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Causes

Written by Tom on Thursday, November 27, 2008

I have been working all day, I have been putting up my usual show, I have performed my usual performance as an able bodied, respectable, adult professional. All day. Like a machine, all day. Feeling less, emotionless, professional, cold and efficient.

As I came home, I experienced a sudden burst of anger as the gas water heater failed again to start and to produce hot water for me to wash my hands. Anger. My old friend. Dear Anger. You have been with me for so long, you are my oldest friend. My oldest enemy.

And tears. Tears, after the anger fits, always.

I need to get cold and efficient again. I’m a professional. I’m a worker. This is all I can do in my life. I work. Je fonctionne. Je ne vis pas, je fonctionne. I’m not alive, I work just like a machine works. I Function.

I connect to the Internet. I connect to Transabled.org. I connect to all of you. I connect to myself. And I read your poem, Sean, Demons. I’m alive again. I feel pain. Your pain, my pain.

It won’t go away.

No, it won’t go away.

I have read those four words last Saturday already. It won’t go away.

I’m 44. I’m a French gay man. I’ve spent all that time with this bewildering desire, and with the painful feeling that I’m a freak.

I’m alone, because it is not possible to share my life, my desire, with anyone. I live alone.

I’m alone, because my life is not acceptable. My life as an able bodied, skilled guy who wants a limb off, who wants to become an amputee, is not acceptable.

This is not acceptable. I have two hands, and I want only one.

This is not acceptable. I have a left hand, and I want a stump at the end of my left forearm.

This is not acceptable. My entire life was ruled by this, so far: I mustn’t go into it.

This is not bearable. My entire life was ruled by this, so far: there is no happiness for me as an able bodied person.

And it won’t go away.

I started to pretend in public, late at night, in Paris, when I was a student. I made my first outings as a disabled young man. But before I started to do it in public, I had started doing it alone, at home, when no one was there. I had started it as a kid.

Doing it in public was a big step to take. It took me a long time to get to it. Years of “No, you can’t do that/Yes, I have to do it!”

Hand amputation isn’t the only kind of disability I simulated over the years, although it is - and always was - my true desire. But for a long time, loosing a hand seemed too big a step to take to me, and I diverted my desire to other kinds of disabilities. I diverted the desire to one or both legs. I had a period as an occasional wheelchair user. But whatever I did, the thing was still there.

I also imposed lots of discipline to myself.

I undertook many things to prove myself I needed to be fully able bodied. Work. Shine. Be strong. Be good. Build a house from scratch to the very end. Work. Make money. How many years have I wasted this way?

I imposed so many duties and bad treatments to myself to divert my attention from my desire.

But I always ended up indulging into pretending, late at night, because I cannot live without it, there seem to exist no real life for me as I am, an able bodied, fully functioning man.

There are highlights in the story of my life as a wannabe. Highlights in my childhood that could explain the why and the how. Although it took me a great many years to find those lights. There are facts. I was once one armed, when I was eight. And in that epoch that lasted three weeks or so, I was liberated. I was free. I was free because I had become a disabled little boy whose left arm was hanging dead and motionless at his side after it had been badly twisted. I was free and I was a little boy again because my father took me home, after the accident, which he witnessed, and because he cared about me. He who had never taken care of - nor cared for - me before. He who used to visit me on Sundays, in the early morning, in my bed, to abuse me. I was free, because I knew that he would not dare abuse me ever again as a crippled. I knew he had something about disability that would make it impossible for him to touch me ever again. I had won! I had gotten myself the only thing that could free me from him as a child abuser and restore him as a father. I knew that he would respect me and love me as his son if I was crippled. And I had become a crippled! My victory. It was my victory.

And the fact is that, during the three odd weeks when I couldn’t use my left arm, he was caring to me and he respected me.

Unfortunately, my arm healed. And the sex abuse resumed.

It did.

And my victory turned into a defeat.

A few years later, when I was eleven, I had a dream one night. In my dream, I could remove my hand from the end of my left arm. It was very clear and real. I just had to pull on the hand with a slight twist, and it would come off. I could put it back too. But it felt much, much better without it! I wrote about it in another post.

---

I went out, last saturday, as a one handed. I drove to the city for the evening. I have spent many nights out there in the past, in gay bars, meeting other guys while wearing my “funny hand”. Some asked questions. Some turned away. Some really liked it. A reasonably good looking, tall, slim guy with a funny hand.

I went out last staturday and I want to do it again today.

November 1st, 2008

Tags: Able Bodied, One Handed, Sex Abuse

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