The Impressionists

By Richard Braynard

My brand new Endolite prosthesis was being adjusted again, so I was back on crutches for a couple of days. I'm a new amputee and I've got used to crutches, but I'll sure be glad when the hi-tech leg is ready to roll.

The amputation did not come as a surprise. Actually it took a little more than eight years to happen. It began when I was 39 and first noticed something funny going on with my right foot. So I saw my M.D. who said I was having a circulatory problem in my right leg and who immediatly outlined his plan of attack. First I was to go to a physio-therapist and start taking special exercises to help the circulation. He also warned me that it might be necessary to put a plastic artery in my leg. He even made my blood run cold by warning me that if the plastic artery didn't work out, we'd have to remove the leg. Note that he said "we." I could just see myself, saw in hand, cutting through my leg bone. I have that kind of imagination. And humor.

Having had a grandfather who lost both legs at age 56 for the same reason, I took the therapist seriously. The visits lasted several weeks and then I was on my own with the exercises, which I pursued for almost five years, but which were interrupted when I was 44 by a reoccurence of the foot problem. Back to the M.D. This is it, said he. So my right leg got a new artery made of plastic. Five months ago--I am now 47--`this is it' came from the doctor a second time, so here I am, minus my right leg from a little above mid-thigh down. I went through a temporary prosthesis and learned to walk with it, and then I opted to go all out and get an endo-skeletal hi-tech job. And here I am, on crutches at age 47, waiting none too patiently for science to make me like new again.

Being a member of the art museum and a fan of impressionist painting, I decided to see the local show, even on crutches. Our art museum is an overdone marble palace of gigantic proportions, but it's fun to see the people and the paintings and the silly modern sculpture and to have lunch with ear plugs in the "Garden Court", a vast space lined top, bottom, and all four sides with both marble and glazed terra cotta so that the acoustics consist only of decibels jangling on the cutting edge of the threshhold of pain.

I got to the Den of Sonic Fury about 12:15 and went down the cafeteria line. When I got to the end and paid my check, the cashier lady asked if I'd like help. I thanked her and said yes. At that point a young high school kid appeared from nowhere and she called him by name and then said to me: "One of our buspersons will help you."

Busperson. The `person' disease creeps into the language at every crevice. And then, of course, I noticed a busgirl. But was I assigned to a busboy? No. A busperson.

The Garden Court was jammed with tables, each table jammed with decibelic eaters/talkers, but my busperson headed with assurance toward a far wall where I saw a table for two with one lone man sitting there. The table was sort of pushed into some greenery, which the Garden Court affects in an attempt to make it a garden. The lad put the tray down, said something which was swallowed by the engorged decibels and disappeared.

"Is it all right if I sit here?" I shouted at the man whose hair was beginning to gray. He smiled and nodded, not even attempting to speak. So I pulled out the chair, got myself in and sat. I have full length crutches which I then started to place on the floor between the table and the greenery and saw a pair of elbow crutches already there. I looked up at my table companion.

"Mine!" he mouthed and pointed at himself.

"We've been segregated," I shouted at my table mate. He heard me and smiled warmly. I mentally noted that he had a sense of humor resembling mine.

Then he took courage and a big deep breath and said loudly enough for me to hear, "I'm an amputee too."

"Congratulations!" I said and held out my hand. With a grin he took it. I introduced myself. "My name's Richard Braynard. If you think that's a lot of `ards', my father's name was Bernard Braynard."

My companion laughed heartily. So heartly that I thought quickly about what I just said, but it wasn't that funny. I looked at him with a question on my face.

"My name is Edward Vark," he shouted.

One second later after the name had registered, I started laughing, too. Call in the aardvarks, the pig-like mammals with long snouts and sticky tongues that eat ants. In this case only one vark to three ards.

I was delighted to have an amputee for a tablemate. I had met a number and exchanged all sorts of information and compared notes on depression and phantom limb and stump formation, but to find myself in a social situation with an amputee was something new, and I was dying to know more about him. I looked at him carefully and he was quite good-looking. About my age, maybe a tad older, a rather hefty pair of shoulders--from years on crutches?--and perfectly cared-for rather large hands.

"You saw me as I got here so you know that I'm a right AK. I'm waiting for my permanent prosthesis. It was only five months ago that all this happened, but I had been prepared for it some eight years ago. Bad circulation. I suppose it's only a matter of time before my other leg goes, too. But I'm still running my insurance business as usual. Fortunately I have an excellent assistant who can take charge when I'm not there."

"I'm a right AK, too," Edward Vark said.

"Really," I rejoined. "So that really was segregation when the busboy brought me over here." I laughed and so did he. "But I'm grateful to him. It's nice to meet a fellow right AK."

"That's not all," Edward said. "I'm a left HD as well."

I was semi-stunned. "You've really had a double whammy," I said. "A left hip disarticulation. Did they both happen at the same time?"

"Well, in a way, yes. I was a construction engineer and there was a bad accident. My left leg was crushed right at the pelvis and my right leg mangled. They tried to save it, but a week after they had sewn my left hip together, they were forced to remove my right leg about midway up the thigh."

I immediately had visions of his genitals being destroyed, but I really didn't think I should ask anything quite so personal. The thought was very disturbing, however, and it must have showed because he said, "Everything else in the area was saved." I felt a great relief and obviously that showed, too, since he laughed and said, "You look relieved to hear it."

I laughed. "I didn't mean to be so personal, but I can all too easily put myself in that position. I'm a very empathic person."

Once we had finished with the preliminaries, we both tackled our food. Since he was already ahead of me, he waited for me to finish. When I was on my last bite, he said, "Have you been through the museum or are you just starting?"

"I got here in time to eat. I prefer to poke around when my stomach has something to do, otherwise it snarls at me. How about you?"

"I haven't started either." He seemed to emanate a desire to be included. I liked him and wondered if he was lonely.

"Why don't we tackle it together?" I suggested.

"I'd like that," he said.

With that we untangled our crutches--the way they were lying on the floor looked like they were copulating--and each of us got to his respective foot--his being a prosthetic one--and without any attempt to talk in that decibel-laden nightmare, we walked to the nearest exit and stopped to let our ears recover. While we stood there, I looked down at his prosthetic foot.

"What size shoe do you wear on that right leg?"

"It's an eleven, but arbitrary. When I wore shoes I wore a nine, but they wanted me to have more contact with the ground. I'm not sure it makes any difference. Anyway I belong to an exchange club so I don't have to worry."

"I was just curious. I know a guy with a size twelve who's a right AK like me. He sometimes has problems. May I suggest something? And please don't take offense." He raised his eyebrows, so I continued. "Why don't we get a couple of wheelchairs? I'm not used to doing this much on crutches, and I get tired in a hurry."

He smiled. "It's a great idea because I get tired too. I never go out except to do the essential errands." He paused and looked at me for a moment. "I'm not married. I used to be, but. . .well. I didn't tell you that the accident happened when I was 31 years old. I'm now 51 and. . .well."

There was a lot he wasn't saying. Did his wife desert? Or did she die? I'd bet on the first one. Me, I've never been married and never will be for reasons of my own.

We walked over to the coat room and inquired about wheelchairs and got a pair with no trouble at all. And no charge, either. Now that's making art accessible! We parked our crutches with the attendant and took off to see the sights in comfort. I've had virtually no experience in a chair, so I didn't do too well at first, but Edward really knew that he was doing.

"You use a chair at home?" I inquired.

"Much of the time. Either that or I still walk around an my arms. Keeps my upper body in shape. It's so much easier than putting on one prosthesis because then sitting down and getting up becomes difficult. In public I do it, although I think I've long since given up about what people think when they see me. Most are repulsed and a few are attracted, sometimes quite vehemently. Have you had that experience yet?"

"You mean the attraction?"

"Yes," he said.

"Actually, no. Although I've heard other amputees talk about it. Or complain about it. I am acquainted with a woman amputee who is getting married to a guy she met because she's an amputee. He loves women who are amputees and really fell for her. She for him as well." I didn't tell him that I feel strongly attracted to fellow amputees.

"Yes," Edward said, "it's commonplace. I've had several offers of marriage from women who want to devote their lives to me. I've been lucky to escape. As you have probably concluded, my wife deserted--while I was still in the hospital. So you can imagine what I think of women."

"But not all women are like that," I objected.

"You may be right, but so far that has not been my experience," he rejoined. "Actually, I can understand the repulsion another person might feel on seeing a person with no legs, just stumps, and in my case not even two stumps. Do you feel attracted to amputees?"

Was that a loaded question? I decided to answer truthfully. "Yes, I am, and I suppose that's odd because I'm an amputee myself. But I wasn't aware of being attracted until I became an amputee five months ago and began to be attracted to the amps I met up with in rehab. Matter of fact, I'm not sure `attracted' in the right word. I'm `drawn' to amputees and the other disabled people I meet in rehab because they seem to have greater depth of personality."

"You consider yourself disabled then," Edward said.

"Yes, and I consider you `dis' abled. It's a stinking word but there's nothing else unless we consider a circumlocution as idiotic as `the physically challenged' which says nothing because a boxer in the ring and an entire football team are all examples of physically challenged people. Along with a woman carrying a heavy load of dirty laundry to a washer. In reality there is no such thing as `disabled' simply because everyone has a `dis' ability when compared to someone else."

Edward gave me an odd look but seemed intrigued. "You've done more thinking about the problem than I have. Or dared to. My ex-wife left me with the feeling that I was finished, that I had nothing left to offer. I even talked it over with a psychologist at the hospital and he told me I was feeling castrated but that I wasn't. Well I knew that, but I guess psychologically I was. Would you believe that I've never had sex with anyone since the last time I was with my wife?"

"That's shocking! Your prostate must have long since rotted away from inactivity."

Edward laughed. "I meant sex with anyone other than myself." He lowered his voice. "I assure you my prostate is alive and well and living with gusto right in back of my balls. I have it checked regularly. My physician seems to enjoy palpitating it." He grinned as he spoke. I really liked this new-found friend.

It seems we had come a long way since meeting in the Den of Decibels under the duress of segregation, so we proceeded to go to the exhibit we both had come to see. It was quite a collection and most enjoyable and took us over an hour. At one point I was thanking myself for thinking of the wheelchair. The galleries were mobbed and I could never have made it on crutches--I would probably have been knocked down and trampled to death.

It was interesting to note that people were very considerate of me and the chair, something I had not expected. Edward noticed the same thing--we hadn't tried to stay together, we constituted too much mass and occupied too much space as a pair. And we weren't the only chairs there, either, as I observed two others, one of them used by an attractive woman amputee who apparently was an HD. The other was a young male paraplegic who could well have been classified as a quad.

What I learned from the experience was that if and when I go back to see another art show, I'll use a chair regardless of the prosthesis. It's safer.

Out of the galleries into a corridor, we rolled until we found a place that was removed from the crowd and stopped to compare notes. Edward liked the show enormously, and he said that the reason he saw so much and looked so hard was because he had gone with me. A psychologist would have had a ready quote from a textbook about social acceptance, but I took it as a compliment. So I told him how much I liked him and how indebted I felt for the segregation. He smiled in appreciation of both the statement and the joke.

I think I was right: he's lonely. I'm not. At least no lonelier than I've been all my life, which has been the life of a loner, even while being a good salesman taking someone to lunch every day.

"Do you feel up to tackling any more of the museum?" Edward asked.

"To be candid, no," I replied. "But if you want to, I'll go along for the ride."

"Richard," he said and paused as if looking for words. "You are a remarkable person. I want to say something, but I'm afraid you won't believe it. But God knows it's true." He paused again. before he continued. "I had an appointment with you today, but I didn't know, of course, it was going to be you. This is only the second time I've been to the museum--the first time was with my ex right after we were married. I'm one of those amputees who goes nowhere. I think I said I go out only when forced to. Today is the twentieth anniversary of my amputation and the twentieth anniversary of my freedom. Is that too strong a word? At any rate something nagged me and nagged me and kept telling me to come see the art show. So I gave in, put on my prosthesis and drove fifteen miles to get here. I almost quit when I saw the mob and heard the unbearable din at the museum restaurant. But I went through with it. And met you with your wonderful humor and your freshness and your, well, health. And you like amputees, and you are an amputee. And the world's your oyster. I didn't realize there were people like you in the world. Thank you for keeping our appointment."

Edward's eyes were glazed with tears, but he didn't allow them any more expression than that. He seemed to be holding on for life, his hands clenching the arms of the chair.

I remained silent, although I felt tears as well. Empathic response. And maybe also because no one had ever before said anything like that to me.

We sat there a very long time without a word, finally arousing the attention of a guard who came over to us. I looked up at him and he asked if we were all right. I told him we were very tired and were just pulling ourselves together. I even said that this was the first time I'd ever been in a chair and wasn't used to it. The guard smiled sympathetically and asked if there was anything he could do. I thanked him no and told him we were leaving soon and that we had loved the exhibition.

The conversation gave Edward the impetus to look up and thank the guard, too. We neither one spoke again but started rolling back to the cloak room to get our crutches and turn in the chairs. Then we started for the exit and our cars.

"You remember where you parked?" I asked.

"You sound just like my wife!" Edward said and laughed, but without humor. "She had a string of unrelated questions that all began with `did you remember?' `Did you remember' to do this `did you remember' to do that! Maybe that's why I became a double amputee. Anything to get rid of her and her constant nagging."

"I apologize. Profoundly."

He smiled at me. "Coming from you I can take it." He stopped walking and looked flabbergasted. "My God! It's been twenty years and I still get angry. And would you believe I've never been able to say what I've just said to you? Oh brother! do I have a long road ahead of me. I've got to make up for twenty years of wasted time. Talk about the physically challenged! What about the psychologically challenged?" He looked at me. And then a smile started growing. "It's all your fault. Look what you've done for me in the space of a few hours. Let's go to my place and have a drink. I'd ask you for dinner but I haven't got much to offer."

"Ok, I'll make you a deal. If I go to your place for a drink, you'll have to come to my place for dinner." Of course I had no idea whether there was any food, but you can always phone for a pizza.

"You got yourself a deal on one condition," Edward said.

"And the condition?"

"That you tell me what the dinner is."

I laughed. "Wow! You really know how to call a guy's bluff. I'm going to phone for a pizza. Or I'll pick up hamburgers on the way. Which is it?"

Edward was laughing. "I'll settle for pizza."

I walked him to his car while he told me where he lived and the easiest way to get there. Then I went to my car.

About thirty minutes later I pulled up at a very nice two-storey house with a manicured lawn, roses and other amenities, such as a long wheelchair ramp.

He was standing at the front door. "You found it OK! No trouble?"

"Not a hint of it!" I answered. "You do your own gardening?"

"A little of it. I have a lawn service come in for the regular stuff. Come in and sit down," he said as I got to the door, "and what'll you have? I have a large variety of beverages including alcoholic ones."

I entered the living room. "Is iced tea too much trouble?"

"Not at all. It's exactly what I want. Make yourself comfortable here or join me in the kitchen," he said and started for the kitchen. I followed.

The living room was an attractive room with a grand piano with lots of music on it and something on the underside of it, large bookshelves and comfy furniture. We walked through a small dining room into a large kitchen that had a dinette table set up in the middle.

"That piano attracted me. You play? I'd like to hear you," I said. "But what was that thing hanging down under the keyboard?"

"That's my invention for using the sustaining pedal when you don't have any legs. I sit down, remove my leg, hook my stump into a kind of socket-harness and fasten that to the lever you saw under the keyboard. Presto chango! I can manage one of the pedals."

"You're an inventor, too!" I exclaimed. "Have you any other inventions for us amps? How did you dream up a thing like that?"

He smiled broadly and replied, "You really want to know? OK you asked for it! It's patterned on the kniehebel--that's a German/Austrian word meaning `knee lever' and it was standard on the fortepianos of the late seventeen hundreds. The player operated it with his knee and it raised the dampers, just as our so-called `loud pedal' does today."

"For Pete's sake!" I said. "How in hell did you run into that bit of esoterica?"

"It's a hobby--old music and instruments. Do you play?"

"Well, yes, I do. That's why I noticed the piano first thing. I play piano and fiddle. Perlman and I, the fiddlers on crutches! Tell me more. What composers do you like?"

"Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Debussy. And you?"

"Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Debussy, Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Bachrach--all those cats. And I have every recording Peggy Lee ever made. I can honestly say she's the only woman in my life."

Edward looked at me sort of oddly and went to the fridge and got out a bottle of iced tea. "I make a big batch every morning. It's not very strong," he warned.

"That's great for me."

He poured two glasses and set them on the table. "Want to sit here or in the living room?"

"Let's go in the living room. Maybe you'll play for me." I had just said that when the thought struck me: how do we carry glasses while on crutches? But he went into the dining room, wheeled out a tea cart, put the glasses on it and wheeled it back into the living room with me standing idly by full of admiration for his ingenuity.

In the living room he set the glasses on the coffee table in front of the sofa and motioned me to sit.

I sat. He stood there looking at me. "You are the first guest I've ever had on a purely social basis. There have been salesman, delivery boys and other functionaries in and out, including my piano teacher, but a guest, no." He paused for several moments. I knew something was coming so I didn't interrupt. "This is the new me. I'm glad you never met the old me. You wouldn't have liked him." He stopped and shook his head slowly twice. "You're overwhelming, you know that?. For the first time in twenty years I feel like a human being. I can't tell you how grateful I am that we were segregated by the young lad. You have changed my life profoundly. Even if, God forbid, we were never to see each other again, my life will never be the same. You opened doors I didn't know existed and at this moment I don't quite know what to do about them--if anything."

I had opened doors he didn't know existed? I didn't have anything to say that could follow such a statement, so I said nothing. Meanwhile he went to the piano, got poised ready to sit on the bench, then started removing his pants. Once his pants were aff his backside, he sat, opened the valve and released the prosthesis. Then he picked up another socket-like gadget that was on the piano by the music desk and put it over his stump, cutting off my view of it just as I was wanting to see more of it! He pulled his pants down so that the leg was out of the way and then fastened the socket to the lever and said, "Look!"

He moved his stump laterally and pushed the lever laterally.

"Ingenious!" I exclaimed. He then played the first movement of the Mozart sonata in C major where all the scales sparkle up and down. He played exceptionally well. I was enormously impressed.

"I'll certainly never volunteer to play a Mozart violin sonata with you. You're years ahead of me. You play extremely well. How long did you study?"

"I'm still studying. My teacher is a man and it took him a lot of time to get used to seeing me in shorts with nothing but one stump hooked to the underside of the piano. But it's the only thing that's kept me alive. Until today. As you can see, playing in public is not for me. Can you imagine the audience reaction if I clopped on stage on crutches, dropped my pants, took off my prosthesis, put on the loud pedal socket, hooked myself to the kniehebel and launched into a Chopin prelude?"

"Yes. I can," I said laughing loudly. "They'd also be yelling `take it off, take it off!' I started to."

"You mean my shorts? What a ticket-selling idea! I could be the first concert pianist to open a concert with a strip tease. Instead of twirling a bra I could twirl my prosthesis. Learning to do bumps and grinds, however, would be something else. I'd really need two stumps for that and I only have one."

"Right!" I said. "With two, you could glue tassles on the end of each stump and twirl them like the burlesque queens used to do with their tits." We both laughed with delight at the absurd picture.

Still laughing, Edward unhooked the socket from the lever, removed the socket from his stump, turned on the bench and lowered himself to the floor. He then came over to the sofa via his arms. I could see his stump quite plainly, specially after he hoisted himself up beside me. I looked at it quite openly.

"How does it compare with yours, Richard?"

"Very like, Edward. Very like. Do you want to see mine?"

"Yes, if you don't mind."

So like two little boys out behind the barn comparing penises, we compared stumps. I pulled my pants off without getting up off the sofa. Edward was sitting on my left, so his view of my right stump was not very clear. I rolled over so I was sitting on my left hip. I was wearing jock-type underwear, so my stump was in the clear. Edward pulled his boxer shorts up high to expose all of his stump. I examined his and mine and he did likewise--we didn't touch each other. They were, as I had noted, very similar. I also noted with mixed feelings, that I was getting an erection, but because I'm small, I figured it would never show enough to cause Edward--or me--any embarrassment.

"How many prostheses have you had?" I asked.

"I've lost track, but this is either the fifth or sixth. And you have yet to get into your first." He smiled with the memory but he was still looking at my stump. "I wish you better luck than I had with my first. It was badly fitted and drove me crazy."

At that point I happened to glance back at his stump and saw something that made my heart speed up. He was quite obviously getting an erection and his was obviously going to be considerably more conspicuous than mine. I must have looked at it a bit too long, because he put his hand over it to hide it. I looked away a bit too quickly. We both knew what was happening, because when I looked back at him, he was looking at my shorts for telltale signs of the hard tail that wags in front. I decided to take the plunge.

"Mine doesn't show very much. It's quite small. Nevertheless, yes, it's hard. I find looking at your stump is exciting and I confess I like it. I mean both your stump and the excitement. If I seem to be babbling, it's because I hadn't expected this kind of development."

"This noon while we were eating. I suddenly realized that I was thinking of you sexually. That's never happened to me before. I didn't know I was or could be interested in a man. But you knocked the pins out from under me." He smiled wryly. "Not that I have any pins under me. All these years it has taken two crutches and a phony leg to keep me airborne. Since I met you I'm airborne all the time. I'm very confused. I have never been gay before, so I don't know how to handle it. Are you gay? Was that what you were trying to tell me?"

"I'm gay and have been for as long as I can remember. But I didn't know that I liked amputees until I became one and then I wanted to make love to every amputee I saw. When you told me you were an amputee, I was very much aroused. I got aroused again when you told me I was the one you had the appointment with. I'm a cautious man by nature, so I can't say anything more about me and you except that I want to see you every day, eat with you, talk to you, listen to you. I want to hold you in my arms because I think you're super, but I won't do that until I know I'm right about you and until you know you're right about me--if that's what's going on in your head right now. I've had half a glass of iced tea and I'm drunk. I'm not making sense."

"I don't know how to handle this. I've never felt anything like this before. But I intend to indulge my feelings and let them happen. Oh God! What a waste my life has been!"

"Edward, you cannot say that. It's not for you to say. Maybe you had to live all this while just to get in touch with yourself, because that's what you're doing. You're finding out who you are. And if you happen to find out who I am let me know. I'm only just discovering myself, too!"

After that outburst we just sat there looking at each other. I ached with the desire to hold him in my arms, but I resisted. And then he said something I'll never forget. He said,

"I love you and I want to express it and the only way I can think of is to go to bed with you and kiss every square inch of your body."

"Where's your bedroom?" I asked.

"Upstairs," he answered and hopped off the sofa and swung himself on his arms to the stairway and went upstairs one at a time. I followed as fast as I could, not being used to steps and crutches.

He had hopped up on his bed and was removing his clothes by the time I got there. I put my crutches on the floor and sat on the bed and he immediately swung over and started to undress me. He got all my clothes off and then took off his undershirt, displaying a magnificent chest and shoulders. The man was built!

The rest is very private but it was the most wonderful love feast I've ever had, and I know there will be many more like it.

When I left him that evening, he said, "For the first time in my life, the future is accessible."

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