Raymond Luczak - QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology

QDA

A Queer Disability Anthology

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ALSO BY THE EDITOR

POETRY

How to Kill Poetry

Road Work Ahead

Mute

This Way to the Acorns

St. Michaels Fall

FICTION

Men with Their Hands

NONFICTION

From Heart into Art: Interviews with Deaf and Hard ofHearing Artists and Their Allies

Notes of a Deaf Gay Writer: 20 Years Later

Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life

DRAMA

Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about theDeaf American Experience

Snooty: A Comedy

AS EDITOR

Among the Leaves: Queer Male Poets on the MidwesternExperience

Eyes of Desire 2: A Deaf GLBT Reader

When I am Dead: The Writings of George M.Teegarden

Eyes of Desire: A Deaf Gay & Lesbian Reader

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QDA

A Queer Disability Anthology

RAYMOND LUCZAK

Editor

Squares & Rebels

Minneapolis, MN

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology.

Copyright 2015 by Raymond Luczak.

Published by Squares & Rebels (a Handtype Pressimprint) at Smashwords.

Cover design: Mona Z. Kraculdy.

Cover photograph: Adam Marsnik [fotorufus.com].

SMASHWORDS LICENSE STATEMENT

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoymentonly. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.If you would like to share this book with another person, pleasepurchase an additional copy for each reader. If youre reading thisbook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your useonly, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchaseyour own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of thisauthor.

All rights reserved. No part of this book can bereproduced in any form by any means without written permission.Please address inquiries to the publisher:

Squares & Rebels

PO Box 3941

Minneapolis, MN 55403-0941

squaresandrebels@gmail.com

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IN GRATITUDE

The editor wishes to thank David Cummer for hiseditorial insights as well as Jennifer Bartlett, Bryan Borland,Christopher Bram, John R. Killacky, and Adam Marsnik for theirassistance with this project. He is also grateful for Lennard J.Davis and Scott Jordan Harris for their permission to be quoted atlength in his introduction.

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CONTENTS

RAYMOND LUCZAK _ Introduction

BEX _ Comic

JAX JACKI BROWN _

KENNY FRIES _

BARBARA RUTH _ Poems

TRAVIS CHI WING LAU _ Curvature

KRISTEN RINGMAN _ Poems

SARA IBRAHIM _

MARK ELLIS _ Poems

JOEL GATES _

ASHLEY VOLION _ Poems

ANDREW MORRISON-GURZA _

LUCAS SCHEELK _ Poems

MONIQUE FLYNN _

ALLISON FRADKIN _ Poem

DONNA MINKOWITZ _

D. ALLEN _ Poem

GREGORY VILLA _

LIV MAMMONE _ Poems

KIT MEAD _

ARTHUR DURKEE _ Poems

CHRISTOPHER DEMPSEY _

MICHAEL RUSSELL _ Poems

NOLA WEBER _

KENNY FRIES _ Poems

KRISTEN RINGMAN _

MARIKA PROKOSH _ Poems

TAK HALLUS _

CYRE JARELLE JOHNSON _ Poem

JASON T. INGRAM _

MAVERICK SMITH _ Poem

QUINTAN ANA WIKSWO _

DAVID CUMMER _ Poem

CARL WAYNE DENNEY _

TRAVIS CHI WING LAU _ Poems

TORANSE LOWELL _

WHITTIER STRONG _

JAMES SCHWARTZ _ Poems

BARBARA RUTH _

THE POET SPIEL _ Poem

MARK ELLIS _

JOHN R. KILLACKY _ Video Narratives

BEATRICE HALE _

KATHI WOLFE _ Poems

D. ALLEN _

CHRISTOPHER DEMPSEY _ Poem

JOHN WHITTIER TREAT _

MEG DAY _ Poem

BRENNA CYR _

STEPHANIE HEIT & PETRA KUPPERS _ Poem

LARRY CONNOLLY _

RAYMOND LUCZAK _ Poems

LYDIA BROWN _

DONNA WILLIAMS _ Poems

KATHARINA LOVE _

JAX JACKI BROWN _ Poems

ZAK PLUM _ Comic

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Without deviation from the norm,progress is not possible.

Frank Zappa

IN MEMORIAM

Cook Friedman

1949 - 1993

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RAYMOND LUCZAK

No More Inspiration Porn:Introduction

Half a lifetime ago, in the fall of 1988, when Ifirst saw Cook Friedman in a large room at the Gay and LesbianCommunity Center, I had no idea who he was. He was lanky with ahead of thick curly hair and a sexy smile, and he sat with a woodencane. I had just moved to New York City, and in those pre-Internetdays, there wasnt an easy way of connecting with the Deaf LGBTcommunity. I decided to try the next best option, which was EDGE(Education in a Disabled Gay Environment); it was listed among thegroups that met at the GLCC.

Folding chairs were arranged in a circle. A tallolder man with a thick mustache looked embarrassed by a young Deafman with limited motor skills blatantly fixated on him. An olderfeminine lesbian sitting in a wheelchair gave me the nicest smileof anyone I saw. A clean-shaven man who didnt seem to bephysically disabled joined us. There werent many of us, butbecause there was no American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter, Iwasnt sure how well Id be able to lipread and follow thediscussion. Luckily everyone was fairly easy to lipread. Cookturned out to be the person in charge. He was funny and kind.

Afterward we became friends. He lived in a tinyrailroad flat a few blocks away from GLCC. I was agog at the sizeof his vinyl record collection. He loved music, and he knew whereeach album was. His record player seemed to have its own shrinewhere the walls of his cramped living room were graced with recordssqueezed into shelves. He was very proud of the fact that theauthor Christopher Bram, his neighbor and friend, modeled hischaracter Jack Arcallis home in his novel In Memory of AngelClare on his apartment. Cook told me stories about the halcyondays of the 1960s and 1970s when he dated Judy Garlands lasthusband and partied in St. Marks Baths and worked in a recordstore on West 8th Street where he met John Lennon and Yoko Ono ascustomers and danced all night long in discos. He was working as ahairdresser during the 1980s when he started to notice that hisbody wasnt always cooperating with him. He felt strangelyuncoordinated. Then he learned why: multiple sclerosis.

I had heard of MS before. My first sign languageteacher had it. When my deafness was diagnosed at the age of twoand half years, I was immediately outfitted with a bulky hearingaid in a chest harness and brought to an elementary school near myhome for speech and lipreading lessons. Sign language wasforbidden.

In my small hometown, there was an older Deaf manwho was a high school dropout from the Michigan School of the Deafand he worked as a dishwasher for the Holiday Inn, although Iwouldnt know these two facts for a number of years. I did noticean incontestable fact about him: on summer days, while sitting infront of a bar on Aurora Street, he always seemed to be teachingsomeone how to fingerspell and sign. I remember a few occasionswhile in the car my mother turned my head away not to look at him.This made me doubly curious about his hands. I sensed they werecapable of saying something more than just directional gestures,but I didnt understand that it was a fully-realizedlanguage on a par with English.

Then I was mainstreamed full-time in a Catholicschool for five years. I felt increasingly suicidal. My hearingclassmates treated me as the runt of their class, and I cried agreat deal. Then one day I turned off my faucet of emotioncompletely; it would take me years to allow myself to feelunfettered emotion in front of a stranger. My face revealed nothingfor fear of being bullied again. It didnt help that my own hearingfamilyI had eight siblingsnever slowed down their dinnerconversations enough to enable me to follow them. First I had tofigure who was speaking and then