- I live in a world where most of the people
that I see have arms that are longer than me.
- At least you got some. (person giggles)
(playful music)
- [Interviewer] Hi!
- Hello! (giggles) I'm Jordan.
- I'm Lou.
My pronouns are they, them,
and I'm a photographer designer.
- [Interviewer] What makes you qualified
to know if someone was born with disability or not?
- I've watched enough crime shows, medical dramas.
- I don't know that I am qualified at all.
- Is anyone qualified to do that?
I don't think so.
- [Interviewer] What's disability,
how would you define it?
- Disability is a social construct.
- It is something physical that affects
the way that one interacts with the world
and the spaces around them.
- [Interviewer] What's your relationship to disability?
- I know and love a lot of people that are disabled.
I myself have a chronic illness.
- [Interviewer] Is there a difference
between people who were born with that
and people who weren't?
- I would imagine that there is
a certain mental component that comes along with that.
"This is how it was, and I've never known another."
Versus "This is was me before, this is me after."
- [Interviewer] Let's freaking do this.
- Okay.
- Hi, hi.
- 'Sup, dude? (laughs)
- Hi, y'all!
- Hello. (giggles)
- Hi! How you feeling?
- Sweaty.
- Yeah, I feel like my stomach is...
- I can sense the nervousness.
Ever stood next to anyone without any arms?
- Uh...
- What do you do for fun?
- I'm a dancer.
So I like to stay very active.
I feel like in my free time I'm always moving.
- What kind of style of dance?
- So I trained in tap and ballet.
- You do tap dance? I need to learn how to tap dance.
Can you please just show me?
- You do like a shuffle, where you hop on one leg
and then you make the flap sound.
(shoe stomps)
- Yeah. (chuckles)
- They wanna know what your dating life is like.
- I've been in a relationship
for two and a half years.
It's actually quite interesting.
'Cause it's, like, a able bodied person.
- How has your perspective about disability
changed with dating an able bodied partner?
- I had to realize that not everyone
is ready to learn, like, at the speed
that I want to teach at.
- I am going to guess that you
were born with a disability.
- Congratulations, you got the answer right. (laughs)
(group laughs) - I got the first.
Thank you!
- I think that you were born disabled
because able bodied is, like, a perspective
that you don't seem to have had.
Yeah.
- You were born with a disability.
- [Interviewer] If you saw each other
crossing from the street, would there be a nod?
- I think I would give a nod, actually.
I live in a world where most of the people
that I see, have arms that are longer than me.
And...
- At least you got some.
(group giggles)
- I would say "What's up?"
- [Interviewer] Theresa?
- No way.
- No? (laughs) (group laughs)
- [Interviewer] Theresa! You made him cry!
- Oh my God! (laughs)
- I'd probably just, like, smile at you.
- All right.
- What's up? - Hey.
- I see Godsmack, you know, I see hand tattoos.
- I wheelchair circuit.
- Oh, hell yeah.
This is a rock-and-roll.
- What do you do?
- Security.
- You're security?
- People don't think that I can do the job.
- Do you find that that is
to your benefit that they, you know?
- Yeah, I love it.
- Yeah. (laughs)
- How would you say your disability
has affected your life?
- I have wheels, it makes me faster than you. (laughs)
Because the only thing I can't do is walk.
- You seem like a big dude.
Have you, like, always been really into fitness?
- Yeah, I love sports, especially basketball.
Yeah. - Very nice! Basketball.
- I've been playing for 25 years.
- Oh, wow. - Or so, yeah.
- Hey, are you on a team?
- Yeah.
- Is it like a triple A? What are you major league?
- I'm on the division one team.
- Okay.
- So we're the elite of the elite in the United States.
- I believe you were born with the disability
because it makes me think of my friends
who have gone into play professional sports
or play at that level, have done it their whole life.
- I'm gonna guess that you were born disabled.
- How did you know?
- I was right for you? - Yeah.
- The sports that you're talking about doing
could have all been done, being disabled.
- Sure? - I think so.
Yeah. (laughs)
- I love your whole outfit.
- Thank you. (giggles)
- I see you plant pants, the boots.
- What do you do for a living?
- I design clothes for a skateboarding company.
- Oh, sick! - Yeah! (giggles)
- Very cool.
- And then my passion project
is I teach group fitness classes.
- Whoa! - Yeah. (giggles)
- There are a lot of disabled people
that come to my group fitness classes.
We do a lot of cardio strength training
and then we have some normies as well,
which is really fun.
- Normies. - [Person In Black] Yeah.
- How have your family, your friends,
their perspective changed in general.
Do you have those kind of conversations with them?
- I think with the friends,
it's surprisingly easier to explain things.
Dealing with a family has been a little bit difficult.
- [Man With Glasses] Okay. - For certain reasons.
- With family. Okay.
- I'm gonna say you were not born with the disability.
- I'll say you became disabled.
- From the experiences that you had with your family.
It seemed like maybe there was some
coming to terms or grappling with changes.
You were not born with disability.
- You got me wrong.
- I got you wrong? - Yeah. (chuckles)
- I was born with it, and my symptoms
didn't show up 'till I was six.
It's like very dynamic and it progresses over time.
Like, I identify as being disabled my whole life
but my family pretend it didn't existed.
- Yeah, yeah. - So.
I didn't really come to terms with it
until I was a lot older and then
getting a diagnosis officially
when I was, like, mid twenties.
- Wow, that's when it finally happened?
- [Person In Black] Yeah.
- Oh, what?
The gas lighting that happens, - Yes!
- From the medical industry it's just, like, the worst.
So I'm so glad that you got a diagnosis.
It's a big deal.
- Look good, dude. (laughs)
- Hello, Jordan.
- [Interviewer] Do you guys know each other?
- Well, we're both artists bumping into each other.
It's like 2006, but I'm, like,
thinking about it and I'm like, dang,
I, like, know nothing about your life.
Like... - Yeah, yeah.
- Well, so what do you like to do on a day to day basis?
- I like to sleep in, I'm a painter.
- Painter! I started to gather.
- Yeah, I can see you're, like, splattered with paint.
- Yeah, yeah.
- What kind of art do you do?
- Mostly representational.
Been a lot of animals in the past portraits.
- What made you start painting?
- I did graffiti when I was a kid
I'd skateboard during the day,
and then at night I'd, like, drink and do graffiti.
- Tell me about your dating life.
- Yeah, I'm relatively single.
(group laughs)
- I'm also relatively single. - Yeah. Yeah.
- I feel like I'm blushing right now.
Yeah, nice. I like it.
- I'm gonna say you were born with a disability.
'Cause I've been seeing you around
for probably most of my life. (laughs)
And you've always been the same way.
- Based on graffiti and skateboarding,
I would say that you became disabled.
- You're very perceptive.
- I was right. - Yeah, you're right.
- Can I ask what happened?
- I fell off a bridge and it was, like, in 2005.
- Holy shit. - Yeah.
Me and some friends were riding graffiti
and I was drunk, and broke my back,
and lost my right arm.
- Wow.
- How did it change your relationship to art?
- I got more into art after that.
I was in the hospital and I started, like,
painting immediately, and that perspective changed,
my hobbies changed, that kind of
became focus in my life.
- Yeah.
- I still do, like, art illegally.
Like I'll put up art in the streets and stuff like that.
- Do you feel that you have
any more ability to get away with it
because.... - Oh, 100%.
- I think the cops are like,
"I just don't want to deal with it."
- Yeah.
- "How I get him to the station?"
- Oh.
Nice to meet you brother.
- Yeah, likewise.
- Hey. - Hello.
- Hi.
- What do you like to do for fun?
- Well, when it's nice out, like, really nice,
I like to go to the naked beach
and you know drink the lemonades and vodka
and do some swimming.
- Sounds like a good day. (chuckles)
- Right?
- Do you have a partner
that you get do these things with?
- I'm single right now. - Okay.
- Did the wife and kids thing
and now I'm, like, dating myself.
- Oh, that's cool, yeah.
- Been a lot of fun.
And I'm also pre-menopausal.
- How would you say your perspective
on your disability has changed over time?
- I'm fully capable of doing things
that maybe originally I had to grow
and learn that that's the case.
- When you were young,
what kind of hobbies did you like to do?
- Playing in the dirt, bows and arrows, and BB gun.
- I think you were born disabled.
You mentioned things that sounded
like could have been done in a wheelchair
when you were a kid.
- I'm gonna say you were not born with disability.
The way you talked about things
seemed like a lot of focus on growth
and coming to a fuller idea of who you are as a person.
- So you got it right.
I was at a car wreck when I was 16.
- 16.
What do you feel is like one of the things
that you go, like, "Oh, this is something
that it taught me about myself."
- I had goals. - Right.
- And those were no longer an option
because they really required legs to make those happen.
It's such a humbling experience.
- Hi, I'm Charles.
- Charles, Jared.
- Good to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
- What do you do for fun?
- I skydive.
- Oh, shit!
- What do you do for a living?
- I'm a homemaker.
- You're a homemaker?
So you're just at home like, like,
making the home all day?
- Eating bon-bon's on the couch.
No, definitely not that. - Oh my God.
- I take care of my husband
and our homes and three dogs, a horse and a cat.
- A horse? - Yeah.
She was my Christmas present.
- Oh, Christmas present!
Did she come with a big red bow on her?
- She didn't, but she came with a rainbow halter.
- Oh. (laughs)
- Do you ride the horse?
- Not anymore.
- Oh.
Did you used to ride your horse?
- I used to ride her.
- What was life like growing up for you?
- I had very supportive parents
and I was able to live with pretty normal life.
- You were born with a disability.
Sounds like you've been comfortable
with yourself and your life.
- So, you got me wrong.
- I'm sorry.
- I'm glad, actually.
That means I didn't feel like a three year old amputee.
- With the little horse clue.
- Okay.
- Gonna guess that you became disabled.
Instead of being born disabled.
- You got me, right. - Yeah!
- Yeah, so the horse thing, that's how it happened.
- Yeah.... Oh, really? - [Charles] Yeah.
- Oh my gosh.
- She bucked me off and I ended up underneath her
and she crushed my leg.
- Wow.
- You guys still have a healthy relationship?
Actually, she's who helped me really recover.
I never blamed her that day, I did everything wrong.
She was just being a horse.
- Wow, okay.
(dramatic music)
- [Interviewer] How the hell was that?
- It was a lot being put on the spot
of being like, "Tell me about your disability.
I need to know, like, exactly like what it is
because of this, like, game that we're playing."
Was an interesting and hard thing to do.
- [Interviewer] What's some of your biases
that were checked today?
- Not considering like, "Oh, this was something
that I was born with, but didn't present itself
'till later in life."
That was not even a part of the situation
that I was thinking of.
- I learned that if I see someone else
with a disability, like, they not want me
to give them a nod.
- [Interviewer] Do you think Bosso is cute?
(Lou laughs)
- I think a lot of people here were cuties today. (laughs)