4 Americans With Disabilities Open Up About Their Cost of Living

Thirty+ years after G.H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, four Americans with disabilities reflect on the struggle to secure a financial future. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [The Cost of Living With a Disability in America]( The Cost of Living With a Disability in America Last month, I spent days sobbing quietly in the bathroom. I was low on medical supplies for my daily catheterizations—and worse—low on income, desperate to figure out how I was going to swing it. Despite having a near constant flow of work (for which, I’m both lucky and grateful), I’m always barely making it, financially. While life with a disability isn’t necessarily as removed from the normative experience as I think many able-bodied people tend to think it is, the barriers that plague our access to any semblance of economic stability are nearly impossible to overcome. I have not one dollar to put toward retirement, and no realistic path toward home ownership or meaningful savings or investment. I carry over inflated debts acquired from birth onward that are impossible to pay in a lifetime, regardless of any income I manage to bring in. I am not alone in this. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [California Dreamin' With Taylor Fritz, America's Top Ranked Tennis Star](esquire.com/sports/a44869643/taylor-fritz-interview-us-open/) California Dreamin' With Taylor Fritz, America's Top Ranked Tennis Star It’s 7:30 in the morning at Los Angeles’ Chateau Marmont. The hotel’s famous gothic-nouveau facade is still shaded; the sun hasn’t yet risen high enough above Hollywood to brighten its alabaster balconies and broad-striped awnings. The table between the entrance’s green velvet settees has a straggler champagne glass from the night before–it’s the kind of place that doesn’t shy away from its spirited decadence, and where, perhaps more than any other hotel in the world, stars are extolled, mythologized, and sometimes even dismantled. In the morning quietude, a matte black Tesla has silently pulled up the driveway. Taylor Fritz steps out. A lithe six-foot-five, he is Southern California-handsome—longish hair, big smile, tanned skin—and he looks very much like someone who could be famous. That is to say: he fits the scene. Setting notwithstanding, his starry vibe can be attributed, first and foremost, to his damn good tennis game. Twenty-five-year-old Fritz is currently ranked ninth on the ATP Tour (global men’s tennis’ preeminent governing body), though his all-time best position is fifth, which he achieved this past February. For U.S.-born players, he is the highest ranked at present–a leading position amongst a stacked field of ascendant talents and ATP standings, with names including Frances Tiafoe (10), Tommy Paul (14), Christopher Eubanks (30) and Sebastian Korda (33) not far behind. What propelled Fritz to this threshold is a naturally athletic yet acutely developed baseline skillset, which he uses to generate deep, fast groundstrokes, a lethal serve (which he says is his best shot, generally, without giving away his “very specific” fortes), and a hell of a lot of court coverage thanks to his height. [Read the Full Story](esquire.com/sports/a44869643/taylor-fritz-interview-us-open/) [The Scout Who Found Patrick Mahomes]( The Scout Who Found Patrick Mahomes When Brett Veach followed Andy Reid to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2013, he accepted a position as the team’s “pro and college personnel analyst,” a vague, undefined front‑office role that doubled as a blank canvas, a dream job for an upwardly mobile football scout. Veach worked under general manager John Dorsey, an archetypal football grunt with a general’s baritone voice and a habit of wearing the same gray sweatshirt, and Chris Ballard, a handsome, well‑coiffed director of pro personnel with a bright future. Veach did a little of everything—college scouting, pro personnel work; the job description was basically Let’s see what you got—but above all else, he watched tape of football players. Mahomes had just finished his sophomore season—just two years removed from Whitehouse High. He’d thrown for 4,653 yards as a sophomore and put up big numbers in the Red Raiders’ Air Raid offense, as most Texas Tech quarterbacks did, but owing to his quiet college recruitment and the fact he wasn’t eligible for the draft for another year, he wasn’t exactly on NFL radars. “Who is this guy?” Veach thought. To Veach, the question became an obsession. One day that spring, as he later recalled, he was grinding Mahomes tape on a quiet weekend inside the Chiefs’ offices when Andy Reid happened by. Reid was curious about what Veach was up to. Veach had a simple answer: He was watching the next quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs. [Read the Full Story]( [Zach Johnson Is the Right Man for the Job. And He's Looking the Part.]( Zach Johnson Is the Right Man for the Job. And He's Looking the Part. When I walk into the tailoring room on the second floor of Ralph Lauren’s Chicago store—the brand’s largest brick-and-mortar in the world—Zach Johnson already has a colorful array of polos and button-downs spread out on a table. RL staffers are pulling shirts, asking questions, and returning with new hues of blue for the PGA Tour veteran. Johnson’s really not here for polos, though. For the fifth year running, Ralph Lauren will outfit Team USA for the Ryder Cup, pro golf’s biannual, transatlantic battle of the best. Johnson, a five-time Ryder Cup team member, will serve as the head captain for the first time in his career. He’s in Chicago to attend the BMW Championship, the penultimate tournament on the PGA Tour’s playoff schedule. He’s got players to scout and a handful of captain’s picks to make. But first, he needs a suit. [Read the Full Story]( [In the Year’s Best Comedies, Millennials Lament the World They Grew Up In]( In the Year’s Best Comedies, Millennials Lament the World They Grew Up In Say what you will about millennials—and people have said plenty—but the first generation to grow up online has made some pretty great comedies. Shows like Broad City and Workaholics satirized a generation’s signature state of arrested development, daring to show the world what happens when someone repeatedly blows their entire paycheck on a volcano vaporizer. They avoided the earnestness that often plagues comedies in their later seasons, and even resisted pivoting to outrage comedy during the Trump years. Most recently, there's The Other Two, a scathing satire of the media and entertainment industries, created by two former SNL head writers and quintessential millennials Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider. Unlike Workaholics and Broad City, The Other Two started to soften as it approached July’s series finale, culminating in major mea culpas, from the show’s two main characters. The problem with mea culpas is that they aren’t very funny. (There’s a reason Steve Erkle’s catchphrase was “Did I do that?” and not, “I’m sorry I did that.”) [Read the Full Story]( [Persecution in the Name of the Lord]( Persecution in the Name of the Lord At CCU, as at many conservative evangelical schools, undergraduates must sign a “lifestyle covenant,” or honor code, that forbids certain behaviors. In the 2022–23 student handbook, tucked between bans on arson and sexual assault, was a prohibition on “Same-sex relationships: engaging in a romantic same-sex relationship, defending, or advocating for same-sex romantic relationships.” Additionally, under the school’s “knowing presences policy,” students who failed to report their rule-breaking peers could also be disciplined, facing penalties as severe as suspension or dismissal. Journey Mueller sensed her friends were “stressing out about what they were going to do, because they didn’t want to get me in trouble,” she says. Ultimately, they followed school policy and reported her code violations to leadership, which led to disciplinary action. Journey faced expulsion unless she renounced her “behavior” and underwent therapy and mentoring. “I felt like I could lose everything,” she says, explaining that her CCU scholarships and financial aid, which covered housing and much of her tuition, were the sole reason she could afford higher education. She was a low-income teen who had spent years turning to food pantries and hand-me-downs for survival, and college was her ticket to the middle class. She couldn’t afford to follow her heart; instead, she would follow the rules. [Read the Full Story]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( esquire.com ©2023 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019