Angus’s Story – September 2024

Angus’s Story

I’m grateful to say that as a man with Cerebral Palsy, I have accomplished a lot in 32 years. Despite many barriers, I was able to complete my HSC and was accepted into university. While I was at uni, I lived on campus and was accepted into the student lifestyle without anyone thinking twice about my disability. However, living the usual student lifestyle comes with becoming close with your peers you live with. Although the girls I hung around every day saw me for the intelligent, understanding and mature guy I was, I always had to be the friend who they could come to when they were having relationship troubles, never the one they had to work through those troubles with. 

After graduating university, I found my passion for writing and acting. I am building a career in the media, working for household Australian broadcasters ABC and SBS. My latest series Latecomers, which I co-wrote and starred in has garnered much success and notoriety within Australian media. Still, just like university, I’m praised for my creativity and my boldness to speak on topics that are both personal to me and can be painful at times. Yet, that’s as far as I can go. To have people understand and be sympathetic to my situation, but still not have the intimacy that I crave as a human being. 

Through meeting and becoming close to my sex worker, I’ve been able to feel a human connection that hasn’t been available to me in my life. It’s not just physical, it’s the opportunity to feel open and free to spend time with a girl without worrying how my disability will affect the situation I’m in. On the days she comes to see me, she brings lunch for both of us. We eat together, we laugh together, we bicker with each other, we even get frustrated with each other’s quirks. She’s really like having a girlfriend. Even if it is just for the day, it means a lot to me. Obviously, I understand that we’re not in a relationship, but we’ve spent so much time together now, we know all about each other’s media careers, we’re able to celebrate each other’s accomplishments and also complain to each other about the hours of work that we’re going to have to put in to achieve our next big goal, while reassuring each other that our hard work will pay off. 

This, to me, is more important than many services I am able to access and would happily go without, if it meant I could use my funding on something that is reasonable and necessary to my personal needs.