For people afflicted with disability, dating can often be a daunting process. Whilst the afflicted person has, much like anyone else, an insistent longing to enter into a loving and fruitful relationship, they are inevitably anxious of the thought that, upon first encounter, their prospective significant other will be too closed-minded to look past their disability to observe the kind, sexual soul that inhabits them.
This is most certainly true in David’s case. David has been single now for what is approaching ten years, ever since developing a rare psycho-associative condition which causes him to compulsively wear a simply enormous novelty sombrero. The sombrero in question measures, in total, thirty-five inches in diameter, making it difficult for him to even walk through your average doorway, let alone consummate a newfound relationship. In fact, just attempting to figure out the mere logistics of sexual intercourse is, for David, a consistent source of anxiety. It is, to his mind, a strategic nightmare not worth thinking about, much like a game of chess, or sex-chess, if such a thing even exists. It probably doesn’t. Luckily for him, this is a bridge yet to be crossed.
But to his credit, David remains largely resolute in his search for love, even in the face of consistent and sometimes even severe rejection. Let us take his most recent first date with Helen as a case in point. Helen of course knew about David’s disability beforehand, but throughout the course of their date she became increasingly less and less tolerant of the manner in which it manifested itself. For David this was rather unfortunate, as upon entering the restaurant and seeing Helen for the first time in the flesh, he was mesmerised by her beauty and subtle mannerisms. To him, she appeared almost as a young Angela Bettis. However, before he could mentally deduce whether or not Angela Bettis was a real celebrity or merely somebody he’d just made up, the date was already well underway.
Right from the get-go, it was clear to David that Helen was yet another sexual prospect who was simply unwilling to look past his disability, or for that matter the jaunty tassels affixed to the rim of his novelty sombrero, which seemed to permanently conceal parts of his face during conversation. In fact, the ways in which these tassels swayed with the nervous shifts in David’s neck muscles made Helen feel physically sick, and far from jaunty. Due to Helen’s remarkably forthright character, she communicated this feeling almost immediately. Unperturbed, David explained that the tassels were as much a part of him as they were the sombrero, by means of a heart-warming oration which bordered on the poetic. Yet Helen simply didn’t buy this, expressing her harsh opinion on the matter by belching the word “bullshit” in between canapés.
Feeling Helen’s phone number quickly slipping from his grasp digit by precious digit, David decided to go all-out, thinking that an effort at self-deprecation would perhaps win her over. What’s more charming, he thought, than a disabled person, such as he was, who could laugh at himself, and be unsullied by his own illness as a result? He began to tell Helen about the predicament he found himself in a few days ago, in which he met his new next-door neighbor for the first time. He introduced himself, he explained, by way of a jovial hand-wave whilst mowing his front lawn.
However, seeing the giant sombrero perched exuberantly upon David’s head, and being a Mexican immigrant himself, the new neighbor took this friendly gesture as a racially motivated hate crime, and proceeded to deliver a long tirade in defense of his nation, which included many references to the Battle of the Alamo. At this point, Helen had had enough. She swiftly raised herself from her chair, before cruelly requesting that David not contact her again in the future, and left the restaurant altogether. His date with Helen was, on the whole, a veritable disaster.
And so, David’s quest for a meaningful and long-term relationship goes on, and we salute him, for he is a true underdog, or at the very least he is a fully-grown man who looks completely fucking ridiculous, almost like a cartoon character, and we all love those. It is therefore with the warmest of sincerity that we wish David luck in his search for womanly companionship. And who knows, he may even find something more, by which I mean: sexual intercourse.
