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10 Years of Love Bites From New Mobility
(02/24/2005) by Unknown
New Mobility's annual Sex, Wheels and Relationships issue celebrates 10 years of Love Bites, a regular column written by our Founder and President, Dr. Mitch Tepper, and one of our long time expert, Lizzi McNeff.
See
Meet the Sexperts,
Love Bites Smorgashbord, and Success Stories.
Making Jaron
In the January 1997 issue of New Mobility, Mitch Tepper wrote about his new baby boy, Jeremy, conceived at home with the help of penile vibratory stimulation. Deluged by men with SCI who wanted to be fathers, Tepper then wrote “Making Babies: Vibrostimulation and Insemination” [NM, September 1997] where it was read by one Stephen Feldman, a T4 para, 14 years post-injury at the time. Tepper’s article eventually inspired Feldman and his wife, Cory Zacker, to have a baby of their own.
“I had never attempted to have an ejaculation, understanding that it was more or less impossible without some of the more extreme measures like electroejaculation, which didn’t appeal to me,” says Feldman. Electroejaculation stimulation usually involves a medical office or hospital, anesthesia, and an electric probe inserted in the rectum—hence Feldman’s unwillingness. “So when Cory and I met, got engaged and got married, it was with the understanding we would not have children.”
Then Feldman read Tepper’s “Making Babies” article and became curious. “First to see if I could have an ejaculation using the means that Mitch described,” says Feldman, a grad student studying counseling. “I had a vibrator for many years, not the type that’s prescribed for inducing ejaculation, but it worked just as well. With that, we had the notion that this [insemination] was something we could do.”
According to Tepper’s article, over-the-counter vibrators work for 30 to 40 percent of men with SCI, and prescription-only models, such as the $350-plus Ferti-Care, work for over 70 percent.
“We went down to visit some relatives in Florida,” says Feldman, a New Yorker, “and my cousin had two small children, a boy and a younger daughter who was just born, and we just had a great time with her son,” says Feldman. “When we came back we started trying to have a baby right away.”
The couple followed Tepper’s article very closely. “He mentioned in the article that you have to use a latex-free syringe because the rubber plunger in the syringe can damage or kill sperm,” says Feldman. “No one would necessarily know that, so it was a very useful, critical piece of information.” Also, as the article recommends, Feldman took his sperm sample to a urologist to test for “swimmers” and to find out his options.
“The urologist at Mount Sinai told us it most likely would take us 18 months or longer to get pregnant at home. He suggested Cory get evaluated to make sure everything was a go on her end, and then we would go through an elaborate procedure where I would collect the sperm at one location and it would travel to another laboratory somewhere else,” says Feldman. “He was describing very expensive procedures that were probably not necessary anyway.”
But Zacker, a fine-arts dealer, was ovulating right then. “We didn’t want to miss a cycle so I did the penile vibratory stimulation and got an ejaculate and Cory was pregnant the next day.” Just like that—voila!
Jaron Zacker Feldman turns 6 this month. “For a long time we thought of him as a miracle baby, and now we’re just like everyone else,” says Feldman. “We’re just parents at school with their kindergarten kid. Of course we look different, but we face the same issues all other parents face.”
Feldman’s story can be found in greater detail by doing a search for Stephennyc on carecure.atinfopop.com. Find one of his posts, click on his name, then “view all posts by this member,” and then scroll down to the subject heading, “Making Babies.”
Hands-On Whoopee
Quadriplegia kicked the teeth out of Jim's sex life when at age 20 he dove into a pool and came out injured at the C4-5 level—and his sex life didn’t really have the chops to begin with. The closest he came to losing his virginity pre-injury was “heavy petting” as a teenager.
Back in 1996, Mitch Tepper decided to write about Jim in his article, “Hands-Free Whoopee” [October 1996] after coming across a racy post by Jim on the joy of virtual sex. “Sex is 100 percent mental to me—by written word or by phone. ... It’s full of passion and absolutely terrific,” Jim told Tepper. “I have little desire to attempt physical sex, and lots of reservations.”
Jim’s words sounded familiar to Tepper—“not unlike what I’ve heard from many other people with disabilities,” he wrote in the article. Tepper says it’s common for disabled people to be afraid of physical sex, especially when they haven’t had sex ed or instructive role models. By seeking fulfillment on the phone and online, Jim began to reclaim his sexuality.
Overall, Tepper is unimpressed with the quality of Internet chat rooms. However—“For Jim,” he wrote, “hands-free whoopee is not an inferior substitute; it is his personal form of sexual expression.”
At least until Sandra came along.
In 1997 Sandra ran across a post by Jim that blatantly spelled out the type of sexual contact he wanted. First, no meeting in real life and absolutely no falling in love. Second, he wasn’t interested in a pen pal, he wanted raw cybersex that might lead to phone sex. Third, he wanted a woman to masturbate to the erotica he’d send. In these fantasies he was always, without exception, nondisabled. The women knew he was a quad in real life, but that’s not how he wanted them to think of him.
Tepper’s validation of Jim’s virtual sex life encouraged him to pursue a real-life romance with Sandra, and after they became a real-life couple, Sandra also corresponded with Tepper.
“It was safe,” Sandra wrote Tepper. “In the beginning, it was fun and games and play sex to me.”
But Jim’s customized fantasies wouldn’t let Sandra go. “I remember sitting three lanes deep, many rows back in carpool one afternoon several weeks into our correspondence,” wrote Sandra. “I remember what a rush this little flirtation was turning out to be. I would compose sexy letters to Jim and think about all the other mothers out there reading Good Housekeeping.”
Sandra decided to break Jim’s rules. “As I began to be more attracted to Jim, it became harder and harder for me to visualize him as nondisabled. I wanted Jim. I wanted US together,” she wrote. “I was beginning to form a real attachment to him and I didn’t want fun and games and play sex. I wanted Jim.”
Realizing her feelings toward him had deepened, Jim began writing his disabled body into the scenarios. Then he wrote a scenario that took place in his real-life house. Sandra wrote him back and told him if he could ever figure out a way to make that possible, she would come to him.
Finally Jim decided to hell with his own rules, and the lovers arranged a real-life tryst. Afterward Jim was jubilant: “Our greatest discovery wasn’t primarily sexual,” he wrote. “As she stood next to the chair, I realized I could get my good arm around her and hug her quite strongly. I can hold her, Mitch! She LOVED it! I loved it!” Of course real-life sex was now part of their relationship, but the pure human joy of holding each other was best of all.
They’re still holding each other today.
“Fortunately Sandra and I remain a wonderful success story,” says Jim. The couple have a house together in a quintessentially suburban New York community. “We lead a happily domestic life, with our three cats and a rabbit making us extremely popular with my niece and our friends’ kids.”
*Names have been changed.
Finding Strength Within
It’s a lesson she has learned the hard way, beginning at 15 and continuing for decades, but Jane has finally realized that her self-esteem does not depend upon her being in a relationship.
At age 2 a virus in her spine introduced her to life on wheels. At 7 she was enrolled in a school for kids with disabilities and was urged to walk with braces, but lugging around 50 pounds of steel was fatiguing—so she returned to fulltime wheelchair use in high school. That’s when she started dating men five or six years older. “I was engaged several times but got out of the engagements because of abuse, and the only reason I let it go on as long as I did was because I didn’t want to date men with disabilities at that time. I felt good that an ablebodied man cared about me.”
It was a trap that many disabled women growing up in the 1950s and ’60s experienced. When a disabled woman caught the attention of a nondisabled man, she felt an emotional high. In Jane’s case, because it was a phone relationship, it took five months before her suitor realized she used a wheelchair. By the time she finally got around to telling him, he didn’t believe her.
“When he first came to see me I told him the doors would be unlocked—my mom was gone. He saw the wheelchair next to the bed and actually picked me up off the bed and carried me outside and threw me into the lake, thinking I could walk—I looked pretty normal then, my legs hadn’t atrophied or anything. Then he realized.”
They kept seeing each other and were sexually active, but he became abusive. “He would hold my head down and make me have oral sex, and if I didn’t want to do it he would call me names and tell me that I’m not a real woman.” Still, they kept seeing each other. She broke it off two weeks before the marriage date when she found out he was cheating.
There were other engagements, but it wasn’t until she was 25 that she married Brian. By then she had an elementary teaching degree but had been denied employment—“They said it was too hard for the kids.” From that moment on she has been on the front lines of the disability rights movement.
“I married Brian because he seemed to be a kind person and he was going to be an architect and he came from a doctor’s family,” she says. “We’re still very good friends, but it was never like a real husband and wife relationship.”
They started having problems when he graduated but wouldn’t go to work. “All he would do is draw and have all these dreams that would never come true. He just stayed in the house and visited his friend. He was writing a book and said it was going to be published and we would have lots of money, but it never happened. It was always dreams, but he never did anything. I supported him.” After seven years, Jane left.
Then came Michael, who seemed like the real thing. It was during this time, early 1980s, between marriages, that she also met Lizzi McNeff, a newly injured quad who was just starting to take an interest in sexuality and disability. They were both active in disability rights, and their relationship of sharing life stories began.
Jane and Michael lived together for three years before marrying in 1985. He worked, was outgoing, well-known, loved by everyone, but his friends were surprised that he would marry a woman with a disability. For Jane, it was a double-edged sword: Her landing another nondisabled man had given her self-esteem another boost, but his friends made her feel like damaged goods.
From the beginning Michael drank, but they had fun together. Over the years it became clear that he was an alcoholic, and the emotional abuse began—he became an angry drunk, stayed out often, and when they argued, he would sometimes take her chair away from her. When he sobered up, he would be a prince, helping with chores, telling her she meant everything to him. “I didn’t like the fighting, but I loved him and he kept telling me it was going to get better.” The cycle of abuse, making up, and making and breaking promises went on for 15 years.
Finally, four years ago, she left. And although she has had relationships since then, she has finally discovered the strength to be able to live alone. Why did it take so long? “I’m vulnerable because I love relationships,” she says. “I have to have a relationship, and when someone shows me affection, I’m drawn to them.”
Now, with help from her friend McNeff, whose interest in sexuality culminated in advanced degrees, counseling and research, she talks about her need and how it relates to her self-esteem. “Lizzi has been a strong point in my life,” says Jane. “Because of her involvement in abuse research and counseling, she has just been a rock for me. She’s done so many studies and has brought me into that so I can understand myself better as to why it has happened with me.”
It’s all about feeling that need to be in a relationship. “There will always be that need,” she says. “But the main thing is that I now feel comfortable being by myself. It’s not that I don’t want a relationship, it’s just that now I think I can handle being alone.”
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