Prudy Sutherland

“Handicapped people are forbidden, and sex is forbidden, so it’s no wonder that the sexuality of handicapped people is doubly forbidden.”

Published in the April 7, 1987 Village Voice, New York, NY

For years, because of my cerebral palsy and certain other physical difficulties, I doubted my ability to give and receive pleasure in sexual intercourse. For a long time I did not want to ask my doctors about sex because I felt a negative answer would make me regards myself as non-human - such is the value our society places on sexuality. But I got to the point where I felt I owed it to myself to find out. Besides which I was mighty curious! So at a routine physical evaluation, attended by my nurses and my physical therapist, I asked the doctor, in what I thought was a simple, forthright manner, if I could give and receive sexual pleasure. Extremely nervous laughter ensued - but no answer.

At various times after that, the hospital instituted sex-education programs which dealt with such topics as birth control devices and the unwed father, amazingly irrelevant to the institutionalized handicapped person. Several times I asked my question, with similarly depressing nonanswers.

Finally, since I was extremely hazy about what physical movements were involved in coitus, I decided to go to a porn movie. I reasoned that a movie would provide an uninhibited graphic illustration. But none of my friends took me seriously.

One dark night, with a young man with whom I was just getting acquainted, I took off and pulled up at a sleazy, red carpeted theater complete with groaning old men in raincoats. They let me in for nothing, and I am not sure whether that was because I was a woman or because I was a cripple. After the first ten minutes I got the idea down pat and saw I was perfectly capable of performing. My self-image skyrocketed. I, just like other women, had something sexual to offer a man!

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this educational adventure…

to be continued…

The rain on the window crinkles like a black celophane.

Nothing to feel, and nothing to say,

Not sick and not high,

No time to write a good insightful letter

Full of earthiness and vim –

Just this feckless poem.

My textbooks have everything down to a science;

Percentiles glitter like rhinestones in the scholar’s crown.

Yet whys are the thumbtacks in my soul,

Which bears the stigmata of either an artist or a fool.

They hurt, generating self-pity if nothing else.

The radio offers occasional smiles

Between the bong, bong, bong of puberty’s ravages,

Songs that bring back meaningful times:

Warm beer in a joyous suicide car,

Being hugged for hating myself.

I am these experiences;

The radio affirms me.

Tonight is not a meaningful time,

Just pent-up solitary raunchiness after too much study.

Prudy Sutherland

15 November 1981

The day casts a stone

Into the pool of the mind;

Dreams are the ripples.

Prudy Sutherland

29 October 1981

With a scream of joy

I take my humanity

And give it to you,

And in your touch, a mirror,

I receive it again –

An exalted spiral of affirmation!

Prudy Sutherland

The Moment

Live in the hope-spangled moment!

Yet the fragile crystal moment

Too often shatters

Into thought-slivers

Of barren futures

Or painful pasts.

Live in the moment

But gingerly.

Prudy Sutherland

26 July 1981

Elaina

Elaina, she dances, she dances, she

Dances across fragrant meadows

On a primal summer morning,

Her silk gown billowing;

Sweetly she hums a melon cool tune,

Whispering, swishing.

Elaina, she trods across sullen graveyards

At cold winter midnight,

Her sirge robe mimmicking

The shadows of the gravestones

On which her foot falls leaden;

She wails, she wails, she wails.

Prudy Sutherland

19 July 1981

Valentine

Look at it this way:

A heart is just an upsidedown bosom

Which has a point at its top,

Perhaps an arrow to ecstacy.

Prudy Sutherland

16 February 1981

In Therapy Together

The sweet-smelling kindergarten teacher

Gently showed us how to play with the Tinker Toy set,

And after she left the room

We took the sticks

And poked each other’s eyes out.

Prudy Sutherland

27 January 1981

In Tears in a Crowd

To have no real friends

Is like being naked

And having people laugh at your body.

Prudy Sutherland

14 January 1981

Pragmatic

If the shoe doesn’t fit

Try it on the other foot.

Prudy Sutherland

21 December 1980