Month: August 2023

OTTERS in Wheelchairs

Wheelchairs were a highlight of my summer travel back home.

If you’ve never been disabled, it can be hard to appreciate disability. This is where construction workers have an advantage in sympathetic understanding. Most of us have been temporarily disabled at one time or other in our lives. We’ve had to butt crawl up the stairs, or learn to use the other hand with one arm in a sling, to navigate on knee scooters and crutches.

Buying lobbies. My first time in a store scooter. No crashes!

I’ve been temporarily disabled many times in my life, but returning from a trip to Maine was the first time I’ve ever gotten to ride in an airport wheelchair. It was awesome!

The wheelchair was a necessity after I sprained my foot getting out of bed. I know. Pretty dumb. I could tell my foot was asleep when I woke up, but I had to pee and thought I could walk on it. Not! I wonder why I’d never learned this lesson until now. Don’t try to walk if your foot is asleep! Wake it up first.

I had traveled to Maine to commune with the OTTERS (Old Tradeswomen Talking Eating and Remembering Shit). We are writing a book about the Tradeswomen Movement. For the last half century we have been agitating to help women enter the construction trades and other nontraditional jobs, and now we are recording our collective history.

OTTERS Dale McCormick, Elly Spicer, Ronnie Sandler, Lynn Shaw, Lisa Diehl, Liz Skidmore, me in front

It was great to see and hug my old friends from all over the country, many for the first time in years. Working together resulted in measurable progress on our book. We stayed in a beautiful country house. Plus we got our fill of lobbies (the Mainers’ word for lobster)!

Then the trip from Portland, Maine to Santa Rosa, California tested my enthusiasm for airplane travel. 

Our “cabin” is the red house, right near Wolf’s Neck Woods State Park

My long day of travel involved three airports. By the time I left Portland, on a warm muggy day, I still could not walk. My friend and Airbnb host, Marty Pottenger, loaned me a walker and, later, a cane. She suggested I call the airline to ask for wheelchair support. She drove me to the airport where I hobbled to the airline counter. She reclaimed the cane and I plopped into a streamlined wheelchair, pushed by a handsome gray-haired man. He said he was retired but worked at the airport two days a week to help make ends meet. I said, “Two days a week! That’s all any of us should have to work. The Wobblies called for a two-hour day but I think a two day week is better.” We talked about jobs we’d worked at as we crawled forward in the security line, and I realized it would have been hell standing in that line without the chair. He left me seated near the gate and went to pick up another disabled traveler.

I was relieved to be in the first group of passengers, those who need special assistance. My foot was healed enough to limp to my airplane seat without a cane.

My Airbnb host in South Portland, Marty Pottenger and her 1850 house

At the stopover in Charlotte, North Carolina there was one other disabled traveler besides me flying on to San Francisco. The young dreadlocked assistant grabbed both our wheelchairs at once, one in each hand, and pushed us at high speed through the packed airport. Charlotte is a big city of 880,000 people and its airport is huge. We flew through the foot traffic with some close calls, but never hitting any walkers. I felt like Casey Jones drivin’ that train. I wanted to see the airport art but was barely able to take in my surroundings. The distance from one gate to the other was far but we got there in plenty of time to make our flight.

At the San Francisco airport I was greeted by a man holding a wheelchair and a sign with my name on it. What service! This was another long trek that required an elevator. I was deposited right at the taxi stand where I caught a ride to a nearby hotel where my wife was waiting. 

I had first planned to take the Santa Rosa airport bus, which runs till midnight from SFO but it would have left me at a bus stop two and a half miles from my house at 2am. I had thought I could walk home from there if necessary. Sometimes Uber and Lyft can be problematic at that time. But Holly came to my rescue. After a good night’s sleep she drove me home from the hotel the next day. Home looked pretty darn good and I’m relieved to be back on solid ground.

Reuniting with my activist buddies was wonderful but I wonder if I’m too old and crabby to fly across the country again. Flying used to feel like a fun adventure. Now it’s just a trial, this time made manageable by wheelchairs and their pushers.

My Life as a Dirty Old Man

Like Judy Grahn’s poem, Edward the Dyke, written in 1965, “…my problem this week is chiefly concerning restrooms.”*

At 74 I’m still often called sir. I’m mistaken for a man because I wear my hair short and usually wear a ball cap. I dress in T-shirts and hiking pants and, often, boots. Hiking is a favorite pastime. When I was younger I was mistaken for a boy, but that can’t be true now, can it? I’m old!

I never cared that people thought me male. On the street it was a defense mechanism. I passed. I stood tall, took big steps, walked fast, balled my hands into fists, and adopted a mean look. Men generally don’t get attacked on the street, especially if they keep to themselves and don’t make eye contact. That could be why I have never been attacked or raped. People don’t see me as female.

In the 1970s I bought all my clothes in the boy’s department at JC Penney. They had flannel shirts in boys’ size 18. I worked as an electrician and wore Carhartts before the brand became fashionable. I got my hair cut by a gay guy who told me my cut was fag cut number three. Sometimes gay men flirted with me. Sometimes I was confronted by men who thought I was a fag. “You idiot, I’m a dyke!” was my comeback, yelled as they drove away, 

There was a time when I tried to signify my femaleness, mainly to ease the discomfort of others. I would wear dangly earrings or women’s clothes. Not dresses. Maybe a scoop neck T-shirt, a bra. But that didn’t always do the trick. People make an immediate decision about gender and changing that first impression is not easy.

I was once nearly thrown out of a women’s dressing room. The authorities have never arrived in time to eject me from the toilets, but I get dirty looks from women there. Often, entering the restroom, they will look at me, then look at the sign on the door, thinking they must have made a mistake. Or implying that I made a big mistake. Their misgendering me has made them mad—at me! How dare I wear male clothes and confuse them!

To these women my response is usually, “I’m one of you.” Once I open my mouth they usually get it. I don’t have a male voice.

But, even after all these years, I was struck dumb recently at a roadside rest stop when a man insisted I should use the men’s toilet. 

“The men’s is around the other side,” he instructed.

Many retorts went through my mind. I wondered if I should just pull up my shirt and show him my tits. 

My wife Holly reminded me that I’ve often responded, “Do I have to show you my tits?” It’s a way to get the idea across without actually having to disrobe.

These days showing tits might not be enough to prove femaleness. After all, any body can have tits—or not—if they want. But here is the reason showing my tits would be all it takes. Nobody would buy tits like mine. Old lady tits.

I ignored him and kept walking. Why should I have to answer to this man I didn’t even know, had never seen before, was likely a tourist from some red state. I could see he had gotten off one of those big day tripping buses.

Apparently thinking I didn’t speak English, he began gesturing with his arms. “Around that way,” he said, slowly mouthing the words as he flung his arms in circles. 

I sized him up. He looked perfectly harmless, rather short, oldish maybe 65. He wore a fisher’s hat, a plaid shirt, shorts and sandals. I was thinking I could take him if necessary. I’d go right for the crotch. 

There was nothing sinister about him and I saw no wisdom there. The old white-skinned guy was just trying to be helpful. His face had a quizzical look, like wondering what this man was trying to do in the women’s restroom.

Does he see me as old, this helpful bathroom monitor? I have no facial hair (ok a little, but I pluck and shave). He must think I’m an old, shaven man. Does he think I’m a dirty old man with bad intentions? Does he think I’m targeting the women’s room to attack women? Gee, getting into this guy’s head is scary.

Finally, I just said, “I’m a woman,” and that was enough.

Later, I kind of wished I’d pulled up my T-shirt and showed him my tits.

*From the lesbian poetry archive: http://www.lesbianpoetryarchive.org/sites/default/files/Grahn_Edward.pdf