My Body Isn’t Made for Sex Anymore

Sex & disability, an exercise in frustration

Allison Wallis
Gay Mag

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Illustration by Randi Pace

MyMy body doesn’t feel like it’s made for sex anymore. The body I had when I first met my husband, the body that lifted 50-pound bags of flour and kept up with the men in the kitchen, running a station solo during the busiest of Friday nights, has morphed into a body that can’t quite keep itself knit together. The body that allowed for rooftop sex and fooling around in cabs, quickies and sexual marathons is now a body that requires extensive preparation for intercourse. The progression of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is cruel. I miss that old body. I grieve for it. I imagine my husband does as well.

My husband and I clicked physically the moment we met — so quickly that I called my mom after our first night together and told her I was going to marry him. Our first few years together we fooled around everywhere. New Yorkers make an art out of ignoring the people surrounding them, and we took advantage of that fact in a myriad of ways, including taking the elevator up to the roof of our twenty-one-story apartment building and sneaking through the security gate to the one corner where the security cameras didn’t reach.

New Yorkers make an art out of ignoring the people surrounding them, and we took advantage of that…

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Allison Wallis
Gay Mag

I write about disability, chronic pain and illness, trauma and resilience, and life in Hawai’i as a feminist Jew. Find me on Twitter @allylovespono