Alexx's Journal

I often come here to kvetch when things are going poorly. It seems only fair to share with you all when there's an uptick.

When I visited my GP last Wednesday, she gave me a referral for a psychiatrist, apologizing that it would take a while, and I'd have to go out to BMC, because Codman Square was shorthanded just then. But then, I got a call on Friday asking if I could meet with a psychiatrist at Codman on Monday (today)! I could, and did, and it was a pretty good first visit, though it will be a while for tangible results, if any.

Another result of my GP visit was my decision to stop taking a medication I've been on for quite some time, that was theoretically supposed to help me sleep, but which I hadn't noticed any useful effects from. Two days later, despite my sleep in fact being somewhat worse, my energy level and affect were both dramatically improved. (Still, you know, disabled and with lurking depression, but better than I'd been for some months.) And this improvement has even lasted! Yesterday, I even joined Kes and April for a rainy road trip to Salem, and came out okay. Yes, I was totally wasted by the time we got home, but I bounced right back today. Here's hoping this continues…

Though the weather cannot seem to make up its mind, it is officially (if intermittently) Spring. The time when young men’s fancies turned to thoughts of love – and also not-so-young men. This particular man is grumpy about it.

True, the poly aspect of my marriage has always been observed more in theory than in practice. As Kestrell so memorably put it on a button, “Poly, but I’d probably rather be reading.” It takes time and effort to build up a new relationship, and those are rare resources. But it was exercised on occasion. And just having the option available was often very gratifying. It’s fun, when talking with someone attractive, to think, “If I turned up the charm and put in the effort, there’s a decent chance that they would have sex with me.”

But these days… that train of thought goes more like: “If I did manage to get this relationship onto a sexual level, would it even be remotely worth it?” Except in rare cases where the sexual chemistry is as compatible as the personality chemistry, it takes a while to get to really good sex with a new partner. There is a learning curve as you adjust to each other’s particular quirks and kinks. Any new partner I got at this point would face a particularly steep curve, as so many of my body parts now respond to almost any stimulus with “OUCH!” And my ability to give pleasure is just as compromised as my ability to receive it; my once-proud ‘gamer fingers’ can no longer in repetitive motions for extended periods. And my stamina in general has gone to hell.

It’s not the worst problem in the world, but it is One More Thing. I feel kinda pathetic for whining about it. But I figure that there are enough people among my friends who either have this problem now, or will face it in the years to come, that it’s valuable to talk about it.

I know some people read my journal, but not kestrell's, and this deserves wide distribution.

Aimee Mullins: How my legs give me super-powers

Last night, kestrell and I went to see The Taming of the Shrew on the Boston Common. As ladysprite said: "I adore living in a city that both provides free Shakespeare performances every summer and that has enough people who want to see it that the Commons is half-packed an hour before showtime on a weeknight."

The production was quite enjoyable, as they usually are, but the most notable aspect of it for us was the accessibility. They had promoted this particular performance as having a descriptive track for the blind and vision-impaired. And they *far* exceeded our expectations! All the staff members had been briefed, so as soon as we approached the site, someone noticed Kes' white cane and immediately intercepted us, and brought us over to the accessibility table. There, Kes was provided with a braille program, and a wireless headset on which to listen to the descriptive audio. We were then shown to a special seating section that had been set up for us, right up front, stage right. Several staff members had clearly been assigned to this specific section, and came around frequently to check that everyone's receiver was working properly, and even asking if anyone needed help getting to the porta-potties! The describers did a 30-minute "pre-show", in which they described in detail the set and the costumes.

The show also had what they refer to as "Open Captioning". There were two scrolling text displays, one at each side of the stage, that ran subtitles. The "blind" section was quite close to one of these, so if they had any hearing-impaired friends sitting with them, they would be accomodated as well.

Kes and I have *never* seen blind patrons made so welcome, much less at a *free* event. But now we know it can be done. There were about a dozen or so blind people in the audience. Here's hoping that they do this again next year, and we get twice as many!