by Ben Mattlin
. . . Although Mattlin will reluctantly take his belongings to a House with limited wheelchair accessibility and no suites for the disabled, he will undoubtedly arrive at Quincy . . . with the same outgoing attitude and distinct sense of humor that helped him through high school and his freshman year at Harvard. “It’ll be a really tight squeeze,” Mattlin says of the wheelchair route to the Quincy House dining hall. “There’s the smell of garbage, and you have to go through the kitchen,” he adds, accurately but humorously.
Alas, even this publicity is to no avail.
I move into the very same drab two-room unit previously occupied by the only other wheelchair-using undergrad in recent memory. I briefly contemplate hanging a sign on the door that reads: Handicapped Unit.
Yet I do my best to fit in at Quincy House. I like its un-snobbish, unintimidating reputation as a place to party. I become a regular at the in-house Q-World Grill. I’m a fan of its uniquely Bostonian (at least to me) vertically split hotdogs and “frappes.” A hand-scrawled sign above the counter reads, “If you don’t see it on the menu, ask for it.” Translation: beer. Since Massachusetts raised the drinking age to twenty-one, this is supposedly the only way it can be sold. I happily indulge.
I have a new attendant—a tall soft-spoken man named Clayton, whom Dad found through a classified ad in the Times, or somewhere. Later, I’ll find out that while I’m at the Grill, Clayton is calling Dad and telling him I’m crying every night, which is untrue. Dad offers to drive up, but Clayton tells him he’s taking care of it.
At the same time, I have a new weekend guy named Seamus. Seamus is formerly of the Irish merchant marines, complete with a heavy brogue. He hand rolls his own tobacco cigarettes while telling tall tales of his travels. I realize this sounds like a stereotype, but it’s true! A crowd gathers around him at the Quincy dining hall. One of my classmates even follows us back to the Handicapped Unit after dinner to hear more.
On his second or third Sunday, Seamus tells me in confidence that Clayton made a pass at him. It’s awkward, the two of them sharing a small bedroom every weekend. I had thought Clayton would return to Oneonta, his hometown, on weekends, but that isn’t happening.
“Are you serious?” I ask. Implication: Or is this more of your blarney?
“Aye! An’ ah’m quittin’ if this kinda thing is alloo’ed to g’ on!”
On Monday, after Seamus has left, I talk to Clayton. Delicately.
“Did anything go on this weekend between you and Seamus?”
“No. Not really. But I think he’s gay.”
Clayton’s version is that Seamus was the one doing the nocturnal nudging.
I know I must act decisively, before the next weekend. On Wednesday, I resolve to be loyal to my weekday help. He’s the one who’s really depending on this job. So I call a few of my second-choice candidates for the weekend position— the ones I’d turned down for Seamus just a few weeks earlier. Jay, still interested, is hired on the spot. That settled, I call Seamus to say it’s not working out.
I needn’t have bothered. On Friday afternoon Clayton disappears. The Harvard van drops me at Quincy after class (I’ve been going around without an attendant as much as possible), and when I return to the Handicapped Unit he’s cleared out.
What to do? I don’t have a good back-up plan, but I have kept Bill’s phone number from last year. Miraculously, he’s able to start on Monday (till then I’ll have Jay). Plus he has family in the area to visit on weekends.
I never see Clayton again, but he does leave me with one remembrance. A few weeks later I receive a phone bill for eight hundred dollars! (It’s two months’ worth. I presume he removed the previous month’s bill when he brought up my mail, and I never noticed.)
I call Clayton’s former home in Oneonta, to where I’m guessing he’s returned. “Oh my God!” says his ex-roommate, when I deliver my news. “You too? Hey, you’re lucky—that bastard still owes me a grand!”
***
Buffeted by revolving attendants, intractable Harvard deans, the loss of Mom, and the imminent forfeiture of my childhood home, is it any wonder that, at nineteen, I have the panicky sensation of losing my grip on the only anchors left?
I grow thin from lack of eating and have no patience for schoolwork. I fall asleep in class and study only sporadically (in fairness, that could have something to do with Max Weber and John Locke). I like writing term papers but despise research. When I say research, I’m referring to book research. I don’t do lab experiments or interview expert sources—and there is no Internet yet to tap.
Book research poses two problems, neither of which I’m yet equipped to recognize. The first has to do with libraries. I enter Lamont Library by ramp (the larger Widener Library requires a more circuitous entrance) and attempt to direct my attendant to finger through the card catalog. I can’t actually peer into the small drawers myself—except for the few that happen to be at my exact height. So there’s a lot of whispering back and forth, and I have to trust my attendant’s comprehension skills.
(Eventually I will learn to ask the reference librarian, which speeds things up tremendously. It forces me to explain myself better than I can to my attendants, plus the librarians frequently contribute their own valuable insights. Good old-fashioned service is often the best accessibility accommodation!)
Once I have the books I need, it’s incredibly difficult manipulating them. I concede that I’m a “bad reader,” plodding slowly through dense prose, easily becoming bored. But in truth I’m struggling as much with the logistics— angling the texts to reduce glare, turning pages, cross-referencing to other books and other passages in the same book, highlighting, Post-It noting, and simultaneous note-taking—all things I can’t do.
To be sure, that’s what the attendant is for. But attendants are not scholars, generally speaking. And even to this day I feel there is a bubble that forms—or should form—around you and the material you’re working to master. So having to direct each step of the process verbally—that is, to instruct my hired help how to help—can be more than an interruption; it can be an intrusion.
Perhaps this is an excuse, I fear in my college years. Perhaps I’m simply a lazy student. All I can say for sure is the process of information gathering and fact checking is prohibitively exhausting (in those pre-computer days).
I fare better in psychology and literature classes, fortunately, where I feel greater liberty to offer freewheeling interpretations. I’m heartened by the rumor that the hardest part about Harvard is getting in, not staying in. Not that I’m anywhere near failing; it just feels like I am.
***
Alfred Lord Tennyson famously observed that, in the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. It’s not only in the spring.
I’m overwhelmed at Harvard. I crave ballast. And at nineteen, the ego boost I seek is a girlfriend. So I ask out a series of female friends; shyness is not my problem. Every one accepts. We have dinner—I never eat much at those dinners, of course, because it’s too awkward to feed myself—or attend a concert or movie . . . and we talk and laugh, maybe even hold hands . . . but never kiss, except possibly a peck on the cheek.
With each encounter I’m plumbing for a profound connection, a revelation about my destiny. To me, women hold eternal and transcendental secrets—they must!—and I’m desperate to fashion a key and glimpse inside. Such sharing might come in time, but I’m in accelerated mode—scrounging for Depth (with a capital D) with greater intensity and celerity than any modern concept of “speed dating” or online compatibility testing would dare attempt. I recall Christine, Myra, Jennifer, Caroline, Beth, and many others.
It’s after midnight when I bid one of them good night with a frank if flowery confession: “I would ask you for a kiss before parting, which I had intended and practiced, but it’s too soon, I realize now. It’s only a few months since my mother died, you see, and I don’t dare even contemplate a real, lasting relationship with anyone. I’m so sorry.”
“You understand, then?”
“No problem, Ben. Good night now.”
In my still-new motorized wheelchair, I make my way back to Quincy House trembling against the biting chill wind. I hadn’t the courage to ask my date to help me don my coat or gloves, and have left my attendant back in the dorm for privacy’s sake. My fingers stiffen on the chair’s control stick, and I wonder intermittently if I’ll make it back at all.
I do. I always do. I never learn to ask a passing stranger for help, nor to set up a time at which the attendant should come looking for me. If only we’d had cell phones then!
More humiliating still is the junior I fall for as a sophomore. By my calculus, if women are linked to an essential, fundamental truth, older women must be even more so. They wield a greater command over how things ought to be, and so offer greater comfort.
My beguiling inamorata is in an “open relationship” with another guy—a senior! I play it cool at first, or try to. Until one night I’m waiting in Quincy House for her call . . . her roommate, who answers when I break down and call, says she’s gone out. I wait some more. I’m certain I’ve seen a look in her eyes that implies interest. A magnetic echo-signal that says soul mate. As I wait, I have Bill turn on my old black-and-white portable TV. I reluctantly find myself glued to It Happened One Night. I watch Clark Gable take charge of amatory chaos, ordering Claudette Colbert (and everyone else) around with such manly charm that the effect is magical. When at long last my phone does ring, I berate and cajole my fantasy girl à la Clark Gable into meeting at the Kong. Which is the Hong Kong, a Chinese restaurant famous for its lounge scene and easy carding policy. Bill walks me over and, when my date shows up, he dutifully vanishes. We share a ground-floor booth (the real action, I’m told, is upstairs but there’s no elevator) and a Dragon Bowl—a large vessel of a rum-based concoction.
My date, though older, gets asked for ID; as usual I do not.
The dark, smoky place is crowded and loud. We shout and laugh at what we think the other one is saying. I warm up from within and begin feeling good when all of a sudden my date’s attention is snatched away. “Look!” she says by way of explanation. “There’s John!”
John is her “real” boyfriend, or in my interpretation my chief rival for her affections. I know John, through my brother. Nice enough, but I’m sure he doesn’t see in her what I see. He lands about two tables down from us, with a group. Frankly, he seems indifferent to us, but she keeps smiling and waving at him. I hasten us out as speedily as possible.
Back on Mass Ave I perceive how drunk I am. A passerby makes a joke about being careful not to lose my chair-driving license. I’ve heard the joke before but guffaw politely. My date and I amble back to Quincy House, and it’s only gradually that I get the sense she’s concerned I might not get there safely without her.
She does not even enter my rooms. She announces she’s going back to her place, which is on the other side of campus. Not taking the hint, I insist on accompanying her. To make sure I’m able to return safely afterward, I suggest Bill tag along. It is a long walk, after all. He follows from a polite distance.
The next morning when I wake up with a pounding headache, Bill asks if I remember shouting “I love you! I love you! I love you!” across Kirkland Street. I dimly recall telling her she’d better break up with John because I needed a serious commitment, but refute actually saying the L word.
Needless to say, I’ve never spoken with the young woman since. Not even on Facebook.
***
That summer—one year after Mom’s death—something within me sharpens. I’ll no longer search for true love, I decide. I’m going to focus on the single goal of losing my virginity. After all, I’ll be twenty in a few months!
Doubtless it’s a stand-in for happiness, a shortcut to improving self-esteem, but …
I don’t feel like a virgin. And in my mind I’m not. I have no soft-focus illusions about the act, no expectation of doves flying or firecrackers sounding. I’ve read enough Updike to know the moist, sticky, smelly slog of it. And I’m sufficiently self-aware to realize I’m not exactly anybody’s idea of a stud, though I envisage myself to be a pretty smooth operator.
In June, back in New York, I meet with my old pal Jane from high school. She’s the one who predicted I’d go to Harvard and write for the New Yorker. She’s home from college, too, but don’t ask me which one.
It’s one of those disgustingly humid evenings when everyone looks frazzled and “glowing.” But to me, she looks good enough. She’s interested in literature—and more importantly, in my literature. I tell her about my short story but complain it’s not as good as Updike. I expect her to say, Who is? Instead, she offers this: “You don’t need to be as good as Updike. You need to be as good as Ben Mattlin. To write as well as you can.”
I could have fallen in love with her for this wisdom, but I’m no longer looking for love.
We “walk” from a café back to my place, a short distance. It’s one of my final stays at the Beresford. She reclines on my sofa and I put it to her: “Can I kiss you?”
I’ve never understood what’s meant by a “sideways glance” until that moment.
“No,” she comes back quickly. “We’re good friends, yes, but I’ve never thought of you that way.”
I’ve never thought of you that way becomes a running theme with the women I target. Later, I’ll gather it’s a common theme for many with disabilities. We’re safe enough and patient enough to confide in—confide in deeply—but we’re basically considered sexless. Disqualified before we try. Out of the running, so to speak.
So I scratch Jane off my mental list and go on undeterred.
Persistence is a family trait. I grew up hearing, Don’t take no for an answer (this, of course, presumes you are not a latent rapist!) and What have you got to lose by trying? Mom, post-divorce, scrounged for forever to get back into the workforce. Dad, even now, in his eighties, sends out manuscripts and queries with ruthless efficiency as he tries—with some success—to place his wry, bittersweet essays about aging.
But I suspect I would’ve been a stubborn cuss anyway, just by virtue of having to be—in order to survive. For me, sometimes the very act of breathing itself is a game of wills.
By August I’m spending a lot of time in Stamford, at Dad and Barbara’s. I left an internship in the city, at a famous rehab clinic on the East Side, when I realized it was one of those do-goodery keep-a-cripple-busy programs. I should’ve been clued in when the woman who interviewed me asked where I was in school and then said, “Harvard? Where’s that?”
“Cambridge, Massachusetts. Near Boston. You know, Harvard University—”
She nearly fell over backwards. “Oh, that Harvard! Hmmm—”
Not to knock the value of these occupational-rehab programs. Young men and women with all manner (and combinations) of disabilities, few educational or professional prospects, and even less in the way of financial resources, learn to answer telephones and direct calls or dish out cafeteria trays and other essential skills, earn a few bucks and feel good about themselves. But after two weeks I was certain I didn’t belong. Ostensibly, I was helping put together a newsletter for participants. But there was no adaptive technology available to help me figure out how to become more employable. I was just marking time, filling a space. Besides, there were at least three guys in the program named Rocko! It was a different world.
At Dad and Barbara’s, I soak up rays shirtless in their front yard and listen to WNEW. I’d developed a bad rash on my back anyway, which needed time to air, I reasoned. A few days of this and I grow restless. My younger half-brother Jeff is now five and off at d
ay camp all day. His summertime nanny is a recent college grad from California.
No, she’s not blonde and leggy and doesn’t sashay around in a bikini. Her dark brown hair is cut short, and she wears glasses over her wide brown eyes. She’s come every summer for the past two years, so we’re used to each other. Most importantly, she’s used to me—the way I eat, the way I get lifted into and out of the Checker car, the way I rely on Dad or other help to get up in the morning and to bed at night, and the way I look with no shirt on.
I’d never paid her much mind before, other than noticing her large chest. But this summer she’s developed a delightful insouciance—doesn’t fly off the handle with rash, pretentious opinions as I’d at least imagined she did on our previous encounters. She’s more sure of herself, or rather more comfortable in her own skin, notwithstanding the occasional self-effacing giggle. Her wide-ranging intelligence and creative competence are evident in the way she challenges Jeff’s mind—telling stories with plenty of questions for him to ponder—whips up inventive art projects and challenging recipes in the kitchen (all part of her nanny duties), and in the evenings—after sharing a bottle of wine with Barbara—quotes Keats, Milton, and PG Wodehouse all while cracking shockingly naughty jokes.
Mary Lois is my logical next victim.
***
After dinner one night, I suggest we take a walk. She agrees. In a clearing, she sits on a low stone wall while we chat. I tell her about things I like to do in New York. She tells me about her graduate school plans. We agree that Stamford is tiresome.
By moving my motorized wheelchair in close, I’m able to walk my left hand onto her blue-jeaned right thigh. She doesn’t push it off. Mentally, I search through my store of role models from TV and movies. Clark Gable might just grab her and plant a kiss. Not an option for me. For me, it has to be verbal. I have to get her participation, her complicity. But how?
Captain Kirk. There’s an episode of Star Trek that ends with him kissing a blonde (okay, there are dozens of those) on the Enterprise bridge. First he says something about having to remain in command; then she asks if a kiss would pose too great a disruption.
