One act tipped the scales. A flaming redhead, Sheila Shamu, the only solo female competitor, raised more than eyebrows in her lime-green spaghetti-strap tank top and black skinny jeans when she made love, not to the air, but to a broom. She worked it like a pro, slinking and gyrating the handle between her legs before tracking her tongue across the shaft and working it between her tits. The judges noted it was the first simulated titty-fuck in local air-sex history, earning her an instant spot in the final round. I noted that I had something long, smooth and glistening of my own: my cane. She'd just confirmed its spot in the show.

Back in the present, I'm making a beeline across the stage, grabbing a folding chair from the judge's table and dragging it into the center. The audience doesn't know what to make of it: "Is this part of it?" "Should we help him?" Honestly, I'm just setting up, but my swaying gait's confusing them. I actually hear one guy say, a little too loudly, "I don't know whether to laugh or not." In fairness, I'm wondering the same thing, but I just have to bite my lip and go with it.

My Gimp the Pimp routine begins with me sitting in a chair beckoning an invisible stripper towards me with a five-dollar bill hanging from my tongue. Unfortunately, my Night at the Roxbury-esque head bob probably looks more like a rooftop pigeon. But then I whip out the cane and air sex turns to air sodomy. It's my big gimmick move right off the bat and the crowd reacts with whoops and hollers. I suspect every man who uses a cane has fantasized about fucking someone with it, and I'd finally found a medium not bound by laws legal or scientific.

But even sodomy gets boring after a while, so I dive to the floor, hitting my knee on the way down, and pull out the one move used so often it's an air-sex cliché — but doggy-style just looks so good on a stage. I then mime putting on a rubber glove and fisting the air, but this gets lost in translation. I need an exit strategy and fast. It's time to pull the chute and launch the orgasm. My two-minute time limit has almost expired, but I'm not going out with a whimper. This one is going to be the fake orgasm to rule them all. I start from deep in the diaphragm on my knees and project a guttural grunt to the back of the room. The audience is riveted as I fall forward and send my whole body into convulsions, trembling until I'm fully spread-eagle at center stage. Was it good for you?

I hadn't planned anything beyond the sitting in the chair part; from there it was pure physical jazz. After a while, you get so wrapped in the moment your inhibitions fall away and you can't even hear the music or the audience. It's just you and your body, it doesn't matter how you look — disabled or not. In many ways, air sex is identical to the genuine article: compromising positions? Check. Slight loss of dignity? Check. You just want to roll over and go to sleep when it's over? Double check! And, like sex, even if you aren't the best, you're still glad you played.  n°

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
		Aaron Broverman is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. He blogs regularly about disability issues for This Magazine (This.org). His work has also appeared in Abilities Magazine, New Mobility Magazine. Also online at Askmen.com, Bankrate.com and CBC.ca.