Disabled and willing

I’m a 23-year-old straight male. Due to a rare autoimmune attack three years ago, I have been indefinitely confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. I was never sexually active before the attack, so now I’m left to face my sexual future from a significantly altered perspective. The important thing to remember is that I can still engage in sex. I can’t speak for all men that use wheelchairs, but I think a common misconception is that we automatically can’t have sex. I have always been very healthy and, aside from being in a chair, I still am. I would like to pursue physical relationships with women, but how do I let them know I can still perform without just coming out and saying it? "Hey, nice to meet you. I can still have sex, by the way. So, read anything interesting lately?" There’s no casual way of approaching the subject. Perhaps I should just bypass the tentative and the apprehensive altogether. Are there any wheelchair fetishists out there I should know about?

_Have A New Desire Inside Can Anyone Please Perform Erotic Deeds?

P.S. Sorry, I couldn’t resist the acronym my sign-off would create.

"Many people think ‘paralyzed from the waist down’ means ‘turned into a block of ice down there,’ " the authors of The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability — Miriam Kaufman, Cory Silverberg, and Fran Odette — wrote in a group e-mail. (We’ll call the authors KSO for short.) That paralyzed folks don’t have blocks of ice in their pants is something we fully ambulatory idiots can go our whole lives without learning. "[Non-paralyzed people] have been raised to believe that it isn’t polite to ever ask a person with a disability anything about their disability, let alone about sex," say KSO, "at least when they’re sober."

So how do you let a woman know you’re ready, willing, and able to bone her brains out? "The most important thing is to see yourself as a sexual being and put out that vibe when you are in the kind of places where you might meet someone," say KSO. "All those things people do, like making eye contact and smiling (sensuously, mysteriously, impishly), get the message across (staring at breasts doesn’t usually get the desired effect). A comment like ‘I can do anything in this chair except climb stairs,’ can also be useful. It might be a good idea to take someone on a first date to see Murderball," a film about athletes in wheelchairs, "as it has some fairly frank discussions about sex. It may not be in theaters much longer, but you’ll be able to rent it soon!"

As for wheelchair fetishists, HANDICAPPED, they’re out there and KSO have some good news for you: "They tend to be straight women looking for guys who use wheelchairs." Straight women — they’re just a bunch of kinky, sex-crazed freaks, huh?

I’m a 27-year-old man with cerebral palsy and a long-time reader who is hoping you can help me. I am dating a woman who also has CP, and if you don’t know much about this disability let me give you a short rundown: it can affect balance and muscle tension, which renders all conventional movement void. So think outside the box, man. We have run into some difficulty when it comes to having sex. (I know what you’re thinking: I don’t need the mental image of two gimpy people getting it on in my head. But, hey, we need to get freaky too.) Our bodies don’t move like other people’s; we are both in wheelchairs and while sitting is no problem, my stiff legs make the missionary position impossible. We have invented ways to get each other off, but as far as doing the deed we are stumped. We have tried many different positions, but we can’t get the angle right. We have looked all over the place for help, including the Internet, with little luck. There doesn’t seem to be much info out there for us.

_Getting Irritated (with) Missionary Position

You gimps seem to have a knack for acronym creation, GIMP, nice work. Okay, on to the advice:

"Things do get more complicated when both partners have disabilities," write KSO. "Some positions that have worked for other people are: 1) on your sides facing each other, with one of her legs over you; 2) on your sides facing the same direction — this is a particularly good one if her legs are also stiff. And if either of you takes medication to relax your muscles, you might want to ask your doctor if it is safe to take an extra dose before having sex.

"Many people use a hand to guide the penis into the vagina, and if you both have problems controlling hand movements, getting started will take extra patience," say KSO. "And keep in mind that intercourse is not necessarily the be-all and end-all sexual experience."