Finding Love the Hard Way

Submitted by Rob

Just an Innocent Kid

I was a pretty good kid, with the exception of the perpetual war waged against my older brother. They say that even that is normal for boys, I grew up on an upstate dairy farm, which operated 24/7/52, and there was not much time to get in trouble…or to have fun. That shaped my early love life. I never had time to date much, and could only legally drive less than a year before my injury. When I finally got my license, I found it did not matter anyhow. Unlike girls of today, during my teenage years most girls turned their nose up at the thought of going to a dance in our pickup or our flat bed with the cattle box on it. Despite the problems, my brother and I did manage to get an occasional date. We would take a truck to town and park it. Because it was a small town, we could walk to a girl’s house and walk her to the school gym or the Y where most dances and social events were held. If the girl lived in a somewhat remote area, either she accepted the truck ride or she got scratched off our list. The thing that made this painful was when we had to compare our love life with that of the few guys from wealthy families who had their own car and took their girls to the drive-in movies. Although we knew it was mostly bragging, it still hurt. In the1950s, the “pill” did not exist, and even condoms were under lockdown at the pharmacies and restricted to legal-aged adults. If a kid tried to lie his age, his parents would be waiting for him at the door when he got home. It seemed that each summer, one high school girl would get pregnant, and abstinence would be in vogue the entire following school year. No one had to say a word.

Personally, I never thought much about having sex with a girl when I was in high school. It was probably because I had acquired a distorted, i.e., muted view of the process on the farm. From the time I was able to walk to the barn with my father to attend a cow in labor, I understood about the birds and bees. In fact, I educated my whole first grade class, with the exception of a couple girls who preferred to stick with the stork. I also helped Dad taking the bull to service cows in heat. She would be secured in the “service station,” the bull would sniff around a bit, mount her and be done in less than 30 seconds. He would slide off and look around for some good grass or hay. The cow would turn her head and look at him with her big brown eyes as if to be asking, “that’s it?” Cow sex was not impressive. Then as I got older, I had to test my own equipment from time to time to see if it was working. I thought the few second high that resulted from success was pretty good, but then, the afterglow of the adrenalin rush I got from shooting a 10 point buck lasted for a week. This view of sex led me to conclude that its primary purpose, at least as far a doing it with girls was concerned, was similar to earning a merit badge. You proved that you could do it. And, as I later learned, sometimes you should not generalize animal behavior to humans.

I never had a steady girl, and actually never dated one more than four times. It just was not practical for a farm kid who was at the mercy of the weather or a cow in labor. The fourtimer was the result of my dad and a guy at the milk processing plant. They tried to fix me up with the guy’s step granddaughter. She did not like the organic smell of the farm truck, and our relationship broke off when she had to walk to dances or the movie theater with me during the cold, snowy winter evenings. I still remember my last high school date. About a week before my injury, I went on a hayride on a clear, chilly evening with the smell of wood smoke in the air. Our family was not particularly religious, but I had a bit of an ecumenical side to me. I was raised a Catholic, was on a hayride sponsored by the Luther League, and my date was a Jewish girl. And guess what? The girls were “thrilled” to ride on the farm wagon pulled by a tractor driven by a local farmer. He did not even hose the caked manure off of the tractor. Women! The only way a farm kid could have a steady girl was if she was a neighbor and willing to help with chores.

I never complained. Hunting and fishing topped dating as far as recreation was concerned. Besides, I was not ready to think of settling down. My plan was to get an engineering degree with an Air Force ROTC scholarship, become a pilot, and possibly marry a woman from some exotic foreign land like my Uncle Joey did. Then I would retire from the Air Force early, and work as an aircraft engineer. I thought it would be good for our kids if we were settled down before they were in high school. Raising a family was a given.

My Life Sentence

I took me only a few minutes to figure out what was wrong following my tumbling miscue in gym class. My limbs and the rest of my body lost communication with my brain. It had to be my spinal cord, probably in my neck. I had a good biology course and understood the nervous system basics pretty well. The frog I dissected did not die in vain. I did not, however, understand the consequences of the spinal cord injury, or in other words, the severity of the sentence that had been doled out to me.

My rude awakening came soon after I was wheeled into the emergency room. I was carefully transferred onto a hospital gurney, and then a nurse took charge as the others left. After a quick introduction, she said they were going to drain my bladder because I had not “voided” for several hours. I soon learned that she meant “pissed.” Farm kids don’t use medical jargon. Then she said she had to remove my clothes first. “No big deal,” I thought. “We do not want to move you any more than we have to, so I have to cut them off,” she continued.

“Okay.” I was only wearing my gym clothes.

She quickly cut my t-shirt up both sides and down the short sleeves and lifted the top half off. This nurse was a pro with the scissors. When she started to do the same thing to my gym trunks, I realized that she was a woman. I almost threw up when she started snipping. My own mother had not gotten a look at my “private parts” for several years. Now this complete stranger. Then, the finale. She snipped the side of my jock strap and the end flew across my body. A couple more snips and she was done. She did not say a word until she draped a sheet over my naked body. “Are you all right? I need to step out a minute to get the doctor.” I mumbled a weak “yes.”

Before I could catch my breath, she returned pushing a cart piled with supplies. A doctor followed. “Young man, I am going to insert a catheter into your bladder to drain the urine [pee].” He held it up with his gloved hand. I really did not need to see that foot long piece of tubing. “If this hurts, let me know.” Fortunately, it did not.

As you see, almost from the onset, I knew my love connection had been affected by my injury. Before the day was out, I underwent surgery to my neck and awakened lying on a strange contraption with my neck being stretched to the point that I thought I was being hung horizontally. After about two weeks of being functionless in a total state of shock, my spinal cord began to function on a reflex level, much like a new born baby. As fate would have it, the first sign was a reflex erection, which a nurse pointed out to me.

“That’s a good sign,” she said after entering my room.

”What?” I asked, eager for any good news.“

“That,” she said with a smile, and pointed toward the lower part of my body.

I could see nothing down there. My eyes were fixed on the ceiling because of the traction.

“Well,” she said, “you have a nice little tent down there.”

There was always something going on down there. Tidal drainage one week, a supra pubic catheter the next, ad nauseam. It was impossible for me get my mind off it. I really did not understand this stuff. All I knew was that if you cannot piss right, you are in big trouble. The medical people are going to cut, probe, and otherwise mutilate your love connection in an effort to get things flowing.

My hospital course was pretty ugly. In the 50s, intensive care units had not yet been invented. As I later found out, I was only the second spinal cord injured patient to be hospitalized there who survived more than two weeks. After a month or so with no miracle happening, hope began to fade. Student nurses were always around to remind me of my problem love connection. I remembered that before my injury, when cute things got close, I had to scramble to hide the sudden bulge in my pants or risk certain embarrassment. Now the students could be dangling over me, and pure emptiness. Then when they touched my privates with a wash cloth, it would jump to attention. I learned about what that was all about from a nerdy student nurse who flaunted her knowledge by explaining everything in detail as she did my morning care. Eventually, she got to my “privates.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” she began. “That is perfectly natural. Even babies get reflex erections like that. It is not sexual or anything.”

Just what I wanted to hear. Sometimes a girl can really hurt a guy. There were times when I regretted not trying to get my merit badge in high school even if it risked getting a girl pregnant. Now I would never have the chance. To say I was depressed is an understatement. When you are no longer to walk, do not have sensation in most of your body, everything else half works on the level of babies, and your love connection is on the fritz, who wouldn’t be depressed? Everyone knew that but there was no Prozac in those days. The treatment for severe depression during that era was electroconvulsive shock therapy. I left the hospital running on empty, both emotionally and physically. Everyone viewed my discharge to home as a temporary stop on my way to my final resting place. I hoped that the stopover would be a brief one.

I arrived home in the Spring weighing 97 pounds, down from the 179 I weighed a week before my injury. I looked like the Auschwitz survivors freed at the end of WW II. I had at least three bedsores that went all the way to the bone and a few others not quite as bad. However, thanks to my mom’s home cooking and her 24/7 nursing care, I began gaining weight, and my sores began to heal. Most important, my strength began to increase, and I discovered a great deal of movement in my arms and wrists. There were no girls to deal with so I was able to shut that part of my life out. In a way, I became an actor. I was aware of the pain my parents were experiencing, and tried to be as positive as possible to avoid causing them more grief. At night, I often cried myself to sleep. As the saying goes, I was “laughing on the outside and crying on the inside.” I put my fail proof suicide plan on hold and became obsessed with death wishes. I realized that if I took the suicide route, it would tear up my parents even more. Instead, every time I heard an airplane approaching, I wished it would come crashing down on me.

By the end of summer I was improved enough that the state vocational rehabilitation agency agreed to sponsor me for some physical rehabilitation at one of the early facilities. I did some real acting to convince him I was highly motivated. I transformed my smiley face into the little engine that could. The interesting thing about this is that I had no idea what rehabilitation was. The counselor told me about all these therapies that were going to enable me to take care of myself even if it had to be in a wheelchair. But then, others had told me I would be walking soon too because they were praying for me. You can understand why I was a nonbeliever.

I will not dwell on my rehabilitation. It was an eye opener when I entered the lobby on arrival at the facility and saw several people in wheelchairs doing “normal” things like playing table tennis. It was a different world inhabited by other people like me. Words can go in one ear and out the other, but seeing is believing. If they could do those things, I could too. I could not wait to start therapy. When I returned home a few months later, I was a different person...at least from a physical standpoint. I looked human and I was functional to the point of ambulating in parallel bars with long leg braces.

Regrettably, there also was a very dark side at the rehab facility. Most of the guys who were being rehabed were coalminers, longshoremen, and other laborers who worked in dangerous jobs. Most had spinal cord injuries. They were tough, hard working “realmen,” and they approached therapy with the same vigor. But on the inside, they were on the same page I was. They no longer viewed themselves as a husband, father or lover. Their manliness had been wiped out by the sci. Each, in his own time, wrote the inevitable “Dear Jane” letter. Its purpose was to offer a wife an uncontested divorce or break off the relationship with a girlfriend. It would encourage them to move on and salvage the remainder of their life. We knew when a letter was being written by the empty look and teary eyes of the writer. We supported them with a pat on the shoulder and a kind word, reassuring them that they were doing the right thing. Regrettably, the staff believed as we did, and provided the same consolation. Sometimes they even helped to compose or write the letter for those who had limited literacy. The staff cannot be faulted because they were hemmed in by the limited knowledge about spinal cord injuries and sexual functioning available at that time. No one knew or thought differently. As you might imagine, that was the last blow to the last nail in the coffin bearing a crucial part of my life. My connection to humanity had been permanently buried. It was at this point that I vowed to stay distant from young women to avoid the possibility of involvement and the broken heart it would bring. I felt as if I had been unjustly thrown in prison where I was confined to a solitary cell and destined to live out my life. A spinal cord injury can make one feel lonely in the middle of a crowd.

I returned home from the rehab facility in early spring, with the projected goal of attending the vocational education program at a special facility designed to accommodate people using wheelchairs in the Fall. Everything went according to schedule, and eighteen months later I completed my training as a draftsman. Again, reality set in. In the small community near home, no draftsmen were needed. I did get an occasional job from a relative who was in the construction business. However, the work was erratic and I spent most of my time working on hobbies. The reality was that not only were women and love gone from my life, but I would not become the self-sustaining workplace robot that voc rehab had expected of me.

Salvation

Eventually 1960 came, and as a song of that era goes, maybe it was the “dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” As a scientist, I accept the fact that there are some things that cannot be explained from the cause-effect framework that I operate from. For example, scientists have gained a great deal of insight into how the spinal cord attempts to repair itself, but haven’t a clue as to why a particular person is singled out to sustain an injury. The same is true of love. Although scientists have the biology and chemistry charted in some detail, there is nothing to explain why two individuals come together at a given place and time and set that process in motion. Some people believe that the alignment of the planets and stars determines our destinies as far as matters like these are concerned. I cannot argue against that.

Unbeknown to me, the planets and stars began taking hold of my life. At first I thought that I was still bumbling along when my apologetic, shortsighted voc rehab agency counselor offered to send me to a medical rehab facility that just opened for a much overdue checkup. I jumped at the chance to get out of my parents’ hair for a few days. When I arrived at the facility, the staff was awed by my independence. They were expecting a newly injured person. Somehow they turned my 3-day checkup into a 30-day in-service training program. They asked me to teach them all the things I learned at rehab facility. For me, it was fun, and I actually felt useful. During an incidental discussion, someone asked about my past, and I told them about my college/Air Force plan that went bust. Thoughts of a wife from an exotic foreign land never entered my head. A few days later, I was invited to a conference room where several of the staff were waiting, including the medical director. He announced that they were there to talk with me about going to college. “We think it’s time,” he said authoritatively.

It was the beginning of the social awakening that characterized the 60s and they were intent on righting what they perceived to be a wrong. Thanks to their idealism, hard work, and more of my good acting, we set about to integrate a nearby metropolitan college. I had no particular goal or expectation. To me, it was little more than grasping at a straw that had been held out. It would at least give my parents a good respite. I moved to the campus about two weeks before classes started so I could get settled in and have time to work out some of the many problems ahead. During the first week, there was a group meeting with representatives from the rehab program, the college, and voc rehab agency. It was only then that I realized what I had gotten into. During the discussion, it became clear that I was a test case, and the admission of future wheelchair students to the college was ridding on my success or failure. When I made my “pretend” commitment, I was only thinking about myself. What a mess. I felt like the weight of the world was now on my shoulders. What happened to the planets and the stars?

It was only the second or third week of my hellish first semester at college when learned that the planets or stars had not abandoned me. On my way back from a class, I stopped at the bookstore to pick up a few things. I was wheeling down the isle between rows of bookcases when I noticed a woman in front of me. Her back was toward me and she was engrossed in a book. I thought there was enough room to pass behind her, and not wanting to disturb her, I carefully started to ease by. As it turned out, there was enough room for my wheelchair but as I gave the wheel a push, my elbow clipped her on the thigh. She jerked around as if to swat someone with her book, glanced down, and finally saw me. She blushed a bit and apologized for being in my way. In turn, I told her it was really my fault and continued on. I never gave her another thought until a few days later when I spotted her at the bus stop near the bookstore. As I wheeled by, I stopped, and said “hi.” She returned the “hi” and asked how I was doing. We engaged in small talk until her bus came. I learned that she was not a student but worked as a gofer in an office a couple blocks down the street. I continued to stop and chat 2-3 times a week when my schedule took me by at that time. After about a month, she informed me that her bus waiting days were over. She was in the final stages of buying a used car from a neighbor and had rented an apartment. She was going to be on her own at last.

“I’m going to miss you,” I said.

She responded: “I can still come by. I just work down the street. Give me your phone number and when I am settled, I will call you.”

“Sure,” I replied and told her the number when she pulled a pen and pad from her purse. The bus came and she was gone. I would miss her. She was the only friend I had at that point.

About two weeks later, the phone rang. The only calls I got were from home and I thought it was my mother. When I answered, what I heard was, “I’m all moved in. It’s great. No parents, no little sister. The only problem is that I don’t like to cook and eat alone.” Before the conversation ended, we had arranged to meet the following week at the cafeteria, and I would get her an inexpensive guest meal ticket. It became a twice a week happening, and in the relaxed atmosphere and with more time, our conversations started moving toward more and more personal issues. She had been out of high school for a couple of years and was struggling to figure out what to do with her life.

Then it happened. Late one afternoon, near the end of her meal, she suddenly started pouring out her soul. She really had a pretty miserable life growing up with a combination of strict parents and Catholic schools. Her father would not allow her to date until she reached 18, and then, as long as she was living at home, only if he first approved of the guy. In high school she had been a cheerleader, but they were not even permitted to ride on the same bus as the teams because there was no socializing with the boys. Here she was, at age 20, totally naïve about “things” to the point that she was scared to death of dating men. As she put it, to her, sex was something that brought on the wrath of God, disease, and pregnancy. She felt like a 10 year old girl, not a grown up woman.

As you know, my life had not exactly been a bowl of cherries. I started out with the intent of expressing empathy, but her mood caught up with me. I ended up giving her the top 10 lowlights of my life, ending with the fact that I was a 23 year old virgin destined to living my life without ever being able to change my status because of the ravages of my spinal cord injury. We were both pretty miserable by the time we departed. She accurately summed things up: “God, we are real messes, aren’t we?”

The planets and stars were not about to let me down. About a week later, we were in the cafeteria finishing our coffees and she picked up a newspaper someone left behind. She scanned the front page and then read out loud the beginning of an article about a new hippie commune that had been started somewhere in West Virginia. Hippies were just starting and were front page news because of their open use of drugs, free love ideas, and doing everything else that was considered antisocial. When she finished, she asked, “Why is it that you and I are always missing out on the good stuff?” Before I could think up an answer, she gave me a very determined look and continued, “Why don’t you and I forget about what everybody else thinks like the hippies do, and do something we want to do for a change?” I had no idea where she was going with this.

It was a Saturday afternoon when I found myself checking out her small apartment. The sofa bed was larger than I expected but low. What was I doing there? Inasmuch as neither of us had seen a totally naked adult of the opposite sex, we were going to change that. Then, she wanted to find out what sex was like even if I could only pretend. Before you smile too much, when I was confronted with the reality of her words, I had to struggle to hold back tears. It felt like salt had been rubbed into my wound. Finally, she was going to do whatever we could think of that might make me feel better. As she put it “we were going to become part time hippies.” Honestly, I thought nothing good was going to come of this. Embarrassment and humiliation were written all over it. I only went on because I did not want to hurt my best friend.

I struggled to get over my embarrassment, but her curiosity about everything from my scars to my urine collection system fashioned from a condom and rubber tubing did not help. She wanted a detailed explanation of every aspect of my injury. This was difficult because my knowledge of neurology and urology was very limited. Also, no one had ever discussed the sexuality issues with me. My total understanding of reflex erections was what I learned from the nerdy student nurse. I did not tell her that my erection was a non-sexual, baby thing, as had been explained to me. That would have been too painful. Instead, I explained to her that it was also supposed to work on auto-pilot when an attractive girl caught my attention. “Well,” she said, “my car does not have one of those automatic transmissions. Sure, I have to shift by hand but that’s no big deal.” Neither of us realized how prophetic her words were.

Eventually, she did run out of questions. “I guess it’s my turn now,” she said, and nonchalantly went about undressing. She was a strikingly beautiful woman. Seeing her standing there set my heart beating and probably pushed my blood pressure beyond the range of those blood pressure meters. In fact, when she sat on the edge of the bed, she could feel my heart beating. Well, at least I got to see and touch a real adult naked woman. I had come a lot further than I thought I would seven or eight years earlier. Her cheerleader personality kept us going. She was convinced that we could use my love connection despite the fact that it had been reduced to a manually operated model. “Com’on, we can do it,” she urged.

We ran into an immediate problem, thanks to some unnamed missionaries who are credited with instructing humans on the proper way do sex. How was I supposed to get my mostly paralyzed body on top of her’s and into position to connect? We gave it our best shot, but there was no way we could get our act together. Had I known at the time that this was the missionaries’ idea, I would have been skeptical about it working before we even tried. Who would expect people who use the Bible for reference to be experts on sex? It can be argued that sex is discussed throughout that book, but it is mostly by innuendo or some other way to talk around it. It is certainly not a “how to” book like that Comfort guy writes.

Finally, on our third weekend after a bunch of bruises and near crush injuries, we figured out a novel approach to get “intimately connected,” at least for a minute or so. At the moment of success, she giggled and said, “Boy, if the nuns could see me now.” We both exploded with laughter and literally flew apart. Every time we tried to reconnect, we would break into laughter again. We completely overlooked the fact that we both had just lost our virginity, a rite of passage that should have been celebrated with at least a toast. I have come to recognize that given enough time and a playful mood, even a child can figure out how to fit a round peg in the hole in a new toy. Moreover, creative children can find things to do with their toys that differ from the intended use.

After a couple surprisingly successful afternoons, she posed the $64,000 question: “Why do men need two ways to get erections?” As far as she was concerned, my reflex “thingy” [her word] seemed to work just fine. Actually, she was having a difficult time understanding why I thought I had a problem. I tried to give her an answer and quickly found myself getting both of us confused. Finally, to dig myself out of the hole, I said something to the effect, “I did not design us. Ask God.”

Our “hippie afternoons,” as we called our apartment get togethers, continued for a few months. Sometimes we would just frolic naked on her sofa bed, and then we discovered how the tip of the tongue could strategically be applied to various body parts and elevate sensory stimulation to new heights. Back in those days, we would probably have been arrested if caught doing some of those things. It was our way at thumbing our noses at our past and at society in general…and maybe even some unnamed missionaries. After all, we were temporarily supposed to be hippies.

Our Saturday afternoons ended when she informed me that she met a guy who she was thinking about dating. I knew that this time would come. Under the circumstances, it was the right thing to do. We did, however, continue the college cafeteria part of our relationship until our schedules got incompatible. We then became limited to an occasional phone call. I learned so much from her. I learned how caring and accepting women can be. I learned that if I let go of some inhibitions and negative thinking, I could unleash unimagined potential. I learned that warm, soft skin pressing against mine could create a feeling of serenity and security that I thought I would never realize. She broke down the prison walls and freed me. In effect, she reconnected me to life itself. Just as important, she had gained the confidence and understanding she needed to begin feeling like a grown woman. She could approach the future with newfound strength. Finally, in my humble opinion, we both qualified for the hippie free love merit badge.

I felt energized, self-confident and had a constant smile. People noticed and commented on how well I seemed to be doing. After bordering on academic probation at the end of my first semester, her cheerleader encouragement helped me to push my grades upward. My dorm had been ramped, and a steady stream of wheelchair students were being admitted. Then I got a real surprise. I received a call I got from the medical director of the rehab facility. “I am inviting you to join our team when you graduate,” he said. “We think you have a lot to offer both the patients and staff. Please give it some serious consideration.” The thought of doing something like that had never occurred to me. It blew my mind. I found myself living a dream. This time it was not a nightmare.

My friend kept telling me that I needed a real girl friend. I could not disagree, but I was still doubtful of that ever happening. Occasionally I would attend a campus social event with a classmate, but that was the extent of my dating. During my second sophomore semester, however, things improved considerably. A graduate assistant in the anthropology department, who was a friend of one of the new spinal cord injured students, offered to help our social life. If we wanted, he would direct some female anthropology majors looking for an interesting paper topic to us. As he said, we could have a good time teaching them about life as a crip, and we would find them to be open-minded, fun girls. He went on to say that once we were seen with these girls, other girls would start giving us a second look. As his friend later said, “he knew his shit.” We had some get togethers with small groups of the students at our watering hole and had some great times. It was not long before other girls were inviting themselves to join us, even in the dorm lounge or snack bar. Things were looking up. Looking back, I can imagine reading a term paper written by one of those students:

“We used Goodall’s approach to integrating herself with chimpanzees to study their social order and other habits. We slowly gained the trust of the tribe of the homo sapien subspecies spinal cord injured by drinking a malt beverage with them at a watering hole they frequented. When the all-male cohort relaxed, they began sharing some tragic life experiences. Interestingly, they reframed them as humor to cloak the pain they obviously experienced. As the evening wore on and more of the potent, bitter beverage was consumed, I suddenly felt pressure on my knee. I glanced down and saw that the right hand of one of the handsome males had been placed there. Immediately I recognized this as an early stage of the male homo sapien mating behavior. Presumably, a bond was building between us. Centimeter by centimeter, he slowly nudged the hand up my leg. He likely sensed the pheromone laden bait characteristic of adult female members of the species. When he was within stroking distance, he paused. I held my breath, waiting to see how he would use his partially functional digits to move the apparel that covered my leg so he could strike. Regrettably, the time grew late and the cohort disbanded before he made the final move. I fear this tribe may have assimilated some of the inhibitions that abound in our highly restrictive culture. Surely this inhibited mating behavior warrants further study.”

Guided by the stars

It was the busy lunch hour in the cafeteria. I was meandering around looking for a vacant spot at a table when I heard my name called. I saw one of the guys from my dorm floor waving for me to come over. He was sitting with his fiancé, who I had met before, and another young woman. When I approached, he invited me to join them since there was an empty place at the table. He introduced me to the stranger, who was a friend of his fiancé. As we ate, we engaged in some small talk. I learned that the young woman grew up about 75 miles from where I did, and we had similar farm backgrounds. Lunch was brief, and I left with a, “see you around.”

Sometime later that week, as I was again searching for a place, I noticed her in the food line. I wheeled over to her and told her I would find a place for two. “That will be great,” she replied. When she sat down, our eyes met. By the end of our meal I was entranced. I knew I had to go after her. I soon found that I did not have to go far. The feeling was mutual. Our relationship grew exponentially. I do not think either of us realized what was happening. Hardly a day went by without us being together someplace. She had an old Ford Fairlane, which had been her parent’s car. It started finding its way to drive-in movies and remote spots. What started out like one of my high school-type dates with a little necking quickly evolved into her parking the car in a remote corner of the drive-in movie lot. Then she started leaving her bra at the dorm when we went to a movie. You would think that a guy who bragged that he felt qualified for the hippie free love merit badge would not have been concerned where this was headed. In fact, I was really starting to sweat. Things are never simple when you are a spinal cord injured person. Here I was in the front seat of a car with a lovely woman, and we were getting rather passionate. However, she was about 5’ 10” and I am 6’ 2” so things were tight at best. More importantly, I could only be without my urinary collection device for about a half hour without risking disaster. To this day, I cannot imagine a quadriplegic spinal cord injured guy engaging in intercourse under those conditions. I’d have to see it to believe it.

In addition to having my self-control tested at the movies, there were other danger warning signs that had been catching my attention. For instance, we were talking about the future as if we were always going to be together. As you might expect, my defensive mode began to kick in. One evening when we stopped by the snack shop to get a caffeine fix, she sensed that something was wrong.

“I have been thinking about us,” I began. I quickly got into the consequences of my injury and my somewhat updated version of the birds and the bees. “I thought you ought to know what you are getting into before this goes any further.”

“I knew most of that,” she said, “there are two nursing students on my floor. And there are patients with spinal cord injuries in the hospital they were assigned to.” I have not figured out if I love or hate surprises like that. “You have different stories about the sex part,” she continued. “They said I should dump you if I wanted that in my future. Who should I believe?” She was smiling but I was not sure if she was serious or kidding. Except when acting, I have always been honest to a fault. I told her the basis of my version, i.e., it was based on personal experience. “I want you to know all the facts. Think about everything. It all comes with me.” Her decision did not take long. The next day, she gave me a “thumbs up.” “I love you and I have no intention of dumping you. It will all work out.”

I know it was a mental struggle for her, but she agreed that it would be best if we did a trial run before we made a formal commitment. “Shacking up,” as we called it back then, was not on her Church’s list of things unmarried young people should do, and she had a phobia about college security guards. It was a Saturday evening when I locked my dorm room door after we made the dash from the service elevator. I remind you, she was not totally naïve like my friend and training partner. She was as familiar with animal sex as I, and she offered that she was somewhat familiar with missionary position human sex, having extrapolated from sultry movie scenes. Of course, I told her to forget about that. She also had dated some, but whether she acquired any actual experience, I cannot say. Sometimes it is best if a guy invokes the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Aided by my experience, within fifteen minutes she was on top of the world. “This is neat. I can see out your window. I can see some stars.” Her words quickly faded and were replaced by the sounds of passion blending with the varied rhythms of my Ventures album playing in the background. Sometimes life is just plain sweet. She had to be back at her dorm by 11p.m. that evening, and I escorted her. While she was signing the registry, the women’s prison matron at the desk glared at me. We went to the elevator and I kissed her goodnight, said “I love you” loud enough to catch the guard’s attention, and ended with a “sleep tight.”

“There is one thing I need to do before I go to bed,” she answered.

“What’s that?”

“I need to tell two nursing students they better start hitting the books more. They have a lot to learn.”

On the way back to my dorm, I glanced up at the sky and quickly picked out the little dipper with the North Star brightly shinning at the end of its handle. It has guided travelers for centuries.

It took only a day or two for word to spread around the dorm that we had started shacking up. It was not possible to keep that sort of thing a secret. Smuggling women into the men’s dorm required teamwork. A short time later, I stopped off at the watering hole to get a cold one, and a couple of the other spinal cord injured students were at a table. I invited myself to join them.

The waitress brought my beer, and the question of the day quickly popped up: How are things going with your girl? “Great,” I replied, “and I am not telling you a damned thing more.” One of them looked up kind of sheepishly. “I have to confess, all…most of us at least, thought you were feeding us a bunch of bullshit when you told us what happened with that other girl of yours.”

When I was sharing my experience trying to educate them, I was well aware of the skeptical looks on their faces. What else could I do? We did not have cell phones with cameras in those days. They knew my training partner friend was real because I had introduced her to some of them when they passed by in the cafeteria. “Guys, don’t be stupid and waste what are some of the best years of your life like I did.” I went back to sipping my Rolling Rock pony, and smiled as I remembered the AB guy on my dorm floor who asked if I would introduce him to my sister. I was momentarily puzzled about how he knew I had sisters. Then he went on to say that he had seen my sister picking me up on weekends. My sister? Some of the things we crips have to put up with are unbelievable.

Our Celestial Journey

Everything was falling into place, and my not quite official fiancé decided it was time to start preparing her parents. She made a trip home and purposely “let it slip” that she was dating a guy who used a wheelchair. As she expected, her mother freaked out. “Why would you date a person like that? He won’t even be able to take the garbage out,” was the exact beginning of her tirade. It went downhill from there. My fiancé left earlier than usual, and her father escorted her to her car. She was about to pull away when her father stuck his head in through the window and kissed her on the forehead. “You do what makes you happy. That’s what I want.” That was all she needed to hear. We made a visit together, and her mother stayed in the kitchen where she spent most of her time banging pots and pans around. It was not exactly the behavior one would expect from a supposedly devout Christian woman. We survived the visit but were left wondering if her parents would end up getting divorced because of us.

We made a couple weekend trips to my parents’ farm and she quickly became part of the family. On our third visit, I had her stop on a hillside as we approached the farm. It was a beautiful peaceful, August day and we could see the ripening grain fields and the cows grazing in the pasture. I proposed, giving her an inexpensive ring she had requested, and we hurried to share the news with my parents.

It was two weeks before we went to deliver the bad news to her mother. I swear her mother turned blue as she ran to the bathroom. I doubt her mother ever stopped crying that afternoon. Her father invited me to the living room and we chatted for a while. Then he straightened up in his chair and told me about his father. He had M.S. and worked on the farm until he literally dropped dead in the barn while milking a cow. “He was a fighter and wanted no pity. He could always find a way to do what needed to be done. I know you can too. You have my blessing.”

Things were really getting hectic. So much to do in so little time. We would both be graduating in the middle of December. I had formally accepted the rehab position pending my graduation and would start work the first week of January. My fiancé also had a job lined up for January. It only made sense to move from the dorms to an apartment so we would be settled by the time we started work. The big problem was money. We had managed to save about a thousand dollars between us. We bought a new car that I could drive, using her old Fairlane as the down payment. The rehab O.T.s installed hand controls on it, and I started learning to drive in a large cemetery near the campus.

Our wedding budget was $500 max. We decided we would get married in the college chapel, which was available to students for a token fee. We got a great deal that included the college chaplain’s honorarium. It had to be a small wedding, so we limited it to our parents, two attendants, and their significant other. We decided to get married the afternoon of November 26, which was the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. Since most of the students would be gone for the holiday, we would have our reception in the dorm lounge area. This would be followed by a sit-down dinner at a nearby, upscale restaurant. We would reserve a room at a suburban Holiday Inn for our honeymoon.

Our wedding went smoothly. My mother-in-law did attend and she kept her sniffling down to about 10 decibels. At least it did not echo in the chapel. [About ten years later, she confided to my wife that things turned out better than she could have imagined and had come to admire me.] I’ll spare you the details of our honeymoon. I will say that deer hunting is boring in comparison. When we returned to the college, the news had already spread. During our reception, there had been a few students who wandered by and asked what was going on. The college security also knew, and I got called aside by the guard to my dorm. Security had discussed our wedding and concluded that there was no policy that related to conjugal visitations by married couples. My wife was free to come and go as long as she alerted the students like housekeeping personnel did. That was to yell out, “woman on the floor” when getting off the elevator. My smuggling days were over. The day after we moved out of the dorms, I took my driving test and passed without a problem. We were set.

There was one surprise to come. I reported to work as scheduled. Mid-morning, the medical director escorted me around the facilities and introduced me to some of the newer staff whom I had not met. When we arrived at the nursing unit, the head nurse, who I had known since my earlier admission, introduced me to a couple of her staff. She indicated that she had a brand new nurse who started that morning, who she also wanted to introduce. She called around on the intercom, located her, and asked her to come to the nurses’ station. When I saw her coming down the hallway, I almost choked. It was my training partner friend. It took the ultimate in self-control to restrain our laughter when we were introduced. I knew she had enrolled in nursing school, and I knew she graduated, but she never said a thing about the job. During our first private moment, she gave me a congratulatory kiss and told me that she had a wedding date in April. In turn, I congratulated her. That was the first time we had ever kissed. That fact reveals the nature of our relationship. It was always based on trust and caring, not romance or sex. We were two very lonely people who needed a friend. We were two buddies trying to help one another.

While my wife and I were still dating, we shared stories about our background and how we got to where we were. I could not leave out the pivotal role this young woman played in my life. In all likelihood, without our hippie afternoons, I would not have started dating and found my wife. Both of these women had expressed the desire to meet the other. It was only a short time after I started working that she and my wife met. They embraced, and it was as if they had been lifelong friends. She later helped care for me when I had major surgery that became necessary after nearly two years of constant urinary tract infections. She has remained a cherished friend of ours.

The urinary tract problem was a major crisis, beginning two years after our marriage. I learned the value of having a loving wife’s support. I recovered and the outcome of the surgery exceeded all expectations. For more than three decades, I had remarkably good health, missing only half dozen days of work due to illness. As equal marriage partners we played leap frog, advancing our education and careers step by step. We have always been on the same page, wanting to make the world a better place. Enhancing the wellbeing of others has been our priority. We are proud members of the 60s generation. Love and its binding force, intimacy, have been the defining force in our marriage. Perhaps I am driven by memories of the deprivation, despair, and hopelessness from my early post injury years that almost took my life. My wife has always believed that our coming together has enabled each of us to draw upon the strength of the other. We have set aside time for carrying a message of knowledge, understanding, and hope to others so they do not unnecessarily deny themselves the opportunity for love. For several years, my wife often accompanied me when I went on trips to professional and other conferences to bring attention to sexuality and disability issues so they are prepared to confront them in their practice. At times, she shared the podium with me, giving a significant other’s perspective. I know the message we have attempted to spread has been heard because of the wedding invitations we have received over the years. In our eyes, there could be no greater reward. Now, the years are mounting. As couples age, there are always challenges to keeping intimacy in their relationship, ranging from menopause to joint pain. Sadly, many grow apart at a time when they need one another most. However, we have chosen to nurture that aspect of our relationship. We find it to be as much value today as it was when we first came together as a couple. We have had an exciting and rewarding trip together.

During the past few years, we both have battled cancer. If we had not had one another to lean on, it would have been difficult to weather the storms. As I found out earlier, feeling that warm soft skin next to yours can instill a sense of serenity and security that can lighten life’s greatest stresses. It was a wakeup call for us. We recognized that the light from the stars and planets is starting to grow dim for us. We retired and are now spending more time with one another. Life seems to go fast when you are in love. It seems like only yesterday that I was looking out from my prison cell lamenting about a far different outcome.

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Submitted by Rob on July 2^nd, 2010