Illustration by Matthew Daley.

On August 20, 1995, I slipped into the passenger seat of my friend’s rusty old hatchback. It was nine o’clock at night. As we pulled onto the highway, heading from Ottawa toward Montreal, I wriggled to get comfortable on the vinyl seat, smooth against my bare legs. Fastening the seatbelt, I settled in.

By ten o’clock we had hit a moose.

The first thing I remember is someone calling my name. I opened my eyes to the chaos. Shouting, slamming car doors, flashing lights. I couldn’t feel anything; I couldn’t move. Next came the emergency room. My friend, uninjured, except for a few scratches, tried to reassure me.

“They think you might just be in shock,” he said. But after X-rays, an ambulance to Ottawa, and an MRI, a neurosurgeon said broken neck, the highest two vertebrae fractured, a quadriplegic spinal cord injury.

My injury was called “incomplete” because my spinal cord’s capacity to convey messages to and from my brain was somewhat intact. I might regain enough movement in one arm to transfer to a wheelchair, I was told. I might be able to live independently. I learned in an instant how one can shift from ability to disability in so unannounced and sudden a way.

At first I could only move my eyes. Machines, attached by tubes snaking across me, had taken control of all my bodily functions. Nurses assumed my body’s care: rolling it, washing it, feeding it, wrapping it in a hospital gown, catheterizing its bladder every four hours. These actions were beyond intimate for a 31-year-old.

What came next were five months in a rehabilitation centre and the gradual return of my left hand. Shaky at first, I inched through hospital corridors maneuvering the joystick of a power wheelchair. Food splattered around me like an infant feeding itself, though eventually I mastered showering, dressing, and brushing my hair and teeth. My left hand became a cornerstone of my independence, and walking was increasingly seen as optional, merely a way to move from place to place. The wheelchair would suffice.

Public scrutiny of my body was initially surprising. In line for coffee, walking along the street, travelling by taxi: Did you have a stroke? An accident? What happened?

Yet my legs recovered. From initial twitches to more coordinated movements, I slowly graduated to propelling a manual wheelchair with my feet, stepping between parallel bars and walking with a cane. Life returned after a year. I walked slowly with a limp and retained little function in my right arm. I learned to write again with my left hand.

At that time, I viewed my recovery as a reclamation of self, though I had no understanding of what my life would become. Disabled, I had crossed some invisible line and become “other.”

Public scrutiny of my body was initially surprising. In line for coffee, walking along the street, travelling by taxi: Did you have a stroke? An accident? What happened? Marked physically by trauma, I felt on display, having lost some right to privacy. People seemed curious, often offering advice or encouragement as one would to a small child. Good for you to be out on your own!

Other intrusions were less benign. “What’s the matter with you anyway?” a cab driver once asked me after I got into his taxi. “I was in an accident,” I replied. “You can’t use your arm? And you don’t walk very well. Christ,” he said. “If I was you, I’d kill myself.”

While that cabbie likely just suffered from individual prejudices, his sentiment toward me was hardly unique. Depictions of persons with disabilities in the media reinforce stereotypes that promote such objectification and discrimination. Rarely is a person with a disability presented as a multidimensional, complex character, driven by human desire, who just happens to possess physical challenges. Instead, they are lauded as inspirational heroes, victims, or objects of pity. A reality show that followed people with disabilities on dates chose the moniker The Undateables.

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Evenings out are often fraught with complications. Venue information on accessibility is inconsistently provided, and when it is, rarely do the words “barrier-free” appear. Listed under “accessibility” is often the number of stairs at the entrance and the flights required to access washrooms. And since stairs render an establishment inaccessible, this information tells people with mobility disabilities that they’re not welcome.

I sometimes attend events in inaccessible locations. Once I was helped up the stairs to a friend’s birthday party, only to slide down again on my bum in full view of other guests, patrons, and staff at the end of the night. Could my friend have picked a more accessible space? Possibly, but in Toronto they’re in short supply.

I travel often and am highly dependent on accessibility services. There’s little sensitivity to be found receiving wheelchair assistance at Canadian airports. Able-bodied friends I travel with are typically addressed in my place, with airline staff referring to me, if ever, in the third person.

Alone, I have been “parked” in the middle of terminals with little explanation. Agents complain to me about the number of “chairs” they have to assist, their sore backs, or staffing shortages. They converse with each other, griping about working conditions and personal matters as if I were a burdensome object to be shunted around.

Two decades of being disabled have affirmed for me that the social stigma and discrimination people with disabilities face extends to the ever-present struggle for access to services and built environments.

Universal design, emphasizing the creation of environments that can be understood and used by as many people as possible, regardless of ability, would help anyone with mobility limitations experience their cities more fully. Plus the mere presence of people with disabilities in public spaces could lessen the prejudices all too present in our society.

It might also preclude the need to categorize oneself as disabled, or even the need to prove “disability” to gain access to services and built environments. Ability exists along a continuum, comprised of visible and invisible conditions. We should all remember that.

I once attended a conference where a speaker reminded the audience that “able-bodiedness is a temporary state.” Whether from birth, illness, injury, or aging, many of us will need accessible services and environments.

Frankly, we deserve better than sliding our bums down stairs.

Gurza, a disability awareness consultant since 2012, has made it his mission to get Canadians to stop, think about, and discuss how people with disabilities are portrayed in society—including their sexuality and desires. Since the launch of his website, AndrewGurza.com, in January 2015, his message is slowly making its way to folks both in Canada and across the world.

People with disabilities face a number of challenges. One hurdle Gurza has faced is that society largely views disabled folks as undesirable or asexual beings. “Sex and disability make most people uncomfortable because they haven’t had the chance to see disabled people sexualized in a way that gives them agency over their bodies and their experiences,” he says. As a result, Gurza has spent considerable time over the past four years crafting his voice. He has worked tirelessly to reclaim words such as “disabled” and “crippled.” Through social media and his blog, he provides readers with insight on the real disabled experience. “It is never really seen as something normative and accepted at all,” he says.

In February 2015, Gurza launched Disability After Dark, a weekly podcast dedicated to disability and sex. He talks frankly about everything from sex and sexuality, desire, devotion, accessibility, sexual identity, and queer culture, and often invites guests on the show to share their experiences. In a recent episode, “Accessing Anal,” Gurza discusses the inaccessibility of anal sex to a person with disabilities, using himself as the example. Its open and honest format has paid off: The podcast has reached nearly 6,000 downloads since its inception.

Gurza also speaks across North America about disability, on topics ranging from body image issues to long-term care. “Being a disability awareness consultant, I want people aware of what the disabled experience—what my experience—as a queer disabled man feels like,” he says. “I want to bring everyone into my experiences and give them a seat at my table.”

It’s hard to deny that while Gurza’s voice is valuable for the disability community in general, it is extraordinarily valuable and necessary in the queer community. As a queer man, he’s aware of the “homonormative ideal,” which assumes that all queer people must conform to certain ideal beauty standards or fit certain stereotypes. From being flamboyant and feminine to having huge muscles and a beard, these ideals have plagued Gurza throughout his life, and he has been confronted with an incredible amount of ableism and discrimination from within the community. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt,” he says. “It burns each and every time.” From being asked blatant questions about his body (“Does your penis work?”), to being unable to access queer spaces both physically and emotionally, much of this has fueled Gurza’s work. “I use the tough parts [of my own life] to bolster my mission of shining a light on the reality of disability,” Gurza says.

Gurza has embraced his status as a kinky cripple who has worked overtime to dispel the myths that plague those who have disabilities. “What I am trying to do in my work is shine a light on what disability is really like for me,” he explains. “There are days when living as a disabled person isn’t awesome, and no matter how much positivity you use, nothing will change that.” He believes that by showing Canadians the emotional side of disability, they will have a better understanding of how disability affects folks in all aspects of their lives. Most recently, a parent who listened to Gurza’s podcast wrote in to say that because of him, they now had the words to talk to their disabled teenager about sex. “When I read that, I was bowled over. I mean, it doesn’t get much better than that,” he says.

This year, Gurza is challenging himself to something different: he’s in the midst of writing a book proposal based on his blogs and planning a lecture series based on his podcast series. “I want my voice to be among the many disabled people, to bring disability that much closer to the mainstream,” he says. Gurza may just be the voice to end the stigma and make you look at disability differently

More recently in the foreground of Jian Ghomeshi’s trial and his acquittal of all sexual assault charges, defence lawyer Marie Henein’s designer shoe collection, her “architectural-inspired” hair and courtroom attire were also heavily debated as deliberate choices on the part of arguably one of the most polarizing legal figures in our immediate collective memories. Were these clothing choices a foreshadowing of what would be her razor,-sharp dissecting courtroom strategy? Were the red bottoms of her Christian Louboutins meant to warn of the figurative bloodshed awaiting Lucy Decoutere on the stand?

Our clothing is a second skin, our social epidermis. Our chosen threads are by far one of the most powerful tools we use to convey our social selves, our feelings, beliefs, and our aspirations. Clothing can be rebellious, resistant; it can signify aggression and authority as well as it can embody assimilation and passivity. Intriguingly, that the same garment has the capacity of being all of these or none at all in different spaces and at different times. There is power in our clothes, how we perceive ourselves in them, and how others perceive us.

I have had items of clothing be my best friend at times—my ride-or-dies. I’ve mourned their passing when they are no longer wearable, when their seams had had enough. I’ve had clothing speak to and for me, help facilitate my confidence when I ran low in that department. Similarly, clothing can betray us. Nothing is worse than when a stranger has to inform you of an open zipper. Or, when clothes demand we take stock of our financial reality when a well-hidden price tag, the accomplice to a “wear and return” scheme, makes itself visible to those around us and a good Samaritan, unaware of the aforementioned deception, pulls the tag off and your stomach drops—your backstage is now your front stage and you are exposed.

Clothing, its meanings, and how we relate with it is complicated. Are we its hunter or its prey? Beyond its capitalist agenda, clothing choices, far from being a mere personal preference, are highly social, political, and filled with emotionality. In the end, we may wear our clothing but in what ways do our clothes wear us?