"Olantis is big. He’s tall and fat. He’s black. His voice booms and his laugh ricochets. He goes so fast in Roscoe! The first time I saw him, before we’d officially met, he was zooming down Shattuck Avenue weaving in and out of groups of students walking in clusters with their oversized backpacks. His music was blasting. This man was up in every available sensory input of every single passer-by.
I wasn’t envious just that Roscoe had the horsepower to go so much faster than Anita (my own motorized wheelchair). I was also envious of Olantis’s flagrant disregard of social norms. I spend my days at Cal trying to balance my need to advocate my right to physically enter spaces with my perceived need to not offend anyone in the process — by dressing modestly, not too dykey, careful not to break any obvious gender or fashion rules; by keeping my mouth shut in the face of minor issues if I can deal with them on my own; by projecting a friendly and helpful attitude as much as I can. It doesn’t always work, though, so seeing and being with Olantis is sometimes liberating...
I enter another space in a wheelchair, one in which the homeless and disabled people like Olantis are quick to greet me and talk to me while the able-bodied world averts its gaze. Even with my disability, I realize I am in a place of privilege — a white, middle-class woman pursuing a doctorate, with access to medical insurance. I know that Olantis does not share this privilege. I know that I am lucky to be in the space I am at Berkeley, but the challenges it brings can be emotionally draining and painful. My time with Olantis is anything but. The crip-bus-bond isn’t just tolerant; it’s fully embracing of me, because of my cripness, not in spite of it."
No comments:
Post a Comment