I’m sitting across from an orthodontist, sipping lukewarm coffee and chatting casually about L.A. traffic, as is common on first dates. But as this Hinge experiment, with his Harry Styles-esque bob and $200 sweatpants, tries to make eye contact with me, I keep glancing over his shoulder at an artificial eucalyptus plant. I silently pray this looks like eye contact, because I know what’s in store when my gaze meets his. The shudder.
If this term isn't in your search history, the shudder gesture is the opposite of the male gaze: a jaw-clenching, testicle-shrinking squint, usually directed at my face. It's a subtle gesture that says unequivocally: we are not equal.
Because I am blind and he is not.
My brain is creaking with anxiety. Now I'm thinking about all those nice people who have herpes and how they have medicine to help keep everything under control for a while. Now, I'm I long having herpes and a large collection of Valtrex while drinking my drink. I need to order another round. Do it, do it now. Before this man notices with absolute certainty that you have nothing to do with the dark brown eyes he thought he saw on your dating profile, before he apologizes and that second drink never happens.
In theory, dating is fun. Meeting a stranger in a cafe full of hipsters and Moroccan tiles, sitting at a table that’s too small, and pretending to be interested in someone else’s American version of life can be chaotic. But if you’re like me, dating makes you want to run out of there like you’re in an episode of “The Last of Us.”
Ayla Harrison developed an eye condition called retinopathy of prematurity when she was a newborn.
My face is pitiful. It's lopsided. My eyes are all different sizes and colors. My right eye is lazy, wrinkled, and blind; it moves like an out-of-control marble spinning in a drain. My left eye hemorrhages, which can cause bouts of total blindness. The reason for my Picasso face is a retinal disease I have after my mother went into labor three months early. She looks that Medicaid doctor right into his very symmetrical face and says through grunts and gritted teeth, “My baby girl doesn't like to wait.”
Doctors move me to an intensive care unit and increase my oxygen levels to 100% to keep me stable. Later, a nurse with nicotine stains on her nails tells my parents that I have developed retinopathy of prematurity, an eye condition caused by all that oxygen. The disease will open me up to a lifelong series of vision problems.
Then there is the rush. More doctors. A surgeon barely manages to save the sight in my left eye, but my right eye cannot be saved. My parents are told that I will be blind in that eye forever. A tiny cyclops. I weigh less than a pound. I am so small that the surgeon can fit my entire hand on the nail of his little finger.
And for a moment, everyone just stares.
The first boy I ever loved has a rat tail. We’re both 8 years old. To win his affection, on a dare, I decide to eat a cockroach off the floor at recess. The kids point and lose their 8-year-old minds, but the attention makes me feel electric. Then he makes direct eye contact with me. I look down, my act thrown off in an instant. He looks at me like someone asked him to find Waldo and lingers on my mismatched, marble eyes. The baby fat on his jaw tightens. Then it happens. My first shudder.
I stop going to recess.
At dinner, I mention my eye contact problem to my mother. She drinks her third rum and Diet Coke and tells me, “Look guys in the eye like you want to steal their wallet.”
By the time I get to high school, I can't address another person unless my eyes are glued to the floor.
In the hierarchy of teen dating, I’m a tough candidate to pass up. Boys in expertly shredded Abercrombie jeans flinch in a chain reaction of disgust when I pass them in the hallways. Cheerleaders corner me, demanding I tell them what’s wrong with my eyes. The cheerleading captain pushes me toward a locker. I grab onto her perfect French braids and pull down hard until my knuckles turn white. Somewhere, the junior varsity cheerleaders chant “Fight!” like it’s a pep rally.
Harrison in a preschool photo.
(Ayla Harrison)
And for a moment, everyone just stares.
I walk home alone with a split lip and decide that the teenagers in my small southern town are just wolves in Adidas sweatpants.
Years go by. I leave my swampy hometown. Before I leave, my childhood eye doctor warns me that I have the eyes of an 80-year-old. I ignore him because I am 22.
I avoid talking about my ROP with anyone and instead diligently stick my bangs to my forehead to hide my blind eye. It’s a trick I learned working as a waitress in a neon-tinted strip club in a small town in Florida that offers oysters at will and lap dances until 3 a.m. I mimic the strippers’ dance moves. Like the girls swinging on stage in thongs, I want to feel that desire that burns a hole in men’s pockets. One dancer, this oiled-up pole dancer, tells me about a weekend trip she took to Los Angeles. “Life there is like a buzzsaw setting off a glitter bomb,” she says.
A month later, I move to Santa Monica. I go with the flow of L.A. men and fall in love in the time it takes to flip through the channels. But relationships fade or split open like a melon dropped on hot pavement. And then, one random Wednesday, my left eye hemorrhages and fills with blood. And suddenly, I can't see.
Again, more doctors, this time specialists. Their offices are in high towers. And like many specialized areas of medicine, there is silence, bright lights, and lots of nodding. There are lasers and emergency surgeries. Eventually I can see again, but not without a lot of help from a perpetual weekly doctor’s appointment. I make friends with the 89-year-old grandmother and her grandfather in the lobby. I go so often that my mother asks me if this eye doctor gives out a rewards card like at Yogurtland.
My eyes bleed while I shower and do yoga. My vision goes out like a light when I’m at the grocery store. My blindness episodes continue for months, and still my mother asks me, “When are you going to meet someone? Can you mail me artisanal donuts?”
This only reminds me of what comes next: the shudder.
I need a new plan. Or a therapist. Instead, I call my eye doctor, a woman I’ve seen so many times she probably funds a fraction of her vacation home.
In the exam room, my eye doctor decides to fit me with therapeutic contact lenses. She explains that these fancy contacts will protect my bad eye and also make my eyes look the same color. She finishes adjusting them, offers me a mirror like I’m in a Marvel movie, and waits for the applause. I stare at my blind eye, dressed in its new costume, and instead opt to Google a late-night question: What happens if I get another eye procedure?
I suggest that she do more surgeries on me, state-of-the-art surgeries to fix my bad eye and its marble-like wobble. My doctor gives me a reassuring smile and lectures me on the dangers of continuing to open my eyes on a regular basis. All those surgeries will only make my condition worse, she tells me.
Two weeks later, in a different medical tower, I meet with my retina specialist this time. I ask him the question about how to correct my uneven eyes. The answer is identical: a list of horrors. He pauses and adds, “But you’re a single woman now. So maybe you should think about it,” and moves on to another patient without saying anything else.
Tears come out in a wet torrent as my doctor calls out to an 82-year-old man in the next room, “How are you today?” The door closes behind him.
Harrison crosses 4th Street in Long Beach. She had a date at a nearby Peruvian restaurant with a man who surprised her.
I call my mother through sobs. I manage to say, “I can’t wear these lenses.” I babble about how the lenses are just a fancy bandage; a device to hide the fact that my vision loss is a ticking time bomb. And who’s going to like that? My mother waits patiently for my sobs to subside. Finally she says, “Your remaining vision might be gone before I finish this sentence, but no one has to accept that except you.”
She then asks me if I've seen Reese Witherspoon do that dance on TikTok yet.
Weeks later, I have a date with a man. I sit across from him at a too-small table at a Peruvian restaurant on 4th Street in Long Beach. His voice is a mix of Spanish slang and a Southern California surfer drawl. And I swear he never loses eye contact. Normally, this would shatter me. But with my new glasses, I feel a strange new confidence. So, I commit first-date seppuku and tell him about my glasses and my vision loss. As I talk, my anxiety hijacks my thoughts, and I immediately regret opening my mouth. Because I’m waiting for the flinch, that lightning-quick jolt of expected pain. And then I realize I’m too busy thinking ahead to notice that my date is ordering a second round of drinks.
I'm too busy to notice that our date is still going on.
It continues until the ice melts into the dark amber color of whiskey in our sweaty cocktail glasses. It continues until it turns into the soft yellow of morning sunlight. It continues until he takes my hand on a crowded street and I know it’s my turn to look him in the eye. At a crosswalk, I turn my head and stare at this man.
And for three seconds, I have an overwhelming urge to steal her wallet. I smile. To some extent, my mother is right.
Then he asks me, “Can I kiss you?” I nod. He leans over and kisses me on my sick little eyes, right in the middle of that crowded street.
And for a moment, everyone just stares.
The author is a playwright and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. She is on Instagram: @outside the batteries
