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- [00:00]
Kevin Allison
Folks in my 40s and 50s, one of my biggest disappointments has been that no one ever really taught me about skin care. I just come from a generation of midwestern men who were really out of the loop for decades. So in recent years I have experimented with a gazillion skincare products. But I found it's just so overwhelming. There's so many different things I've tried that left me saying, okay, is this doing anything? You know, there's a lot of wrinkles now and the dullness and looseness and the dark circles and bags under the eyes, it stresses me out. So I have to say I'm also genuinely grateful that our sponsor, One Skin sent me their OS1 peptide products for the face and under eye treatment. I'm actually seeing and feeling an unmistakable difference. My skin is brighter and it's tighter, it's softer, it's not greasy. And even the under eye, the tired, dark, baggy stuff is fading away. The thing is, as we age, some skin cells stop functioning the way they should. Longevity scientists call them zombie cells. And One Skin's OS1 peptide was specifically engineered to address those doing something most skin care was never built to do. Their results are backed by four peer reviewed clinical studies, over 10,000 five star reviews. And it was all born of from over a decade of longevity research. One Skin's OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging, helping you unlock your healthiest skin now. And as you age. For a limited time, try one skin with 15% off using the code risk at one skin risk, that's 15% off. OneSkin Co with the code risk. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word.
- [02:50]
Benjamin Boster
My champions, I have served. I sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on.
- [03:09]
Mary Gossett
Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.
- [03:16]
Kevin Allison
Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I can't sleep with Benjamin Boster. Hey, folks, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, and every Thursday we release these special episodes. We look back at stories from the earlier years of the podcast. This week, in honor of Disability Pride Month, we have the best of disability stories. We have had such extraordinary stories over the years touching on this subject matter. And so I'm really excited about this new series we're starting. In a little bit, we're going to hear a story from Amy Salloway, but we're going to start with with a story from Mary Gossett. This one first appeared on the seasons of love episode from just a few years ago in February of 2024. And here's Mary now with a story we call when I needed you most.
- [05:15]
Mary Gossett
All right, it's 2018. I am 34 years old and still single and ready to not be. I spent hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars paying for dating programs and those online dating sites that prey on desperate single women like myself, and to no avail. I was coming up empty, and I was ready to give up. But I casually kept going on some of those free online dating sites. You all know the free online dating sites, and this particular one, plenty of fish. Anybody here any? Plenty. I know, I know there were plenty of fish, but none of them were particularly my type of fish. And most of the messages I would get on Plenty of Fish were like, hey, and nothing more than that. And I'm not gonna respond to that, but I got one message from a guy named Andrew, and the message was probably more than four sentences long. I could tell that he read my profile, which is very unusual on plenty of fish. And a warm sensation bubbles up in me, and I think, well, maybe there's hope. And so I message him back. Well, Andrew and I, we messaged back and forth for a couple of days, and on our third message conversation, he discloses to me that he's a wheelchair user. And frankly, I'm a little hesitant. I don't know that you could tell, but I was also very desperate. And so his messages, his words made me feel good. And I thought, well, who am I to make any judgment by somebody's ability to be mobile? So I decided to give Andrew as much of a chance as I would any other fish in the sea. So Andrew and I finally meet. We meet in a Mexican restaurant. Remember walking in, taking a deep breath, thinking, okay, where is he? There's only one guy in the restaurant in a wheelchair. Well, that must be him. So I walk over. Hi, Andrew, I say. And he looks at me and smiles and has this gorgeous smile and the most beautiful blue eyes, and I'm smitten. He says, hi, Mary. And then I realize, okay, I have to greet him somehow. I mean, you don't shake hands on a first date. And so I kind of bend down, give this, like, awkward wheelchair side hug. And he's probably used to those, but I was not used to those. And Andrew orders taquitos at the restaurant. And I later realized that he probably orders taquitos because they're easy to eat. His hands are not very nimble. He spills some salsa on his shirt. I'm trying not to stare, and I think maybe this was an overcorrection. I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't want to objectify him. But I'm also really just. I feel like this is awkward. Well, most men on their first dates really like to talk about themselves. Sorry, but that's, like, a thing. Well, Andrew wasn't like most men. He listened to me and asked me about myself. And I was in school at the time. He asked me about school, what I liked to do, kind of normal, light first date conversations, but it was about me. And suddenly I'm not so worried about the salsa on his shirt. And he laughs at my jokes, and he laughs with his full body, and it's absolutely adorable. And I decide, well, we're gonna give this a chance. So we continue to go on dates. We talk on the phone every night, and we decide to be mutually exclusive. Our relationship and dating is not easy. Andrew doesn't drive, and so our dating routine consists of me driving to his apartment complex, getting out of my car, meeting him at the curb, giving him the awkward wheelchair hug, giving him a kiss, then him wheeling over to my chair. I stabilize the chair. He gets into my car. I wheel the chair to the back of my car. I open up the car, put his wheelchair in, go to the other side, get in, drive. We have to find accessible dating spots. We have to find accessible parking. If we're in a crowd of people, we have to kind of, like, swim through crowds. And it's just not. It's not always easy. And my friends, they would look at us, and I always wonder if other people would look at us and say things like this. But my friends would say, mira, you're such a good person. And I feel really embarrassed because that's. I'm not. This is not like a pity thing. Like, I really enjoy being around Andrew, and I love him for all that he is. One night he says, mary, I love you. And I say, I love you too. And even though it's hard, Andrew is my first love, and my hormones follow suit. So I yearn to make love with Andrew, but I don't know how to bring it up. I don't know how it all works. And not. You don't learn about disability sex and sex ed. So I didn't know how to bring it up. And one night I said, andrew, can we have. Well, and he smirked and he said, sex. And I said, oh, thank you for saying it, so I didn't have to. And he said, mary, I would love to have sex with you, but can we talk about it first?
- [11:08]
Benjamin Boster
What.
- [11:09]
Mary Gossett
What kind of an adult is this? This is like a miracle moment. I'm so relieved that he wants to talk about it. So he tells me that his best friend's wedding is coming up and he'd like to reserve a hotel room for after the wedding, and that would be our target date. And I count down the days. Well, two weeks later, this was on the morning of July 22, 2018. I get out of bed like any other morning, and I put my feet on the floor, and I cannot feel the floor under my right foot. This is kind of strange. The numbness kind of travels up the right side of my body. Well, that night I was at Andrew's place, and I blamed him. I said, you remember how I pushed you up that steep hill last night?
- [11:55]
Benjamin Boster
I think.
- [11:55]
Mary Gossett
I think you pinched a nerve. And he was very sweet about it and said, well, thank you for your help. And he has very strong hands from propelling himself, and he put his hands on my shoulders and massaged them and said, does this help? Well, it didn't. Maybe emotionally, but physically it didn't. My symptoms got worse, and a few days later, I went to the er. I was eventually wheeled back to have a brain mri. And after what felt like hours of being surrounded by a tube of vibrating beeping noises, and I had this, like, kind of cage over my face that they do in brain MRIs. It was quite uncomfortable. It felt a little bit torturous. I'm finally wheeled back to the ER room and the doctor comes in. I'm convinced I have a brain tumor by this time, after being in the er, in the. In the MRI for a long time, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to die. And so the doctor says, well, we got the MRI results and saw the images, and we saw Something took a breath. Okay, here it comes. He says, we saw what are called lesions on your nerves. We believe it to be multiple sclerosis. I thought I had a brain tumor, and I didn't know anything about ms, so to be honest, I was quite relieved. Well before I was sent home, a neurologist came to my room and explained that Ms. Is like scars that eat away on the myelin sheath of the nerves in my central nervous system. And once there's a scar, it doesn't go away. And symptoms may not go away either. I learned that Ms. Is chronic, progressive, and incurable. I imagine myself in a wheelchair, rolling next to Andrew, and I think, can two people with disabilities be in love? I go to Andrew's house that night to tell him in person. I was diagnosed with ms, I tell him, and he grabs my right hand with his long, strong fingers, and my hand is numb, so I don't feel it. But he looks at me with his blue, tender eyes, and he says, you're strong. We'll get through this. Remember, the wedding is coming up. Well, I tell Andrew, I still want to go. I wasn't feeling super well, but I really, really want to go. It was the only thing I was excited about at that time in my life. And a day before the wedding, I start to feel this crawly sensation traveling across my back into my arms, my neck, my legs. It was. I was being submerged in a pot of bugs. And then the crawly sensation turns into numbness and weakness. And I coach myself, I'm going to this wedding. I don't want Andrew to know that things are getting worse. I am going to this wedding. Well, the wedding is at a Holiday Inn. The service is short. Then there's dancing and food at the reception. I go to the dance floor. I can't move my legs very well, so I just kind of bob and I move my arms. And Andrew, well, he can't move his legs very well either, so he kind of bobs and moves his arms, and we're just doing our thing. Next, the DJ plays I'll make a love to you on the speakers. And so it's time to slow dance. Slow dancing for anybody is awkward, but slow dancing with a man in a wheelchair is very, very aw. So I put my arms out to his shoulders, across his chair. He puts his hands on my waist. I don't feel his hands. And we sway, and the room is spinning. And all I'm doing is focusing on my feet on the floor so that I don't fall onto Andrew. After about 45 minutes, I go upstairs to the hotel room. I'm exhausted. I slide into bed. Andrew comes into the room about an hour later, and he slides into bed and he wraps his arms around me. He moves his head close to mine and I can't feel his body. And I just yearn to feel his warmth. This was supposed to be the moment, and I know I can't do it. And so, without even trying, I just give up. I don't say anything. I close my eyes and I roll out of his arms. And we sleep on opposite sides of the bed. On Monday, my doctor fits me into a schedule. At my appointment, my doctor evaluates my strength. And he tells me I need to go to the hospital. I agree. I'm actually kind of relieved. He explains that the only means of treatment that may or may not improve my symptoms is to have plasma exchange. He says it's like dialysis for your plasma. You'll be there about two weeks. So I go to the hospital. I'm admitted to the neurology floor. New MRI results show that I have a new lesion in my cervical spine. And the best way to decrease the inflammation is through IV steroids. So I received this drip of methylprednisone into my veins. My body inflates from all this excess fluid. I feel like my skin could just pop, as if it was a water balloon being poked by a pin. And Andrew and I, we talk on the phone every night. He would say, mary, you're strong. He'd try to cheer me up in each conversation. I fell asleep before he hung up the phone. And he would just gently, calmly say, mary, I love you. Have a good sleep. And he would call me back the next day. And when he could, he came to visit me. And he would encourage me to practice my physical therapy exercises, which includes walking down the halls using my walker. And I would just shuffle a centimeter at a time, focusing on every single little step. I was wearing these green non skid hospital socks. I couldn't talk because I was focusing so much hard on not falling. And Andrew would slowly roll behind me. You're doing great, he'd say. And the nurse floor. The floor nurse walked next to Andrew to catch me if I fell or I needed a hand. Because Andrew, he couldn't catch me. He couldn't really help me physically at all. After two weeks in the hospital, I was discharged to my home and Andrew and my relationship shift. Neither of us can drive. Neither of us can help each other with practical needs. And for the first time in Our relationship. I feel pretty needy. I'd say, can you come over to my house this time? I really want to see you. And it's hard for Andrew to get a ride over to my house. You say, sorry, Mary, I can't come. Maybe this weekend. I expect Andrew to understand my emotional struggles, but he's had a disability his whole life. And I grow jealous of Andrew's abilities to pivot, to adjust, to tolerate. We compare symptoms. We both have spasticity. That's a word that I had to practice saying quite a few times. We both have weakness. He compares me to his friends with cerebral palsy. He says, you know Ashley. She uses a posterior walker. It's the kind that goes behind her back. I think, oh, yeah, now you're the expert on my durable medical equip. One Saturday, I arranged to see Andrew in his apartment. We hadn't seen each other in weeks. And I limp to his door with my walker. I knock. He lets me in. We sit on the couch. He doesn't hug me. And we talk about our relationship, the current barriers and struggles. And he said, you know, Mary, I know it was really hard for you with. Well, with me. And now it's even harder with. Well, with you. And I just. I think I need to think about this. I want to yell, think about us. What happened to the months of me carting you around? I thought you loved me. I want to change his mind. I want to convince him that we can work it out. But I'm sorry. So tired. So I say, okay, call me when you're ready. I grab my walker and trounce out his door. Andrew calls me two days later. I thought a lot about us, and I just don't think I can do it. Is he really doing this? I can't speak. I hang up the phone and I look around, and I'm all alone. How could he do that when I needed him the most after all that I did for him? And he just leaves. I saw him as strong and compassionate. He was my first love. I later learned that many young adults break off romantic relationships after a new diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. We were no exception. I'm sure you can tell that today, four years later, I've improved. I'm doing quite well. I get infusion treatments every six months. Physical therapy, good medicine has helped. I still have symptoms on a daily basis, but I have tools to tolerate my body. I'm able to work full time. The National Ms. Society. Woo.
- [22:13]
Benjamin Boster
Woo.
- [22:16]
Mary Gossett
I even play pickleball a few nights a week. I'M one of those people. I haven't been in a stable relationship since Andrew because dating with a disability is hard. It's complicated. I know from both sides, and Andrew wasn't there for me when I needed him. But guess what? I was. Over the past four years, I look back and I realize there's one common denominator. Me. I've not left myself. You might have thought this was going to be some sexy, hot, romantic love story when I started. So sorry if you're disappointed, but it is still a love story. A love story about deep, unconditional love that's never going away. It's a story about loving myself. And that's enough. Thank you.
- [23:26]
Kevin Allison
Hey folks, I want to talk to you about the Perfect Gene. I have always struggled with the fact that I have no butt, I'm a bit chubby, and I guess my size is a little unusual in terms of like big waist and not so long legs. I'm really making myself sound awesome here. But the fact is I've always been impatient when shopping, I get very when shopping, I'm not a I don't like shopping. So many, many, many, many, many times I have just settled for jeans that really don't fit very well or are a slightly just not quite the hue, not quite the color that I'm really looking for or sometimes even the not quite the texture I'm looking for. So the perfect jean set me up. They don't cut corners either. Ykk zippers, reinforced belt loops, deep pockets that actually fit your phone, your keys, your wallet and such a range. Waist from 26 to 52 lengths from 26 to 38 six fits from skinny to thick, thick 13 washes. It's over 5,000 combinations. I also love these athletic comfort shorts they have. So listen, risk listeners get 15% off their first order plus free shipping at the PerfectGene NYC. Or Google the Perfect Gene and use the code risk15 for 15% off. That's the perfect gene.
- [25:19]
Benjamin Boster
Tomorrow morning is knocking.
- [25:20]
Mary Gossett
Stock your fridge now.
- [25:21]
Benjamin Boster
How about a creamy mocha Frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.
- [26:00]
Kevin Allison
This is Risk. This is Orcas behind me now and we just heard from Mary Gossett, who was good enough to share that story at a fundraising event for Risk in the Twin Cities a few years back as organized by Amy Salloway and Jeff Grell. We're grateful to all three of them. Next Up a story by Amy Salloway herself. Now, I do want to warn you that this story does include a character using the R word, but it's so central to the moral journey of the story that we decided to leave it intact. This one was first shared on an episode called Brain Matter in April of 2015. It's a story we call Vulnerable Adult.
- [26:57]
Benjamin Boster
In January of 2006, I got asked to be a guest playwright for Entropy center for the Performing Arts, which is this really cool combination therapeutic day program and professional theater company for adults with multiple disabilities. What I mean by that is if you were blind, you would not qualify to be a client. But if you were blind, schizophrenic, and in a wheelchair, this would be your lucky day. So Entropy usually did these big, colorful body cabaret type shows with lots of glitter and feathers and balloons, often starring the clients with down syndrome because they're total hams and will do anything on stage. But now they wanted to try something different, and they were creating an original musical about traumatic brain injury featuring the stories of the 30 or so clients who had traumatic brain injury. The reason that I knew this at all was that my friend Steve was one of the theater instructors there. I got a call one day from him saying, hi, I just volunteered you to write a musical about traumatic brain injury. And I'm like, what? And he said, well, you know, I mean, we've been writing this script for ages, and we've been trying over and over to make it work, and we just keep throwing out the drafts. It's just not working. It just keeps turning out too dark and not funn. And I'm like, I can't imagine why Traumatic brain injury is a laugh riot. And he's like, oh, come on, you know, you can do this. You write these autobiographical solo shows that are unbelievably depressing, but everyone loves them. And I'm like, I have no experience. It's like, it'll be fine. Just come. So my first day at Entropy, I get like four steps through the door, and a man flies through the air and falls down at my feet. Literally this extremely adorable man, like, tall and gangly, kind of geometric, with floppy hair and these black, chunky glasses and a cane just catapults. Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. And lands right where I'm standing. This entire room of people sees, and they are unfazed. And I'm like, oh, my God, are you okay? Help, Steph, someone. He's like, no, no, don't help me up. I'm. I need to work at getting up myself. It's something I'm working on. And I'm like, okay. And he says, but could you grab my thermos? And he points to the side, and there is a stainless steel thermos that has rolled away. So I grab it and wipe it off and hand it to him and eloquently say, nice thermos. He's like, thank you. I carry it everywhere. And then there's silence. He smiles up from the floor like, things are still good here. I stand awkwardly, because that is my forte. And I just. I have so many questions, like, who is this guy and what just happened? And is it bad that he fell? Will it stop? Does everybody here fall? Is it a thing? This is just my first day. So I did go through an orientation, in case you are concerned. I signed, like, stacks of paperwork, and I authorized a background check and drug screen and body cavity search, I think. I don't know. And I read the really, really thick handbook about the vulnerable adult statutes, which are the laws that protect adults who have a physical, mental, or emotional disability from abuse at the hands of caretakers. So that could be abuse in the form of, like, harassment, neglect, assault, financial coercion, solicitation for prostitution or drugs or sexual contact. And of course I'm like, no. Oh, God, this is horrible. Sign, sign, sign. Authorize. Authorize. But something about all that legalese triggered my anxiety, because I have failed at a lot of things in my life, and I did not want to fail at this job. But I didn't know if I would actually be good at working with a vulnerable population. I mean, I didn't know if maybe I would end up being afraid or intimidated or grossed out. Because, I mean, totally, totally, honestly, like, there are adults wearing diapers, and there is sometimes pink eye, and there is drooling sometimes. And sometimes you open a utility closet and there is a man standing there with his penis in his hand. But then I just thought, whatever. That could happen in any workplace. And also, it turns out, I loved entropy. I loved these clients. They had a grasp just beyond anything of what it means to be human. Like, I walk through the world with these anvils on my shoulders of feeling fat and ugly and rejected and ostracized and wrong and so grindingly lonely. And I didn't have to explain any of that to these people. They just accepted me unconditionally and wanted to hug me. They wanted me to be me the way that they wanted permission to be Fully them. And they were so funny and creative and like wonderfully bizarre. Like, there was this guy who apparently had a dream of being an opera singing hot dog vendor. And so every time we did a theater scene or an improv, he would justify the entrance of an opera singing hot dog vendor. And there's a woman named Pam who this is kind of something that happens. She was sort of trapped in time in her high school self when she was a cheerleader. So every morning she would be doing her cheerleading routines. And we all learned them because it's good exercise. So they were just resilient and also kind of badass. So like falling down, guy, guy on the floor. His name was Aaron, and I had to interview him for the traumatic Brain injury musical. So. So I asked if I could sit with him at lunch and have him tell me his story. And he was like, yeah, it's kind of complicated, so let me know if I'm going too fast for you. So I watched his kind of pretzeled up hand take the cap off his thermos. And he poured the black coffee and took a swig. And he told me that he had been a seventh grade French teacher and an artist. He got kids to paint outdoor murals. And about two years ago he was riding his bike and was hit by a truck and thrown to the side of the road. And he ended up in a coma for three months. And when he came out of it, he had lost two years of memory. Two years prior to the accident, completely gone. He had lost all muscle control on one side of his body. So that's why his speech was slurred and his hand was twisted up. And why he had just recently graduated from using a wheelchair to a cane. And his esophageal reflex was broken or messed up, so it was hard for him to swallow and he choked a lot. And I was like, dude, I am making you talk while you eat. I am going to be responsible for your untimely death. And he was like. And he pushed his bag of grapes towards me and said, okay, then you be grape monitor. You make sure that I alternate sentence then grape, sentence, then grape. And so that's what we did pretty much every day. I mean, sometimes it was like sentence then Cheeto or sentence than wheat thin. And I was so fascinated by his stories, I kind of stopped eating lunch myself, which honestly was okay because, you know, weight loss. One day, Aaron had yellow post it notes stuck all over his lunch with words on them like provolone, baggie, recycle. And I was like, dude, what are those? And he said, well, when I taught French, I would make the kids associate a written word with a 3D object. That's called didactics. So now I'm making my brain do didactics. I'm kind of a vocabulary whore. And something about hearing Aaron say the word didactics made my heart flip over a little. And I just thought, this is not a typical entropy client, you know, I mean, this is not really the same kind of vulnerable adult. This is an attractive, smart, witty, creative man my age who was in a terrible accident and someday is going to recover. We started sitting together for rehearsal too, and sometimes laughing disruptively, which was frowned upon. And one day, Aaron forgot his didactically labeled lunch at home. And I found myself blurting, I'll take you to the cafe next door. Really high pitched, just like that. And he said, uh, oh, are you allowed to do that? Do you have permission? And I said, yes, of course I do. I am staff. I totally did not have permission. So we embarked on the long, slow lurch down the hall, around the corner, on the sidewalk, and into the cafe, which involved Aaron having his cane, but then also clutching my shoulder for more support with his hand, with his fingers digging in like claws. It really, really hurt, but I kind of didn't mind. Our bodies were really close together. I thought for a minute that maybe he'd smell because, you know, some of the clients do. That's understandable. But he just smelled like Guy. The entropy staff are aware when a client is missing, that's actually part of what they get paid for. And we were gone. I knew that we were gone a really long time. We were really late, and yet I couldn't get myself to tell Aaron that we had to hurry up. And then finally, when we were lurching out on the sidewalk again, he just stopped walking. Just totally stopped. It was this cold February day with a little bit of a breeze and this perfect blue sky. He stood there and tilted his head back and closed his eyes. And he moved his hand from my shoulder to down around my waist. I know.
- [39:22]
Mary Gossett
And.
- [39:26]
Benjamin Boster
And he just breathed in and said, this is so nice. It was so nice. I felt the muscles in his arm relax and unclench. And my mind thought about bad things, wrong, illegal, illegal things. Other seemed situations in which it would be nice if he closed his eyes and tilted his head back and said, this is so nice. Situations that I would like to be participating in. And I knew it was bad and wrong and illegal. And finally we ended up back in the theater and Steve looks at me like. And Lisa, the director, reprimanded us in front of everyone, said, amy, we do not show favoritism to clients here. We don't think that's fair. Do you think that's fair? And I just said, I'm sorry. He forgot his lunch. And she glared at us like we were two teenagers she had caught making out. So from that day on, every single day, there was at least one ambiguous moment between me and Aaron that made me go, what the fuck is going on? Like when he came over to me wearing his Carhartt jacket and said, could you zip me up? Or when he looked into my eyes and was like, you, eyes are so green. They are really green. And I'm like, no, they're not. They're colored contact lenses. My real eyes are the color of sewage. And he said, you should let your eyes be real. I like when you're real. So basically, at this point, I don't even give a shit about the musical I'm supposed to write. All I can think about is whether there is any possible way that I could be with this man who maybe possibly likes me without committing a felony. So one day, Aaron's sister can't pick him up right after rehearsal. She's going to be late. So I say, well, why don't I wait with you in the cafe until she comes? Which is not violating. It is responsible. So we sat at a table across from each other drinking coffee, and I asked him some more questions. I asked what he used to be like and how he felt about himself now. He said that it was utterly freaky how many support staff he had just maintaining his being a doctor and neurologist and physical therapist and social worker and an anger management specialist. And I said, you don't seem angry to me at all. And he said, you just haven't seen it yet. And then he said, amy, I know I am supposed to feel so lucky to be alive. Everyone at Entropy goes on and on about how they're so joyful and grateful and lucky and. Fuck that I don't feel lucky. I don't know if this is any better than if I had just been killed by that truck, because this here is not who I ever meant to be. I take a sip of coffee so my mug will be close to my face so that Erin can't see that I, too, don't feel lucky, so that he can't know how many times I have said those same words as I sobbed at my reflection in the mirror or punched my own body or Laid in bed alone in GROSS Pajamas at 3, 4, 5 in the afternoon, day after day, because I couldn't get myself to go out into the world anymore. This here is not who I ever meant to be. Eventually I ask him, are you okay with me asking you all these really hard questions? And he says, yes. You're the only one who does. You help me remember things. You help me feel normal. I ride the bus home with this mantra playing in my head of I want this. No, I love my job. I don't want to lose my job. I don't want to be a criminal. But this shouldn't be a crime. We are two damaged people who are connecting with each other and helping each other feel normal. Maybe someday, possibly, we could help each other feel lucky. I want this. So a bunch of days later, we're at Entropy again. We just did some yoga, some. Some downward facing dogs. And Aaron is stretching and he's telling me about this concert he went to the night before. Some Afro funk thing. And suddenly there's the sentence, yeah, I went with my girlfriend. I know. I'm like, ah. And he picks up on that and says, amy, I know it might seem like we were on a path towards dating. I mean, you have feelings for me, right?
- [45:47]
Mary Gossett
Oh, God.
- [45:51]
Benjamin Boster
But I do have to tell you that I have a girlfriend, Celeste. I think you're a wonderful person, though, and I really hope we can still be friends. I turn away, not only because he just slammed this door in my face, but because he did it so kindly and compassionately. I mean, there aren't any non brain injured guys who have ever tried to spare my dignity like that. Are you fucking kidding me? And then I feel Aaron tapping my knee and he says, amy, psst. Can I please tell you what a hottie Celeste is? Oh my God. She's 12 years younger than me, so I'm kind of robbing the cradle, but oh, she is so pretty. And she was in the Peace Corps in Ghana, so she speaks French and she's gonna help me learn. And we fuck so much. We fuck all the time. We fuck like rabbits. You should totally meet her someday. Yeah, I say. That'd be great.
- [47:16]
Mary Gossett
So
- [47:19]
Benjamin Boster
a few days later, Aaron gets kicked out of entropy. I know, I don't. This is like the responsive section right here. Total empathy flowing back and forth. I don't see it coming, but I guess the other staff does. The staff that is more objective and less blinded by love. He has an anger outburst and throws a metal chair at one of the down syndrome clients while screaming. You fucking retard. And there is only one noun that is not allowed at entropy, and that is the one. So with the appearance of Celeste and the exit of Aaron, I don't have to feel shame or guilt or any terrible conundrum hanging over my head. I'm on off the hook.
- [48:13]
Kevin Allison
Yay.
- [48:15]
Benjamin Boster
Except not really. What I am is left feeling utterly embarrassed about my selfish hypocrisy. Because, I mean, I get it right then. I wanted Aaron to be normal enough that my affection for him wasn't against the law, but still disabled enough that he would settle for me as his dating pool. See us as these perfectly matched, dented cans unfit for the supermarket shelf. So, of course we should fall in perfect dented can love. Or at least have hot, dented can sex. But it doesn't work that way. So I throw myself back into what I was supposed to be working on all this time, writing this big, amazing, happy, sad, hilarious musical. I know about traumatic brain injury with these 30amazing actors who have been hurt, damaged and tattered, but still had a transformation. But it's hard not to think about Aaron, because that's why I loved him. He was raw and honest enough to let me into his transformation. And I was fueled by it, by that feeling of standing on a cold winter day under a perfect blue sky with someone's arm around me so I could help hold him up. Thank you.
- [50:29]
Kevin Allison
This is Risk. This is Tony Bailiff behind me now. And we just heard from Amy Salloway, who you can find on Instagram at Amy Salloway and who I am currently chatting with right there on Instagram in between takes of this hosting segment about how much we hate social media technology. Amy was saying you should be able to find her on instagram @Story ClubMinneapolis as well, but she doesn't know why you can't actually find her there right now. Zuckerberg. That's why. Zuckerberg, folks, if you have any stories about disabilities, you know how to reach us. We are at risk-show.com submissions. And furthermore, folks, today's the day. Take a risk.
- [51:43]
Benjamin Boster
Sam.