There is little in our modern society-affluent, brash, caring and concerned-that the bemused individual finds so utterly reassuring as the erotic experience. At last the unconstrained expression of simple mutual affections is enabled. It becomes possible to know, one is allowed to know, another's comfort, another's joy, another's ecstasy; and, in those discoveries, find one's self unearthed.
Shame and secrets, frustrations and lust are abolished-suddenly life acquires a nearly palpable lovingness. Suddenly one is wanted for one's depths and one is living for others' depths, sharing barely considered understandings, sowing intimacies.
In that case, there is, perhaps, little in our modern society-our caring society-so tawdry as the defensively prissy way that we prefer to meet our social obligations. A strict veneer smothers instincts when, as a society, we take it upon ourselves to care for those who are (we are fond of declaring) 'less fortunate than ourselves'. Care is regulated and administered with a frosty knowledge: the we-know-best syndrome acts swiftly to stifle any agitations toward bliss. Anyone deemed to be in need of such care, who subsequently seeks, nonetheless, to lead a full life is often likely to find his or her aspirations persistently thwarted.
A disabled person with love to offer may be patronisingly, evasively, looked upon as a refreshing, 'nice' example of how graceful (no more) a disabled person can be. A disabled person wanting love, however, is another matter. A delicate problem to be circumvented with a wary, maternal excess or browbeaten into an equally unsatisfying dullness by measured refusals to acknowledge any real need to love.
Of course, it is not that love is wholly denied, rather it is that the nature of such love is hedged about with reductive compromises and qualifications. Affections can quickly become social calculations hoarded, with a miserly zest, in guarded, shady places-delights not accessible to a less fortunate few. It is a mean-spirited attitude damaging to society generally, but for a disabled person, who may have to depend upon others' help to gain access to various experiences, it is an attitude with an especially harsh effect.
Ironically, in such a reticent climate, the world can often seem remarkably frank about a disabled person's genitals. The pursuit of hygiene and 'regular habits' is no doubt commendable, but the thoroughness with which one may be scrubbed, prodded and generally mulled over, in this respect, years after one has acquired an awareness of a personal and inviolable sensibility, is hardly likely to provoke the budding forth of creative spirit. Instead, frustrations mount and inchoate emotions tense on brittle edges. Respect for dignity is casually brushed aside, and one's integrity feels less and less drawn towards a sense of any personal value and, increasingly, pulled into confrontation with 9 tarnished self-image.
No society that cares so positively, as our's surely does, for those of its citizens who require its care, can ever allow itself to become complacent about the shortcomings that may yet exist. It is no part of the public means of any society to provide disabled people with a sex-life.
But, equally, it is vital that attitudes are not, thus, fostered that impede, because of dependence on able-bodied people, a disabled person from access to such a life. A fulfilled life has necessarily fed on human love, else it is one that has been selfishly permitted to waste.
After all, if the erotic experience of human love is to mean anything, to have any truth, then this is only possible when all those who desire to share that experience, nourish that expression, may do so. Humanity is rendered merely glib, wherever its creativity becomes a guttering flame.
