Let me start off by saying that I would like to apologize if this post makes anyone uncomfortable. I’m sorry if it makes you blush. There’s your disclaimer about the nature of this post, alright? Yes, I’m going to talk about sex. And penises. And disability. And while you have every right to choose to not read it because it will make you blush or make you uncomfortable, it is my sincere hope that you do choose to read it.

Because it’s important.

I have felt an overwhelming urge to write about sex and disability for months now. Probably since January, to be honest. And as the months have passed, my desire to write about sex and disability has only increased, as my knowledge and my experience has increased with every experience of physical contact I have with Don and possibly even more so with every conversation I have with him.

But I’ve refrained over the past…um…one, two, three…almost four months for many reasons.

The first being that I never felt I had the right to talk about sex and disability simply because I’m not disabled. I am “able bodied”. And I therefore never believed it was my place to say anything, no matter how many sexual experiences I had. And no matter how many sexual experiences I had with someone who is disabled. It wasn’t my issue…and I subsequently shut my mouth.

Until now.

Because I do suddenly feel as though I have the right to talk about it, if for no other reason than it affects me. And furthermore, it affects the person that I love. I love someone who is “differently abled”. I love someone who lives every day with physical limitations and constraints…who has, as Kate put it, “had to invent a new way to walk”. I love someone who has been forced to wear an identity on his sleeve, no matter how hard he has tried to hide or blend in and no matter how much he may not have identified with said identity.

Don’s experience is not my own.

And yet, his experience has become linked and intertwined with my own over the past seven months. His experiences now, sexually or otherwise, have, in a strange way, become my own experiences because I love him, see him and am learning that no matter how deep we go, there’s always another layer. His experience has become my own because I choose him and I choose to feel whatever he has felt and whatever he feels and whatever he will feel in the years to come.

Because he’s mine.

I also refrained from writing about sex and disability because I was scared of embarrassing Don. I was scared of making him feel uncomfortable. I remember the first time I used the word “disabled” to describe him in a phone conversation that lasted late into the night and I swear, I could * hear * him cringe. I called him on it. And he admitted that he hated that word.

And I remembered how it took literally months before he was comfortable talking about sex with me. Let me rephrase that! Cuz Dog knows he wasn’t nervous about talking about it in an abstract way…

I remembered how it took him literally months before he was comfortable talking about our sexual experiences with one another in January. (Oh yes…I can see the light bulbs going off over top of everyone’s heads! “Wait a second! I remember those posts on blogster! I * knew * it! They * did * do it!”) I remembered how uncomfortable and shy and defensive he was talking about just about any part of our time together in January…most of all the time we spent curled up into one another in bed.

I cut him some slack for a few weeks before I pursued it.

And then…well…wow. Talk about layers…

It was then that I realized that sex with Don was never going to be like anything I’d experienced with anyone else. And I realized that my old “tricks of the trade” weren’t going to work. And that everything was going to have to be built up from ground zero. And a new, customized plan of attack was going to have to be devised. Don’t get me wrong…I was cool with all of this. I’m crazy attracted to the guy, have been since the very, very beginning (ooh! More light bulbs!) and would go to just about any lengths to have sex with him. I also realized, as we started talking about what had and hadn’t happened in January that there was going to be a whole lot more talking and a whole lot more discussing. More talking than I had ever done with a sexual partner before.

So, given all of this discussing and talking and cultivating, I certainly didn’t feel as though I should be further discussing it by writing about it. There is more than enough shame in Don’s past regarding his body…no need to bring more. And likewise, there is more than enough issue in Don’s past regarding his body…no need to draw more attention to it.

Until now.

Baby, no more hiding, okay? It’s time to step up and step out…it’s time to force people to look at you, stop trying endlessly to make it easier for everyone else to take in the sight of you…it’s time to be honest and it’s time to share it all with the world.

The past didn’t go anywhere (Ani Difranco)

We will change the way society views disability and sexuality.

Stand by me. You’re not alone. (The Clash)

Together.

Okay?