What it’s like looking for sex and romance when you’re young … – iNews
Josh Hepple sits in his wheelchair, legs crossed, and tells me he’s nervous about our interview. The disability and LGBTQI+ campaigner and communicator has had a bad experience with a journalist in the past. He’s particularly concerned about the language I use. Hepple has severe cerebral palsy, and it’s not a disability but an impairment, he explains. “Disability” comes from the barriers in society that exclude and discriminate against people like him.
It all begins to feel that we’re starting off on a very formal footing, until he announces: “and I’m the disabled guy who can’t wank.”
Hepple is telling me this because the story of how he has overcome this and other impairments to a young gay man’s sexual and romantic life is the inspiration for an award-winning play by Jon Bradfield, on which he has closely collaborated. Because not being able to masturbate due to the involuntary movements his condition causes was a hindrance for the 31-year-old mental health work volunteer for a large part of his life.
Dating can be a minefield even for the able-bodied, but if you rely on personal assistants to cook or take a shower, and have a speech impairment as Hepple does, there are extra challenges. And that’s before you’ve dealt with people’s preconceptions. Research by Scope found that 67 per cent of people feel awkward talking to disabled people. Other research from the charity found that 23 per cent of people with a disability avoid social gatherings altogether.
More on Dating Apps
For Hepple, the advent of dating apps has made life a whole lot easier. Before he joined the Grindr app, he had convinced himself that casual encounters were out of the question. “I was 24 when I got Grindr, genuinely as a joke, thinking I would never use it. Then two hours later, I went to a university library to get a book out and I came back with a beautiful man,” say Hepple.
He hadn’t had an encounter with a man before then and it opened up a world of potential. From that point on, the apps have revolutionised his dating life.
Seven years on and he’s had hundreds of sexual partners. Meeting men has gone from a near-impossible aspiration to a regular habit. At home, Hepple relies on a rota of assistants for help with tasks like bringing him drinks or helping him get to the toilet. “My assistants go home at 9pm, I’ll open Grindr at 9.05pm and by 9.10pm someone is walking over, by 9.15pm I’ve found them, by 9.30pm it’s all over and I’m back at my desk reading a book.”
Hepple quickly discovered what science has proven – orgasms are good for you – and found they helped with his impairment. “There are physical benefits, like controlling my movements and putting me in the right frame of mind to concentrate. Sometimes they are eight or nine-minute interactions that are very civil. Neither of us want to meet again but they get a bit of enjoyment and so do I. I don’t know if I would say I’m sex-positive or call it liberation, I’m quite pragmatic about it all.”
Overall, it’s been overwhelmingly positive for Hepple. Sometimes it’s just a brief interaction but sometimes it’s become something more significant. He’s met new people he might not otherwise have had the chance to get to know. He hasn’t found The One yet, but he has found about 50 good friends from Grindr.
“They are all clever, fascinating people. Every interaction is different and I have different friendships and relationships. Some of them are still sexual. Many are platonic – kind and reliable, they help with my care.”
And what about love? He won’t go into details about the more romantic stuff, but connections have come and gone. “I’m trying to keep some of those moments special. I need to keep that private,” he explains, then he adds, “I’ve experienced so much joy and love.”
At the moment, Josh has several partners. “One of the relationships is very physical and we come from different backgrounds and there’s something nice about the fact he’s never been with someone disabled before, but neither of us want to be together permanently. There have been some that I don’t fancy at all, but we have become friends and we have similar interests – and then some of them I find quite weird.”
He prefers people who have never encountered anyone with an impairment before, because then they don’t have preconceptions. When he meets someone new, he sends a message beforehand saying that his impairment may be new to them, but they can give it a few minutes to see what happens.
“They do react wonderfully to that – and that’s really, really nice,” he says. He also chooses to avoid using the objectifying language that is prevalent on the app, instead writing things like “you seem kind and you have a nice smile”. It works. He still gets lots of rejections and blocks but the ones that do come through for him tend to be decent people. It’s self-selecting, he says. “If they are dicks they won’t want to come near me.”
More on Features
There is a risk though, to his safety, each time the door opens and a new man walks in. The standard advice not to reveal your address on first dates does not apply when circumstances require that you entertain strangers at home. “It’s not all perfect and wonderful. It can go very right or very wrong. Someone could rape me, or marry me – but hopefully, they are somewhere in the middle.”
“It’s gone wrong three times out of maybe a thousand,” he admits. “When it has gone wrong, surprisingly, the police have been phenomenal. My social workers and my doctors have been very judgmental about my sex life but the police are surprisingly easy to talk to. They are very flexible, even if I don’t have an assistant with me [to clarify my speech] they try very hard… but even when they catch them, in the interviews, if they say ‘I couldn’t understand him say no’, the police have to throw it out… I don’t want this to be about sexual assault but I’ve gone through two and I see why people don’t report.”
For the most part, though, “doctors and social workers upset me a lot more than Grindr men,” he says. “When professionals attack the way I talk I find it far more erasing to the human condition than a drunk man on Grindr who has got a bit carried away. I know he’s about to get a night in the cells. But when it’s a professional attacking my communication, that really traumatises me. I rarely come out of a shag feeling sad or disappointed or disempowered but I often do – maybe 50 per cent of the time – with professionals. They get communication wrong or get defensive and I feel disempowered.
“On the other hand,” he continues, “cerebral palsy has a massive impact on my life, so if someone says, ‘don’t worry, I don’t see your disability,’ you’re erasing a massive part of who they are. If someone says that to me, I say, ‘I don’t see your right arm’.”
If not exactly a love story, one of the really good relationships in his life, he says, is with the writer Jon Bradfield, who he approached to be his collaborator for the new play, Animals, based on Hepple’s experiences. He fell in love with Jon’s writing before meeting him, after seeing some of his work.
“Josh had seen some of my stage shows, mainly a string of adult, gay pantomimes for Above The Stag Theatre [in London], which I guess I’d describe as literate smut with heart!” says Bradfield. “He liked the idea of a writer who he thought would bring irreverence and big characters, and a sort of unabashed humour to the sexual side of it.
“Before I wrote a thing I spent a lot of time getting to know Josh, talking about his initial ideas, his philosophy about disability and the practicalities of his own life as someone who relies on people for a lot of things people take for granted and how that intersects with having a sex life.”
He adds: “I’d never have thought of writing a play about a guy who can’t wank, nor felt entitled to write it, but I was instantly taken with it as an idea, so to be chosen and trusted like that is incredible. And for Josh’s part there’s something very cool about someone who loves theatre, but isn’t a writer or a producer, nevertheless manifesting a play, persuading someone to write it and then having it produced.”
Hepple has been a theatre reviewer and equality trainer at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for many years, and given disability equality training to a number of other arts organisations. Theatre seemed a natural way to tell his story.
“Jon is a phenomenal writer. I do want to pay credit to what an amazing friendship we have. When my care was shit in lockdown, Jon was wonderfully kind and helpful. My relationship with Jon has been absolutely incredible and I’m very lucky to find such a kind and gentle man.”
Animal, the Through The Mill Prize-winning play written by Jon Bradfield and based on Hepple’s experiences, comes to Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester on 9 March – 2 April, the Park Theatre in London on 19 April and Tobacco Factory, Bristol on 12-15 April