Got an email from a publicity assistant at Freaky Productions, the movie studio that made My Left Foot Job. They want me to watch a few more of their movies and talk about how they represent persons with disabilities in a positive manner. Apparently the studio’s come under fire for making a film featuring people with mental disabilities, including Down syndrome. The title of one of the films is Going Down on Her. Another is One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Breast. I’ve been loosely following the story in the news. Not sure how I feel about it. They say they got the actors’ consent beforehand, but some non-profit group is saying that these actors didn’t understand what they were being asked when they signed the contracts. That’s not the issue for me, though, or at least it’s not the primary issue. The primary issue is whether or not the films are sexy. Cerebral palsy is one thing; Down syndrome is another. A disability can sometimes be like a dress. Some people wear them very well, so well that they make them appealing, even enticing. Disability as Prada. If you wear something confidently enough, everyone will want it. Others wear their disabilities like they’re pants made of staples and toad flesh. People with mental disabilities often don’t know how to wear them, and as a result, they always look uncomfortable. Their brains have been clothed in the wrong bodies. This is one kink in my philosophy: how to apply it to people with mental impairments. How can you use your disability to become stronger and smarter when your mind is unreliable? If you embrace a mental disability, you could hurt yourself and hurt others. That’s not what my philosophy is about. But then, if I encourage the correction and rehabilitation of such people, how do I avoid looking like a hypocrite?
In any case, I agreed to watch the films. I don’t know if they’ll be sexy, but at least this time I have a door that can be locked.
Over the last few years, I’ve developed a habit of leaving things as they are, even if they can be fixed. With the TV remote, I’m more likely to mash the buttons down or nose the Pequod forward and put the remote closer to the TV rather than simply put in new batteries. I used to think I was patient, but I was actually just ignorant. I think this habit’s come because of my disability. I think of myself as something that doesn’t need fixing, so I apply that notion to everything else—which is wrong. Obviously other things need fixing. Maggie, for instance. She hovers around me even more than she used to. Not just out of suspicion about my influence on Randal, but out of concern for my health. I’m over my pneumonia, but the illness weakened me. I can get out of bed and onto the toilet, but not much else. I bathe every second or third day. Randal helps me in and out of the tub. I asked him if it feels weird or uncomfortable. He shook his head. I told him he’s a good man.
It’s hard to look at Maggie now. Her eyes look bleached. They linger rather than just stare; the animation’s been scraped away from them. Her mouth clenches. Her lips fold between her teeth. I don’t know if she’s tired or anxious. She has to go to Toronto in a few days for a work conference. She’s been looking for a caregiver to take care of me while she’s gone but she hasn’t found one. I told her not to worry too much about it; Randal and I can survive on our own. Randal told her the same thing. I can help him, Mom, he said. He’s not that heavy. I chuckled. Yes, I said, raising and flexing my arm, I’m on Weight Watchers for Cripples. Randal laughed. Maggie sighed heavily. She doesn’t like that it’s two against one. She said she’d think about it, meaning she’ll eventually agree because there’s no other option.
She’s taking me to massage therapy again tomorrow. There are two masseuses who work with me. Both female. Both fat. Both possess blacksmith’s hands that knead and pound my flattened muscles even flatter. I often jar when they work on my back, my arms and legs snapping upwards like a skateboard broken in two. I am a one-hundred-and-forty-pound cripple completely at the mercy of a pair of two-hundred-and-twenty-pound behemoths with hands like giant potato mashers. Yet, at the end of each session, I emerge feeling like my body’s been rinsed with whiskey and Listerine, my muscles humming and tingling, my joints yawning open.
I don’t think of the therapy as treatment. It’s more of a pleasant excursion. Each session’s an hour-long vacation. The masseuses never ask questions. They just do their job, running their heavy hands over the mass of knots that is my body. Despite Maggie’s purpose in giving me the therapy—to encourage me to think more positively about my body—I thank her for it. If nothing else, it’s something for me to look forward to.