It was Friday afternoon and the hotel bar traffic was building. I sat and sipped a Dewars-and-water and watched the 20-something redhead behind the bar make drinks. Some part of me found her appealing but I was lost in thought. CNN Headline News paraded silently across a large TV monitor attached to the ceiling. I absently scanned a complimentary USA Today and fidgeted with my glass. And then the woman in the tailored blue dress appeared. Time stopped for a moment as she stood in the doorway and hesitantly scanned the room. Our eyes met just briefly as she looked at the bar stools, but it was clear that they would not be easy for her. She seemed to settle on a table near me and began making her way toward it.
Every other eye in the room was on her, too, but not for the same reason mine were. You see, the wonderful creature entering the room was quite disabled. Her allure to me was as much a function of her crutches and the brace on her leg as her aquiline features and nice blonde hair. Oh, don't get me wrong. This girl was a "looker" in her own right with large, firm breasts and a winning smile. Her figure was good for a handicapped 40-ish lady, too. But most of the looks in the room reflected curiosity, discomfort and pity. For me, on the other hand, there was no doubt about it. This was the most astoundingly exciting woman I had ever seen and I knew I had to have her before the night was over.
OK, I'm different. I have always been wildly attracted to the lame ladies. I remember as a kid in the seventies begging to accompany my father to the office because his secretary, Ellen, had caught polio as a young woman and wore a brace on her leg. My father didn't know my motivations, of course, but at the age of 10, I would sit behind a spare desk and in near rapture watch Ellen haul her leg around in its steel and leather. Once I got my drivers license I was also guilty of going to shopping malls alone to surreptitiously follow disabled women around. It's a fetish, plain and simple. There's a scientific name for it—abasiophilia—and it's right up there in the sexual deviancy literature with pedophilia and necrophilia and all the other "feel-ya's." But it should be a little less horrific for you since I don't put anybody else at risk. Basically, like Peter Sellars' character, Chance, in "Being There," I usually just like to watch.
And the woman coming across the bar was giving me a wonderful show. She was using a type of crutch I'm sure you've seen at some point, called the Warm Springs crutch. Basically it's designed for people who don't have a lot of upper body strength and it gives added support to the arms. They were fairly common in the polio era, but you hardly ever see them today. Her crutches were made of dull aluminum and were long, with a single pole at the lower end, branching into two uprights above. Between the uprights were hand-grips and leather-covered open bands clasping both the forearm and the upper arm. A brown leather strap attached to each upper band to keep the crutch from falling should she let go of it. The straps formed loose loops that hung down on each arm.
Now this lady used her crutches expertly, swinging her legs smoothly through them with a certain flowing rhythm. As she came closer I could see her better and I noted something that was distinctly odd. The lovely blue dress came to about mid-calf and I could see the lower portion of the long brace on her left leg. What was unusual was the built-up shoe she wore on her left foot. The brace attached to the heel of the shoe, but the very need for the build-up was at issue since the extra inches of lift caused her right foot to not fully meet the floor. In other words, her legs appeared to be the same length but the lift made her stand on the ball of her right foot. I had never seen this before. Still, her right leg appeared to be semi-paralyzed and it flopped somewhat as she swung herself toward me. Hell...who knows, I thought. But the appearance of a short leg also drove my hormones even further over the edge. It's like that for me: the more crippled, the better. Sad but true.
The lady swung her legs a final time to just next to one of the chairs. She pulled her arms from the crutches, holding them together. Upon pulling the chair back she pivoted on her elevated right foot, reached down to unlock the brace and dropped into a seated position. She took another few seconds to carefully place her crutches on the floor, lift her braced leg under the table, and slide in. At this point had the crutches not been in view she would have looked like a perfectly normal, very pretty lady sitting in the bar.
Never one to dally, I made my move. I stood next to her and asked if I could buy her a drink. She agreed and I sat down, calling to the redhead behind the bar for a Tanqueray and tonic for the lady. I was completely mesmerized by her blue eyes and her wonderful perfume. I'm pretty sure it was "Red Door;" I can tell you for absolute-sure it was incredibly sexy. We each hesitated for a moment but I then started the conversation.
I asked her what she was doing there and she said she was in town on business from Des Moines. She was a data analyst, an IT person of some sort, I gathered. She was wearing a wedding ring, as was I, but I didn't comment on that. She said her name was Jenna and she was bright and cheerful and obviously quite intelligent. I alluded to her disability by asking if flying was difficult for her. She said it was a pain in the ass to get through security nowadays but she managed. Her biggest beef was the lack of legroom on most domestic flights which made it especially hard for her to maneuver in and out.
I took the plunge and asked her straight up about her lameness. She said that she had actually contracted polio from the Salk vaccine when she was a young child (I had heard of these very rare cases before). She had been able to walk with just a brace until a car wreck crushed her right leg and hip. The built-up shoe kept nearly all her weight on her braced left leg and off her fragile right femur and hip. She refused to allow the accident to relegate her to a wheelchair, although she admitted that at times a chair was preferable to the crutches. Nonetheless, she said, in business dealings she found that standing erect seemed to accord her more respect. She felt badly for those who couldn't stand, but since she could, she did in most circumstances.
