, and pulled our car up to the parking space and said, “Well, let’s pile out,” while forgetting her chair was dismantled in the backseat.

We hit up at least a dozen apartment management offices that day, and I learned early on to let Tabby speak up ahead of me, or else they tended to speak to me exclusively and ignore her, even when I made it clear the apartment was for both of us.

A woman told me, “I don’t think her cart will fit in our doors.”

‘Cart?’ That was a powerchair- a nice one, even. It is no longer the Dark Ages. The days of pulling your disabled friend along behind you in a rickety wooden cart are gone with the nickel gallon of gas.

But next time, it gets downright illegal.

The Quandary of Whether or Not to Wish My Ex ‘Happy Birthday’ on Facebook

Today is Gooberface’s birthday. You may recall that Gooberface is my handsome-faced, cerebral palsied ex-boyfriend. He’s 27 today. Should I write a quick note on his wall, out of courtesy? After getting up to talking about marriage, does that constitute a “Happy Birthday” a year and a half later? What is the protocol in this situation? 

Wait a minute, did he write on mine on my last birthday? I’ve had one since we broke up. I’m not even sure how to check, and scrolling that far back seems petty. I do the classy thing and stalk his Facebook page instead. Pretty good amount of wishes- will he even notice if I don’t? 

As I look through his Facebook I realize none of our pictures ended up on here. Tabby took pictures of our Halloween together where we dressed him up like the “Master of Ceremonies” from “Cabaret.” There’s a picture of me standing next to him while he’s made up with his jaunty fedora (it was Halloween, he was allowed), both of us smiling big, he proud of how he looked and me proud of my handiwork. He could have gotten that picture from her. In fact, our relationship had no online presence. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign. Goober put every damn certification he got in the course of his BA on Facebook: blurry pics of him holding up computer print-out diplomas. Also, pictures of his cat, which kept jumping on my hip the last night I spent at his apartment, and which I was wildly allergic to. I’m still not entirely convinced he didn’t just pick the last fight to pick the cat over me.  

Which isn’t to say we were incognito. We went out in public, and once I went with him to his Bible study. Bible studies are strange things socially. People who gather to study the Bible are intrinsically compelled to welcome others. They couldn’t really call themselves evangelical if they didn’t. But a study is its own discreet, self-containing organism, and existing members quarantine, assess and judge new members, all while maintaining a strange over-friendliness. The whole thing was rather creepy. I remember asking where the bathroom was, and someone answered in a cheery voice, but I also suspected she didn’t trust me in there for some reason. That is one thing I do not miss: being his normal girlfriend on display for his friends. That and watching “Apollo 13” while he paused it to fill me in on all the technical details. The relationship ended, but I know what a LEM is now. (It’s a Lunar Excursion Model.)  

I notice one of his friends hasn’t wished him well on his birthday. She was always there to cheer on his every insignificant milestone. The milestones were significant because HE did them. It was the stupid cliche of an everyday thing becoming extraordinary (heart-warmingly, tear-jerkingly extraordinary) because the person who did them was disabled. Come on, he graduated high school, he didn’t break the Nazi Enigma Code. He liked her better than me, even though I accepted him and she kept him at arm’s length.  He liked being her project more than he wanted to be my boyfriend- he preferred to be patronized than treated like a regular 20-something. 

Honestly, the real reason I’m considering doing it is because an omission is too glaring. My sister says that’s the kind of omission that needs to be glaring. She’s angry with me for even considering writing on his Facebook wall. It starts there, then you start talking, and then you’re back together again. I don’t think this is fair, because we never got back together again, even when he asked to a month later. Still, she’s so adamant about it I think of doing it just to declare my own independence, even though she denies the existence of Facebook, and she’ll never see it. (She’s not crazy about the idea of blogging either, come to think of it.) “You know how you always come back to tell me when I’m right about these things?” Her hands are on her hips, and she’s lecturing me with the same tone of voice she uses in her non-gateway drugs lecture. “This is one of those times.” She herself believes in a clean cut when it comes to relationships. Her own ex is Voldemort- He Who Shall Not Be Named.

I close the Facebook tab. I’m being childish. This has taken too much of my time as it is, and the time machine has not been perfected. 

He told me later he felt like we were too different when we were standing at the bus stop and I criticized a wedding party’s tacky bridesmaid’s dresses. We were across the street from a public park- it’s not as if they could hear us! -and I verbally went to town on their puffy, bright lime-green monstrosities. Obviously, we weren’t meant to spend our lives together. If my partner and I can’t call out someone’s bad fashion choices together, then he clearly can’t handle what this chick is about. 

I Walked In On My Roommate Changing, and It Changed My Life Forever

Back when I left home to attend college, I moved to a dinky little podunk town in the Central Valley, and lived with a family on the edge of said metropolis. I rented a room with them, the family being a couple, their teenage boy and a toddler who was quickly learning how doorknobs- and the front door locks -worked. My future roommate and then good-friend, who I’ll call “Tabea” (not her name, I just like the name, although it sounds vaguely medical), lived across town on campus in a specially-equipped handicap-accessible dorm room which ate up all her savings.

Tabea has cerebral palsy, and uses a power chair to get around. She is one fine-looking lady. That’s not patronizing her- she is one hot piece of ass, just in a sitting position. She once told me that she went to a doctor for a consultation and the doctor said she was the “most advanced cerebral palsy child” he had ever seen. I wondered how he managed to not notice her ginormous breasts. 

Tabea stayed at my house a lot, most of the time intentionally. This particular time, she stayed with me because after a day of up-to-no-good carousing (we went to the cheese factory), the university bus which would have taken her back to campus didn’t have a working ramp. Those were dark days to be disabled at that campus, the Dark Ages being two years ago. Back then, if the problem wasn’t that the ramp wasn’t working it was because that bus wasn’t equipped with one at all. After many meetings, angry phone calls and complaints, they got their act together, kinda. However, when Tabby went back to the campus recently for her graduation ceremony, they were showing signs of regressing. Their solution for getting patrons with wheelchairs up the hill was to have them transfer out of their chairs (Tabby’s chair weighs as much as I do), get into a golf cart and ride up the hill while the chair was loaded (again, heavy) on the back. Everyone knows that wheelchairs are physically attached to the person using them! Educate yourselves, people. 

Anyway, Tabby stayed at my house, and I pulled out my two Ikea mattresses on the floor for us to lay on. The next day we prepared to head out, this time taking the city bus back to the campus. I used the bathroom to shower while Tabby got changed in my bedroom. The bathroom wasn’t equipped for her to shower, and anyway Tabby is one of those magical people who can go more than a day without showering and not stink (whereas I am a muggle in that regard). 

I have always been a forgetful person. My visual memory is abysmal. I forget things people tell me right after they…huh, sure I want a donut. For some reason, I forgot something and went back to get it, in the bedroom. When I opened the door, Tabby obviously wasn’t expecting anyone, and was kneeling on the floor. Her back was to the door and her dress was lowered and ruched around her waist, with one arm still in its sleeve and her dress opened to reveal the flawless expanse of her back. I think there was even light coming in from my thin curtain, like a spotlight. I would later find out after we moved into our own apartment that she always kneels on the floor to change. I don’t usually care for naked women- not my cup of tea, neither are naked men, really -but this poleaxed me. This was the first time I’d ever really seen a disabled body, and it was so beautiful it took my breath away. An artist would have painted her, with her perfect smooth skin and violin-shaped back. Looking back, I think I stood there like an idiot for at least a few seconds before recovering and letting myself out again. 

Tabby was really nice about it. I think she saw I was embarrassed. I don’t think she thought it was intentional, and that I was a perv. I would later see her undressed in more mundane ways, and she me, the kind of who-cares intimacy between heterosexual same-sex roommates. I’ve peed while she was in the shower, so I think we’re actually legally married at this point. 

Inspirational Recollections of My Disabled Ex-Boyfriend

I know some of you are wanting to correct me: the term is ‘ex-boyfriend with a disability.’

A year ago Gooberface and I broke up. If you recall, Gooberface, knowing my predilection for salty breakfast meats, took me to Denny’s for my 30th birthday. The next day, he chatted with me on Facebook and, like, totally friend-zoned me. His girlfriend of six months- we’d been talking about honeymoon plans the day before. Looking back, it was no big loss. Going to Sea World for your honeymoon is lame anyway. 

After we broke up, all the disapproval that people close to me who were too cool and open-minded to voice when we were together came out.  Someone who I thought knew me better shocked me when they said they thought that it might have been misplaced pity on my part all along. Geez, thanks, dad. 

Gooberface has cerebral palsy. He walks- kind of. He talks- sort of. His speech took some getting used to, which I did. It put me in the role of interpreter many times. My being able-bodied wasn’t incidental. He once told me he didn’t want to date a woman with a disability. Didn’t want anyone stealing his thunder, I guess. Naturally, our disparity didn’t go unnoticed in the greater arena either. Gooberface and I weren’t recluses (although I keep trying and damn society keeps pulling me back in, like the mob). We went out places- to Starbucks, movies, restaurants -and I was often cast in the role of his interpreter. I know some people thought I was his aide. I didn’t care. I was too excited to be with him. He has transcendent qualities that rise above his disability. By that I mean he’s really bleepin’ good-looking. The first time I met Gooberface, I almost tripped over his smile. My visual memory is abysmal and I cannot remember faces worth a hill of beans, so I’ve always been a sucker for nice smiles. Looking back over all the men I’ve fallen for or had a crush on- Dr. Cheekbones, the Hispanic Bible-thumper, the possibly-gay man who kind of looked like the Phillip Morris midget -their only real link was a nice smile.

Gooberface was 25 to my 29, and lived in a tiny apartment in crappy public housing that I found oddly charming at the time. He was intelligent and sexy. However, one of the biggest disappointments in our relationship was that he was kind of a stick in the mud. I rented a car and took him to a field so he could drive on his own- no barns for us to hit, just open grass -but he refused. He was Mr. Play-it-Safe. Years of growing up in Special Ed. in the public school system had drained the spontaneity out of him like flat soda from a leaky bottle. Overall, we got along well, mostly because I tend to be over-sweet in relationships and he tended to avoid conflict. 

Gooberface and I were not platonic. I used to get excited at the velcro sound of his leg braces coming off, because it meant we were going to make out. That was what strangers never knew- that his rearranged flesh was dear to me. One of the first coherent things I thought when we broke up was a sense of panic that I wouldn’t have a reason to touch him anymore. 

We don’t talk now. Everything that seemed stable then is over now: my goals, my career path, my education. Gooberface belongs to the past now too.  Bye, Chris.