I Haven't Found My Mini-Essay on Disability and Corona...

 in the anthology so I'm posting it, here.(Still buy the book it's nice, and I can see myself as Contributor, but...

I found myself wishing “they knew what it’s like”, that abled people had to juggle their needs and expectations  around some limitation of some sort(the severity of what some people face with the virus make me think of it with a pang now that brings a flush to my cheek, though Nature’s imagination is clearly more vivid and ruthless than mine.) I might have just given the worst offenders big shiny clown noses or something else embarrassing and non-lethal.  I wouldn’t have made my experiment last longer than a  week, as opposed to six months that feel like housearrest, with no clear end in sight.Might have given big butts to the people that take up too much room on the sidewalk. Instead, we have corona, which makes people face a wide range of outcomes, none of which are pleasant. Some of the survivors will join us in disability; our fight is one with my draftees than volunteers. At the very least, I hope that both our government and the disability-rights movement will be there to embrace and guide the newbies, but I can almost guarantee that, as in most other stages of this crisis, the United States circa 2020 will not do enough.

In some ways, I’ve been preparing for  quarantine a long time without knowing it.  I like to read and write, and I’m quite used to having a far-flung network of friends that I could go at least a few years without meeting in person, and I have, or at least had, a large backlog of premium-cable shows to watch and fiction projects that were waiting for a quiet Sunday for me to get back to them. More seriously, as a wheelchair-using freelancer who tries her hand at activism, my life had been somewhat of a ball of work-life-activism-tainment for a few years now.  Though it could be an uneasy mix, and I often felt that my individual needs got lost in the shuffle in favor of the collective warmth of solidarity, but whatever my life lacks in individual hedonistic pleasures, at its best, it’s full of the satisfactions of a job well done and other simple pleasures.(Some of which, even though I have the freedom of movement of a grounded sparrow, have been curtailed for the moment.) Maybe I am fortunate that my progress or even my enjoyment has never exactly arrived in a straight line, at least unless I have birthday money, a favorite top, and a cursor poised over “Add to Cart”. I  have gained and lost freedom before with attendant shortages or living in a group home…it was a while ago now, but I can learn to live with less.   However, apart from the eerie quiet on the streets, quarantine life feels familiar in many ways. If there is a good side to it, I don’t miss as many meetings or celebrity meet-and-greets because everything has become virtual.I still miss a few due to being a Luddite and unprepared for video-conferencing, but listening to stuff while sitting in my sweatpants is nothing new either. If I have a really excellent day, I can feel a moment of satisfaction at being ahead of my time, but it’s not worth the price our country is paying, naturally. What do I hope to gain from this? Cleaner, healthier, public spaces, a sense that nobody is expendable, universal healthcare, working at home without stigma. I want abled Americans to remember the frustration of this current moment and take it inside so that they remember that not everyone has transportation or the ability to meet every need whether social or material so that they might embrace the “vaccines” of accessibility and inclusion.

Cable Television Kind Of Ruins "Elementary" for me...

 and not just because the cable superstation I started watching it on is now some weirdo "Opinions? Us?" personality free news thing now. Just, well, the stories aren't edgy, and most of the procedural stuff strikes this crime-show geek(and David Simon booster) as really inaccurate.
I like the rock-and-roll view of Holmes, and having a female Watson who is maybe not as secure in her place in the world as Watson-as-narrator is the stories seemed to be, and I'm not exactly disappointed with it, but it might have been nice to have a My Show(no matter how late I'd found it) but I'm not sure there is one

Who needs Cyberattacks When One Has A...

 utility monopoly?

Frustrating and largely wasted day due to power outage.

What I Really Learned In Special Class And Other Not-So_Happy Stories....

 

-Can’t believe we’re back here, worrying about the Russians again.(Very much wish this was one of those “crowdpleasing” movies I would never pick but I have still seen a lot of because of licensed housing, or holiday outings or whatever where there was , like, a hockey championship instead and it could be at least somewhat amusing to have a  President who’s a lovable doof who never manages to say the right thing….I don’t find that trait of his especially lovable, but people do, I guess. Maybe I liked it better before he was in charge for real instead of Master of The Somber Pause and Dude that We Imagined Washing A FireBird on the White House lawn.) As real life, it’s awful, even as a person who hasn’t felt that she had much of a future for a few years now. Benefits may be “dignified”, at least compared to all-out begging, but they’re hell on  Sense of Possibility and Sense of Self as Valuable Citizen. Even if some of allegedly my fellow Americans didn’t treat it as what I used to buy ill-gotten hookers and blow and threaten to mess with it every time they got a chance at power(Even Dems, including Biden, have not been immune to this junk in the past.) So, yeah, even if I don’t feel old enough to pass a torch, and indeed, childless and not really connected enough to the next generation to know where the torch would even end up, most of my activism feels like fighting for someone else at this point. Sometimes it feels like I could look in a mirror and not see a reflection(Too bad that’s not my really cool and offhand way of coming out as a Vampire…Vampire Berner could also be kind of a funny family comedy, with an abled blonde instead of me in the lead anyway.) But I do feel sort of invisible, which ironically I used to really wish for when I was in junior high getting stared at…is there a heaven with a backlog and supply concerns from China just now  getting to my twelve year old’s request? Plus side, maybe I could finally get the “Four inches of bod and a great birthday,” I’ve wanted since September 1985, and people might start looking again!

Which brings me to the title of this post, I guess, and my facing an unsettling, but more personal truth.  From time to time, Paypal still thinks I agreed to send my Scammer Twin more money, because, hey, she asked.(I’ve been throwing  the notices out, because I may be something of a soft-hearted sucker, but I didn’t plan to adopt this liar anyway, even if she hadn’t switched stories in midstream, as detailed in my previous post.(I’m sure that person does struggle, compared to most Americans, but it’s not right to lie about it even if you aren’t very good at it.) Why do people think I have money?  At times, I’ve wondered if it’s something I wear or the way I write, but neither have been very special this week, as you can see.

It's hard not to tell on “her”. Not to try to fill “her’ with outraged guilt for trying to hustle a cripple. Not gonna do it, just upset that after activism, assertiveness training and who  knows what else, part of me seems to always reach for the playground get-out-of-jail-free card that wasn’t. It’s humbling, but not in a sweet way.

I think I met my "Scammer Twin"...

 Wasn't going to tell this story, because I kind of look dumb in it, but hopefully good-hearted and generous, too, right? Anyway, in the spirit of #MutualAid last week, I parted with some coin, right? Wasn't exactly sure if I was enabling or what...had sort of a feeling all was not as advertised, somehow, and, good story or not, I probably should have paid attention. I scaled back, somewhat, from my original view of what was generous, though(Personally, I try not to give amounts past the point where I could shrug if somebody did really use it for liquor...just say "bye, money!" and move on.) so it didn't turn out to be an expensive lesson.
Punch line, though.  She(or let's be real, "she") just hit me up again this morning, only instead of, say "Elaine" she's calling herself "Katherine" this time and forgot all about the diabetes she told me about last time. I laugh because, as much as I'd like to see myself in some of these slinky Leonard chicks...deep down, I'm still really the woman who misspelled "Detail-oriented" on her resume and didn't notice till ten had gone out.(I can be nit-picky and I sit down a lot, but I guess it takes more than that to make one 'detail-oriented', for what that's all worth.)

If I took up a life of crime, I think I'd be exactly this person. So I sympathize.  But not enough that she'll see another nickel of mine, whether it's "hard-earned" or not.

In Case Putting Stuff Out In The Universe Is Real...

 your Bohemian Crip is not allowed to say:

"vomit"

"barf"

or, and this will hit my tweenaged inner child  right where she lives, "gag me", as an expression of disgust ever again.

It's Bothered Me For Years...

 that the writers on "Seinfeld" who wrote"The Handicap Spot"(sic) did not seem to know thing one about how an electric wheelchair works. Like, at all. It's a pretty funny episode that I hadn't seen in a long time, because my tendency had been to watch Seinfeld pretty continuously, burn myself out and not stay current. Leaving aside the omnipresent representation(a disabled writer would probably know from watching a friend, or of course, their own lives, that you don't try to push an electric chair--they often weigh hundreds of pounds) or nomenclature debates(Even when it was on, people were moving away from saying "handicapped" anymore, but go off.) nobody cared to do any research? For Example,, I bet if they did an episode about, say, scuba gear, they wouldn't show everyone wearing the shit backwards, because some network president could be super into scuba and get his friends from the country club to write letters and whatnot.(Although I will admit, they did some crazy and somewhat surreal episodes.) But it feels like they decided we are joke butts, not joke consumers.

I do like the car-salesman riff throughout, but my mom never got out of those places without the salesman hitting on her.(That, and the Fonz, were how I learned that "picking people up" was a thing. Only it was close to home that I learned women didn't always, well, dig it.) Even then, or at least over time, I figured a.  It must work on somebody.  and 2.  That was probably pretty sad and I was glad I wasn't her kid.

My brother usually pointed out afterward that the guys had hair in their noses.(if you want to date a single mom, grooming counts, dudes...if she doesn't notice, the kids do.)