Then, quite by chance, I met Avril.
Avril was thirty-three. She was not what you’d call good-looking in the traditional sense, but she did have astonishingly striking eyes and a large, quite perfect chest. Furthermore, she was bright, articulate, and often viciously funny. On the downside, however, she also had phocomelia.
Phocomelia is the congenital disorder which afflicted many of the children of thalidomide mothers. Apparently the word itself comes from the Greek for ‘seal limbs’, a reference to the flipper-type hands which are a common symptom.
Avril was severely physically disabled and spent most of her time in a wheelchair. She had two tiny legs and a tiny left arm, which she labelled ‘fun-size’, and occasionally ‘fin-size’. Her right arm was slightly twisted but otherwise OK, except for the hand, which again, was a little on the small side.
The first time I laid eyes on Avril, I must admit, I thought, ‘Now there’s someone who might be desperate enough to have sex with me.’ She later confessed that she’d thought pretty much exactly the same thing about me.
I became friends with Avril through her brother, Stu, who I’d worked with very briefly on an aborted radio show. Feeling bad and beholden because I’d ended up working and not getting paid, Stu invited me over to dinner one night. At his place. With him and his wife.
In truth, I didn’t actually relish the idea of spending the evening with a happy couple in their happy home with their happy, well-adjusted baby gurgling happily close by, jerking its tiny fists and having happy, well-adjusted baby dreams. But I did relish the idea of a free meal, so I graciously accepted.
And, as it happens, it was disgustingly pleasant. Stu’s wife, Carolyn, was lovely, Stu was charming alongside her, and—OK, I’ll say it—even the baby was inoffensive enough. I was enjoying myself.
Then the house telephone began to squeal. It was Stu’s sister. She was outside in a taxi, fuming angry. She’d had a big row with their parents. Stu huffed and puffed, apologised, excused himself, then went outside.
While he was out of the room, Carolyn said, ‘I don’t know if Stu’s mentioned Avril before…’ He hadn’t. ‘Well, just so you know, she’s in a wheelchair.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s um…that’s great. Well, not great obviously. I mean, that’s fine. Which is to say, I’ve not got a problem with that. Obviously. I mean, why would I?’
Carolyn smirked at me and briefly limpened a wrist as if to put me at my ease.
I smirked back.
Avril was still in feisty mood when she whirred up to the table. Stu introduced us. Avril immediately picked up on my dithering over whether or not to shake her hand—she was used to it. I had already stood up and was wondering whether even that might be construed as a rather insensitive move. She held out her right arm. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Shake my tiny hand.’ I laughed and did so, and even then it crossed my mind, the old adage about men liking women with small hands. But I thought better of sharing it. Instead I said, ‘Pleased to meet you. That reminds me of the E. E. Cummings poem.’ Then I immediately felt like such an obnoxious, idiotic, ham-fisted oaf. I blushed. But I’d started, so I had to finish. ‘Nobody,’ I quoted, ‘not even the rain,’ I continued, ‘has such small hands.’
Avril pulled a face. ‘What are you saying?’
I blushed some more. ‘I don’t know really. It’s a poem.’
‘I’ve got absolutely no idea what that means,’ she said.
‘Now play nice,’ said Carolyn.
Avril laughed. ‘No, I’m not being mean. I genuinely don’t understand. The rain doesn’t have hands. Or am I missing something?’ She looked at Stu, who shrugged unhelpfully. I wondered whether ‘Am I missing something?’ was a joke.
‘I don’t think it was meant to be taken literally,’ I offered.
‘You don’t think he wrote the poem about a deformed girl then?’ asked Avril.
I shook my head, then changed my mind. ‘Actually I think he did,’ I replied. ‘Yeah, I remember now. He definitely did. He wrote it about a girl with really tiny hands.’
Avril laughed again. ‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘That’s marvellous.’ I drank some more wine, relieved.
At the end of the evening Avril and I were left alone. Stu and Carolyn were tidying up in the kitchen and making coffee.
‘You know the worst thing about my disability?’ Avril asked me, apropos of nothing.
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘Let me think.’
I thought. The answer that occurred to me was ‘Not getting enough sex?’, but I didn’t voice it, because I didn’t want to offend. So instead I said, ‘Swimming in circles?’, which was just unbelievably, unconscionably, excruciatingly dumb. But she laughed anyway, which was nice of her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The worst thing about being in this chair, and having these fucked-up limbs…’—she had quite a fruity vocabulary, Avril—‘…is that most men tend not to think of me in terms of someone they might like to fuck.’
Perhaps over-enthusiastically I responded, ‘I know! That’s what I thought, I just didn’t like to say! But I do know exactly what you mean. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but I’m—well, I’m quite an ugly bloke.’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ she replied. ‘You’re no Tom Cruise, but you know, you’re not…’ She ran out.
‘That was a valiant effort,’ I said. ‘And it’s appreciated, really it is. But the fact is, I am a frighteningly ugly bloke, and I don’t mean to demean your condition when I say this, but ugliness, to this extent, is actually a kind of disability.’
‘Oh, come on,’ she said.
‘It is!’ I squeaked.
‘How so?’ she asked.
‘In a way,’ I continued, ‘it’s actually worse. Because at least you have an excuse.’ She raised an eyebrow. Perhaps ‘excuse’ wasn’t the right word. Well, too late now. I moved on. ‘Let me explain. People look at me and their reaction is probably similar to the reaction they have when they look at you. They think, you’re just not in the running. No pun intended. You’re not someone they’d consider—whether for sex, for a job or, nine times out of ten, even for conversation…One of the reasons I work as a copywriter is because I can get a lot of work without having to turn up for an interview. Most of the jobs I get are on the strength of my writing. I don’t have to impress in person.’ I was getting into my stride now, the alcohol filling my mouth with words. ‘I’m pretty much good at everything I do—no arrogance intended—but I’ve never got a job I had to interview in person for. Even if I’ve been perfect for the job. And this is because I’m butt-fuck ugly.’
Avril laughed.
‘Yeah, laugh it up. At least you’ve got rights groups and laws looking out for you. Do you know it’s not even illegal to discriminate against ugly people?’
‘That’s a disgrace,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should start a campaign,’ she said.
‘Maybe I should,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will.’
I didn’t.
‘It’d be a complete waste of time though,’ she countered. ‘You’d still be discriminated against. Trust me. So where did you say you lived?’
The