Undergraduate memory

In my freshman year at Arizona State, I took a semester of art courses that assured me that I was not destined to live the life of a professional or struggling artist. After class, my dorm was in the same direction as the parking lot for a classmate who was, without doubt, an artist. She was into neon sculpture at the time.

Our chats as we ambled across campus in the morning heat consisted of her sharing the current unnatural hairstyle of her vagina (sometimes pink, sometimes green) and my trying to convince her that I "went out" like normal people do.

"Do you ever go out?"

It was a question I got often from classmates and it always baffled me. Have you not found me here in public attending the same events as you? What about me cries hermit and recluse?

The question was always intended to probe the life of a disabled college classmate, though significantly, it rarely led to the questioner's wanting to "go out" somewhere with me. Maybe it was really a larger, more practical question that they never quite asked: Did you know you're the first cripple my age that I've ever chatted with? How would you get into the clubs I go to? What's your life like?

My college roommate, Marian, was pretty much the first cripple my age I ever really talked to. I didn't go to most of those clubs. I usually settled for the accessible portion of small local bars. Occasionally nondisabled friends carried me into the dance clubs, but it meant leaving my scooter behind and dancing with my manual chair for the night. Fun, but an extraordinary physical effort for me. And I could rarely pee in those places. My evening ended whenever my bladder cried "Uncle." This was the late '80s, pre-ADA.

I went to the movies almost every weekend, sometimes more than once. Often it was the cheaper midnight showing of the latest film. Sometimes it was the double-header at the local dollar theater. Man, that place was gross for traveling on wheels. When I went to the show with my nondisabled friend, Sandi, she would stand on the back of my scooter or I'd turn the seat 45 degrees sideways and we'd share it, giving the Queen Wave to everyone who honked at our two-person sidewalk parade.

Most of my nondisabled friends hopped on for a ride now and then. One guy, Pat, used to take wild screaming scooter rides by himself through the parking lots after I'd transferred into his car, and while other friends stood by to help hoist it into his giant dilapidated trunk. Brian and I usually played a little game where when we saw each other on the quad, I would fly straight at him as if I couldn't control my machine and he stand faithfully still as my chair raced toward his shins, but stopped just in time to gently touch them. It freaked other people out.

There was this guy in a big black power-tilt chair who used to zigzag through the campus crowds and seemed to be steering randomly. He freaked the hell out of me, but perhaps he was playing the exact same game.

Yeah, I "went out," but there was a different pattern to it. Sometimes it involved the public buses, and then, rarely would nondisabled friends come along. Those were gimp outings, or shared with poorer nondisabled friends who had never yet owned a car. House parties, dorm parties, movies, shopping, eating out, and the local Improv when it moved in. I didn't do many of the Spring Break trips -- usually just around Arizona instead of beaches in Mexico.

Did I "go out" like normal people do? Yes. And, I guess, no.