This is what happened when a guy with cerebral palsy took a trip to a gay bar
A man with cerebral palsy has opened up about his first trip to a gay bar.
Andrew Morrison-Gurza, from Richmond Hill in Ontario, shared his story as part of LGBTQ community project I’m From Driftwood.
Speaking of the first time he ever went to a gay bar in a wheelchair, aged 19, he said: “I remember before going, we had to get ready.
“There was all this prep that had to occur. Because I’m in a wheelchair, that would mean that I would have to have somebody help me get dressed, and have somebody help me look my best, and try to ‘pass’ as normal as I could when I’m going to this bar, because I knew that my chair was going to be something that nobody had really seen before.
“I had to take the special accessible transit there,… When we finally did get there, we had to go through the back, because they had no front entrance. It was just huge stairs to the front entrance.
“I get into the back of this little tiny freight elevator. I finally get into the bar, and there’s all these men that look like your typical gay man. No shirts on, or tees and tank tops with bulging muscles.
“I remember going up to a couple of guys trying to dance, and having them look at my chair, and not being sure what to do but back away from me.
“So it was almost like parting the sea, because they would see me coming, and all move out of the way, thinking they were being polite, thinking they were moving for me to get through, when all I wanted to do was dance.
“I knew right at that moment that I was different from them, and that’s something that has stayed with me from the time it happened, just because I realized that this chair is something that’s going to separate me from “the pack” and make me different within a group that’s already different.
“That was something that was hard for me to accept at the time, or even realize.
“We often don’t see disability in the queer community. Or, if we see it, we’re afraid to discuss it. So I think this story is also important because it humanizes the issue, and takes it away from just being a guy in a chair to an actual story and a person that’s attached to it.”
