The Rosa Parks of Dildos

(The story you are about to hear is totally fucking true.)

Sherri Williams is one of the great American heroines of the 21st Century. But you probably won’t read about her in the history books, which shows you how screwed up our education system is.

Sherri Williams is the Rosa Parks of dildos. And once again the battleground is Alabama, where if you dare try to sell another adult a dildo, (I swear this is not satire) you can go to jail for up to a year and be fined up to $10,000. Yep, this law says you cannot sell “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs…” And if you’re thinking this must be one of those laws that dates back to a previous century when Alabama legislators walked with their knuckles scraping the ground, you’re right. It was passed in 1998.

Sherri Williams owns a chain of adult toy stores. So she stood up for our inalienable right to stimulate our adult genitals any way we damn well please. With the help of the ACLU, she sued Alabama to have the dildo ban struck down. It took eight years for her case to work its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, thus letting stand a lower court decision upholding the law.

But the story has a happy ending. In November, she opened a “romance” store called Pleasures in Huntsville. And because it’s in a building that was once a bank, she even sells sex toys through a drive-up window. She gets away with it because a loophole in the law allows sex toys to be sold for “medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial, or law enforcement” purposes. (Law enforcement? Do they set up sting operations? “Pssst. Hey buddy, wanna by a dildo?”) So before customers can purchase, they have to fill out a short questionnaire asking, among other things, if they or a partner are having difficulty finding sexual fulfillment. Doing this means their purchase can be justified as medicinal.

Isn’t Sherri Williams brilliant? But I’d like to suggest another loophole. Since the law bans items intended “primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs,” she could claim her products serve a higher primary purpose. For instance, instead of calling a vibrating dildo a sexual aid, she could call it a kitchen aid and say it’s a mixer. It would be like those stores where they sell bongs and call them “tobacco products.” I was in one that had a sign that said PLEASE REFRAIN FROM REFERRING TO OUR WATER PIPES AS BONGS. Pleasures could post a sign saying PLEASE REFRAIN FROM REFERRING TO OUR KITCHEN MIXERS AS DILDOS.

This is a foolproof loophole because if the enraged state legislature counters by banning any product that could have a secondary function of genital stimulation, this would prohibit the sale of just about everything from whipped cream and balloons to cucumbers and Spider Man action figures.


I hope Sherri Williams' spirit of rebellion catches on. I think it’s about time clear-thinking Catholics organized to challenge the Vatican’s disdain for masturbation. Pope Paul VI issued a declaration in 1975 called "Persona Humana - Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics." It says masturbation is a ”grave moral disorder" and an “intrinsically and seriously disordered act…” The Pope acknowledged that the Bible makes no direct reference to jerking off. But, he wrote, "Even if it cannot be proved that Scripture condemns this sin by name, the tradition of the Church has rightly understood it to be condemned in the New Testament…”

I remember the pain this prohibition caused me as a young Catholic boy struggling to give up waxing the whale in the name of my church. I finally decided it was easier, and more fun, to give up trying to be Catholic.

For the sake of young Catholics like that all over the world, some righteous adult Catholic needs to burst out of the closet and found The Society of Catholic Masturbators. We’re Catholic, we jerk off, and we’re proud! Get used to it!

I issue the following challenge: Who among us is bold enough to be the first to come out as a proud masturbating Catholic? It can’t be me because I’m under qualified. Like I said, I’m not longer Catholic

Ask Smart Ass Cripple

Dear Smart Ass Cripple:

This morning I woke up and realized my age-demographic could be summarized thusly:

"Born too late for the sexual revolution, but just in time for roller-disco."

I'm very depressed. Any smart ass words of encouragement? I don't need to be motivated,
I just need a reason to uncurl myself from the fetal position I have going on the sofa....
(There's a bag of Cheetos somewhere in the mix, too).

Sincerely,

Depressed

Dear Depressed
You think you’re depressed? What about me? I never heard of roller-disco until you sent me this letter. So of course I had to go look it up and watch videos of it and everything. I couldn’t just leave well enough alone. I should have known it would be one of those things that once it enters your brain it instantly metastasizes and you can never blot it out. It’s one of those things that I could have lived a rich and rewarding life without ever learning about, but now I have and I can never unlearn it. Like for instance, I can recite the names of all six main characters on the TV show Friends. Somehow that trivial trivia snuck its way into my brain and burrowed in forever. And now I can’t pretend that I don’t know their names no matter how much I try. All I can hope for is the sweet release of dementia. I also wish I didn’t know that a tiny little sparrow can bring down a mighty jet if it flies into its engine. Knowing this has led to a spike in my gin and tonic consumption when I fly.
So thanks a whole helluva lot, Depressed, for introducing me to the horror of roller-disco. Now my gin and tonic consumption is going to skyrocket even on terra firma.
Move over and pass the Cheetos.


Dear Smart Ass Cripple:
Next week I will be having my first colonoscopy. I’m very nervous and I want everything to go just right.
What should I wear?
Yours truly,

Anxious

Dear Anxious,
Selecting precisely the right fashions to wear to your colonoscopy, especially your first, is a crucial decision.
I learned this the hard way. As I recently prepared for my first colonoscopy, I gave no thought to how I should dress. As a result, I found myself the subject of the ridicule of Dr. Wellington Rice IV, the catty, sharp-tongued fashion critic for the Journal of Gastroenterology. He wrote: “Dr. KB of Chicago emailed me to report that ‘Colonoscopy Patient X’ presented himself to him wearing hippie chic: blue jeans, a faded flannel shirt and no underwear! Hey Patient X! News flash! Abbie Hoffman is dead! Quit going to resale shops. And tell Santa Claus to bring you some underwear!”
Of course all my friends saw this and they all knew Patient X was me and I became a laughingstock.
I was humiliated. But fortunately, my colonoscopy revealed a polyp and I have to have another within a year, which gives me a shot at redemption. In preparation for my all-important follow-up colonoscopy, I’ve purchased a smart-looking Panama hat from Banana Republic. And regardless of what I ultimately decide to wear with it to my colonoscopy, my hat will have a rakish tilt that will silence my critics.
So as your colonoscopy approaches, try not to panic. Trust your fashion instincts and I’m sure everything will turn out fine.
And don’t forget to accessorize!


Dear Smart Ass Cripple:
I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I have an extraordinarily successful career. I’m making fabulous money. But I just can’t seem to enjoy it. I can’t stop worrying that it’s all going to come to an end and I will wind up penniless and homeless.
Can you offer words of encouragement?
Fondly,

That Wise Ass Talking Baby on TV


Dear That Wise Ass Talking Baby on TV,
Careers are fickle and cyclical. They wax and they wane.
When this phase of your career passes, take heart. You can make a comeback. Time passes quickly and before you know it you’ll be an adult and old enough to do porn movies. And after that career phase runs its course, there’s always Branson.

(Got a question? Want a smart ass answer? Send your question to asksmartasscripple@gmail.com)

A Desperate Plea for Hate Mail

I’m very disappointed. Smart Ass Cripple has been in business for two months now and we haven’t gotten any hate mail yet. Hate mail is very important. I believe it was Confucius who said, “One can best judge the character of a man by the quantity and quality of his hate mail.”

Hate mail is an essential self-evaluation tool for me. It reassures me that I’m pissing off the right people. So if I don’t get some hate mail soon I might have to take drastic action. I might have to write something about Jerry Lewis.

Nothing whips up a tornado of hate mail more than when I write something suggesting that Jerry is less than a deity. About two years ago I wrote an opinion piece for the Progressive Media Project criticizing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for presenting Lewis with its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. I said the telethon insults disabled kids and adults by perpetuating the destructive 1950s charity mentality.

Here’s one reader reply:

“Your comments (in my mind) seem to originate from someone who is bitter, cynical and just plain angry with the world. Yes, you have a serious disability but don't poison the world with your venom and hate.”

A mother of two adopted disabled kids sent this heart-felt reply:

“Get your head out of your butt …! Drop the hate and get a life that matters..!!”

But my most gratifying hate mail came from Lewis himself. It wasn’t exactly mail but it was hateful nonetheless. In a 1993 interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Lewis broke into a rant about cripples who speak out against him:

"This one kid in Chicago would have passed through this life and never had the opportunity to be acknowledged by anybody, but he found out that by being a dissident he gets picked up in a limo by a television station."

Hey, that’s little old me!

And he added:


"It just kills me to think about these people getting publicity. These people are leeches. They all glommed on to being Jerry-bashers. What did they have before that? They're disabled people who are so bitter at the bad hand they've been dealt that they have to take down somebody who's doing good. There's 19 of them, but these people can hurt what I have built for 45 years. There's a million and a half people who depend on what I do! I've raised one billion three hundred million dollars.

"These 19 people don't want me to do that. They want me to stop now? Fuck them.”

Now that’s classic hate mail. I’ll probably never reach that pinnacle again, but I keep trying.

But I’m trying to lay off Jerry because I’m afraid of terrorism. The French love him and they have nuclear weapons. If Jerry goes down, they may decide to take the rest of the world down with him.

So please don’t make me do it. For the sake of my sense of self-worth I must get some hate mail soon. You can help. Please send the link for Smart Ass Cripple to anyone I might piss off. This especially includes (but is not limited to) racists, gimpophobes, homophobes, republicans, religious freaks, fascists, patriots, the French and Yankee fans.

If you love me, you’ll help me get some hate mail.

Barkley's Balls

Several years back I sued the Chicago Bulls and the old Chicago Stadium. The old stadium was built in the 1920s, before the first cripples arrived in America. So there was no accessible seating so if you were a cripple and you wanted to see Michael Jordan play, the only place they could seat you was courtside on the hockey ice. (I have no idea where they put you if you wanted to see a hockey game.)

This was a sweet vantage point but the problem was they insisted we pay a sweet price for the tickets, like the courtside price, the Jack Nicholson price. But I figured out that if you showed up with the cheapest nose bleed seat ticket they had no choice but to put you on the ice anyway, though first I usually had to endure a lecture from an usher about how I better pay full price next time.

So one time I’m sitting on the ice and this stern security guy with a clipboard and pen demands to see my ID. I ask why. He says he’s going to give my name to the ticket office so next time I call they’ll make me pay full price. I wouldn’t show him my ID so he berated me before he slunked away in defeat.

I filed a complaint with the Chicago Department of Human Relations. (They use the word Relations because I guess the word Rights is to controversial, too threatening.)In addition to winning an agreement that the ushers would stop hassling me and other ice sitters, I also won free tickets to a Bulls game versus the Phoenix Suns.

This was hot currency. Whom would I invite to join me? It had to be someone who would immensely appreciate the chance to see the Jordan Bulls live.

I decided to invite Marty, my ex-marine friend, mainly because Marty spent most of his days watching every imaginable sport on TV. That’s about all he could do because when he cashed his monthly Social Security disability check, once he paid his bitter mother rent and bought himself several cartons of Pall Mall cigarettes to last him all month, he was broke.

Taped to the walls of Marty’s dark, wood-paneled bedroom were pictures of women he cut out of magazines. Some of them had the pupils of their eyes burned out by Pall Malls. But Marty always seemed harmless. “I go to the doctor once a month and he gives me a shot in the ass,” he told me once. As long as he kept up religiously with his monthly shot in the ass ritual, his restlessness and paranoia subsided enough to where he could function in the world, at least enough to watch sports and chain smoke Pall Malls. (How did I meet a guy like him? He was my attendant years earlier at Jerry Lewis summer camp for cripples.)

So when I called Marty to invite him to the game, he was excited like he won the lottery. And I told him we had courtside seats, right on the ice, and we’re playing the Phoenix Suns too.

“Coooool!” he said. “I’m gonna kick Barkley right in the balls!”

Marty was appreciative all right. He was way too appreciative. In the days leading up to the game he left me several phone messages thanking me profusely for inviting him and reaffirming his solemn vow to kick Barkley in the balls. I was starting to worry that Marty might actually run out on the court and kick Barkley in the balls during the game. Or maybe he might pull a sneak attack during the national anthem. Maybe I should tell Marty the game was canceled. But he’d know better. As jacked up as he was about all this, there was no way I could pull it out from under him now.

We met at the stadium. An usher escorted us to our place on the ice. It was way early. The stands were practically empty. Marty wore his Bulls shirt. He was jacked. “Where’s Barkley?” Get his mind on something else, I thought. So I asked him to come with me and help me in the men’s room. We headed for the men’s room just as the Suns came out of the locker room for warm ups. They ran right across our path. Barkley was the last one out. He literally had to stop in his tracks to keep from running into Marty. There they were, face to face.

This was the moment Marty had dreamed of. Barkley’s balls were two feet away. I wanted to scream out a warning! COVER YOUR BALLS! But it all happened so fast.

Barkley looked at Marty. Marty looked at Barkley. “Hey, how ya doin'?” Marty said. Barkley ran out on the court.

Marty and I proceeded to the men’s room. He never said another word about Barkley. When presented with his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to kick Barkley square in the balls, he choked. I could tell he was profoundly disappointed. I have to admit, I was too.

Don't Ask Don't Tell

If you’re not gay and in the military, don’t ask don’t tell doesn’t seem like too bad of a deal at first. What if they applied it to cripples? In order to be allowed to fully mingle in society, all we would be legally required to do would be to make some attempt, no matter how inept, to pretend we’re not crippled. In exchange, everyone else would be legally required to act like they believe it. So in my case, I could get a huge box like a refrigerator box and fashion it to fit around my wheelchair and decorate it with streamers and flowers and claim I’m riding in a parade float. I’d waive my Miss America waive. And no one would be allowed to dispute my claim because at least I’m making an effort to appear to be normal. Discriminators would have to be more discriminating in their discriminating.

This don’t ask don’t tell deal could work well with all kinds of cripples. Blind people could always say they’re just out walking their dogs. People who have seizures, when it’s all over, they can say it was an improvisational dance. Little people could walk around on stilts.

But I know that before long, somebody would blow my cover, probably some wise ass delinquent kid. I was rolling through Chinatown in Washington, D.C. once just minding my own damn business when all of a sudden this kid about age 12 starts walking beside me. He looked Chinese. I could tell by his contemptuous smirk that he was a snotty little shit.

“You’re short!” he snorted.

“I’m as tall as you,” I said.

“But I’m standing and you’re sitting down!” said the little weaselly runt. “And you got a big head!”

I saw this as a teachable moment, a rare opportunity to help a young person learn a valuable lesson about tolerance. So I said, "Hey kid, cram it."

But it would be some punk ass kid like that who would violate the protocol and spout something like, “That ain’t a parade float! That’s a wheelchair!” Or eventually I know I’d get worn out under the weight of trying to pass and not want to do it anymore. But the minute passing cripples stop keeping up their end of the bargain, all bets are off. And then all of those who have had to grit their teeth and play along with our charade will finally be free to dump their pent up resentment on us, and they will.

So maybe the only fair thing to do when it comes to sexual preference is to apply don’t ask don’t tell to everyone. Nobody, be they hetero or homo or what have you, is allowed to express a sexual preference in public, for fear that someone might find it to be creepy. Because the problem is that we as a nation have not reached a consensus on the definition of creepy. Some people say we should let Jesus decide what is creepy, but I don’t know about that. Jesus is a nice guy and all, but he’s kind of a tight ass about a lot of things. Pretty much everything creeps him out.

Creepiness is very subjective. I remember in the 1980s when Senator Jesse Helms, the late bigot, waxed venomous on the Senate floor about how those disgusting, hell-bound gay people were spreading AIDS. I thought to myself, you better be careful what you wish for, Jesse. Because if we start sending consenting adults to jail because we find their taste in sex partners disgusting, if I’m ever in charge, the first person I’ll be forced to lock up will be Mrs. Jesse Helms.

There needs to be a presidential commission formed for the purpose of coming up with recommendations on how to define creepy. Their report can be used as a blueprint for legislation and if it is approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate and three-fourths of the state legislatures, we can add an amendment to the Constitution proclaiming once and for all exactly who and what is creepy. And then we’ll know exactly who can be shunned.

Or we can apply don’t ask don’t tell to everyone. That will make our hetero heads explode. I know mine will.

We’ll all be out on the streets demanding repeal.

Australopithecine Mushroom Eaters

I wonder which of our human ancestors first consumed mushrooms. Australopithecines maybe?

I wonder this because I used to think that the first humanish creature to consciously consume a new species of mushroom, knowing full well it may be poisonous, was the definition of a brave person. He was willing to throw himself on a grenade for the good of the tribe.

But now I realize that’s not at all how hominids emerged through the treacherous era of trial and error. The first mushroom eaters were probably not the brave warriors at all. They were probably the tribe psychos and retards.

(Okay I know I’m asking for trouble here by using the “r” and “p” words instead of more dignified acronyms. But we are talking about Australopithecines here, creatures with brains too tiny to grasp the concept of dignified acronyms. I’m sure the fossil record will bear me out on this. Australopithecines probably identified their “r” and “p” tribe members with a snide, dismissive grunt or hand gesture, or maybe even a fart. But so as not to distract from the point I’m trying to make, we’ll pretend Australopithecines were sensitive and astute enough to promulgate appropriate acronyms. Henceforth, these acronyms shall be AWID (Australopithecines with Intellectual Disabilities) and AWED (Australopithecines with Emotional Disabilities).

The scenario:

Australopithecines are in their prime. They’re happy and well fed. They’ve just discovered delicious and nutritious fungi known as mushrooms. But then one overzealous Australopithecine eats a different variety of mushroom and drops dead. The other Australopithecines are grief-stricken and confused. Which mushrooms are safe for consumption and which are not? Civilization is at a crossroads.

In the fairy tale version, a noble Australopithecine steps forward, plucks a mushroom and swallows. Live or die, he’s celebrated as a hero.

But in the real version, an Australopithecine says, “Hey, I got a great idea! Why don’t we get one of those AWIDs or AWEDs to eat it? We can get them to eat anything!”

That’s the more plausible plot line because modern Homo sapiens have applied similar logic. Just a few months ago, Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama apologized to the people of Guatemala for the syphilis experiments of the 1940s. U.S. government medical researchers secretly infected Guatemalan inmates in prisons and mental institutions with syphilis and gonorrhea so as to test the effectiveness of penicillin as a treatment.

And in the 1960s there was the Willowbrook experiment. Residents of Willowbrook, the hellhole New York state institution for all manner of gimps, were deliberately infected with hepatitis and treatments were tested on them. This experiment was so uncontroversial that it wasn’t even secret.

So it’s clear that some poor sucker AWIDs and AWEDs were coaxed out into the woods by their Australopithecine brethren and offered a nice juicy mushroom. This is assuming that Australopithecines allowed their AWIDs and AWEDS to run around free, which is a big if. If the AWIDs and AWEDS were institutionalized, as their homo sapiens descendents would be, then there were probably special days where AWIDs and AWEDS were treated to mushroom casseroles and soufflés prepared and delivered by the “normal” Australopithecines. As the AWIDs and AWEDS happily devoured their mushrooms, the other Australopithecines watched on intently and recorded the aftermath for posterity.

Live or die, whoever had this great idea of using AWIDs and AWEDS as human shields was celebrated as a hero.

Laura Hershey

The gimp community has been blessed with a metric boatload of incredible writers. Laura Hershey was/is the best. No question in my mind about that.

Laura died the day after Thanksgiving. But fortunately for all of us, she has a glorious paper trail. Go google her up right now. You’ll find a ton of amazing stuff. It’s like a big basket of fresh, ripe fruit. No matter what you select, it will be great.

You’ll find essays, poetry, blog posts, etc. But it’s all poetry. Even when writing about something like the minutiae of public policy, Laura spelled it all out with a sharp clarity that hits you in the gut like good poetry. Often while clawing through my brain rubble for words to express my opinion or feelings about some major gimp affair, I’d look up and find Laura had already nailed it, striking precisely the right note. A good example was that whole Terri Schiavo mess a few years back. I wanted to write something ripping those on the right and left for their raging hypocrisy. Both sides claimed to be the friends and guardians of disabled folks, when really they only differed on the timeframe for slitting our throats. The most mature response I could formulate in my mind was,”You guys are all a bunch of ass holes!” Meanwhile, Laura’s essay “Killed by Prejudice,” appeared in The Nation. She particularly stuck it to the homophobes and gimpophobes on the right. She wrote: “I'm a lesbian feminist. I'm a secular thinker who believes government should serve the public good. I abhor the fundamentalist religious movement's selective advocacy of some rights for some people.

“My partner and I squirmed as we watched Senator Rick Santorum, Representative Marilyn Musgrave and others who championed Schiavo's rights. Robin and I are both disabled women. If either of us were incapacitated, these right-wingers might argue to keep us alive; but they would oppose our right to stay by each other's bedsides.

“While they defended one woman's right to live, they jeopardized many other disabled lives by attempting to gut Medicaid, which provides essential healthcare and support services.”

Amen.

The last time Laura and I met up was in Los Angeles in ’09. It was Oscar weekend but we weren’t there to breathe the same air as Angelina Jolie. We were there to protest Jerry Lewis being chosen to receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award . Laura had the same disability as me. She too was once a poster kid. She too grew up to righteously resent how Jerry and the Muscular Dystrophy Association turn kids with MD into tragic clowns for their own marketing purposes. A bunch of us parked ourselves (uninvited, of course) in the lobby of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. We chanted. We sang to the tune of “I Feel Pretty:”
He feels pity,
so much pity.
He feels pity, and to this we object!
Because pity
heightens fear and undermines respect.
He feels giddy,
oh, so giddy,
for on Sunday he’s getting a prize,
for his pity
and his patronizing tears and lies.

The cops couldn’t scare us away. It was enormous fun.

For these types of antics Laura was often accused of the mortalest of gimp mortal sins: ingratitude. She had something brilliant to say about that too. Just last week in her blog Life Support on the website of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, she wrote “The Good and Bad of Gratitude.” She expressed how disabled folks are reluctant to express gratitude, even when we really feel it, because gratitude has historically been shoved down our throats:

“All too often, people with disabilities are pressured to feel gratitude for things that are their basic human rights – subsidized housing, support services, inclusion in the community, basic acceptance and respect. Some people think that disability is a drain on the economy, and an imposition on others. They don't want to be reminded of the prevalence and inevitability of disability in any society, in any person's experience or family. In response to this deep discomfort, they try to impose conditions on anything "given" to people with disabilities – conditions like passiveness, submissiveness, limited demands, and constant thank yous.

“We have to demand the things that are essential to our lives, equality, and quality of life. We must refuse to feel gratitude for these, except the normal level of gratitude that anyone might feel for living in a time and place that still supports human life. We can't succumb to feelings like embarrassment or shame regarding our needs, even if those needs are more extensive than the average person's needs. That will only reinforce and perpetuate our inequality, and the pulling away of vital state- and federally-funded support services.”

You can find the whole piece at http://www.spinalcordinjury-paralysis.org/LifeSupport/2010/11/24/the-good-and-bad-of-gratitude.

Read it and rejoice.