2007 - Vol. 4, Issue 5

Equal Opportunities, Mathilde Madden (Black Lace, 2006)

Reading Mathilde Madden's latest book, Equal Opportunities, I couldn't stop thinking of Jon Voight. Not current–day, lizard–faced, worried–about–Angelina Jon Voight, but sexy, damaged war–hero Voight, in the classic post–Vietnam film, Coming Home, his biceps always glistening from some rehab exertion.

There isn't a war in Equal Opportunities, but, as in Coming Home, an older, nondisabled woman has sex with a younger, disabled man. Rather than being swept along by history, Madden's graduate student, Mary, can predict the attraction because Mary thinks wheelchairs are hot. Mary is a "devotee" — one who finds wheelchairs inherently erotic. David, a self–described former "shag machine" is beginning to rebuild his life two years after becoming paralyzed in an auto accident.

The couple begins an unconventional, steamy love affair that encourages both parties to explore different sides of themselves, without the earnestness and "we can beat this thing!" moments so typical of mainstream efforts concerning this subject. In fact, one of the biggest conflicts of the book is whether the relationship actually needs David to be in a wheelchair to survive.

Initially, Equal Opportunities appears much like any book you might find on the "Romance" shelf in your bookstore, right down to the currently stylish shifts between his–and–hers points of view. But I don't think mainstream romance is quite prepared for such straightforward depictions of intermingled pain and pleasure, bondage, and a graduate student being totally turned on by watching her lover crawling the floor without his wheelchair. I say this not to warn readers from the book. In fact, I find it witty and inventive, and most of all, sexy. But this is no introduction to disability culture. This is straight–up (no pun intended) erotica that some might want to keep hidden when the relatives come to visit. We all know how fun it is to relive those teenaged moments of stealing Mom's steamy books and reading them by flashlight on a school night, and Madden captures that "it's fun because it's wrong" tone perfectly, whether by having Mary tie David up with the ribbons from her own hair or having the couple lick boiling fudge off of each other after following a sexy television chef's recipe. Madden may want to make a statement, but it's secondary to showing how much this couple enjoys each other sensually.

That's why I enjoyed this book so much and why it evoked my collegiate lust for Jon Voight in a wheelchair. Any remotely straight woman who sees Coming Home is going to want to make it with Jon Voight, without thinking once that his wheelchair is a liability. This was a new thought to me at shy nineteen, slowly coming into sexual self–esteem after a lifetime of believing I could only be loved by someone "strong enough" to do it "in spite of everything," mostly by pushing the chair aside like some kind of orthopedic candy wrapper while I hoped I made a sweet enough treat that it was worth getting inside. It was still hard to convince myself that what I felt looking at somebody else in a wheelchair was lust, rather than commonality or pride that he was the hero of the film and the only guy that could inspire Jane Fonda's frumpy Iris to come.

The disability–rights movement has occasionally enabled my natural impulse to put the "cerebral" in "cerebral palsy" by making me focus on "positive imagery" instead of the urge I might have to lick the salt from a sweaty wheelchair jock's toned biceps. If I, who have lived with my own disability and loved others with disabilities have these issues and conflicts, I'm not surprised that a relationships between disabled person and a nondisabled person can appear fraught and troublesome. Sexuality, in all its variation, can also complicate matters. My weakness for dark–eyed men with full mouths aside, I couldn't be much more different from Mary. I don't have a sex–toy goodie bag or a string of freaked–out exes. In fact, until I started spending a lot of time on the internet about five years ago, I honestly believed I was an old–fashioned, hearts–and–flowers kind of monogamist. It would have been difficult for me not to judge Mary for loving that David couldn't get away or for wanting to tie his powerful hands. Since then, though, I have read hot vampire sex, police officer/defendant sex, and had more than my share of inappropriate thoughts about a certain politically controversial former sportscaster, as well as purchasing my first pair of pleather pants. Viewing Mary and David's relationship through my older, more politically sensitive filters, it's time to be honest: I may still live in a red state, but Toto, I'm mentally not in Kansas anymore. I love that Mary likes taking the lead so much, even if I wouldn't always take it where she wants to go, and I especially love how she feasts on everything about David's body, even the parts he has been taught to be embarrassed about.

As a disabled woman from birth, wheelchairs and other such devices have, to the extent that is humanly possible, been demystified and made daily for me. To try to understand Mary's fetishism, I related it to being a fan of a celebrity. Much like the fetishist, the fan carries an image of a person that probably has more to do with projections of her own desires than the actual personality of the celebrity. Mary finds this out the first time she sleeps with a disabled person, the sheltered and naive Rich. "In my brain, I had automatically equated disabled/in a wheelchair with 'kinky as all hell' and Rich wasn't into all that stuff, which I took as a fundamental incompatibility."

Yet, the fantasy is so important and consuming that Mary persists, much as people reread internet interviews or look for postings from the famous television or movie star who turns their crank. "I tried to go vanilla. Consoling myself that Rich was heartbreakingly beautiful, and watching him glide around in my flat in his chair like a ballerina on wheels should have been enough for me." But until she meets David, her attempts to fulfill her desires are dashed, and she ends up being called "sick" by both her nondisabled and disabled partners for her wheelchair–related fantasies.

Although I'm still not completely comfortable with certain aspects of devoteeism, I believe the world would be a better place if everyone got admired as expansively and frankly as Mary admires David in Equal Opportunities. Even reading about it secondhand made me tingle and view my shape in a new way. Yes, only for a week, but it's a beginning.

However, I'm not sure if I would have been able to respond as positively to this book if the fetishist had been male and the paraplegic female. I think part of my pleasure came from the gender–role flip of having the female partner be The Strong One. If a nondisabled David had tied up a disabled Mary, it might well have seemed like stereotypes in overdrive, even including the melting fudge.

A question I came back to often as I found myself enjoying such unaccustomed material was: Had I evolved enough to accept this kind of activity, or was there something about Madden's view I took to? How would I react to meeting a devotee in real life? For now, I suppose the answer is vague but still somewhat unexpected: it depends. This is still light–years away from my initial opinion that it was disturbing when pain and pleasure intertwined and that devoteeism was dehumanizing. I think now that context matters, and I couldn't judge without seeing the whole relationship. Is Mary right? Is loving a disabled body "kinky as all hell" whether you have handcuffs or not? Though this book functions well as "simple" erotica, it's interesting over the long–term because it gives us room to ask these questions.