Dear reader, this story tells of the love between an able bodied girl and a disabled man. I did a little bit of research to see if these events could actually happen and I have concluded that they could... If for some reason my research has led me to improper conclusions, I hope that I won't offend anyone with the story that follows.
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I met my husband Ben back in college. I had known him since freshman year and we were the best of friends. We did not get together until senior year because I had not been attracted to him in "that way". You see, Ben is handicapped and is bound to a wheelchair as a result of a childhood accident and though we got along famously I had never considered our friendship to be anything but that.
Then everything changed overnight. We had gone to one of these frat parties during our last semester at school. It was not our scene and we had never attended one until that night. However, I did not want to finish school without experiencing one such event at least once and I convinced Ben to come with me despite all his bitching and moaning.
The party was as wild as the ones you see in the movies. The frat house was full of people enjoying their youth and celebrating the last days of school when finals are done and the tension is finally released. I got in the spirits of things myself and participated in many of these silly drinking games.
As I never drank much, I got wasted rather quickly and loosened up more than usual. The music was booming and the vibrations were infectious. I was woozy and dizzy and started behaving atypically from my normal good girl behavior. I was standing in the middle of the dance floor surrounded by a throng of boys and girls and we were all moving into each other to the rhythm of the hypnotic music. It got really hot and I started peeling the layers of clothes I was wearing.
When a young man in the crowd noticed me, he directed the crowd to part and I was left alone in the center of a widening circle. I had slowly and sensuously removed my sweater that I was swirling it above my head swaying my hips in a very provocative way. I then removed my sneakers and kicked them to someone who was cheering me on in the crowd. I popped the first button of my jeans to a loud cheer. The boys in the room all centered in on the action as some of the girls stepped back disgusted by the show I was putting on.
You see, I am a dirty blond about 5'4 and slim. I am fairly skinny with curves in the right places. I am rather modest and only my past boyfriends or the people that have seen me in a bathing suit at the beach would know that I am rather hot. I don't usually wear make-up and never attract attention to myself. Yet, here I was in the middle of a room full of strangers about to pull my pants down while swaying my hips like a stripper.
I usually wear very baggy pants and when I released the second button of my jeans they started to ride down my hips. I was still hidden by the large loose shirt I was wearing and the crowd only grew wilder when they saw the top of my pants drop below the hem of my shirt. Soon, the pants were at my feet and the crowd went wild when my bare legs started showing just above my knees.
I kicked the pants away and started unbuttoning my large man's shirt. I teased the group surrounding me waiting for them to cheer me on as each button came undone. When the last was finally opened, I started playing with my shirt opening and closing it showing off the white sleeveless cotton shirt I was wearing underneath. A "wife-beater" they call it, and I always wear one over my bra.
I let my shirt fall to the ground as a roar erupted. I was now standing in my underwear in a room that had turned mostly male. The circle started getting smaller around me.
A flash of lucidity hit me and fear struck me as the horde stepped in. For a minute, my senses came back to me and I tried to cover up by putting my arms in front of me as I screamed for the swarm to step back. I remember feeling oppressed, disoriented and threatened. My heart was beating faster and my visibility was being obstructed by the multitude stepping in on me. I was trapped-in with nowhere else to go. The dizziness and wooziness turned into a swirl and a twirl and the room began spinning faster and faster around me.
Without warning, I started puking and the circle widened quickly. I was sick and the vomiting would not stop. The crowd thinned a bit and Ben finally came to the rescue. Earlier, while I was making a fool out of myself, he had frantically been trying to get to me but the crowd had prevented him from doing so. Some of the brothers who had invited us knew that he might put a stop to my striptease and they had forcibly kept him out of the circle. Using the panic as a diversion, he swiftly picked me up, sat me on his lap, and barreled his wheelchair out of the room and out of the frat house before the crazed-up boys got a chance to react.
To this day, I fear what might have happened that night if he had not been there.
So here we were. I was in my underwear covered with puke in the middle of campus at some god-awful time of the night. Yet, I felt safe in his arms. I had never been close to him physically in all the years we had been friends. He had just become my knight in shining armor and I melted into him on his lap trying to stay warm. The world had stopped spinning around me and I started relaxing. Eventually, all the emotions and the adrenaline rush dissipated and I passed out.
Ben attempted to wake me up when we got to his place but the alcohol had left me completely inebriated and unresponsive. I only have vague recollections of what happened next and I am only able to piece this together based on a few cloudy memories and the story that the man who would later become my husband has told me over the years.
I remember Ben trying to gently wake me up. I was still completely messed up and covered with my own vomit from head to toe. He wanted me to take a shower and had walked me to the bathroom. I think that he had left me to my own devices. I slipped and slid down to my ass still dressed in my soiled garments. Ben heard me fall, came in and attempted to get me to my feet a few times. When he saw that I was still unresponsive, he sat me in the shower and turned it on. Even the cold water would not wake me up. When he realized that I would not be able to do anything on my own, he finally decided to take over.
His shower was designed for his handicap. It was a big open space made for him to wheel one of his chairs under the stream of water. It reminded me of the showers that you see in some hospital rooms. He removed his clothes and got down to his boxers. My "knight" would not take advantage of me so he stayed modest for the shower. He then pulled me to my feet and gently placed me on his lap. We went under the stream of water together. I was still dressed with my soiled clothes and he tried to clean me that way. When he saw that he would not be able to clean me that way he timidly started undressing me.
I have made Ben tell me this next part a million times. It's been almost ten years since these events took place but whenever he recounts this tale I can still hear the emotion and excitement that he felt at the time. It is such a wonderful description of care and thoughtfulness, of love and passion that I get excited just thinking about it.
Ben fell in love with me at first sight, so goes the story. I never suspected a thing and he never showed any outward sign to me. He had fallen in love in the past to disastrous consequences and had decided, prior to ever meeting me, to keep these kinds of feelings hidden after a devastating heartbreak. For more than three years, he had lived by my side never telling me of his thoughts and desires convinced that I could never or would never show any interest in him. Honestly, I was completely oblivious to him in that regard. He was like a brother to me and I never even entertained the possibility. It just never had crossed my mind.
The night of the party, he had seen my reaction to the alcohol and when I started behaving out of character he started getting upset. He suspected that something was wrong and his suspicions turned out to be correct when he noticed that one of the frat boys was spiking the drinks of some other girls with a powder. He could not tell if it was ruffies, or ecstasy, or else, but he panicked when he realized that I probably had been drugged too during one of my drinking games. He valiantly fought to get to me and it was only when I started to get sick that he was able to grab me.