The first time I saw him, he was walking down the street singing to himself. Even if it weren't for the white cane, I would have known by the way he held his head tipped back, his eyes squeezed shut, completely in his own world. He was wearing a black leather jacket and his long blond hair spread out over his shoulders.
I was tempted to follow him, or do anything that might catch his attention, but it was late and I was waiting for a very infrequent bus. I would have to let him go. But then he walked by again, and then a third time. I was struck by how relaxed and confident he seemed. He must have been blind his whole life, I thought. My heart started beating faster. But then my bus came and I got on. The whole time I was thinking, I must meet him somehow. It has to happen.
The only plan that came to mind was to put a "missed connection" ad in the local free weekly paper. I had to admit it was a pretty stupid plan. After all, how would he even know it was there? But I couldn't think of anything else, so I stifled my embarrassment and placed the following ad: "BLIND GUY walking up and down Broad St 9 PM 11/2, black leather jacket, singing. OK, so he can't read this ad, but if you know him please tell him to call. I'd like to talk to him." I called the voice mailbox for my ad every day for a month, but there was no reply, and eventually I forgot about him.
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Six months later, I was walking down the same street, shopping and generally wasting time. On the corner in front of Payless was a guy playing the guitar. I almost walked right by him, when suddenly I noticed the white cane laying across his empty guitar case. My heart almost stopped and I did the biggest double take--it was him. There he was, just inches from me, practically displaying himself on the street as if he were waiting for me to go over and talk to him.
It was too much. I retreated to the Urban Outfitters across the street and pretended to look at the clothes while I watched him through the plate glass. I was still in my early 20s, and I hadn't learned not to be shy--there was nothing I hated more than making idle conversation with a stranger. But he was the one I had been waiting for, and now I had been given a second chance. I found myself walking back across the street, as if pulled by gravity.
For a while I just stood there and watched him play. I watched his fingers moving across the strings, giving his world solidity and shape. When I thought of him touching my face with those same fingers, learning its outlines, I felt as if I would faint.
I was not the only audience member. Several people stopped for a few minutes to listen, then threw some money in the guitar case and moved on. I noticed an attractive Asian girl standing next to me, and I saw my own intense gaze mirrored in her face. For a moment I was thrown--could there actually be another person who shared these same desires? I probably should have struck up a friendship with her instead, but at the time my only thought was, I saw him first. the next time he paused to tune the guitar, I stepped forward and spoke, emboldened by jealousy,.
"You sound really good," I lied. On the noisy street corner, I had barely heard a single note. Not that it mattered.
His face brightened as it turned in my direction. He didn't know a pretty girl was listening, I thought with an excited shiver.
"Hey, thanks. Do you have any requests?"
Now I was stuck. "Uh, I dunno. Anything."
"OK, here's one. I think you'll like this." He started to play, while I waited impatiently for the song to be over so we could talk some more. I was standing closer now, and I could see that he had glass eyes. They almost looked real, but somehow didn't catch the light in quite the right way, and they remained rigid and unmoving.
Finally the song was over. I complimented him again, then introduced myself and before I knew it we were having a real conversation. I found out that his name was Jeff, and he lived in the apartment building directly behind us. He lived on SSI, but considered himself a professional musician.
Being near him, I felt powerful and sexy, and somehow the words kept pouring out of my mouth. I stayed on the corner with him for a long time, talking and listening to him play. I gave him a drink from my water bottle, shivering again as he touched the top with his fingers before he took a drink. When he handed the bottle back to me, I touched it in the same way, first with my fingers, then with my tongue, wondering what it felt like to him.
We happened to be standing next to my bus stop, and I must have seen the number seven go by about five times, but I couldn't leave. My luck did not hold, though; eventually two scary homeless-type guys came by and joined in the conversation. When they started making crude comments about me, I had to leave. I hadn't found out his phone number, or even his last name.
But now I had a mission. At least I knew where he lived. His apartment was just off a busy street, full of stores I liked to shop at. There had to be a good chance that I would run into him again, if I only went there often enough. For two months, I nearly wore out my bus pass, going up to Broad St. every chance I got. I lurked on the corner by his apartment, buying clothes I couldn't afford and eating meals I didn't want, just to have an excuse to stay longer, but every time I went home disappointed, wondering why I couldn't just get over it and have a normal boyfriend, one I didn't have to turn into a stalker to meet.
Then, one sunny day in June, my plan worked. I had been walking up and down the street for nearly an hour and was about to call it quits when I saw him cross the street headed towards me. But wait, he was with some heavy metal guy with long hair and tattoos. I didn't want to make a pass at him in front of some other guy. I hesitated for a minute and they walked by me. But of course he didn't know I was there; unless I made the first move, I was invisible.
"Jeff!" I shouted, running after him.
He whirled around suddenly, fixing me with his flat, glassy stare. "Who is it?"
"It's the girl who listened to you playing the guitar a few weeks ago, remember? I mean we talked a little and I'm sorry I left so suddenly, but I haven't really seen you around since then . . ." In my nervousness I was babbling and nearly revealed that I had been stalking him for a month, but he didn't seem to notice. In fact he looked pleased to run into me again. And miraculously, the other guy disappeared; he wasn't even a friend, just some guy who had helped him across the street.
"So, um, how have you been?" I asked.
"Not so good. I caught a real bad cold." He coughed in demonstration, then took another drag on his cigarette. "Now I got an ear infection, and I'm going down to the clinic to get it checked out. It's been hurting for a few days and I'm starting to get worried. I mean, it would really suck if I lost my hearing." He was trying to be casual, but he was clearly worried, and with good reason. I felt a flash of sympathy. True, I was attracted to his disability, but that didn't mean I wished him further misfortune.
"Yeah, that would really suck."
"Um, I know you're probably really busy, but would you mind telling me when the number nine bus comes?"
I smiled slowly. "No, I'm not busy at all. I was just hanging around anyway. I don't mind waiting."
He thanked me then lit up another cigarette. I waited a few more minutes before asking, "Do you know where the clinic is after you get off the bus? Have you been there before?"
He admitted that he didn't, and hadn't. "You know, I'm really not doing anything right now," I continued. "I could ride there with you, if you want. I have a bus pass so it wouldn't even cost me anything." He resisted for about a second, but I was not going to take no for an answer, and besides, he did actually need the help.
On the bus, my plan suffered a major setback when he let it slip that he had a girlfriend named Julie. She would have taken him to the clinic, he explained, but she was working at Target. I tried to conceal my disappointment.
Once we were at the clinic, it was only natural that I take him inside to the check-in counter. There the nurse handed him a stack of forms which I generously offered to help him fill out. Really there is no better way to get to know someone quickly than to go through a pile of official paperwork together. Within ten minutes, I knew all his vital stats, his life history and family background, and even better, he was impressed with my kindness and patience. After the forms were completed, we proceeded to the waiting room. There were only three or four people ahead of us, but for some reason it was nearly two hours before the doctor called him. He spent that time telling me about himself, while I listened and marveled at my good luck. Here I was, getting friendly with the guy I had almost despaired of meeting again. The cold clinical atmosphere of the hospital only heightened my excitement.
I found out that he had gone blind as an infant, because he was born prematurely and placed in an incubator with too much oxygen. (He was surprised that I knew about that phenomenon) He told me about his childhood, the only child of a welfare mom, how he had been sent to public school (more out of poverty than any concerted attempt at mainstreaming, it seemed) where he had run wild because none of the teachers had the guts to discipline a poor blind kid. He told me in detail about his girlfriend: she was much younger than he, and they had been about to break up when she had pulled the dirtiest trick in the book: she insisted that she was on the pill, but somehow she had gotten pregnant. Now he felt obliged to take care of her, although since they were both broke, for now she was living with her parents. I also found out that he supplemented his SSI "blind money" by selling pot, mostly to the other residents of his state-supported apartment building.
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When the doctor finally called him, I was hoping to go into the exam room with him. Not only would I possibly see him take his clothes off, but I wanted to see what the doctor might do to embarrass himself. For some reason, most doctors seem the least able to handle being around disabled people. Maybe the disability is an affront to their profession, a symbol of failure for modern medicine. Unfortunately, I was not invited in, but the doctor, a young Indian man, did not disappoint me. After about thirty minutes, they emerged into the waiting room. As if Jeff were not even there, the doctor turned to me. "He's got a slight infection in his left ear--there's some redness and fluid--but it should clear up with antibiotics. I'm giving him Erythromycin. Make sure he takes it with food three times a day and finishes the whole bottle . . ."
I couldn't resist torturing him. "Why are you telling me this?"
The doctor stopped talking and gaped at me. "I, uh, you're not his girlfriend?"
I laughed. "No, and I'm not his mother either. I'm just some stranger who helped him fill out the forms. Why don't you talk to him directly? He's standing right here."
"Yeah, I haven't gone deaf yet," Jeff added, getting in the action. The doctor repeated his speech, stammering and dark red.
We had a good laugh as we walked out the door. "You must meet a lot of clueless people like that," I said.
He shrugged. "Most people aren't that totally rude. There's just something about doctors."
Our next task was to get the prescription filled, after stopping at the bank so he could get some cash. He seemed less embarrassed about having me help him, now that we had gotten to know each other. Still, he insisted on buying me dinner as a sort of repayment. Finally, after dinner, I could think of no other excuse to hang around. It was time to go. But this time I made sure I got his phone number before I left. I wrote it on a napkin.
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After a few days, I called and boldly made a date for the next day. I was literally flushed with anticipation, which made the crushing disappointment all the worse when I discovered that he had also invited over his girlfriend Julie and her best friend. As I suspected, they were fat. What is it about blind guys and fat girlfriends? Don't they feel insulted when some fat girl decides to date them because no seeing guy would ever want them? Anyway these girls were huge; they were like planets in orbit around Jeff. Julie was seven months pregnant and it didn't even show. I later saw her flop onto the bed on her stomach. I stubbornly hung around for several painful hours, trying to be pleasant and make small talk with the planets, but after a while I gave up and went home. Later I was filled with self-loathing. What was I doing messing with this poor guy's head? Clearly he wanted nothing to do with me. Right?
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But then he called me about a week later and apologized. He wanted to see me again, could he come over right now? I thought fast. I had to attend a friend's wedding later in the day, but if he took the bus to my house, we would have a few hours to hang out. I met him at the bus stop. There was a moment of confusion when the bus driver told him he was not at his stop yet, but luckily I saw him and shouted loudly enough for him to hear me through the closing door. He was wearing a weird sort of turtleneck sweater with faux Native medicine bag hung around his neck like a necklace. It looked terrible, but I was charmed that he was trying to impress me.
Once we were home and he was seated rather stiffly on my lumpy futon sofa, however, I was suddenly overcome with nerves. Should I jump him right away? But what about that girlfriend thing? I decided to let him make the first move, which turned out to be, not surprisingly, to get stoned.
"You said it was your birthday last week, so I thought I'd bring you a present," he explained, holding out a little bag of pot. After a few bowls, I relaxed a little, but I still felt like all I could do was talk. We talked for a long time, until I realized the wedding would be starting in just a few minutes.
"Uh, you don't mind if I just get changed while you're here, do you?" I asked.
"It's OK with me. I promise not to look," he said, and we both laughed. "It doesn't make a difference to me."
But didn't it? After all he knew I was standing there, flinging off my jeans and t-shirt right in front of him, even if he couldn't see me. And he could hear me pulling on pantyhose and slipping on my dress, a sleeveless fitted silk thing with matching jacket. I asked him to do up the zipper in the back, then turned to face him.
"What do you think of my dress?" I asked, putting his hand on my shoulder. He gasped slightly as his hand encountered my bare skin, then stepped forward slightly and ran his fingers very lightly all over the dress. I grabbed his hand and put it on my thigh.
"See? I'm even wearing pantyhose." He ran his hand over my leg, then pulled back nervously. I smiled to see the color rising in his face.
"Do you, um, do you mind if I touch your face?" He seemed hesitant, as if he expected me to refuse.
"I don't mind," I whispered. I wanted to tell him that this was what I had been waiting for, that the gentle touch of his fingers on my face was more erotic than even the touch of his lips on mine, but I remained silent as I took his waiting hands and placed them on my cheeks. We were standing so close I could feel his breath. He frowned in concentration as he ran his fingers all over my face, delicately tracing the outline of my eyebrows, the bridge of my nose, my curling eyelashes, the ridge of my lips, over and over again. Kiss me, oh kiss me, I wanted to shout, but instead he moved his hands up over my head, stroking my hair.
"It's so long!' he exclaimed. "I didn't know. . ." I turned around so he could feel how my hair hung down past my waist. He ran his hands through it again and again while I luxuriated like a cat being petted.
"You're beautiful."
"Are you surprised?"
"No, I heard those guys talking about you on the street that day we met, but now I know for myself."
"Well, thank you."
He laughed. "You think a blindie like me can't appreciate a beautiful woman?"
I turned around to face him. "No, I don't think that at all. Just because you can't see me doesn't mean you can't appreciate the way I feel or smell. . ."
He seemed pleased, but also surprised. Hadn't anyone ever talked about these things with him before?
Needless to say, I arrived at the wedding hours late, stoned out of my skull, and having forgotten the present, but I didn't care.
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As I expected, Jeff called me a few days later, in the evening, and asked me to come over. This time, thank god, he promised Julie would not be around. It was already late at night when I arrived. He had made brownies. They were kind of mushy and yet burned, but still, it was sweet of him to make the effort. While he fiddled with the sound on his massive stereo setup, I looked around his apartment. In the corner was a large collection of white canes. Braille notes written on index cards and red plastic sheets were tacked to several bulletin boards, scattered on the floor and piled up around a heavy cast iron Braillewriter. Guitars and other band equipment were leaning up against the walls. The only decoration was a copy of an ultrasound picture presumably of the baby currently inside Julie. It looked like a lot of static.
We chatted some more, but I was getting impatient. How could I get him to touch me again?
"Did I tell you I'm taking yoga lessons now?" I asked. Pretty lame, but it was the best I could think of. He seemed interested, so I volunteered to show him a few positions, hands on. It didn't take five minutes before he pulled his shirt off and that was the end of any yoga lesson. Next to the bed was an actual red velvet loveseat, and I pulled him down onto it. It felt so bohemian. I kneeled above him, covering his white skin with kisses. I leaned down, making a tent with my hair, and bit and licked him all around his neck, enjoying the way he trembled beneath me.
"You knew I'd be good," I said as I pulled down his jeans and took his cock in my mouth. His whole body went stiff and he clutched convulsively at the edges of the loveseat. I waited until he was gasping and shaking, then moved back up, putting his hands on my breasts.
"I never thought, when I first met you. . ." he said, and I laughed.
"I did." Suddenly the red velvet loveseat seemed cramped, in spite of its boho charm, especially when the queen size bed was only inches away. I suggested we move, but he resisted. When I pressured him, he finally admitted that Julie had bought the bed for him, in a misguided attempt to guilt-trip him into staying faithful to her. I observed that it didn't seemed to be working, and I had no intention of spending the night on the floor. The rest of his resistance crumbled and I carried him to the bed. He was really a little skinny guy, and I felt like I could practically toss him around.
Once in bed, he had yet another objection. "Uh, I don't have any condoms here, you know."
"It's OK, I came prepared," I assured him, as I pulled the condoms and lube out of my purse. I took one out of the package and put it carefully in his hands right side up, then let him put it on himself, not wanting to hurt him. He was just the right size, and I wriggled in ecstasy as he slid into me. I watched as he leaned over me, frowning in concentration, his unseeing gaze fixed at some point above my head. He was here and yet not here, locked away in his own blank world as we pressed as close as we possibly could, as if we could merge in our skins. I felt utter happiness wash over me in waves. After we finished, we dozed for a few hours then did it again.
By this time it was morning. Grey light filtered in through the shades, and even though it was the middle of the city, we could hear birds singing. We went out to breakfast together, then it was time for me to go home.
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For various reasons, it was a long time before I saw Jeff again, although we talked frequently on the phone. By this time, Julie was getting closer to her due date, and he was getting more freaked out. He alternated between wanting to run away from the whole thing and utter devotion to her. I tried to be a good friend but I was starting to lose interest. I don't have much respect for a beauty school dropout who tricks her boyfriend into getting her pregnant then wears her grandmother's ring even after he said he doesn't want to marry her. And I wanted him to come over again. I finally convinced him when I promised to take him to a head shop near my house so he could buy some screens.
This time there was no need for silly games. We were all over each other the minute I shut the door. I led him to the bedroom and pushed him onto the bed, then kneeled on top of him. When I bent down to kiss his mouth, my long hair made a tent around our faces, closing us into a space that was dark, hot and damp.
"Did you miss me?" I asked, looking for a sign of his devotion. He only groaned in reply. Still straddling him, I sat up straight and pulled off my shirt and bra. He wasn't sure what I was doing, but he could guess, and his mouth smiled in anticipation even though his plastic eyes remained flat and lifeless. I grabbed his hands and put them over my breasts, and my nipples hardened under his touch. He sat up to get closer to me as he ran his sensitive hands all over me. I pulled his shirt off too, and we both gasped as the bare flesh of our chests met.
Soon we had traded places, so that I was lying on my back. Without any prompting from me, he pulled off my jeans and went down on me. I was pleased, not just because he was good, but because he seemed to enjoy it too. By the time he was done, I was panting and twitching. He lay down beside me and for a while we were silent.
When I could finally speak again, I said, "You're pretty good at that."
He laughed. "I got a lot of practice."
"Show-off!"
"No, it's true. How many women do you think I've had?"
I rolled my eyes. "Jeez, I don't know. Isn't the average around ten?"
"One hundred."
"No way! You are such a liar. So am I number one hundred or one hundred and one?"
He looked a bit sheepish. "OK, so I haven't kept exact count, but it's somewhere around there." I wondered if he could really be telling the truth. As he proceeded to tell me stories of seductions, casual encounters and furtive experiments, I began to see him in a new light. At first I had entertained the fantasy that he had been leading a wretched, deprived life, surrounded by obese, inexperienced and repressed women, until I came along and showed him how it was done. But now it seemed that he had far more varied experiences than I, yet the thought was not unappealing. I especially liked the stories about a certain ex-roommate and his girlfriend. They would have sex in front of him in the living room, and when he realized what they were doing, they would invite him to join them. Friends who came to visit were sent naked to his room. They rented porno videos and described the action to him. It was as though they thought of Jeff as an experiment in sensuality. And really, this was not so different from my own feelings. Deprived of sight, his most important sense became touch, and by attenuating this most erotic of the senses, he became a man who lived for love.
Still, I did feel a little embarrassed by my relative lack of experience, and said so. He assured me that it didn't matter.
"I guess not. I still managed to seduce you , after all," I said.
He frowned a bit. "Yeah. But what made you do it?"
I laughed nervously. "I, ah, I just thought you were sexy."
"Yeah, but why me?" Suddenly, I froze inside. It was obvious, even to him, that we were completely mismatched. Me, a grad student, respectable, even a bit princessy, and him, a disabled high school dropout scruffy pothead, living on SSI. I knew the real question was, what's a classy lady like you doing with a bum like me? but it hung unspoken in the air between us. I didn't say anything. Finally, rather than hear some unpleasant truth, he supplied me with an answer.
"So were you just curious about what it's like to have sex with a blind guy?"
"Yeah." I didn't tell him that I already knew what it was like, or that I had fantasized about it for nearly all my life. Of everything that happened between us, that is the one thing I regret. I should have told him.
"So what's it like?" he asked. Evidently that stuff about blind people being able to tell when a person is lying is bullshit.
"Mmm, it's wonderful. The best." As we were talking, he had been running his hands all over my naked body, just lightly and quickly brushing my skin with his fingertips, as if he were trying to use his hands to get a clear, complete mental image of me. "So what's it like being blind?"
"I'll tell you, the worst thing is not being able to drive a car." This wasn't what I wanted to hear. I was more interested in the way he experienced the world, but instead he gave me a list of complaints, laced through with some trite sentiments about appreciating what he has and living life to the fullest. It sounded like he was reciting lines from some after-school special.
"Hey, what are you doing?" he asked suddenly. I had propped myself up on one elbow and was twisted around so I could see his face.
"I like to see your face when we're talking," I explained. He seemed to find it strange. Didn't anyone look at his face while talking to him? I couldn't get enough of watching him. His expressions were innocent, unstudied. When he smiled, he showed all his teeth, unselfconsciously, and when he laughed, he tossed his head from side to side. But the longer I looked at him, the more disturbing his eyes seemed. Up close, they were obviously fake, like the plastic eyes of a stuffed animal, and I could see dry patches on the surface of the lenses. It was unsettling to see them in a living face.
After a while, his hands moved from my body to exploring the bed and its surroundings. Soon he was running his hands over the heavy metal bar that acted as a headboard on my bed. His fingers found some bits of cloth and toyed with them for a long time before he even realized what he was doing.
"Hey, what's this?"
I blushed. "Oh, I keep those there for boys that need, you know, discipline."
He tugged on the black bands. "What's it made out of?"
"They're old pantyhose that I cut up. It's better than rope or handcuffs, because it's soft and stretchy, so it won't cut off the circulation or cause nerve damage."
"Cool. Wanna try it?"
I felt a shiver run through me. Bondage was something I had done with a past non-disabled boyfriend to make him seem more interesting. The idea of doing it with a guy who was already disabled had never even occurred to me. Or rather, it was more than I had even dared to hope for.
"Are you sure you want me to tie up your hands?"
"Yeah, let's try it. I've never done that before." He lay his arms against the metal bar invitingly, and I could hardly refuse. I tied his wrists tightly, then tied his ankles to another bar at the end of the bed. Since he was so short, the bands barely reached his feet, and when I was done he lay spread-eagled, unable to move.
At first I hovered at the side of the bed and tried to move silently, so he wouldn't know what I was going to do next. I kissed him all over, quickly, teasingly. Then I lay down next to him, rubbing all over. If he couldn't feel me with his hands, at least he could feel me elsewhere. I grabbed his dick and held on tightly while I licked and bit his nipples over and over, until his breath was ragged and he was straining against the bonds. I moved up and ran my tongue lightly over his ear, then bit him hard. His fingers twitched helplessly. He's dying to touch me, to see me with his hands, but he can't--now he really is totally blind, I thought. It was almost too much. I could feel the soles of my feet tingling and a strange twisting feeling in the pit of my stomach. The blood roared in my ears. As fast as I could, I put the condom on him, then took him inside me. He bucked and twitched under me with increasing strength. The bonds were coming loose. Suddenly, his feet twisted free, then his hands, and in the moment he sat up and put his arms around me and his mouth on mine, greedily taking what had been denied, I felt him come inside me, both of us pulsing in the same unconscious rhythm.
We lay quietly again for a while, but soon hunger drove us from the bed. I made a quick soup with noodles and vegetables, then sat facing him at my tiny kitchen table, watching him eat.
"It's Asian style. You can drink from the bowl," I explained. He declined my offer or chopsticks in favor of a fork. He held the bowl under his chin with one hand, using the fork in the other hand to randomly rake the surface of the soup in hopes of finding something. Sometimes he missed and his mouth encountered only the empty metal tines. Whenever I handed him something, like a glass of water, there was always a brief pause while I waited for him to take the offered glass, but of course, not knowing it was there, his hand remained at his side, cupped expectantly until I placed the glass in his fingers. We talked of various things, but I remember none of it, I was so fascinated by the sight of him eating. After he left, I would sit in his chair with my eyes closed, and bring the bowl to my lips, feeling its cold edges, trying to enter his world if only for a moment. Then I would open my eyes and swallow the rest of what he had left behind.
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I never saw Jeff again. As soon as Julie gave birth to his daughter, he felt overcome by guilt and a hackneyed desire to live a normal family life. We talked on the phone several times and I encouraged him to come over again, but he refused.
"I'm afraid every time I kiss you I'll see that little girl's face," he said over and over. I wanted to tell him, you can't see anything. You're just repeating what you think you should be saying. But it wasn't my place to tell him what to do with his life. It really was over. I have occasionally considered calling, just to see what ever happened to him, but the memories that I have are perhaps best left unchanged, perfect.