Anne Thomas, one of the contributors to Sucker for Love, The Book, gives us some more details about her story. And offers top notch dating advice.
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Which Sucker For Love show where you in? Was this your first storytelling show, or had you performed before, and if so where?
I was in the 2012 Sucker for Love show. I have performed several times at SpeakeasyDC before performing in this show.
How did it feel to revisit your story for this book? Did you have any challenges taking your story from the stage to the page?
Revisiting the story makes me wonder how Mourad is and the temptation to contact him becomes great, but I am letting that sleeping dog lie. My story was comprised of so much dialog I did not find it challenging to take it from the stage to the page. I just had to add descriptors that were apparent through the performance, but not written down.
How much, or in what ways, have your views on love, romance, or relationships changed since you first told this story?
I was pleasantly surprised at how supportive the audience was when I told this story. I expected shock at the age difference, but I did not expect the “you go Girl”, keep living large response. It affirmed for me that the age difference concern I had was a fear with little basis in reality. I feel that love is precious and you should grab it wherever you can. People are happy to see you happy.
If you were going to send a Valentine’s Day card to SpeakeasyDC, what would it say?
Thank you for loving me as I am. For encouraging me to share my life experiences with others, for creating a fun, safe place for all of us to connect. Each month you bring together a diverse group of people to celebrate all the vicissitudes of life. We all learn and grow through the stories we hear. You make a difference in all our lives for the better.
What’s your best piece of romantic advice?
Be authentic about who you are and what you need. If it’s not a match, better to know sooner than later. But if it is a match, it’s because they love who you are.
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Anne B. Thomas: Born into captivity, raised within the cultural norms, Anne overcame a career as an attorney to become a performer. Craving more fun in her life, Anne took classes in Improv, solo performance and storytelling. She is now a professional storyteller residing in DC. She often performs at SpeakeasyDC, though just before every performance, full of anxiety, she wonders why she does this to herself! But after every performance, she is full of gratitude for the opportunity to go on a journey with a room full of people through the vissicitudes of life!
Anne, you are somehow the first person I have found in 65 years of searching, to acknowledge, that there is indeed a very real and very pervasive stigma and negative perception of disabled people, coming from nearly every social strata imaginable. People with absolutely no credentials whatsoever to speak on the matter, absolutely insist, that the bias, prejudice, and ignorance of which I speak on behalf of all persons with handicaps cannot possibly be anywhere near as bad as I say it is.
Even among handicapped people, few of them dare to speak out on the matter, for fear of immediately being branded as “whiners”.
My own father was especially adamant, that I should just appreciate my having only one partially functional arm to use throughout my life, due to the ravages of polio which totally destroyed my right arm, as if he knew Jack Squat about it.
Ironically, when he eventually lost the use of his own arm from repeated surgeries to remove cancer from his arm, Mr TuffGuy ( Staff Sargeant WW2 ) sat on the edge of his bed, literally crying, while saying out loud that he “isn’t any use to anybody if he can’t use his arm”. This, after telling me for 20 years, that it “isn’t that big of a deal”!
When I was 17, I had asked him, what am I going to do about dating. The girls avoided me like I’m not even worth talking with them. I discovered on my own, much later, that a large part of why they acted that way, is because of the social stigma of talking with anyone regarded as “less worthy”.
Not much status gain for a girl to be seen talking with a handicapped person. Her peers quickly get it across to her, that she will be seen as someone who must have “low self-esteem”, and apparently doesn’t know “she can do better”.
My fathers response, was that I will have to be patient. Let the young women make their own mistakes by selecting young men on the basis of physical attributes. He insisted, in no uncertain terms, that there will come a time, when women will be showing ME the interest and attention that the jocks were getting in the earlier times.
Well, to make a long story longer, here I am, 50 YEARS LATER, and I’m still waiting for my fathers prediction to even remotely come true.
Many women my age still insist, that a guy can’t be less than a certain height for the relationship to be successful.
Likewise, a guy can’t be losing any of his hair, q else he just isn’t good “husband material” ( I have actually heard my sisters daughter say this! ).
And if he has a bit of extra weight, he can jolly well forget about dating altogether.
So then, lets see now. Exactly where does that put a disabled person such as myself?
Not surprisingly, I have little patience or sympathy when a woman says: “Where are all the good guys?”
They are all over the place everywhere!
The problem for the women who think that there are not any good men available, is not that there aren’t many of them out there, but rather, the women aren’t regarding hardly any of those men as “counting” as potential mates, because of the women’s extremely myopic view of any man whom doesn’t happen to be viewed as a perfect specimen.
Even after I waited 50 years, it still largely comes down to physical attributes, and “status”.
I’m not sure that the situation could be any more pathetic, than the way that it is right now.
I am reminded of that old saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”