Not too long ago, I found myself struggling to push my date in his wheelchair up a ramp onto a freakshow circus stage and asking myself – “how did I get here?” But also, “I guess this is what I’m doing tonight…just roll with it” (pun intended…?).

For all my single ladies, and gentleman for that matter, I don’t have to tell you because you already know that DATING IS HARD. I don’t know why it has to be so hard. Perhaps because we all have different expectations, likes, desires, physical preferences, ways we treat and want to be treated by a significant other. And I won’t even bring in the notion of “the spark”— this intangible thing that draws people to one another. Maybe because my logical mind realizes how many things are stacked up AGAINST two people hitting it off and finding a meaningful connection that I try to be too open, and thus found myself in the aforementioned freakshow ramp + wheelchair + date situation.

I met the guy on a dating app. He messaged me and I thought he was fairly attractive, so I responded. Upon looking more closely at his profile pics, I realized that he was in a wheelchair. Messaging back and forth he told me about his injury, that he was shot in a robbery and paralyzed from the chest down. But he was independent, lived on his own, and had a job. Right away I felt that this had no potential. I mean, I’m looking for a life partner and it wouldn’t be my choice to get into something with someone with a disability like that because my thought is that that kind of relationship would require an extra level of emotional care, awareness, compromise, and sacrifice that I don’t think I have it in me/don’t want to give.

After trying to express that to him, he got upset thinking I was saying that he could not take care of himself. After apologizing and trying to express my thoughts more clearly, we ended up video chatting. The video chat led to him planning a date for that weekend – the Freakshow Circus. I mulled over was it problematic to go on this date. I didn’t want to date someone in a wheelchair, but on the same hand I didn’t want to date a guy that was shorter than me, or tubby, and I had given guys with those characteristics a shot in the past. My thing was, maybe a connection could be made there that would override those perceived cons. I wanted to try to be open. So, I decided to go on the date. I suggested dinner prior so that we’d have time to talk/get to know each other more before the show.

When I arrived at the restaurant he was already there. The conversation moved along, but was kind of awkward… he seemed a bit neurotic. He kept doing things and commenting on how he wasn’t making a good impression. At one point he started vaping in the middle of our date, which I didn’t like; and he mentioned that he took an edible every day after work, which I also didn’t like. When the bill came he made a big deal about splitting it. By the end of dinner, I knew that I didn’t want a second date, but I was fine with continuing the evening on to our target destination – the circus. The circus was interesting, but a bust as far as dates go. It also made the implications of going out and about in a wheelchair more prevalent.

We had to knock on a sketchy side door to get in because of the lack of wheelchair access at the front. Again, he did not pay for my ticket, although he was the one that invited me to the event. He pushed his way to the front of the standing crowd and they let him pass but a big guy with a bad attitude blocked me, so we weren’t even really next to each other during the show. And finally when the circus master invited everyone in the audience to use the ramp on the side of the stage to come up and check out the contortionist in the box, he rolled his way to the front of the line, and I followed. I believe he thought he’d be able to roll himself up the ramp – he asked me not to let anyone push his chair. But the ramp was steep. And so when he couldn’t, he asked me to push him up. But I couldn’t – he was too heavy. And even when a guy on staff jumped in to help, it was a struggle for us to get him up the ramp.

 On the stage he took a look into the box and then so did I. I was thinking how hectic it all was, with navigating the chair and streams of people trying to get their turn to take a look. But I just went with the flow. Getting him down the ramp was an ordeal too. A staff member tried to ease him down backwards, but the front of the chair got caught on a rug, and so I and another guy had to try to disentangle it.

When we were finally on the floor and away from the crowd he commented how he forgot that he had stopped coming to places like this because people always overreact in trying to help him when he asks for one little thing. But I was thinking thank goodness for that because I wouldn’t have been able to get him up or down that ramp alone. After all that I walked him to his car. He invited me to his house, and I was thinking to myself “oh my god, is he trying to hit!?” I was shocked, but I politely declined.

The next time we talked I told him that I was uninterested in dating further. I had my reservations about dating someone in a wheelchair, and I would say that they were confirmed. The evening did require an extra level of awareness and care that wouldn’t really have been necessary on most first dates. But more than the chair and everything that goes along with that, he just wasn’t it.