Page 142 of Playing By Ear

“Studio lights,” she said with a huff. “So you’ve invested serious money into your-your-your⁠—”

“Job,” Perry finished. “It’s a job. And yes, I pay taxes on the income I earn there.”

“See, Fiona, he pays taxes,” his father said.

“Hold on,” she said, then paused. “You told them about your vision a few weeks ago. Did Jamie tell you to do it?”

“No one tells me to do anything, especially not a boyfriend. You know that.”

“Did Jamie encourage you to do it?”

“This was my decision.” Perry wished he’d told his parents one at a time, starting with his dad. “And it was a good one. My viewers were massively supportive. I should’ve done it sooner. I should’ve had more faith in them.”

“Faith in perverts who pay for virtual sex?” she hissed.

Perry sat with his dry mouth hanging open, his face awash in a wave of heat. While he hadn’t expected her to celebrate his venture, he’d clearly miscalculated her opposition.

His father broke the silence. “What if we agree not to discuss this further, as it’s clearly a sensitive topic?”

“As a therapist,” Fiona said, “I can assure you that that is not the healthiest route.”

Perry scoffed. “Can you just be a mum and not a therapist?”

“If I was your therapist,” she said, “this would be an entirely different conversation.”

“In that case, can you please be a therapist and not a mum?”

She took a deep breath through her nose, then let it out slowly through her mouth. He tried doing the same, though his lungs resisted.

“Perry,” she said, her voice lower and calmer now. “You say your viewers are supportive about your blindness. What are you basing that conclusion on?”

“On their comments, on their continued viewership, on their…generosity.” No, generosity made him sound like a charity case, his mother’s biggest fear. “On their patronage.”

“Is it possible their support, in all these forms, grows out of, I don’t know, compassion?”

Perry bristled. “You mean pity?”

“That’s an extreme word. It’s interesting you arrived there, though.”

There it was, the therapy talk. “Can you go back to being a mum?”

“Fine,” she said. “As a mum, I want people to value you for who you are, not for your disability. It’s demeaning.”

“I’m happier and better at my job now I’m no longer hiding my disability. If my viewers like me more, it’s because they sense my authenticity, not because they feel sorry for me.”

“You shouldn’t let your vision impairment define you. I certainly don’t.”

“I’m glad that approach works for you.” Perry went on, ready to say what he’d bottled up for years. “But blindness is part of my identity. I’m not simply an individual in a vacuum who happens to be blind. I’m part of a community that demands and deserves accommodation from the able-bodied majority. We’re not ashamed of who we are, and we’re also not ashamed to admit that it fucking sucks. We don’t want to be perfectly sanguine saints like you.”

“I’ve never claimed to be a saint,” she said, as evenly as ever.

Her composure only wound him up further. “Mum, every time I feel sorry for myself, I hear your voice in my head telling me to buck up and carry on. It doesn’t help! It makes me feel worse. It makes me feel weak.”

He stopped talking, startled at his own intensity.

His mum sighed. “I don’t know how a conversation about you stripping for strangers turned into a debate over the medical versus social models of disability, but I promise I’ll think about what you said.”

Perry put his face in his hands. “Okay. Whatever.” The car went silent for several moments.