Damage Differential

The pubs and eateries along my radius on Walnut Street have a certain old city charm, and the Cafe at 2011 can boast a certain picturesque insularity, this wounded warrior gratified, that, last spring, the burly Irish got me over the innocuous step, onto the portable ramp, and I set eyes on the Black Adder for the first time, sort of indicting myself for a now pronounced anti-social aura that radiates from me, as I asked him if I could "stay". His response: All are welcome, and while I am not quite as committed an ideologue as he, I've become emotionally invested in the Liberty on the Rocks Meet Up.

But I'm self-conscious in terms of my physical dilapidation. This is  not to convey I was ever great at flaunting my femininity through dressing. Orthopedic surgery made my flexed contortions worse even in youth, but I have graduated, since I wiped out my savings in 2013,  toward a more thorough deterioration. I look like someone now living off the street, except when the will that has kept me alive resurges. Episodic breakthroughs.

I'm also tired of sitting outside, forcing my boys (whoa!) to sit with me on the sidewalk tables when they'd rather congregate in the bar. It is chilly now, and even if the thick set Irish firefighters were so inclined to haul the Jazzy Quantum up the plank, I cannot risk a circuitry breakdown as a result. My Quickie P-200 was already battered that spring, and was off balance, falling apart, so I cannot assume a gratifying struggle to enter the Cafe actually shorted it. I live in the power chair, and no model is that durable, but the Quantum is basically a battery and a plastic caster wheel casing, metal base, and I hate the fucking thing, know it cannot be subjected to punishment. If I attend, therefore, I will be consigned to waving at the guys through the window, feeling alienated as a result, irritated with my hearing loss--but the group matters to me. I've developed an emotional attachment to center city's marzipan radicalism. What to do?

I no longer support the Americans With Disabilities Act. It is a useless statue if properly scrutinized, and for every activist victory, there is regulatory pushback. The owner of the Cafe should not have to modify his establishment for a former middle class cripple on the skids, nearly deranged from the banquet of human suffering exposed and experienced in the Quaker geography of Southeastern Pennsylvania; Black Adder cannot be blamed for picking a location not modified for access, and it may be I am not perceived the way I imagine. It is equally true that I cannot fully engage if the clique has to be charitable by making a point of coming to me. They are there to mildly booze and share a meal while discussing politics. I am there to constrain my inner Mussolini from engaging in a shoot out with federal agents. Maybe one or two of them could hook me on downers, but it is not particularly a soluble issue. If Tom Reid were to pop up, and remember our off campus watering hole called Walios, he'd look at that continuum, probably shocked to compare me as the undergraduate he knew then, turning herself a corkscrew for Tassoni, hanging on Jerry McGuire's sleeve, to the ravaged grand dame that a non-violent software developer, with some additional assistance from Tony Stiles, has to reign in. A handful of local anarchists, conservatives, proselytizers, to these I've attached such internalized importance, in the waning days of functionality. A real diehard libertarian would probably say that the doctors kept you alive as a body to be exploited, and that is just the way it is. Liberals may have felt it was their duty to lift up your potential toward inclusion, and your failure is on your own head for giving the socialist paradigm the finger.

The real truth of the matter lies in self-hatred, what I am, the hell I've seen, like the surgeon detective in Anno 1790, and that too, is insoluble. Quadriplegia is a bitch. I've lived it over a half century, and want to stop living it now, and in disability culture, that is heresy, grumbling. If I want to attend, then attend already. Sigh.