that I see have arms that are longer than me.

- At least you got some. (person giggles)

(playful music)

- [Interviewer] Hi!

- Hello! (giggles) I'm Jordan.

- I'm Lou.

My pronouns are they, them,

and I'm a photographer designer.

- [Interviewer] What makes you qualified

to know if someone was born with disability or not?

- I've watched enough crime shows, medical dramas.

- I don't know that I am qualified at all.

- Is anyone qualified to do that?

I don't think so.

- [Interviewer] What's disability,

how would you define it?

- Disability is a social construct.

- It is something physical that affects

the way that one interacts with the world

and the spaces around them.

- [Interviewer] What's your relationship to disability?

- I know and love a lot of people that are disabled.

I myself have a chronic illness.

- [Interviewer] Is there a difference

between people who were born with that

and people who weren't?

- I would imagine that there is

a certain mental component that comes along with that.

"This is how it was, and I've never known another."

Versus "This is was me before, this is me after."

- [Interviewer] Let's freaking do this.

- Okay.

- Hi, hi.

- 'Sup, dude? (laughs)

- Hi, y'all!

- Hello. (giggles)

- Hi! How you feeling?

- Sweaty.

- Yeah, I feel like my stomach is...

- I can sense the nervousness.

Ever stood next to anyone without any arms?

- Uh...

- What do you do for fun?

- I'm a dancer.

So I like to stay very active.

I feel like in my free time I'm always moving.

- What kind of style of dance?

- So I trained in tap and ballet.

- You do tap dance? I need to learn how to tap dance.

Can you please just show me?

- You do like a shuffle, where you hop on one leg

and then you make the flap sound.

(shoe stomps)

- Yeah. (chuckles)

- They wanna know what your dating life is like.

- I've been in a relationship

for two and a half years.

It's actually quite interesting.

'Cause it's, like, a able bodied person.

- How has your perspective about disability

changed with dating an able bodied partner?

- I had to realize that not everyone

is ready to learn, like, at the speed

that I want to teach at.

- I am going to guess that you

were born with a disability.

- Congratulations, you got the answer right. (laughs)

(group laughs) - I got the first.

Thank you!

- I think that you were born disabled

because able bodied is, like, a perspective

that you don't seem to have had.

Yeah.

- You were born with a disability.

- [Interviewer] If you saw each other

crossing from the street, would there be a nod?

- I think I would give a nod, actually.

I live in a world where most of the people

that I see, have arms that are longer than me.

And...

- At least you got some.

(group giggles)

- I would say "What's up?"

- [Interviewer] Theresa?

- No way.

- No? (laughs) (group laughs)

- [Interviewer] Theresa! You made him cry!

- Oh my God! (laughs)

- I'd probably just, like, smile at you.

- All right.

- What's up? - Hey.

- I see Godsmack, you know, I see hand tattoos.

- I wheelchair circuit.

- Oh, hell yeah.

This is a rock-and-roll.

- What do you do?

- Security.

- You're security?

- People don't think that I can do the job.

- Do you find that that is

to your benefit that they, you know?

- Yeah, I love it.

- Yeah. (laughs)

- How would you say your disability

has affected your life?

- I have wheels, it makes me faster than you. (laughs)

Because the only thing I can't do is walk.

- You seem like a big dude.

Have you, like, always been really into fitness?

- Yeah, I love sports, especially basketball.

Yeah. - Very nice! Basketball.

- I've been playing for 25 years.

- Oh, wow. - Or so, yeah.

- Hey, are you on a team?

- Yeah.

- Is it like a triple A? What are you major league?

- I'm on the division one team.

- Okay.

- So we're the elite of the elite in the United States.

- I believe you were born with the disability

because it makes me think of my friends

who have gone into play professional sports

or play at that level, have done it their whole life.

- I'm gonna guess that you were born disabled.

- How did you know?

- I was right for you? - Yeah.

- The sports that you're talking about doing

could have all been done, being disabled.

- Sure? - I think so.

Yeah. (laughs)

- I love your whole outfit.

- Thank you. (giggles)

- I see you plant pants, the boots.

- What do you do for a living?

- I design clothes for a skateboarding company.

- Oh, sick! - Yeah! (giggles)

- Very cool.

- And then my passion project

is I teach group fitness classes.

- Whoa! - Yeah. (giggles)

- There are a lot of disabled people

that come to my group fitness classes.

We do a lot of cardio strength training

and then we have some normies as well,

which is really fun.

- Normies. - [Person In Black] Yeah.

- How have your family, your friends,

their perspective changed in general.

Do you have those kind of conversations with them?

- I think with the friends,

it's surprisingly easier to explain things.

Dealing with a family has been a little bit difficult.

- [Man With Glasses] Okay. - For certain reasons.

- With family. Okay.

- I'm gonna say you were not born with the disability.

- I'll say you became disabled.

- From the experiences that you had with your family.

It seemed like maybe there was some

coming to terms or grappling with changes.

You were not born with disability.

- You got me wrong.

- I got you wrong? - Yeah. (chuckles)

- I was born with it, and my symptoms

didn't show up 'till I was six.

It's like very dynamic and it progresses over time.

Like, I identify as being disabled my whole life

but my family pretend it didn't existed.

- Yeah, yeah. - So.

I didn't really come to terms with it

until I was a lot older and then

getting a diagnosis officially

when I was, like, mid twenties.

- Wow, that's when it finally happened?

- [Person In Black] Yeah.

- Oh, what?

The gas lighting that happens, - Yes!

- From the medical industry it's just, like, the worst.

So I'm so glad that you got a diagnosis.

It's a big deal.

- Look good, dude. (laughs)

- Hello, Jordan.

- [Interviewer] Do you guys know each other?

- Well, we're both artists bumping into each other.

It's like 2006, but I'm, like,

thinking about it and I'm like, dang,

I, like, know nothing about your life.

Like... - Yeah, yeah.

- Well, so what do you like to do on a day to day basis?

- I like to sleep in, I'm a painter.

- Painter! I started to gather.

- Yeah, I can see you're, like, splattered with paint.

- Yeah, yeah.

- What kind of art do you do?

- Mostly representational.

Been a lot of animals in the past portraits.

- What made you start painting?

- I did graffiti when I was a kid

I'd skateboard during the day,

and then at night I'd, like, drink and do graffiti.

- Tell me about your dating life.

- Yeah, I'm relatively single.

(group laughs)

- I'm also relatively single. - Yeah. Yeah.

- I feel like I'm blushing right now.

Yeah, nice. I like it.

- I'm gonna say you were born with a disability.

'Cause I've been seeing you around

for probably most of my life. (laughs)

And you've always been the same way.

- Based on graffiti and skateboarding,

I would say that you became disabled.

- You're very perceptive.

- I was right. - Yeah, you're right.

- Can I ask what happened?

- I fell off a bridge and it was, like, in 2005.

- Holy shit. - Yeah.

Me and some friends were riding graffiti

and I was drunk, and broke my back,

and lost my right arm.

- Wow.

- How did it change your relationship to art?

- I got more into art after that.

I was in the hospital and I started, like,

painting immediately, and that perspective changed,

my hobbies changed, that kind of

became focus in my life.

- Yeah.

- I still do, like, art illegally.

Like I'll put up art in the streets and stuff like that.

- Do you feel that you have

any more ability to get away with it

because.... - Oh, 100%.

- I think the cops are like,

"I just don't want to deal with it."

- Yeah.

- "How I get him to the station?"

- Oh.

Nice to meet you brother.

- Yeah, likewise.

- Hey. - Hello.

- Hi.

- What do you like to do for fun?

- Well, when it's nice out, like, really nice,

I like to go to the naked beach

and you know drink the lemonades and vodka

and do some swimming.

- Sounds like a good day. (chuckles)

- Right?

- Do you have a partner

that you get do these things with?

- I'm single right now. - Okay.

- Did the wife and kids thing

and now I'm, like, dating myself.

- Oh, that's cool, yeah.

- Been a lot of fun.

And I'm also pre-menopausal.

- How would you say your perspective

on your disability has changed over time?

- I'm fully capable of doing things

that maybe originally I had to grow

and learn that that's the case.

- When you were young,

what kind of hobbies did you like to do?

- Playing in the dirt, bows and arrows, and BB gun.

- I think you were born disabled.

You mentioned things that sounded

like could have been done in a wheelchair

when you were a kid.

- I'm gonna say you were not born with disability.

The way you talked about things

seemed like a lot of focus on growth