"We're not doing this for a hug — we're going for a fucking gold medal," says a quadriplegic-rugby player, outraged that the Paralympics are confused with the Special Olympics.

    Well, no one who sees that player and his teammates in Murderball, named Best Documentary at Sundance, will ever make that mistake again. The film provides a frequently hilarious reality check about what disability entails: yes, it does mean a brutal period of adjustment; no, it does not mean the end of participation in violent sports.

    Like the state of Texas, the quadriplegic-rugby player's identity is built on a defeat — some awful, Alamo-scale atrocity visited upon the body. In the case of Austin-based quad-rugby spokesperson Mark Zupan, that horror was a car crash that threw him into a canal, where he hung onto a branch for thirteen hours until he was found. As horrific as that accident was, Zupan says since then plenty of things have actually changed for the better — including his sex life. — Ada Calhoun

Almost all the guys
on your team are attractive. Do you have to be hot to play quad rugby (also
known as wheelchair rugby)?

That's pretty funny. No. Those guys made a great film about our lives. They portrayed us as how we are. Some of us are pretty decent looking. We're basically normal. We have decent style [gestures to tattoos]. I'm doing stuff with MTV. We have hot girlfriends. People are like, "Man your girlfriend's hotter than mine!" I'm like, why are you telling me this? Why are you surprised?

You're still with Jess, your girlfriend from the film.

Yes, she's here in New York for the premiere. It's her first time in New York, so Chris [Igoe, Zupan's best friend from the film] is showing her around.

Does she still work at a morgue?

No, that was just when we met. We got to see some pretty cool stuff — or some morbid stuff, anyway. Interesting stuff. We had a mutual friend who worked at the morgue who would pull back sheets and show us: "Here's Mary Sue, who got backed over by a bus."

Do you have groupies?

Not yet. It may change down the line. People are recognizing us on the street and the film hasn't even come out yet!

The film is very frank about sex in a wheelchair. Were you shown that same crazy Sexuality Reborn video in rehab that they show clips from in Murderball?

No. I've heard it's pretty graphic. It seemed pretty self-explanatory to me; you have to get used to your new body. So you try one thing and you find out, well, that doesn't work, so you try this and that works well. It's funny — I met the people who did that movie at one of our screenings. They came up and said, "I'm such-and-such from SEXUALITY REBORN," and I was like, HOLY SHIT. But even if I were shown it, I would have skipped out. I wasn't into group activities in rehab. I was just lifting weights or trying to get home to hang out with my friends.

In the film you meet someone like that — the (also extremely attractive) Keith, who has just had an accident on his motorcycle and is majorly depressed. He falls in love with the idea of quad rugby. It's so sweet when he gets in the quad rugby chair and wants to run into the hospital walls with it.

Yeah, it was so great to see him light up, like a kid in a candy store. And it'll be fun tonight at the premiere cause I got him his own chair. He has no idea. Someone called and said "I'm going to donate some money" and I said we should spend it on a chair for him.
I bet you get a lot more players after this movie comes out.

If we can get into hospitals, we can be like recruiters! We can be the new ambulance chasers. Are you para or quad? Para? Quad? Quad! All right! The more the merrier. I believe it'll change their lives. It's a better thing to focus their energies on than "I'm gonna walk again! I'm gonna walk again!"

Speaking of rehab, someone in the film says the first thing most men want to learn — before they even try to hold a toothbrush — is how to masturbate. Is that pretty standard?

Yeah, a guy's going to be a guy. He has to know if he can still jerk off. It's part of life, you know. Complete paraplegics can't get hard. They have to use an injection of Prostaglandin. You use that and you can drive nails through the wall for hours with your erection. When I was in the hospital, I was intubated and had a feeding tube. When I finally had all that taken out, I was trying to feel around. I had a catheter but didn't know that. I just felt something hard down there. A nurse came in and I said, "I've had a twenty-four-hour hard-on! This is so cool!" And she just turned bright red. You're definitely always thinking with your penis.

From what you say in the film, women are always thinking about your penis, too. The first thing they want to know when they see the chair is if you can still have sex.

Girls are always curious. You sit down to have a drink and right away, they're like, "Can you have sex?" And you're like, "Yeah!" We're pretty confident. We may seem cocky to some. Guys in chairs are always worried about pleasuring a woman. You're not worried about yourself per se. You want to make sure she has a good time before you do. Me and a couple of friends have talked about that. I 'm not sure why, but guys in chairs aren't typically like, "I've got to come and forget about her." At times it's freaked girls out. They get pissed that they don't make you come, like "Did I not do something right?" And you're like, "You're missing the point." I have more fun in a chair than I did before.

Do you use any sex drugs?

Paraplegics are envious of us because we can function fairly normally. Being in a chair you can get all the Viagra you want. Doctors are like, "Sure! Sure!" In rehab, they're like, "Would you like to try this injection?" You say, "Maybe?" And they give it to you and you think, "Damn! This thing's been up for a long, long time! And you have this warning: "If erections last longer than four hours, see your doctor." They tell you take Sudafed to open the blood vessels. You don't want to have to go to the hospital and say, "This thing won't go down."
What's better than injections?

I've only tried Cialis a couple of times. Viagra is more spontaneous. It's my favorite. I cut them in half. You put it under your tongue. Levitra I've never tried.

Have you heard about the new drug for premature ejaculation?

Seriously? [In announcer voice] I have a problem with premature ejaculation. Try this pill! Side effects include diarrhea, headaches—

I think it only buys you like a minute, though.

I'm no longer the two-pump chump — I'm the three-and-a-half!

Your team is made up of guy's guys.

We like to drink a lot. We like . . . the scenery, if you will.

How about the filmmakers [Dana Adam Shapiro, Henry-Alex Rubin and Jeff Mandel]?

Dana and I had really similar music interests. He introduced me to Built to Spill. I introduced him to Modest Mouse, old Pearl Jam and old Corrosion to Conformity. Soul Coughing is one of my favorite bands. I've been listening to Mike Doughty's solo stuff continuously for the last few months.

Even with your shared musical interests, it must have been hard to trust them. The film is very intimate.

Becoming friends with them helped us. They said, "We're going to keep filming unless you tell us to stop." And I said back to them, "If you have any questions, I'll answer them."

Will you play in the next Paralympics? How's the U.S. team shaping up?

They put everyone back in the pool so we have to try out again at the end of this year.

Did the film soften you at all on Joe Soares, the high-strung player who abandoned the U.S. team to coach for Canada?

No. Joe and I will never get along. He's not my kind of person. He does whatever the fuck he does, but I'm not going to go out to a bar and have a drink with him. He won't be coming to Thanksgiving and if I have children, he won't be there to witness their birth, let's put it that way.

You want kids?

Yes, I want two, at least one boy. The other day it came to me: my boy will be named Zachary Thomas Zupan. I want to play catch with him and show my son what my parents showed me. I'm so lucky to have parents like mine. They're why I'm still alive.

So you want to get married?

If I'm going to have children, I'd like to. It's not in the cards right now. I've had relationships where I've thought about it but it wasn't quite right. I'm thirty. I feel like I'm still young and dumb.

Well, that's no obstacle. Jess talked about how a lot of women are drawn to men in wheelchairs because of the mothering instinct. Do you agree?

She always says, "I'll give you the world; you just don't take it." Her best friend — he's irresponsible, so she does everything for him. But I don't want that. The mothering instinct is an interesting thing, but I'll ask if I want help. Coming off the plane, people will just start pushing my chair and I'll have to tell them to stop. If I have to struggle up the ramp, let me struggle.
 n°




Murderball will be released on a rolling schedule starting July 8. For more information, see murderballmovie.com.




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