Ryan O'Connell first came across my radar when he was writing for the website Thought

Catalog.

This was just about 10 years ago, but in terms of the internet, it was still so new, and it

really felt like he was pushing the boundaries of what you could

or could not write about online.

He talked about loneliness and sex or lack of sex, his body, and just the stress of figuring

out who you are in the world.

It's that intimacy in his writing that I now see captivating people in his new Netflix show called Special.

He's bearing at all, and quite literally, he'll hear us talk about a memorable scene with a sex worker,

and why he thinks that sex work is something that we shouldn't be afraid to engage in, or at the very least, just talk about.

Ryan also has cerebral palsy, and didn't come out of what he calls the disability closet until

he was 28.

So today, we're talking about all of this and more.

From Luminary Media, I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is LGBTQ and A.

So the series and your book both begin with a car crash, which actually happened to you.

And after that, everyone assumed that you had a limp and other things as a result of a car crash and not your cerebral palsy.

And you didn't correct them. No, serri. I took it and I ran with it. So why was that easier for people

to process and relate to? To me, there's a lot of ignorance around what serrable palsy is and honestly

it's not entirely their fault because serraub palsy truly looks different on everybody.

You can dress it up, you can dress it down.

So I think that whenever I had to explain to someone that I had surrogal palsy, it was kind of was met with confusion and I hated it.

So then with an accident, you're just like, oh, I got hit by a car.

...