Darker Devotion: Chapter Nine

Disability: Spina Bifida / Genre: Erotic Fiction

Head Games

Melissa knew a thing or two about gaming; of this, Dustin was certain. She owned him in most of the competitive games they played. Dustin considered himself a serious gamer, but Melissa just seemed to out maneuver him at every turn. The few times he did win, he wondered if she was letting him.

They spent the better part of the day playing games. It felt weird for Dustin to be so casually playing video games with a girl he was having kinky and wild sex with just hours before, but everything she did just seemed “right.”

“Dustin,” Melissa said.

“Yeah.”

“Come here, lay your head in my lap.”

“Why?”

“I want to give your head a massage,” she said.

“That’s an odd thing to offer,” he replied.

“Just lay down,” she commanded, but still in a sweet voice. He stretched out on the couch and slowly lowered his head on her lap. He felt the warmth of her thighs against the back of his neck. He looked up at the redhead and she looked down upon him and smiled. Her fingers wrapped around his scalp, and she gently began to massage him.

“This is nice…nicer than I thought,” he said.

“Dustin, are you comfortable?”

“Yeah, very much so.”

“I was wondering, um, I mean you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I wanted to ask you some questions.”

“About my disability?”

“Yes, those will definitely be part of the questions, but some of them might get even a bit…more personal. May I ask them?”

Dustin wasn’t used to this level of reservation from Melissa. Usually, she’d have her way with him, and he’d go along for the ride. Now, Melissa was the one who seemed hesitant, cautious, and perhaps even a bit timid. He didn’t know why, but he felt a sudden surge of both power which he hadn’t possessed before in the relationship, and yet genuine concern for her emotions.

“I suppose it depends on the questions. I guess…I won’t know until you ask them,” he said with a small smile. Melissa continued to slowly rub his scalp, his ears, and his face with her warm, soft fingers.

“See, the thing is, physically, I can figure things out about you pretty quickly. I can observe your movements, learn where you have sensation and where you don’t, what about your body works and doesn’t, but that’s like judging a book by its cover. I want to know…you, and who you are, how you became the way you did, and what makes you tick.”

“Alright, so ask away,” he replied, enjoying her soft, reassuring touches.

“What was it like…to grow up with your disability?”

Dustin was silent in thought on her lap. She began to slow her massage, the fear that she already struck a nerve overwhelmed Melissa, and her lips began to tremble. Dustin took a deep breath, and much to her relief, began to talk.

“It had its ups and downs,” he started. There was again a pause, as if he was searching for the best way to describe it to her. “Kids can be cruel. They see someone different, and they don’t understand it. So it’s a natural reaction for them to band together with those they are similar to, and attack those who are not.”

“Attack you? Like how?”

“Well, when you walk like I do, when you wear diapers, you earn nicknames. The Penguin, Diaper-Boy. Heh, I remember a song one kid sang to me. It went along the tune of Twinkle Little Star, but it went something like this. ‘Crinkle, crinkle handicap, bet your diaper’s full of crap.’ I’m guessing there were other stanzas, but I only remember that line,” he said with a forced laugh. Melissa stopped massaging.

“Dustin…that’s awful.”

“Oh…you know, they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” he said blandly, though Melissa didn’t buy it. She resumed her prodding massage, but the story stung her like a wasp.

“Of course, being a gimp, I went to a school that had specialized in gimps. It was an integrated school, so there were…what’d they call em? Reg-ed? Regular education, and special education. Special. Damn it to hell but I hate that word. Hell, I don’t even like seeing it in weekly grocery ads. Special buys! Special guys! I jest of course. Anyway, I took normal classes. Math, Biology, English, History, whatever. But we had a ‘resource’ room where the other gimps and I would go to get ‘help’ from teacher’s aids.”

“What kind of help?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, many of the kids needed assistance. There were those on ventilators, those in wheelchairs, power chairs, speech impediments, you name it. Some kids needed help taking notes, so they’d have TA sit with them in class to take down the notes. Others needed longer time periods to take tests. Others needed help eating, going to the bathroom, getting the jackets on and off, whatever.”

“Did they help you in any way?” she asked, tapping her fingers against his temple slowly and rhythmically.

“Ha, no. It was basically a blow-off period. I sat there and studied, or goofed off. There wasn’t any real reason for me to be there. I was always a loner. A loner amongst AB’s or able-bodied students, and PH or physically handicapped. A lot of my fellow cripples were envious of me, because I could walk. Some of them looked up to me as a de-facto leader, others resented me. Whatever. But I did go in for physical and occupational therapy.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Well, they had a specialized room in the high school dedicated just for therapy. It was pretty good, for a school-funded thing. They had those railed tracks where they would help people with very limited motor functions try to walk slowly. They had a matt-like table, padded. That’s where I did most of my therapy.”

“What did they do?”

“Well, there were two women there. The PT was an old lady, kind of grandmotherly in ways. She would strap these sand-filled weights around my ankles and make me lift them in various methods. She’d guide me and count how many they were. Or she’d have me do abdominal work, like sit-ups, that sort of thing. I guess the restraints of those weights must’ve ate away at my psyche, maybe it’s why I like the idea of being a submissive to you.”

“You picture me as your therapist?”

“In some ways,” he said with a wink and a smile.

“I like that idea,” she said, focusing her attention on his ears.

“The OT was hot. She must’ve been a late twenties or early thirties lady. Long, dirty blond hair; she kind of looked like a Dallas Cowgirls cheerleader. Yeah. Hot. Of course, she’d have to be my OT therapist. I still don’t know to this day what the hell the point of OT was. Occupational therapy? I mean, sure, if you’re severely mentally disabled, maybe they can train you for some useful vocation, but I knew I’d be working with computers. Screw that. So, computers. Heh, heh. She tried to teach me to touch-type, but the computer couldn’t keep up with me. I took touch-typing classes beforehand, and I think she learned that was a waste of time.”

“What else did she do?”

“Well, this is a bit…weirder, perhaps. She would very occasionally give me massages, kind of like you’re doing, but all over my back, neck, shoulders, sometimes my feet. I’ve got to admit, I didn’t complain; a hot blonde giving me a massage. I digress…”

“Digress, please digress!”

“Well, I look back at it now, and I wonder if she herself was a dev. I mean, the touchy-feely stuff, I don’t know. I mean, it was her job, right? Anyway, then there was ‘adaptive physical education.’ A.P.E. Apes; flattering, eh? So we’d have our gym class, but it was segregated from the reg-ed students. We’d probably get killed if we played against regular AB students, so they had us do stuff for gimps. They had these regular ed students that would take the class as helpers. They’d push wheelchairs in sports games, sometimes just plain old compete with us. They were kind of cool, I mean, big hearts and all. Hell, I wonder now if some of them were devs. Oh yeah, it was co-ed, yep.”

“What…what was that like?” Melissa asked. Dustin could tell she hung on his every word, occasionally forgetting to massage him. He wondered if his hair was getting wet on her lap while he explained this all.

“Well, heck, we had swimming, that was the beginning of the year because it was still warm in August and September. If you’ve never seen gimps swimming, that’s a sight to behold, let me tell you. We had wheelchair basketball. I was often given a loaner-sports chair to make it fair for the others and safer for me. I still got my hands bruised, pinched between other wheelers. We’d play soccer, football, baseball, volleyball, even bocce-ball, who knows why? But our main bread and butter was hockey. We had a tournament every year where we’d host against other teams from around the state, other magnet schools that had PH programs, and we’d play an all-day hockey tourney. Our team often won first place in state. I was an aggressive son of a bitch. I scored a lot of goals, but I got a lot of words of warning form the refs.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Yeah, I guess that was one of the cooler parts of gimpdom. I got to present the trophy to our principal during a pep rally once, honoring all the school’s sports; that was different. We even had a stupid organization with the patronizing name ‘On Our Own.’ It was anything but. It was an optional social club after school, pizza parties, field trips, high school football games, stuff like that. I rarely attended. I had one best friend who had MD…uh Muscular Dystrophy. Most of the other gimps, I couldn’t care less about. But it wasn’t all fun and games.”

“No, I’d imagine it wasn’t.”

“See, here’s the thing. I lived in one town, and the school was in another. While all of my local friends went to one school, I went to the magnet school. That, in and of itself, wasn’t too bad. The problem was the bus ride. See, along with physically handicapped kids, they had mentally challenged kids, as well. And you know the old derogatory saying about the short bus? I was on the short bus. So, here I was, on this half-sized bus, with a bunch of kids who weren’t all together mentally. It was a lonely half-hour bus ride. My Sony Discman became my best friend. I’d get lost in music, perhaps study or do some last minute homework on the way to school, but for the most part, I’d just chill to alternative rock and watch the cars go by as I rode on my little chariot of hell.”

“That had to suck, I bet you couldn’t wait to drive.”

“Yes and no. I still hate to drive. I just don’t feel comfortable when I drive. I learned how to drive at a later age than most kids. Most kids got their learner’s permits when they were 15, I got mine at 17 or maybe 18? No, 17. I did the school part at a regular old driving school, but I had to go way the hell away in another town to learn how to drive with hand controls.”

“So you use hand controls then,” she said.

“Yeah. So the car I learned on, wasn’t so much a car as it was an oil tanker. The USS Titanic, better known as a Buick Le Sabre. Wow, you’d have to crank the wheel four times to make a turn. Spinner knob on the right, accelerator and brake on a lever on the left. It’s funny, because people ask me if it was weird to learn how to drive using that. I reply “was it weird learning left is brake and right is gas? It’s natural to you, this is natural to me.”

“Good response.”

“Yeah, so I hated driving. I’ve had several accidents; most were just fender benders; the worst one wasn’t my fault; some jackass ran a red, and I T-boned him, totaled my car. He fled the country. Anyway, yeah, so I’m not a big fan of driving to this day. I never did get my license until just before graduating high school, so I was on that short bus till the very last day. Want to know something funny though?”

“What’s that?”

“Being on the short bus, I had to fight a stigma. I had to fight off people assuming I was mentally challenged like the rest of the passengers. Granted, I was never a solid A student in math, but I tried my damnedest in every subject I could. I became the ‘anti-retard.’ It sounds so bad, I know. I don’t blame them, they had and have no control over their mental state any more than I do over my physical one. But at the time, I resented them. I tried to be as brainy and intellectual as I could. I joined something called our Scholastic Bowl team. It was competitive trivia; five members would get buzzers and various trivia questions from math to science, history, literature, and the arts were asked. The first team to buzz in would get to make a guess, if they were right, that team would get points. If not, the other school’s team would get a go and see if they could get the question right. I joined the computer club, I hung out with brainiacs and nerds.”

“Well, you certainly seem smart to me,” Melissa said as she resumed her heavenly massage.

“Then there were the dark times.”

“Dark?”

There was a long pause as Dustin searched for the right words. He breathed deeply and said “when you live with a disability…you often don’t want to…live with a disability. If you get my drift. Between junior high, and through my sophomore year of high school, so grades seven through ten, I was dark. I listened to goth music, I wore black, and I didn’t have much interest in many things. I was a C student at best, and often a lot worse. I failed algebra and geometry. I barely passed biology. I would get detention and in trouble with the school every once and again. I was on a slippery slope, spiraling downward. Some of it was normal teenage hormones, the dark and dreary chaos of adolescence so many of us face. Other times, it was the added pressure of being disabled. By the time I was in high school, I wasn’t really being teased for my disability anymore. I guess the kids grew out of that phase. Plus, the magnet school had too many gimps for me to be the lone target.”

“So what set you straight? I mean, you seem so much happier now,” Melissa asked.

“In a word? Fishing.”

“Fishing?” she asked with a chuckle of surprise.

“Yeah, I went deep sea fishing with my dad down in Mexico, and I caught fish. Lots of fish, big fish. I found out I was good at something. For once I felt like I was good at something. It changed my whole outlook on things. Once I realized I was good at one thing, I began to get better at other things. I studied harder, I made the honor roll, I even wrote short stories and was chosen to represent our school at the statewide ‘Young Authors’ conference. Heck, I even recited poetry in front of the entire school during poetry slams.”

“Wow, all that from fishing?”

“Well, kind of. I realized I wasn’t just an abject loser. I learned I could be good at something, and like I said, when I realized I was good at one thing, I realized I was good at a whole lot of things. I stepped into the light, if you will. But, you know, some damage is always done, some scars are very deep.”

“Go on.”

“See, me and women, we’re like fire and water. Don’t mix. I had one girlfriend in high school, also a gimp, and…that’s it.”

“That’s…it?” she asked.

“Yeah, until you came around.”

“And look at you now; laying on my lap, as I give you a head massage.”

Dustin chuckled. “Devs. Man, if I knew about devs when I was young,” he sighed. “You know, I probably have encountered a few people in life who, if they weren’t outright devs, they sure as hell fit the bill.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course, me being me, I didn’t see them for that. I gained a lot of self-confidence in my abilities; intellectually, even physically, but romance eluded me. In college, there were a few girls who were…more than friendly with me, but I never let anything happen, because my rationale was who would go out with a cripple?”

“That’s a terrible state of mind.”

“Preaching to the choir. You know, when the internet came about, I was a horn dog, I’d go on Yahoo Groups or chats looking up various fetishes, and one caught my eye. Devotees. Devotees? What the hell are they? Sounds like a religious cult. Well, the first experience I had with devs was of guy devs of female PWDs. Of course, that first impression left me with mixed feelings. I figured they were guys who were just into cripples because they couldn’t resist, couldn’t get away from their advances, or that they preyed on desperate cripples. But it left me curious, nonetheless. I wondered if somewhere on this green earth if there were a few females who felt that way about male PWDs.”

“So how did you find out about female devs?”

“Funny enough, from a female dev herself. I was in one of those devotee groups, on Yahoo. I don’t know if you ever joined any, but they had member lists, and of course I’d peruse the member lists looking for females. They were few and far between, and most were those porn bots, but one was a living, breathing female devotee. I sent her a message, and she told me Spina Bifida wasn’t her shtick, but that she knew of a place where there were other female devotees like her. She gave me the link to the forum, and I joined.”

“So what were your first impressions?”

“Well, you know, you live your whole life thinking no one on earth is going to find you attractive because you’re a gimp. Then you find out there’s a set of people who think gimps are sexy. Your brain goes into overload and, to quote Beavis…’boi-oi-oi-oing.’ See, so you join there, and you think to yourself, okay they like gimps. I’m a gimp. Let’s get me a piece of ass finally! Sorry for the crudeness.”

“That’s alright.”

“So, I’m there and I find the site is a diverse range of people. Devs who are married or in relationships, who are single and not looking, or who are single and looking for specific disabilities that aren’t my own. So you fall right back into the pit of despair. You find one or two devs where braces or Spina Bifida is their thing, and they live halfway around the world. I might have been horny, but not $30,000 plane ticket to a potential let-down on the other side of the world horny. So I stuck around though, and I started to strike up conversations with devs, and I found out they’re just normal human beings, but with a different attraction. I learned that gimps aren’t the only ones with self-doubts, hang-ups, self-esteem issues, and other dark places of their minds. It was a cool place, and I met some cool folks, we would exchange pics and videos, talk dirty, talk about love, but it was all still…artificial.”

“Wasn’t the real deal,” Melissa added.

“No. See, you’re around the world talking to girls and they say you’re sexy, you send them pics of your gimpy body and they get off on them, and it makes you feel like a stud. But it’s still pixels on a screen. It’s not the warm touch of a woman’s hands. It’s not the same as two lips interlocked in a kiss. And it sure as hell isn’t anything like what we’ve done. Look at me, here I am, laying on your lap, like some patient talking to his shrink about all my troubles as a cripple. You’ve barely gotten a word in edgewise.”

“Dustin, I’ve seen you without your clothes. I’ve explored every nook and cranny of your gorgeous body, but for the first time, I feel like I’ve seen you naked. I love doing kinky, dirty, nasty things with you, but you laying here, exposing some of your darkest moments to me, is more intimate than any copulation could be.”

“So you would rather talk than screw?”

“Oh hell no,” she laughed, and playfully squeezed his nipples, “but I wouldn’t trade this conversation for the world.”

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