Modern Love The Podcast is made possible with support from Living Proof.

Everyone's hair is unique. Find your best hair at LivingProof.com by taking a quiz to get your perfect mix of product.

Use the code Love at LivingProof.com for a free travel-sized dry shampoo with your $20 order.

We are the science. You are the Living Proof.

And Buy Squarespace.

Love can present challenges, but being modern with a website of your own can be easy with Squarespace, start a free trial today and use their templates to express yourself.

Go to squarespace.com and enter offer code ModernLove to get 10% off your first purchase.

From the New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

Stories of Love, loss and redemption. I'm your host, Megna Chacrabardi.

Gary Pressley had all but given up on the idea of finding love, but as the Romantics out there know, love can find you when you least expect it.

And sometimes even when you're resisting it.

All in feral, known for his work on the film in Bruge and HBO's True Detective, reading Gary's essay, Would My Heart Outrun Its Persuer.

I am near quadriplegic. I result of polio and I cannot stand. I have limited strength in my arms enough to function once I'm in my chair, but not enough to get into or out of the chair.

To be able to live in my own apartment as I desired, rather than in the custodial care of a nursing home, require the assistance of a rotation crew of attendance to transfer me from wheelchair to bed, bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to shower chair. You get the idea.

10 to 20 minutes in the mornings and in the evenings usually did the trick.

The female attendance preferred to come in pairs, all the better to help a man into his bed and their undress him.

I am somewhat deferential in the company of women, and I had made a conscientious effort to avoid any touch, any word that might be construed as improper.

With that the arrangement sailed along with no problems, soon settling into a job done and forgotten. At least until Belinda.

A young mother of two boys showed up as half my attendant team. She was working evenings to pay for her college education.

Earlier that day I had noticed the part of the assembly of my shower chair was loose.

Do you know how to use a socket wrench? I asked Belinda. Sure, she replied. I was a tomboy. I helped my father all the time when I was a girl.

She had a silky sheet of straight brunette hair pulled together at the nape of her delicate neck, exotic dark hazel eyes and a dancer's light body.

...