I've got that sinking feeling. Tonight, I'm in way over my head...

"Please welcome to the stage, Gimp the Pimp!"

Shit! There's no more time to plan. Not that I'd come up with anything better than what I'd already seen tonight. The mental gymnastics I'd done from my seat in the audience during those intervening moments between signing up and right the fuck now amounted to nothing but the mind's equivalent of a doodle on a napkin. Here goes nothing...

I'm greeted from the stage by an uncomfortable silence I'm used to, but tonight it's justified. I'm a competitor in the Toronto Air Sex Championship, a Japanese invention commonly described as like air guitar, but fucking, and I have spastic diplegia cerebral palsy — spastic being the operative word. The audience clearly doesn't think I have a shot in hell; even the DJ hesitates before playing my backing track (Nine Inch Nails' "Closer"). I have to cue her twice.

At this point, I agree with their assessment, especially since air sex seems more like synchronized swimming than air guitar, what with the judging, the in-time thrusting to music, and the elaborate costumes. Becoming Toronto's Air Sex Champion and winning a berth at the World Championships in Austin, Texas, is serious business. The competition can only be described — you'll forgive me — as stiff.

Take the first performer, Travis, who came out to Rammstein's Du Hast wearing a long-sleeved teal and fuschia floral shirt, too small to cover his midriff, acid-washed hot pants, and a bandana across his long, brown mop. The whole ensemble looked like it was jacked from his little sister's closet, but I was duly impressed when he whipped a kielbasa out of his fly and lit it on fire. It was the first act and already we had the fire marshal on stand-by. For the grand finale, he then pulled off what Marilyn Manson supposedly removed his ribs for, biting off his sausage tip and spitting into the audience.

In truth, I wasn't supposed to be on-stage at all. I had come as a sociological observer, but when the Jesus-look-a-like emcee made an open call to the audience, the thumbscrew of peer pressure wrenched in the participatory direction when the woman sitting next to me leaned over:

"You going to do it, or what?"

"Oh no, maybe next time. I'll just watch tonight."

I guess my waffling came down to the disability. If I was going to do it at all, I'd want to actually be good. When you're disabled, many people will give you heaps of praise just for showing up. That was the last thing I needed. 

Still, the woman beside me persisted, as if she didn't hear me the first time. "So you going to do it, or what?"

What was I afraid of? I'm a journalist — supposedly intrepid — and an air-sex competitor with a disability would be the closest most people would ever get to a disabled person fucking, unless you count the films of Bridget the Midget. I could bring awareness to the table, win or lose. Plus, sexual opportunities are few for most people with disabilities, but Iron Maiden got a record deal thanks to air guitar, so maybe I'd get laid thanks to air sex.