I’m a quadriplegic and use sex workers — I want pleasure, not pity

Andrew uses sex workers thinks it should be offered to disabled adults as a form of therapy (Picture: Andrew Gurza)

Andrew Gurza was 19 when he lost his virginity to a handsome 27-year-old man he’d met through a gay hook up site. As they lay naked next to each other on the bed in his college dorm room, Andrew asked a question.

‘You just made me come, when are we going to go on our date?’ he said, assuming that if they’d slept together they could ‘do boyfriend things’.

Instead, the man pointed to his wheelchair across the room, and replied: ‘Do you see your chair over there? I came by to help you out because I felt bad for you. You were just a pity f**k.’

Andrew was diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy in 1986, just before his second birthday. He can’t walk, is a full-time power wheelchair user, and before his sexual encounter at college, he’d never even been kissed.

‘I remember laying on the bed with him, totally naked and vulnerable, thinking I need this guy to dress me and put me back in my wheelchair, so I can’t just tell him to get out,’ he tells Metro.

‘I have to stay calm, be nice, and when he leaves I can break down. So he put me in my chair and left, and I cried.’

It’s encounters like these that mean Andrew, now 41, uses sex workers to fulfil his wants and desires – something he’s done for nearly a decade.

‘I couldn’t do it anymore,’ he explains. ‘If I hire someone, I can pretend they’re my boyfriend for two hours and it’s great – it’s a form of self care.’

Andrew has used sex workers for the past eight years (Picture: Alice Xue Photography, 2022)

Andrew, from Toronto, had always known his disability set him apart. There was the little girl in the school playground who told him she hoped his whole family ended up in a wheelchair, and while his friends were going on their first dates, he was having spinal fusion surgery at 16.

He missed out on other milestones too. ‘The popular girl at school threw a party and invited the whole class but me,’ he recalls. ‘I pushed my way into getting invited but when I got there her house didn’t have a ramp, so I couldn’t get in.’ Instead Andrew went home.

He felt the same stinging rejection again when he asked a girl to prom and she declined. ‘I ended up having to go with my caregiver which was fun but my milestones just looked different to other kids.’

While his first experience of sex in college didn’t go as planned, it didn’t deter Andrew. After a friend told him the way to ‘get over someone, is to get under someone’, the disability awareness consultant soon became a self-described ‘slut’, sleeping with guys – but he was never able to find a more meaningful connection.

‘I’ve never gone on a date with someone who genuinely wants to get to know me, they just want to hookup and never see me again,’ he says. ‘It hurts and makes me really sad but if people don’t want to include me in their life, I can’t change that – I just think they’re missing out.

‘I can create my fantasy with a sex worker and still have all those feelings, so if that’s how it is for the rest of my life, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.’

It’s not just Andrew who feels like people count him out when it comes to sex and romance. More than a quarter of disabled people say it’s assumed they never have sex, according to a study by disability platform Purpl.

Andrew believes governments should fund sex work for disabled adults (Picture: Andrew Gurza)

But this couldn’t be further from the truth, says Andrew. ‘I love romance, kissing, body contact and any touch that’s not medical. I want someone who genuinely wants to spend time with me and maybe we’ll laugh and maybe we’ll blow each other,’ he says, adding, ‘I like hand stuff, making out, but I’m not into penetrative sex.’

Andrew conveyed his preferences the first time he met Jon, who has been his sex worker for around eight years. 

‘I kept going to escort sites and looking at the guys but their rates were expensive,’ Andrew remembers. ‘I figured I should use that money for groceries, but then one day I thought “f**k it!”!

So Jon went over to Andrew’s house and the pair sat on his sofa for 25 minutes while they discussed each other’s wants and needs. ‘It was very awkward at first because it was transactional, but I said that I wanted him to enjoy it.

‘Jon had never been with a disabled person before so he was nervous, but then he made the first move and we just fell into it. Now I’m so grateful to have him in my life.’

It was imperative to Andrew that he discussed his needs so he felt safe, but also so he could show the sex worker he was capable of pleasuring him too.

Once Jon left later that evening, Andrew was excited because it had been everything he wanted, but he also had a ‘lot of fear that [his] disabled body wasn’t good enough.’

He needn’t have worried because he now sees Jon regularly but, as Jon charges around £160 for two hours, Andrew has to save up between each appointment so the pair meet up every few months.

‘People think sex work is this dirty, seedy thing people do but it’s not – it’s about building a relationship with someone,’ he adds. ‘It can be fulfilling your sexual fantasy or just wanting someone in your space. Sometimes we’ll just watch TV and enjoy each other’s company.

‘As someone with severe disabilities who is frequently touched by caregivers in a medical way, to have someone touch me intimately, whether that’s like “let’s have sex right now” or “let me just touch your face” – is so important to me.

‘It’s a therapeutic practice. Just like I’ll go for physio, I’ll go for sex therapy.’

Andrew with his mother who supports his wants and needs (Picture: Andrew Gurza)

Andrew admits there were moments when he first started seeing Jon that he got ‘a little bit too attached’ and began messaging him romantically, but once the sex worker set boundaries, it became a very strong working relationship.

‘Even though it’s a transaction it can be hard because we’re taught romance is supposed to be this never ending feeling we’re meant to have all the time,’ Andrew explains. ‘But I like the honesty of, “I’m here for you and I’ll do what you’re asking me to do with consent and what makes me feel safe. I’m just not your partner.”’

He sees sex work as a privilege and recognises not everyone can afford it, which is why he believes it should be government funded for disabled people – something something already offered in Denmark, under the official ‘Sex, irrespective of disability’ campaign, which pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled adults.

In 2020, Australia’s federal court also ruled that government funding could legitimately be used by disabled adults to pay sex workers, although this was reversed in 2024 when the use of its National Disability Insurance Scheme to fund sex work was banned.

Under England’s complex prostitution laws, paying for sex is a not a crime – but actions that encourage it are. However, in 2021, the Court of Protection ruled that it’s lawful for carers to help disabled clients find and pay for sex.

There are still calls from disabled UK residents for the NHS to fund sex worker visits for disabled people, while escort sites like Vivastreet support positive opportunities that sex work offers to people living with disabilities.

‘Sex work is a part of disability justice,’ Andrew says. ‘It provides the clients a chance to access their own pleasure and I think everyone should have that option.’

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