"We Die When We're Silent," thoughts on Fool Volume stand-up special(and other stuff)

Vir Das 

had big plans for his award-winning stand-up career before he woke up one morning unable to speak. His lack of voice, likely brought about by a combination of physical and emotional factors, came about just as he was about to start a Netflix special from shows in three countries; India, the UK, and the United States. Just six weeks before it, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever speak again at all.

He has made a similarly wide-ranging special that features a big tour but said that it isn’t exactly the same special because “When your voice comes back, it sounds different.”(Personally, I feel a little bad that it took weeks of crisis, silence, and a big medical journey for me to discover this comedian’s work…he’s pretty good, even without the “Ooh, ethnic copy!” of it all—Netflix still has a clear advantage over the other streamers I’ve sampled this summer when it `comes to the quality of featured stand-up acts, in my opinion, which I hope you care a bit about if you’re reading this.

And, yes, I am always a little excited—if not, you know, Excited, when I can bring  Bohemian Crip readers something a bit outside the narratives we all know, such as the Optimistic Child Who Doesn’t Know She’s Broken Yet.

Much like Apu with the Stereotypes bowling team on The Simpsons,”They begged me,” my best shot at being recruited at anything, but at this point, I think I’ve aged out of what is clearly a young woman’s game.  I coulda been a contender…if it stayed 1983 forever.  Alas.)

I do think diversity is important, though as someone doing a lab(our) of love by keeping this up, I can’t promise that I have a running tally of percentages of world populations in my head so that it’s absolutely, full-on representative.  I pretty much know that I won’t be doing that that precisely, ever, unless some kind of contract changes hands.I hope to do enough to make the De Sanctis types reach for their smelling salts on a bimonthly basis.

Wouldn’t want my disability to Hold Me Back, right?

Started Watching Superstore Recently...

 

Kind of love it that the character in a wheelchair on “Supestore” can be a bit of a weasel that doesn’t try very hard.(Well, okay, maybe not at work…he seems like the sort of person that doesn’t bring his passion to the workplace…I’m still catching up with this show, so we’ll see what happens as eps go on.  But every “Attitudes Are The Real Disability” aficionado deserves to meet at least one Garrett.
 It feels bad to say that I’d have liked him to face more barriers(I love the character and he’s black and disabled…anything else, bitch?) but it would be easier to talk about barriers in real disabled life if people didn’t think the answer in fiction isn’t “Poof! There’s a law so everybody made the doorways wide enough.” Because it makes people think everyone’s doorways really are wide enough, and they’re not.  At all. So I kind of need Garrett to get stuck a few times(And really, the law should have worked better, but that’s beyond the scope of this post, for real.)

I also can’t believe that people at the store, just kind of privately wonder about the source of Garrett’s disability, which goes past Doesn’t Match My Experience Avenue and might just go zooming right into the science-fiction section if this freakish luck holds—If I had time to write fanfiction for every sitcom that helps me sleep(Not cause it’s boring, just cause I trust it) I’d set up that Garrett set up some kind of pool or something and circulated some crazy tales, only to divulge that he was in an accident in elementary school. In my experience, people seem to need to know this before they can get to know me; an accident at birth seldom provides a gritty-enough tale for this sort of listener, definitely not one a person can’t live without, but what do I know?

A Disabled Case for "Dying For Sex"

 

At the beginning of Dying for Sex on Hulu, I told myself I didn’t know what Molly was missing.  I should have been more sympathetic.    Even though I’m not currently dying, I’ve missed a lot sexually as well and have a fair amount of lost time to account for, but watching Molly turn down what people like me are taught to want, Ie, a man that can “handle” all of our appointments and caregiving tasks (Maybe he was just a little too into it, actually), and turn it down, was hard for me. I didn’t get it (or didn’t I? I did pass up a very sweet disabled partner once because “we were in different places” (usually, literally, which to be fair to both of us, probably did more to put pressure on the relationship than any sense of missing storybook passion.) But, although the sweet memories made me torment myself for years about letting him go-, especially since I didn’t have the options of even a dying Michelle Williams and her radiant O-face, I knew it was probably best not to uproot my whole life to start out where it takes couples years to shift into. The pain and loss were compounded when it seemed like the education I chose instead, and indeed, much of my whole lifestyle here, seemed like a bad investment.

 (Even though I’m over this loss and missing him, in more than an abstract way, I’m still sad I can’t say that either I got a do-over or that choosing me went great.) Maybe the optimists among my readers-all six who are left-might want to think the Universe has a long timetable and I haven’t completely screwed up yet(I probably did, though.  Don’t think there’s another dimension where I’m a futures trader.)

Even though I liked the movie a lot, especially for Jenny Slade as free-spirited bestie-turned- attendant Nikki Boyer, I did have some quibbles, as a disabled viewer. First, the way they structured the episodes did sort of make it seem that Molly was always ready to go in a way that strains the credulity of anyone with even the mildest chronic condition.  Also, she always looks like a poem. (Although, yeah, it’s “Dying for Sex” not “What’s It Like to Die”, but still…dude, it’s probably not like that very often.) Kind of felt sorry for her hubs, too…how many times did she lie? 

 “Oh, that was great, baby! You’re the best I ever…” (Although he was insufferable enough to think that without much prompting and probably bought special “Music for The Patient’s Yoni” tapes.) But it’s a sad thought amid all the awakenings that we cheer on. Also, I only wish America (to say nothing of our health-care system itself, which could be a separate post for the zillions of petty tortures it inflicts on us) could tell us:

 
“Yes, halt and lame and huddled masses…joy and pleasure should be yours.” 

I only wish everyone could do that. In real life, I think I’m only guaranteed an offer of a trip to Disney World—a lot of my classmates were Make A Wish kids when we were young enough that I was jealous. Didn’t really understand the real ride they were undertaking, nor how often surviving  might leave me still feeling jealous from time to time.

 As for sex-positive social workers, yeah, sometimes I’d settle for one that, when she told me she had two kids, didn’t make me think “How?” right. Suffice to say, we don’t talk about kinks. I think one time I suggested to one of the nicer ones, about twenty years ago, that it was hard for me to make a first impression without hearing about Grandma’s operation and she looked over her glasses at me and said “Why?” so I just can’t imagine all that support.