Memoir/Creative nonfiction/anthology
Date Published: October 1st, 2018
Take a step back in time with some of the best writers with disabilities as they recount their first adventure, their first heartbreak, and the first time the unexpected treaded into their life. From body transformations to social setbacks, to love affairs and family trauma, Firsts collects the most thought-provoking and exciting stories of our time by people with disabilities. Contributors include Nigel David Kelly, Kimberly Gerry-Tucker, Caitlin Hernandez, Andrew Gurza, and David-Elijah Nahmod
Baring It All
By Andrew Gurza
Ever since I was little, I’ve had someone seeing me naked as part of their job. In
these instances, my body isn’t beautiful -- it’s broken. They come into my home every
morning and night, put on sterile gloves that smell like latex and plastic, with machinelike
precision and purpose, and begin handling my body. They pull open my scissored
legs to wash and dry me. They quickly and fervently move their hurried hands across
every part of me, ensuring every single patch of skin and every single bit is properly
tucked and trimmed, so that once I am up in my wheelchair, ready to start the day, or to
spend an evening on the town, I look presentable. Their hands feel cold and clinical.
During these moments, my body isn’t really mine anymore. My naked body becomes
little more than a thing to be taken care of; each part of me a checklist of steps that must
be completed before we can move onto the next.
In some small way, I try to desensitize myself to this experience, trying not to feel
as though I am nothing more than something that needs to be cleaned and clinically
tended to. Living with cerebral palsy, and being a wheelchair user since the age of four,
this routine has become second nature to me, and has made me look at nudity and
nakedness as a necessary requirement in order to complete a care task; nothing more or
less than that.
I understand these two systems quite well . . . now. I know that my queer, crippled
body inhabits these two spaces simultaneously, and I have learned to navigate them well,
and to compartmentalize my feelings in each space as required. It has taken me quite a
long while to get to this place of understanding and acceptance of my body, but there was
a time, not so long ago, when these two spaces came together in a rush of excitement,
fear, anger, and pain that I won't soon forget. This moment in time undeniably shaped my
relationship with my queerness and my disability. It transformed how I see myself as a
man, and how other men see me. This moment was pivotal in my understanding of my
body and what it means to me.
I was nineteen years old, and I had just moved away from home to go to university in a
different city, six hours away. My family and I were excited, because this meant a
newfound independence that I had been longing for most of my teenage years. I have
always been very close with my family -- our relationship and bond always strong, in
part, thanks to my disability -- but we were both in need of this change. It meant I would
be on my own, with the assistance of attendant care workers, a mixture of young men and
women trained in personal support work, made available by the university. It meant I
would finally have a taste of freedom, and my family would be able to see me in a
different light -- as an independent, young man. That was an absolutely exhilarating
feeling. I was also excited about something else. This was my chance to finally access my
sexuality with other men, something I had been talking about and wanting desperately
ever since I was fifteen years old. This was my chance to finally get naked with other
men, and I was certainly going to capitalize on that experience….
About the Author
Belo Miguel Cipriani is a columnist with the Bay Area Reporter. In 2017, his column on disability issues was recognized by the National Center on Disability and Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.
He is the author of Blind: A Memoir (2011), which received an Honorable Mention for Best Nonfiction Book by the 2011 Rainbow Awards, and an Honorable Mention for Best Culture Book by the 2012 Eric Hoffer Awards.
He has received fellowships from Lambda Literary and Yaddo, and was the first blind writer to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Cipriani has guest lectured at Yale University, University of San Francisco, and University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, and was the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University from 2012 to 2016.
His writing has appeared in several publications, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, Business Insider, and HuffPost. He was a contributor to the Ed Baxter Morning Show on iHeart Radio, and was also a frequent commentator on San Francisco’s KGO Radio, as well as on several NPR shows.
Cipriani has received numerous awards for his disability advocacy work, including being named “Best Disability Advocate” by SF Weekly (2015), an “Agent of Change” by HuffPost (2015), and an “ABC7 Star” by KGO-TV (2016). He was also honored as the first blind Grand Marshal at San Francisco’s 45th Annual Gay Pride Parade.
He currently works at the Center for Academic Excellence at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, MN, where he helps students improve their writing skills.
