Modern love. The podcast is made possible with support from living proof. Everyone's hair is unique find your best hair at living proof dot com by taking a quiz to get your perfect mix of product use the code, love at living, proof, dot, com for a free travel size, I shampoo with your twenty dollar order. We are the science, you are the living proof and by Squarespace love can prevent Helen, jazz, but being modern with a website of your own, can be easy with square space sort of free trial today and use their templates to express yourself, go to square space, dot com and enter offer code. Modern love to get ten percent off. Here First purchase from the New York Times and WB you are Boston. This is modern love stories of love loss,

and redemption. I'm your host Agnes Chakrabarti body Gary Presley had all but given up on the idea of finding love, but as the romance takes out there. No love can find you when you least expect it and sometimes even when you're resisting it. Here's Colin Farrell known for his work on the film in Bruges and H, true detective reading is essay. Would my heart out run its pursuer? I am near quadriplegic, my result of polio and I cannot stand I have limited strength in my arms enough to function once I'm in my chair, but not enough to get into or out of the chair. to be able to live in my own apartment as I desired, rather than in the crystal. we'll care of a nursing home require the

of a rotating crew of attendance to transfer me from wheelchair to bed bed to wheelchair wheelchair to shower chair you get. The idea Ten to twenty minutes in the mornings and in the evenings usually did the trick. The female attendants preferred to come in pairs all day to help a man into his bed and their undress him. I am somewhat a french law in the company of women, and I had made a call Generous effort to avoid any touch any word that might be construed as improper with at the arrangements, sailed along with no problems soon settling into a job done and forgotten, at least until Belinda A young mother of two boys showed up with half my tendency name. He was working evenings to pay for a college education. earlier that day. I had noticed that part of the assembly of my shower chair was loose.

do you know how to use a socket wrench? I asked Belinda sure she replied. I was a tomboy. I helped my father all the time when I was a girl she had a silky sheet of straight brunette, hair pulled together at the nape of her delicate neck, exotic dark hazel I was a dancer's light body she may grown up a tomboy. But what I saw was a beautiful woman There's a ranch sat in the lower left, roar of my desk, I said, get it and I'll show you how this thing goes back together as the days by Belinda sometimes began taking her turn on my transfer schedule. Without a code, lifter doesn't bother you to come alone. I asked why I cannot run you.

And with that the necessity of my transfer faded into the background, and we began to talk about other things, books and films, my work and hers it seemed natural evolution that, after a few weeks, Belinda's routine occasionally included a friendly visit before she stopped Three to eleven p dot m shift. One day she dropped by with her sons. This is Matthew and Christopher. She said. Boys spoke up even though Matthew the younger. How tight to his mother skirt. It was evident. She had told them about my wheelchair, Matt was all red, hair and freckles, while Chris carried his mother's brunette coloring, and so it was. That the man in a wheelchair, sardonic and standoffish, and a vibrant young.

who loved science and worried over how she would support her sons. Developed an odd connection, a link to a place where hands my touch, but thoughts and feelings and emotions begun to Flickr like lightning beyond the horizon was past forty, my anger and frustration over being paralyzed mostly burned away, but it never occurred to me that the friendship connection between Belinda and me might also be the bridge between caution and passion between isolation and connection. I really don't see the chair. Belinda said a few months after we met. I see you but I didn't believe her, then I had been paralyzed too young when I was Cologne in a time and place where most people with disabilities were seen as invalids and shut ins. Possibly accept Limitations,

retreating behind and accepting smile to avoid injury, neglect, abuse or rejection Belinda was twenty six beginning ready for a master's degree in microbiology, but also a single mother with minimal income nearly a decade in the past she worked as a nurse's aid to pay for her classes and for daycare for her sons and her life was becoming. hectic ass, she undertook graduate studies. I did, know how to love not then, but I knew how to be a friend. I tried to help her with her boys getting them ready for the bus when she had an early appointment watching them. The school and seeing that homework was dawn and bellies failed. One summer day. Belinda asked me to when her to the nearby university city I need a man's opinion on what a professional woman should wear. She said,

purchase program allowed her to supplement her income by working as a graduate teaching assistant. She was apprehensive about looking the part, and so we set out in my van on the way as we passed a restored Volkswagen beetle in the adjacent lane. She pointed to it and said one of these days, I'm going to find one of those and rebuild it only half listening, I murmured just were horses beggars, would ride what a mean thing to say she snapped turning away she was driving. My van at behind her with my wheelchair, secured by tie downs. I'm sorry, I said market, but I didn't understand what caused her reaction.

Doc aphorism make perfect sense to me. I was an expert on wishes. People have a right to dream. She said we were quiet as Belinda bore dresses she liked floral prince. I liked a Navy blue with tiny white poker dots I bought lunch and we drove to my apartment as we waiting for a boy's school bus to arrive. She's out of my couch still sub judice, her legs, tucked under her dark ask aiding down the side of her face. She gazed at the window at the row of cedar trees along the driveway. I really didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I said it's all right. I shouldn't be so sensitive. I could see,

despair reflected in the swamp of her shoulders. I knew about despair. I ward look familiar coat, incapable of accepting what must be tolerated and passionately ignoring what must be acknowledged, but at that moment at the sight of such sadness in one usually so open and a sadness in the spirit. A woman who needed something from me. I wanted. for more than mumbled words of apology. But I also knew that to push myself deeper into her world might carry to a place where I might lose what I had made of myself a place where you. I could no longer hold tight to the hard reality that kept me sane. I believed I did not deserve to love Belinda, I believed I should not allow her to love me. I held I urge the idea. I should be content to write at the remainder of my life without complaint, a burned out case. An absurd hotchpotch of broken

it's a beggar who no longer wished for a horse She was also a woman, beautiful and vibrant, and I was a man in a wheelchair, true, but a man full of heat desire that sometimes rendered the chair relevant I was the keeper of an obscene little secret I had known, perhaps since I have been stuck in the iron lung and surely from some vague moment later. The point where I realized. I would never walk again it is a thing that will sit rancid in my got until the day. I die thing that until then had eaten away any allusion than love and marriage for me would be like it wasn't. Books are movies and it was this. I would be physically dependent upon those who might love me. I am a chore, an obligation, and I

will ever be. So I could not rationalize how a woman might love me and not soon come to hate the millstone. I believed myself to be all this because shade through my mind, not in words but in a fog melancholic unease as I stared Belinda. Suddenly she moved from the couch and across the few steps between us, I opened my arms and she dropped into my lap and put her hand on my shoulder. There was no sound, no words between us. Only her tears and my silent wonder friends lovers.

on that day was a hint that there might be a path through the thicket of my insecurity. I only remember the gift, the magic, the seamless transition from what I could never imagine into that which I will treasure until my last breath a kiss a touch, the sweet sent in the shadow of her neck. We should stop this. You know, I said my mouth against her hair. You need to find someone else. Where can I find a man silly enough to stay home with my boys when they have chicken pox, she replied smiling and lifting up to kiss the top of my head. I like it that you put me First months later, Belinda stopped by my apartment and held at a small box.

inside was a man's wedding ring a wide band with oak leaves and laid into its surface, see if it fits. She said we now approach to decades married, and I sometimes still wonder. Love has wrought. I sometimes think Belinda might see me a thing to nurture a place to sack face an altar on which to offer love. But I also feel something else that low from two decades ago that he between a woman, her mate, cynics say: romantic. Love is a fiction I been thoroughly in love only once and I think it a mystery, an Enigma, a gordian knot, entwining to spirits

but even now cannot fully resolved myself to the reality of Belinda's love. I choose to love, Belinda choose against my head logic and with my are dreams, and even now I confront the tasks with which she helps me each day with a mixture of the guilt and gratitude, resentment and appreciation, anger and amusement and somewhere deep in my psyche and old, ugly, beggar, sleeps unaware that the man Belinda chose to love has gotten on his horse and ridden away

I love spelling my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing eventually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed. We may have happened again. You I have one friend, who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words, then I always get nervous. I sent it to my parents or something like that me and my dad. We like a sponge together and I wish to out that it a c k p o t I panicked, yeah nice.

I'm same as the the digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N times dot com, slash games. The yeah Colin Farrell, reading Gary Presley's essay would my heart out run its pursuer hear from Gary himself after the break, the the.

support for modern love. The podcast comes from living proof, the science behind healthy hair, I'm Katie from living proof, and we get love letters all the time like this one dear living proof. I started using your product several years ago, My friends and family started complimenting me on my hair and asking what I've done. Six of them now use living proof. Products, love Tamara Use, the code, love for a free travel size, dry shampoo, with your twenty dollars order living proof. we're back. It's modern love, the podcast, I'm Meghna Chakrabarti, and now a postscript. from Gary Presley author of this week's essay on life with Belinda today, done. Twenty five years next year, cheer has remained devoted to me away, I really don't understand. I don't know that I would

At the same will the same heart, the same ability to to love beyond what love is to most people, the fact that people with severe and chronic disabilities have a an interest in love, sex and romance as far as some people, then that's what led to the modern love s mind Belinda, and I am gay pestily wife. I have a so my disability it's good. I hope he the world fill and while in the beginning it was difficult trying to learn how to work together. That's a choice,

when you choose to love somebody. You have to accept everything, a big part of working together for Belinda and Gary, has been cheering on each other's professional lives. In the and they've, been married, Belinda has completed two master's degrees and she received her doctorate earlier this year. Gary published a memoir in two thousand and eight titled, seven wheelchairs, a life beyond polio. They, so teamed up on another effort, parenting in addition to sons, Matthew and Christopher, they adopted a daughter almost seven years ago and their foster parents to two year old twins, there's some advantage to being a parent with a disability, and that it silently instructs by example that life isn't perfect the kindness accommodation are necessary,

As for me, I'm much kinder. What's Florida, anger that I was twenty five There's a girl. I've learned you, the sense of humor and the sense of being oblivious. Other people's reactions and Belinda's taught me that some of that. You learn on your own but some of that also comes from. total acceptance from another purse had a child with a disability, Though the latter, a lot of stickman placed on me What here, those given new is the chance to go go into the patient, I was wanting to be with his support. Emotionally, I'm the same way with him. I don't judge him. I don't treat him like he's been treated in the past.

I think that common bond in common need is allowed if both the glow together, he has been the best than I have ever had I cannot imagine my life without him, I've been paralyzed. Fifty six or seven years. And I never would have thought that love come to me in this form. We never can predict what life holds Gary Presley of this week's essay. Would my heart out run its pursuer. We also from his wife, Doktor Belinda Presley they live with their water and two foster children in a rural area of southern Missouri. idea of possibility that Gary talks about

resonated with call in federal himself. He told us it was part of why he chose Gary's essay. One of them most horrendous things about physical. Ability is that cuts into the hope of the person whose expire, in seeing the affliction, and so the billowy to love our beloved is something that all of a sudden has burst into this cloud of suspicion and this cloud of doubt and from the outset looking in that seems to be one of the most heartbreaking aspects of of this story. But the story doesn't go there and now giving in to the doubts there's only giving in to the potential of of loving and being loved. and so I was incredibly moved by and our special thanks to Collins There are four reading Gary's essay, the actor as another love story to share in the disturbing and dark comedy the lobster which hits theatres this Friday and now modern love editor Daniel Jones. What I love about Harry Presley's essay is his feet

inadequacy and how this dislike long disability has turned him into someone who doesn't that he deserves to be loved and what a huge like added a disability that is theirs. after ISM that says you to love yourself before someone else can love you I've seen essay after essay, where the opposite is true, some else has to love you before who then recognise yourself as being worthy of love and chiefs, rescues him in that way, even as he's helping her rescuing her to feel. Like. Any long term relationship that works each person is equal parts, burden and gift to the partner. because if it gets out of balance and one person is all gift and the other person is all that's not gonna! Last! So we all bring these for thought. As negative. pessimism mixed with optimism and love mixed with bitterness

We all bring all about every every relationship, I see a most people who submit tomorrow love and most people. I meet in life- real combination of tunnel romantic and total cynic, and I think that's true with Gary in his essay just on a level of writing and lyricism to his writing alone. He's a romance. check it out. He might deny it in person He is clearly someone who dreams, and who sees their situation. Ultimately, as this unlikely love story, he just feels do that he found someone who reciprocated that and saw that in him. modern love, editor Dan Gentleman's special Stu, Colin Farrell for reading this week's essay his new movie, the lobster hits theaters this Friday.

We can't modern love tee. So far, meagre read the story about friends. Without benefits, he was always look, for the next best thing. I made too good of a friend for him to justify anything. More significant Who was I anyway, a friend a room, a drunken neighbor with nowhere to sleep did even know who I was where we want to know what you think of this week's episode and every episode right as a review on Itunes and connect on Twitter with the hashtag modern love. Podcast. Modern love is a production of the New York Times and W B you are Boston, NPR station. It is produced directed and it is by Jessica, Albert John Parity and am receive. It said the aid for the modern love. Podcast was conceived by Visa Tobin. Our casting consult is any listens Adler. Is our executive producer,

Daniel Jones is the editor of modern love for the New York Times and an adviser to the show music for the party Cast courtesy of a pm, DOT M and the go license collection at ghostly songs, dot com we talk about it, see you next week, the.