blind essay

The Blind Man’s Harley: White Canes and Gender Identity in Modern America

Catherine Kudlick

Several years ago, I completed a six-month residential rehabilitation program at the

Colorado Center for the Blind (CCB), just south of Denver in Littleton. As someone who is

legally blind but with much useable vision, I wanted to learn a set of skills that would help

me function better with the vision I have; at the same time I hoped to change my attitudes

about blindness. Thus, I picked - as far as I know - the most adventurous blindness

rehabilitation program in the world, one that required me to be blindfolded all day in

classes, where I learned such things as cane travel, Braille, and living skills, all the while

engaging in confidence-builders such as going downhill skiing and participating in bizarre

treasure hunts to the far reaches of Denver. The final graduation requirement consisted of

being dropped alone somewhere unknown in the metropolitan area and having to make my

way back to the CCB, being allowed to ask only one question.

Here I want to tell about one tiny aspect of my time at the Colorado Center:

traveling through the streets of Denver using a long white cane. As a professor in the

humanities, I am programmed to step back from my experiences and analyze them through

the comfort of scholarly abstractions. For example, I might write of the program’s

particularly masculine reading of rugged individualism as part of mainstream American

culture grafted awkwardly but firmly onto shifting gender identities transformed by

blindness. Or I might cast everything in terms of “performativity” and “gender play,”

revealing how contested ideas of masculinity and femininity can be created even - and

especially - for something as seemingly fixed as blindness. But first I would have to point

out that terms such as masculinity and femininity are problematic, open as they are to

interpretations contingent on social and cultural expectations that change over time. And

who could resist describing the cane as a blind person’s phallus? All of these observations

have their place in this essay, and may even be the abstract forces that ultimately shape it.

Still, my struggles in “blind boot camp” demanded that I come face to face with

something much more visceral: my own deep-seated fears about blindness, and how these

anxieties related to being a woman in a program that called upon me to “take it like a

man.” Such gender tensions constantly played themselves out in the choices I made

between being safe and embracing the risks that make life worth living. These decisions

shape how all human beings confront difference, as we read the actions - or inactions - of

others through the internal lens of our dread. For a low vision person like me, blindness

represented the consummate defeat and blind people the embodiment of my failure. The

blind of my imagination begged with tin cups in the street or groped in the dark, their

heads raised and their arms stretched out in desperation. Above all, they stayed home,

angry and bitter, passively accepting what fate had handed them. My Blind were so

emasculated that femininity did not have a safe dwelling place.

The six months at the Colorado Center blew away all my assumptions. The

adventure put an end to my lifelong self-image as the pathetic little blind girl, at the same

time destroying any illusions I might have had of one day discovering a conventional

feminine self. Through their unbridled audaciousness, my fellow students and teachers -

all of them blind - rescued blindness from the depths of pity and helped turn it into simply

another way of being in the world. At the same time, I had to change how I thought about

myself as a woman in order to triumph over adversity in this particular way. Yes, part of

me wanted to kill off the helpless blind girl. But did this mean I would have to renounce

femininity altogether, or would I have to come up with something completely new? And

when all was said and done, who would take the little girl’s place?

Public responses to the white cane as the ultimate symbol of helplessness and

powerlessness only increased my dread of being associated with blind people. When I first

started to use a cane, I was dumbfounded by the dramatic change in how most in the

sighted world treated me just because I held a long, thin piece of carbon fiber in my hand.

It might be the flip side of what young powerless street kids must feel when they enter a

room pointing a gun. One minute, I stood there an innocuous, competent, responsible

adult, and the next my “stickmata” brought the wrath of human condescension raining

down upon me, as people’s voices grew artificially soft and solicitous. Most sighted people

assumed I could do very little for myself and treated me like a dependent child or a delicate

porcelain doll. Being female, I found these responses troubling enough. But the men

around me at the Colorado Center - from my young biker buddies who proclaimed

themselves my “Guardian Hells Angels” to my closest friend and confidante, a gay

psychologist in his late fifties from the East Coast - all complained bitterly about how the

sighted world’s treatment of them as helpless dependents was robbing them of their

masculinity.

To counter this image, the Colorado Center consciously sought to make the cane not

just a symbol of independence but a means of achieving it. In operation for nearly a

decade, the CCB was founded by members of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB),

the world’s largest organization run by and for blind people. Not insignificantly, the

Colorado Center’s founder and subsequent directors have almost all been women. The

NFB has a seductive philosophy that speaks to men and women alike at the same time that

it sets the tone for a particular kind of masculine assertiveness. The real problem for blind

people is not the lack of eyesight, the NFB philosophy claims, but rather, social attitudes;

given opportunity and proper training in alternative techniques, blindness can be reduced

to a mere physical nuisance and blind people can compete on terms of equality with their

sighted peers doing just about anything. People in the blindness field as well as the blind

man or woman on the street tend to have strong feelings about the organization, either as

enthusiastic defenders or as fierce critics decrying “federationists” as unthinking fanatics.

The NFB constantly infuriates people because it takes unpopular and uncompromising

stands, some of them seemingly at odds with the needs of the blind. In the early 1990s, for

example, the organization generated huge controversy when it lobbied passionately against

installing the tactile warning strips along train platforms. Federationists saw such

measures as “special treatment,” more ammunition for the sighted world to see blind

people as different; the more practical and less expensive solution, they argued, was good

cane technique. But disagreement over who is qualified to teach and how the requisite

mobility skills should be taught has created a major rift within the blindness field.

Behind the dispute lurks a deep philosophical question that divides the world of

rehabilitation training unmistakably along gender lines. On my first day at the center my

travel instructor, Dirk, who had been totally blind for ten years after the sudden onset of

diabetes, leaned back in his squeaky chair and bellowed: “Okay, Doc. Let me guess. If you

learned to use a cane from someone at the state department of rehab, she was a very well-

meaning middle-aged sighted lady who drove you to a quiet parking lot somewhere and

made sure you didn’t get lost.” My jaw dropped because it seemed he had been following

me before he even knew who I was. The majority opinion holds that sighted people are

better equipped to teach someone mobility because they can see obstacles and have a better

perspective on the big picture that will help a blind traveler figure out certain complicated

situations. For example, a blind instructor might not be able to know that one cannot enter

a raised train platform without using a stairway located way down the block, or might not

be able to tell when a pedestrian crossing is only on one side of a busy intersection whizzing

with cars. The bottom line of this argument rests on safety issues: a sighted instructor is in

a better position to keep a new blind traveler out of danger. And as long as travel stays

within the confines of predictable challenges, it’s women’s work.

The NFB-inspired centers such as the one I attended have shaken up the rehab

world because they exclusively employ low vision or blind travel instructors. During my

time at the CCB all of them happened to be men, though over the years women have taught

travel as well. Those who favor the blind leading the blind approach argue that a blind

person is in a better position to train and instill confidence in other blind people than a

sighted person, however competent and enlightened that sighted person might be. If you

don’t have faith in a blind teacher, the reasoning goes, how can you possibly convince new

travelers to believe in themselves? Anyone who has taken a gym class and watched the

coach sip soda while students puffed their way around the track will appreciate how I

thought about the well-meaning sighted professional who gave me my first cane. As for the

arguments that sighted people can offer help that a blind person cannot, the NFB points

out that you will not always have a kind rehab lady to act as your guardian angel, so you

had better learn how to puzzle out complex situations on your own. It is an appealing

notion, one that too often seemed better in theory, such as the countless times we wandered

around some godforsaken corner of Denver with a blind instructor, lost in the snow. On

the other hand, we learned that it was okay to be lost, that people eventually find their way.

Not just an extreme example of the masculine compulsion to avoid asking directions at any

cost, this approach also underscored the search for self-sufficiency in a sighted world that

often denies such independence to blind people, be they men or women.

Perhaps not surprisingly in our post-Freudian times, the NFB tries to reclaim

masculinity for blindness via cane length. This makes it possible to discern a person’s

blindness politics based on the type she or he might use. Most favor the red-bottomed cane

offered by agencies that do not adhere to the NFB philosophy. These canes reach the

middle of the chest, and collapse by folding into sections, much like tent poles. At the top

they have a black rubberized grip like that of a golf club, while at the bottom one can

choose from a variety of nylon tip shapes and sizes described as marshmallows, cylinders,

mushrooms, and balls, some which roll and therefore require constant contact with the

sidewalk while others remain stationary to facilitate tapping back and forth. They feel

quite solid for something that folds. Many travelers - both men and women - find these

canes the best compromise between strength and portability. You can stuff them into your

back pocket or lay them discreetly on a chair next to you in a restaurant. And if you don’t

feel like drawing attention to your blindness for every minute of your public life, these

folding models offer an option. I have friends who passionately try to convince me that

they are easier to use and transmit information more effectively, not to mention that they

are about 30% cheaper ($25 vs. $40 in the spring of 2000) than the NFB canes. Alas, I

found the folding canes heavy and tiring to use for any length of time. And, I should

confess, they didn’t seem as cool to me - I tended to think of them as akin to orthopedic

shoes or thick glasses in the days before optometry became chic.

About thirty years ago, the NFB modified the style and use of the cane by coming up

with a thin, rigid model made of carbon fiber. These sleek all-white canes with a metal tip

at the bottom generally come to the bridge of one’s nose. One CCB staff member, a woman

well under five feet tall from Brazil, sported a cane that towered over her head. Users

assert that the long canes enable you to walk much more quickly because they give you

more information sooner, like wearing a stronger pair of glasses that allows you to see

farther away. As for the rigidity, the NFB philosophy seeks to make a point: you should not

be ashamed of your blindness, and if a rigid cane is light and durable, why settle for

anything less? These canes have major drawbacks, however. Their length makes it more

likely that a user will get tangled up with fellow pedestrians, sometimes tripping them,

causing the rigid cane to snap and splinter. Also, imagine going through life (restaurants,

concerts, airplane trips, car rides, to name but a few situations) with the equivalent of a

fishing pole that you constantly need to find places to store, particularly when you already

feel obtrusive enough as a blind person. NFB arguments about strength and lightness

shaped the cane industry so that folding ones have improved enormously on both counts,

yet federationists still chide people for using them to hide their blindness. For the

situations where rigid canes are impractical, the organization finally caved in to popular

demand by making a very lightweight and compact telescoping cane, an elegant but

(deliberately?) poorly designed object that collapses when you least expect it.

Students at the CCB were required to use the long, rigid canes, though several

registered silent protests against the school and the NFB more generally by buying the

shorter folding ones. The teachers, who could tell the difference between NFB and non-

NFB canes by the sound of the metal tip, tried to tease people who used them in a friendly

way (“what, you want to walk like an old lady?”), but usually the offenders ignored them.

A few others, such as Jason, a tall guy whose sixty-nine inch cane kept getting run over by

buses, reverted to the folding models because he thought they held up better. He liked the

length of the rigid NFB canes though, so he had to mail order extra-long folding ones from

a special place in Canada because the longest American ones were only sixty inches.

“I should think about getting me one of these folding canes,” Dirk once admitted to

me as we headed off to explore Littleton, causing me to stop dead in my tracks. A

prospective student was visiting the center, and Dirk had traded canes in order to give him

a sense of what the NFB ones were like. “The nylon tips are quiet so I could use them when

I want to follow some slacker,” he explained. But usually Dirk just turned his rigid NFB

cane upside down, using the plastic top as the tip as he sometimes followed behind at a

discrete distance. “Of course, the handle turns to crap pretty fast,” he admitted, “but that's

what duct tape is for.” He rattled around in his snuff bag, spat, and added, “never go

anywhere without duct tape, one of the little-known miracles of the blind guy's tool kit.

I've pasted up one or two canes with the silver stuff, enough to get me home and even add a

couple hundred miles on 'em before they really give out.”

The NFB's sense of rugged independence also translated into its philosophy and

policies that discouraged using dog guides. Because numerous schools across the country

specialize in working with dogs, a rehab center like the CCB could reasonably argue that it

should specialize in teaching cane travel. Besides, people should first have good cane

mobility skills, lest they find themselves without their dog for some reason. But I think

something else was also at work: the NFB seemed to be engaging with the sighted world's

long-held belief that dogs served the more needy - and therefore less competent, more

feminized - blind, that the dog led the person rather than the person controlling the dog

like any other tool. Rightly or wrongly, we internalized the message that using a dog was

tantamount to copping out and creating unnecessary barriers with the sighted world

because animals are intrusive.

Still, the center didn’t rule out dogs altogether. Among the students, the ex-Hell’s

Angel Gavin had a dog, an unpleasant, high-strung German shepherd that wore a

bandana. Keyla had to spend most of her days curled up under one of the tables in the

meeting room while her owner learned to travel with a long, rigid cane outside. I never

understood why Gavin had Keyla in the first place, especially since he was clearly such a

talented cane traveler; I could only figure that her surly growls helped maintain his tough-

guy biker persona in a way a white cane never could. More often, our travel teachers gave

certain students, including Harriet and Don, who had both experienced serious hearing

loss, their blessing for getting dogs after they graduated. But the general message was

clear: canes were about independence, confidence, assertiveness, and full social integration,

while dogs were not.

Such a macho cane environment spawned an interesting culture that ran counter to

everything most sighted Americans have thought about blind people and blindness. In

public, the long rigid canes clearly managed to surprise sighted people because the

circumstances in which we used them confounded expectations of helpless blind people

flailing alone in the world. Sometimes, for example, the whole center would go on chaotic

outings that brought some twenty-five or thirty of us with our long canes fanning out

through an unsuspecting Denver. Sighted culture never quite knows what to do when more

than one blind person shows up, particularly if unaccompanied by sighted help. Sometimes

I got the impression that we terrified people on the street, that they drew only the thinnest

of lines between fearing for our safety and fearing for their lives. I’d hear concerned

mothers hurrying their intrigued children away or groups of African-American teenage

guys shouting to us: “Go brothers and sisters!” More often, sighted people’s anxiety

manifested itself through bewildered and awkward questions about why the canes were so

long. Unconsciously anyway, they seem to have picked up on the NFB cane’s more potent

macho dimensions.

In the hands of someone like my instructor Dirk, the cane became a Harley of sorts,

with a whole vocabulary and series of rituals to match. For example, people who use the

NFB canes must change the metal tip that meets the sidewalk every couple of weeks. Tough

guys such as Dirk and my biker friends referred to the mundane fact of the tip wearing out

as “blowing a tip” and had a whole classification system for describing what caused it. If

one “blew out” on Dirk just a few days after he had put it on, it was “sissy” or “wimpy”; I

think I once even heard one of the guys use the word “pussy” in this context. If someone

like me went through one too quickly, however, it was my fault and not the tip’s. Novices,

particularly women, seemed to “burn through” tips at an alarming rate because, the guys

claimed, we scraped them too much along the sidewalk. But a tip’s significance could also

lie in the eye of the beholder: a few years ago I met a guy - no sissy - who saved every one

he ever changed as a sign of all the miles he had traveled with a cane. Then there was the

whole issue of actually changing the tip. Novices learned that we should first lick the base

where the old tip had been before attaching a new one, a disgusting thought if you imagine

all the places a cane goes in a day. I must confess to wondering if this was really necessary,

dismissing the advice as one of our rare boot-camp hazing moments. I later learned that

some form of lubrication helped matters considerably, but, like most of my women friends

at the center, I decided this was a man’s work and cheerfully resorted to traditional

flirtation rather than spit. Certain people - mostly men but also a few women - developed a

reputation for being good tip changers so the rest of us would go to them for help. Women

had tested various make-ups, skin creams, Vaseline, and even KY jelly, whereas men simply

spat and hoped for the best as they muscled the spent old tip off and a new one on.

The CCB offered a particularly macho environment in which to learn such basics.

When I arrived for my training, the center had just relocated to a former YMCA, where

the travel office had settled into the men’s locker room, which still smelled distinctly of jock

sweat. Moreover, the travel teachers and a few of the male students thought nothing of

heading for the urinal well within earshot of our class. Several of us (both female and

male) complained, but to little avail, since the guys didn't want to be bothered by having to

troop upstairs only to wait in line. Within this bunker-like setting, Dirk began with the

essentials by giving informal lectures about urban planning, stoplights, traffic control, and - for anyone who cared to listen - about how cement was mixed and poured. He taught us

about parking lots and traffic patterns by guiding our hands to a collection of matchbox

cars he kept on his desk, which he'd arrange to create various complex scenarios.

“The best class a blind traveler could ever take would be driver's ed.,” he stated

matter-of-factly one day. “I've been thinking about assigning the State of Colorado's

driver's handbook to all you students and making you pass that sucker of a test. In fact, if

I had time, I'd introduce a bill before the state legislature to require all blind kids to take

it.”

I bristled. Driver's education class had been a huge emotional nemesis for me as a

legally blind teenager in high school. “What's the point of making a bunch of blind people

do that,” I blurted out, for once not being the well-behaved student.

“Well, Doc,” he said, leaning back in his squeaky chair as he always did when he

knew he was about to win, “it's a jungle out there, a goddamned jungle. But there are rules

of the jungle. In theory, anyway. You, little spec of a blind person, are out there

surrounded by wild beasts, wild two-ton metal beasts whose lives just happen to be

explained in a book like this very one provided for free by the marvelous state of Colorado.

I don't know about you, but before I go out there, I'd want a fighting chance, and the only

way to have it is to know what rules govern the jungle.”

After such lectures, Dirk would take two or three of us out to an intersection to

make us listen for the logic of traffic patterns. One frosty morning I found myself heading

out with him and Jason, a pleasant young man who had started his training shortly after I

had. Blind from birth and sheltered by his overprotective family until he had finished

college, he was smart and articulate. But this poor kid from Oregon knew surprisingly

little of the world, so, among other things, the CCB was teaching him to travel alone for the

first time in his life.

As we walked north on the Prince Street overpass and heard a train pulling out of

the light-rail station slightly ahead and to the right, Dirk stopped abruptly. The sun felt

warm on my right ear, but even though I wore the thickest gloves imaginable, I already

feared my frostbitten fingers were going to have to be amputated. “Okay, my friends,” he

ordered, “turn to your left, and tell me where we are. Hint: you have to listen.”

I had been around Dirk long enough by that point to know that the obvious answer

was seldom correct, but having racked my brain, I couldn't come up with anything better:

“At the light-rail station?” I ventured.

“Perhaps. Mr. Krug?”

“I'd have to agree,” Jason said, also sensing that this wasn't what Dirk wanted.

“Listen more carefully. The train is gone. What do you hear now?”

We stood fixed to the spot, concentrating.

A car somewhere to our left had stopped and was idling. “You can cross!” the

person I assumed to be its driver shouted at us. “It's okay to go!”

I felt something long and thin brush my kneecaps. “No need to go anywhere just

yet, Doc,” Dirk said, gently pushing me back with his cane. “In fact, we won't cross

anything today.” I hadn't even realized that I had inched into the street. “Rule number

one: don't listen to drivers. Like all our sighted friends, they mean well, but you need to

understand your environment first. Rule number two: when you get to an intersection,

stop and figure it out. What is your line of traffic, where are the cars headed? How fast

are they going? When do they stop? Where? How long? Take as long as you need. Don't

let anyone push you into going before you're absolutely sure where you are, where you

want to go, and how you'll get there. Now what can you tell me about this intersection?

First of all, what kind of intersection is it?”

“Busy,” I joked, more out of fear than wit.

Jason chuckled in nervous agreement.

“That's right on the mark,” Dirk said without sarcasm. “That's your first

important piece of information. Now what kind of busy is it? Listen.”

I thought hard about all the details of the environment, but truth be told, all I could

hear were big roaring cars that sounded chaotic and dangerously close to where we stood. I

figured just as long as I remained a little behind Dirk I would be okay. Things grew quiet,

and I actually thought I heard the wind rustling in the trees across the street. Then one or

two cars honked as they drove by, followed by a driver who shouted, “You folks need any

help? I can pull up to that parking lot and walk you across.”

“No thank you sir,” Dirk replied in his deadpan way. “We're just three blind people

out for a nice walk in the country.” Then turning to us, “Don't mind them. Your job is to

listen to the flow of cars. Are they going all the time or are they stopping?”

As I concentrated, the reality of the intersection began to take shape. When Dirk

asked if I thought it had a traffic light, a stop sign, or nothing at all, I could tell instantly

that it was a light because the cars clearly streamed through in batches. When the vehicles

going perpendicular to where we stood came to a stop, those facing us would come toward

us. I felt immensely pleased with myself for figuring this out.

“What if I told you that's only part of the story?” Dirk inquired. I sighed. “Good,

it's a light,” he allowed, perhaps sensing how defeated I felt; then, “But what kind of light?

What kind of intersection is this? Is there anything special about it?”

The cars fell completely silent so that once again I noticed the strange mechanical

clanging of the light-rail bell behind us and heard the hum of a train as it glided into the

station. I stiffened with excitement as I collected the pieces of a puzzle and began snapping

them into place: one set of cars passed back and forth in front of us, and when these

stopped, another batch came straight toward us but turned either right or left rather than

going through; they couldn't go through because Church Street dead-ended into Prince Street

at the light rail station tracks!

Ever the eager student, I blurted out my answer, half expecting it to be wrong.

“Excellent,” Dirk said in the flat way he reserved for his highest praise. I felt I had

been awarded a medal. “This is what is known as a 'T-intersection,'” he explained. “It's

named after the print letter 'T.” Then turning to Jason, he asked, “You ever seen the print

letter ‘T,’ Mr. Krug?”

Jason seemed a little embarrassed. Blind from birth, he knew Braille better than

most of the rest of us, but he had never written with pen and ink. Consequently, he had

never had reason to learn the print alphabet. “No, I'm afraid not,” he admitted.

“Here, my friend,” Dirk said gently, “give me your back so I can draw it for you.” I

heard Jason step toward Dirk, who traced the letter first for Jason then for me on my own

back. “Like this,” he said to each of us as he ran his glove over the fabric, first down and

then across at the top. “That’s the print letter T. Now imagine it being upside down like

this.” This time he drew the vertical line first, then put the horizontal one at the bottom,

pushing harder where the two lines met to indicate where we stood. His touch was quick

and direct, delicate and informative all at once.

“This is heady, important stuff,” he growled, as we stood giddy with terror at the

prospect of actually having to apply this knowledge. “But it’s worthless crap if you don’t

put your cane out there to let them know you’re intending to cross. As a blind guy, I could

hold a line of twenty-five cars back all day long if I wanted just by putting my cane out

there and showing with body posture that I want to cross. Your cane is your key to roam

the road, to make the road yours. It’s the simplest and most elegant tool, so you’d damn

well better use it.”

“But Dirk,” I protested, “it’s easy for you to put your body on the line - guys are

encouraged to do that beginning with when you’re first starting to walk! We girls never

learned to ‘just put ourselves out there.’ If anything, I’m hardwired to ‘just keep my body

in there,’ thank you very much.” I tried to make it light and funny, but I didn’t like this

kind of vulnerability one bit.

“Ah come on, Doc!” Dirk shouted over all the traffic. “For someone who’s supposed

to be so smart, you don’t use that brain of yours very much - or maybe you use it too damn

much! I’m not asking you to put your body on the line; I’m just saying use your

goddamned cane!” At that moment, I smelled his habitual snuff, heard the distinct sound

of expectoration, and cringed as I wondered where his spit had gone. “Blind people can’t

afford to be sissy-wimps if they want to be free in this world,” he announced. “The way I

see it, you can either put yourself out there or you can sit at home and wait for some well-

meaning sighted person to come and rescue the damsel in distress. It’s your choice, Doc.”

A few days later Dirk wanted me to accompany him and a more advanced student to

downtown Littleton so we could “visit the damn birds,” Dirk’s expression for audible

pedestrian signals. With Gavin, Finn was the second tattoo-covered ex-biker at the

Colorado Center, a large man in his early thirties who, like Dirk, had gone blind suddenly

from diabetes. We had bonded on my first day at boot camp when Finn had given me a

tour of the center. Even though he was a decade younger, he always called me “little sister,”

while still managing to treat me with genuine gallantry and respect.

“Rule number one,” Dirk barked as we approached the chirping at the corner of

Prince and Alamo, “ignore those things. They're put in by poor clueless sighted people and

their lazy blind friends.” The chirps and cuckoos have been a big bone of contention in the

blindness community, making the NFB once again seem like it has taken a ridiculous stand

against the better interests of blind people. After all, who in their right mind would attack

a street signal that - at least in theory - allowed a blind person standing at an intersection to

hear exactly when the light changed? Once you learn that cuckoo means cross north-south

and chirp-chirp east-west (or is it chirp-chirp means north-south and cuckoo means east-

west?), all you have to do is arrive at the corner and wait patiently for the signal.

“My point exactly.” I heard Dirk's voice ringing in my ear as he instinctively

understood my confusion. “Plus most audible signals are designed with vision in mind.

They want you to know what drivers are seeing, when what you really need to know is what

you should be doing. And no two of these suckers are ever alike. One might be way up top

of a pole, and another practically on the frickin’ ground or far away from the intersection.

Some ping, some chirp, some do one thing one minute and another thing the next, and

sometimes you have to push a button to activate them. And where’s the button?” We

laughed as Dirk noisily banged his cane into various poles and other nearby obstacles,

including an innocent bystander who shouted “Hey!” when Dirk hit her. “Thank you for

helping me make my point ma’am,” Dirk said by way of apology, turning back to us. “I

suppose if cities really wanted to help, they’d raise crosswalks just slightly so your cane

could lead you in the right direction, but it wouldn’t matter that much once you learned

how to use your cane.” He claimed that the NFB metal tip’s sensitivity allowed one to

distinguish the paint of a crosswalk, a lesson I would master by the end of my training,

though I wasn’t completely confident. Dirk admitted that audible signals might be useful

at irregular intersections or in the growing number of situations where traffic lights are

geared toward maximizing traffic flow at the expense of pedestrians. “But if we have to

have them, then they’ve got to be consistent and everybody plays by the same rules. And

the bottom line is having good cane technique.”

Dirk took me to the corner, spun me in a circle, told me an off-color joke, walked me

to a store entrance, spun me around again, then plunked me at the corner. “Okay, Doc.

Wait for the birdie, then tell me where you think you should go.” By that point I was most

disoriented, not to mention that I remained preoccupied simply with finding the actual line

that separated the sidewalk from the street. I felt around with my cane in a panic as the

cuckoo started up, but I still couldn't get oriented. “Here Doc,” Dirk said, taking me by the

shoulders. “Now you're pointed in the right direction. Now what?” I stood through

several cuckoo/chirp cycles, but even though I had a pretty good idea of what I thought

must be north, the sun wasn't out that day and the more I listened for the signal, the less

certain I was about my line of direction.

“Finn, my man, I'm going to step over here for a bit of snuff,” Dirk announced, and

then headed off fishing in his pocket. “Show our friend the doctor how it's done.”

I could hear Finn's cane exploring to my right. “Here's the curb,” he reported in his

raspy voice, “give me your cane,” whereupon he put his enormous hand on top of mine and

ran the cane back and forth over a small indentation. “Here's the lip,” he explained as my

cane skipped over a small ridge and then down. “It's one of those blended curbs that my

boys dig so much for skateboarding, so it's really hard to find, but here's the low point.” I

remembered one of Dirk's mini-lectures where he'd described how city streets had been

constructed to facilitate drainage. Just beyond the curb was a smooth area that gradually

headed upward, then got rough. “Feel the difference between cement and asphalt?” Finn

asked, guiding my cane first to one, then the other. The cement was definitely smoother,

while the asphalt not only felt rough, but grated more on my cane tip. I had the strange

sensation of not knowing whether I was getting this information through sound or touch.

“Now here's the thing, little sister,” Finn said as we stood there, “I know you're

probably scared to death, but don't worry. I'll be right with you all the way, and I'll stand

between you and the traffic.” I felt much better, but my heart still pounded. When the

cars started up after sitting at a light, they roared like a pack of lions that I knew were

preparing to charge at me. We stood through several cycles, this time listening to the

traffic patterns rather than the signals. We waved off the usual well-meaning drivers and

occasional pedestrians. I was beginning to have a sense of the intersection now, realizing

that Prince Street went two directions while Alamo went one way.

“Okay, sis, you say when we should go.” My cane hand shook and my feet felt like

blocks. The cars coming toward us started to roll, so I stepped into the street with all the

enthusiasm of diving into a freezing lake. “You're doing great,” Finn said. “Just keep

those cars and me on your right and you'll be fine.” Dirk had come up on my left, so that

both men kept me in line with their canes when I strayed a little to the right or the left as

we crossed. I felt this incredible sense of warmth and protection just from the occasional

gentle tap of their canes against my shins. When we arrived at the other side, I heaved a

huge sigh of relief.

About a month into my training, Dirk announced that the time had come for me to

cross a busy intersection on my own. This put me into a panic far worse than anything I'd

ever felt about setting foot in a formidable research library for the first time, walking into

my Ph.D. qualifying exams, or going on my first job interview. This was, after all, literally

about life and death. “Doc, you've got what it takes,” Dirk reassured me. “But I'll let you

off easy this time. You just cross that intersection at Prince and Alamo - the one you did

already with Finn here - continue up one more block, and we'll meet you after you've

reached the next corner. You leave now, we'll follow in ten.” Somehow, knowing that my

mauled body would be found reassured me enough that I set off.

I realize blind people travel busy intersections all the time without holding a press

conference. But I freely admit that I burst into tears when I made it to the right spot,

determined when to go, and walked a straight line to the other side, all this without being

run over. I’m not talking figure of speech here: there was a lump in my throat and soon the

outer foam covering of my sleepshades was soggy. Few peacocks have walked with more

pride than I did up to the next corner where Dirk and Finn came up from behind to

congratulate me, slapping my back and giving me high fives.

Then a terrifying thing happened. Just after Dirk asked me to analyze the traffic

pattern of the new intersection, I felt something heavy collapse into my legs. Even before

catching my balance and tearing off my sleepshades, I realized that it was a human body.

My biker buddy and protector, a large man of considerable bulk and a serious diabetic,

was having some kind of seizure. He had slid down onto the pavement where he lay

motionless beneath me. Dirk reached into his pocket for a handful of sugar candies that he

always carried for his own emergencies and tried to feed them to Finn, who seemed barely

able to chew, let alone swallow, and who was definitely not lucid. I pulled out my cell phone

ready to call “911," but Dirk dictated a number, which I immediately dialed, assuming it

was some diabetic hotline. But it turned out to be the number of the CCB. “Doc, just hold

the line,” Dirk commanded in a calm, authoritative voice. “When someone picks up, have

them send one of the sighted employees with a car to the corner of Prince and Main. Our

friend here just needs to get his blood sugar up, that's all.”

Meanwhile, cars were driving up and asking if we needed help - we must have

looked pretty needy at that point, three blind people at a street corner, one of them

horizontal among the hardened chunks of dirty snow. Dirk waved them off, saying that we

had the situation under control. I didn’t feel so sure, but he was my teacher and seemed

knowledgeable about diabetic crises.

I felt torn in many directions as I found myself in voice-mail hell waiting for a live

human to answer. Sure, I had never experienced this kind of thing before, but here was a

guy on the sidewalk, someone who I heard had just been in the hospital for a minor heart

attack. Were we carrying this macho independence thing too far: blind people can do

anything, so why ask for help in the face of death? To my relief, I heard a siren - apparently

a passing motorist had called 911 anyway - and within seconds paramedics had pulled up.

They loaded Finn into the van, sped off to the hospital, and that was the last I saw of him.

Until later that afternoon when my big brother strolled into the center bitching

about them cutting off his Harley shirt so they could give him injections. “Shit man,” he

said in his gravelly voice, “that was my favorite shirt. But hey, I needed the shots. Oh well,

gave up the bike and now the shirt. Fair trades for my life I guess.”

Not surprisingly, the experience with Finn prompted some soul searching on my

part. Would I have felt the same way if a sighted person had been there all along? Was I

unable to trust someone’s judgment merely because he was blind, and did this tap into my

own lack of confidence that I’d felt since childhood, the very thing that had brought me to

the Colorado Center for the Blind in the first place? Or could my biker friend have been

the victim of Dirk's NFB machismo, his need to prove that blind people could survive on

their own? If this was so, then blindness could have killed Finn - not for being pathetic and

powerless, but rather because someone had selfishly sought to prove that blindness was not

these things. Could I trust Dirk not to make me a martyr to the Cause by leaving me in a

similar circumstance if I really needed help? Suppose the ambulance had not arrived

when it did?

As much as I wanted to vilify him, I had tremendous respect for Dirk who, it turned

out, had been completely on target regarding Finn's situation. In fact, he had been on

target about everything, just as he had been thorough, serious, and measured as a teacher.

And ultimately I knew I had agreed to take certain risks by participating in the program to

begin with; if I truly wanted to confront my worst fears about blindness, this was not the

time to walk away.

With a strange combination of caution and renewed resolve, I threw myself back

into my training. Once I could get a little distance, the experience taught me that the desire

to be safe and the drive toward taking risks conflict with each other at the same time that

they operate in tandem, not unlike our “masculine” and “feminine” sides. We humans

must feel safe enough to take the risks that make life worth living. But at times we must

also put ourselves in difficult, unfamiliar situations to find the safety we crave. Blindness -

and perhaps other disabilities - puts this dynamic into a new perspective, forcing us to see

how complex something like safety really is.

This is why a few days later when Dirk barked, “Okay, Doc, show us the way

home!” I eagerly turned to lead him, Gavin, and Finn back to the center in time for lunch.

I wanted to push past my fears of collapsing and struggling alone. I wanted to prove that I

didn’t have to be the helpless little blind girl who preferred to follow just to be sure I would

be safe.

But simple resolve is never enough, as I learned all too quickly, for in my distraction

and need to appear confident I missed some irregularity on the sidewalk and pitched

forward, falling flat on my face. Thanks to the protection of the thick, foamy sleephshades,

I only had a few minor cuts on my chin, lips, and hands, and a mouth full of gravel that I

tried to remove with little delicate flicks of my tongue. “Just spit, Doc,” Dirk said, almost

tenderly. I hesitated. Good girls don’t spit, especially not good little blind ones who have

no way of knowing where it might go. “Well Doc, what are you waiting for, the Red Sox to

win the World Series?” Clearly now I had no choice but to gather up the full contents in

my mouth and let it fly. “Hell woman!” he exclaimed, “I believe you just spat on my cane!”

Later in our travels, Dirk’s cane, which he said with pride had been held together

with his infamous duct tape, finally split in two. “I’ve put hundreds of miles on this baby,

all kinds of weather, all kinds of streets,” he said with what could only have been nostalgia.

“Now the old duct tape won’t even hold her.” He guided each of our hands to the damaged

portion so we could see how well it had held up until the bitter end. When I asked Dirk if

he would miss that particular cane, he said, “Nah, I’ll just get a new one and call it

‘Widow-Maker,’ the same thing as the one before and the one before that.”

Heading home to the center, Gavin announced, “Hey, you’ve got some pretty

powerful spit there, Cathy K.”

“Positively toxic,” Finn chipped in. “Took Dirk’s cane clean apart!”

Dirk spat what I imagined to be a wad of well-chewed snuff into the street. “Not

bad for a girl,” he laughed, patting my shoulder, “not bad at all.”

It all did come down to spit. Dirk, a sensitive guy who had experienced firsthand

the fall from mainstream society’s masculine grace, showed both men and women how to

cast off our feminine selves to counter the stereotypes of helplessness triggered by the sight

of a white cane. Even though I suspect that my teacher’s macho approach to travel covered

over real fears, I gladly took up his invitation to march across the gender line. But of

course I could never be a man. Instead, if I wanted to emerge from the nongendered

hinterlands to which the double stigma of femininity and blindness had banished me, I

would have to make my way to some new place where I could consider different ideas for

my feminine self. Holding my cane, I wondered what a woman could possibly do with one

in public to make it her own in a way analogous to Dirk’s Harley. There was always

fashion. But even if a long, elegant cane seemed more chic than a short, stubby one that

folded into pieces, I still wanted to strut and spit and fix my fragility with duct tape.

Okay, so maybe it is about the phallus.

But it’s also about acting in the world. Each time I trudged through Denver’s ice

and snow, faced packs of roaring cars, and picked myself up from a spectacular fall I

confronted the fact that I choreographed my gendered role to ensure my survival. So if

Dirk had taught me to perform a new part as a blind woman, who was my audience? And

would this be a onetime show or a lifelong run?

Years later, as I wait at a corner with my white cane, I realize that as much as my

CCB show was for the entire world, a poor little blind girl still sits in the front row.

Pathetic, but wanting to be bold, she is the ghost I could finally embrace after graduating

from blind boot camp. And she is not about blindness; she is the little girl that every

woman carries within, as all of us – blind or sighted - face the same choice: when and how

do we take risks to strike that delicate balance between living safely and being a prisoner of

an abstract place known as “home”? Dirk helped me understand that because blindness

exaggerates so many expectations and fears, the blind girl-turned-woman who wants to live

a “normal” life has to push especially hard, perhaps even playing with gender now and

then. So with my teacher’s voice ringing in my ears, I step into the street. And with the

grace of an elegant diva, I flaunt my long white cane, knowing I can spit like the best of the

bikers.

Notes Special thanks to: Emily Abel, Tony Candela, Sumi Culligan, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson,

Sandra Harding, Georgina Kleege, Kim Neilsen, Kate Norberg, the participants of the UC Davis

Cross-Cultural Group in Women’s History, and the organizers of the session at the American

Anthropological Association Meeting in 2001 where I first presented this work. Above all, I

thank the students and staff of the CCB, especially “Dirk” to whom I dedicate this essay.