I paid for my training by teaching clowning to the little kids enrolled in the circus school summer camp. The endorphin rush from my morning workout was matched by the high I felt in the afternoon when I was with the kids—sweet, preschool-aged, hippie offspring. There was a little Russian girl I babysat for sometimes; we’d sit on a blanket in Golden Gate Park and I’d French braid her long blond hair while she taught me how to say stuff like, “My name is Nicole and I love porridge” in Russian. The gig afforded me disposable income, and more importantly, the confidence to believe I might make a competent mother one day, even with my failing vision.
At night and on the weekends, I worked at a fair-trade coffee shop in Berkeley and rehearsed for an off-the-wall comedy whose leading man, Ollie, was my sorta-kinda boyfriend.
Ours wasn’t a sweet romance like I’d shared with Frog Legs, or a tender union like the one I’d enjoyed, briefly, with David. This was a rocky, lopsided love. Meaning, I craved him with every ounce of my being and he … dug me to some extent. It was hard to tell where he stood on the spectrum of amorous feeling—somewhere beyond “like” for sure, but before “love,” which would have required that he stop banging his ex whenever the opportunity presented itself. I didn’t care much what terms I had him on though, because when I was with him, I felt alive, awake. The drama was consuming and the sex made me feel like I was in a romance novel, a real bodice-ripper. Lamps were knocked over. Roommates squirmed at the banging on the wall. It wasn’t quite the Great Romance I’d vowed to find but it was greatish. Memorable, anyway.
One night, as I lay languidly against him in the bath, I broached the subject of my eyes. Tentatively, I told him I had this condition; that I couldn’t see in the dark or out of the corners of my eyes. I told him about the fat Park Avenue doctor. I hadn’t revealed the diagnosis to anyone in a year or two and was out of practice, so the whole confession was vague and rushed and as soon as I’d started speaking, I regretted it. He hmm-ed and uh-huh-ed but didn’t say a word. A few days later, in the middle of a bodice-ripping sex scene, I accidentally elbowed him in the jaw.
“Fuck!” he yelled grabbing his jaw.
“I’m sorry,” I said, flushed with embarrassment. I was waiting to see if I’d be forgiven, now that he knew my extenuating circumstances.
“Well,” he grumbled, “just be more careful.” Then he turned back to the business at hand.
Either he hadn’t heard me or he’d chosen not to hear. Either way, I shouldn’t have told him. In this respect, he was right: I did need to be more careful.
Toward the middle of the summer, I stepped out of my front door one night to meet Ollie for dinner on Telegraph Avenue and I met my next-door neighbor for the first time. He was walking out of his front door at the exact same moment. Had it been a movie, we’d have locked eyes and fallen instantly in love.
But we couldn’t lock eyes because he was blind.
Not a little bit blind, the kind you could hide, but wear-dark-sunglasses-to-hide-your-freaky-eyes-that-don’t-work blind. Carry-a-cane blind. He looked just a few years older than me, in his late twenties, a large man with broad shoulders, so tall he had to hunch down when he stepped through his doorframe. It was odd to see a man who looked that young and strong, imposing even, carrying a cane. It was odd, too, to feel a kinship with this stranger, like he was wearing an emblem that signaled we belonged to the same club. More than odd, it was unsettling. I didn’t want to belong to that club. Not now. Not ever.
I stood motionless in the doorway, one foot inside my apartment and one out, feeling nauseous and panicky. Should I just creep back into my place and wait for him to pass? Or—wait—maybe he wasn’t all the way blind yet, and he could see me, in which case my backing away would be unforgivable. Was I supposed to introduce myself? Was that patronizing? I mean, why should I assume he was sociable just because he was blind? Maybe he was a misanthrope. Maybe he fucking hated unsolicited introductions, just wished do-gooders would leave him alone. Did he have the same eye disease as I did? Had he fallen into a bucket of lye as a child? Could I ask him or was that gauche?
As I stood there, exposed and bewildered and depressed, my neighbor turned to me. Even without a super-keen sense of hearing—which he, no doubt, possessed—you couldn’t miss the sound of my hyperventilating.
“Hi,” he ventured, his face pointed a few feet to the side of mine.
“Hi,” I replied haltingly. “I’m Nicole. I, uh, live next door.”
His face broke into a smile. “Oh, you must be subletting for the summer. Welcome, welcome! I’m Greg.” He had a musical voice, deep and smooth and appealing and he smelled good, too, the light aroma of aftershave wafting my way.
How does he shave, I wondered, without slicing his face to shreds?
I was staring at his cane, which he held pointing straight down to the ground at his chest, so I was able to catch sight of his hand as it let go of the handle and reached out to me.
I extended my right hand to meet it.
“Good to meet you,” he said, gripping my palm firmly. “I hope you’re enjoying Berkeley. It can take some getting used to.”
We stood opposite each other for a few minutes and chatted; he gave me recommendations of good places to eat and tips about which mentally ill homeless people were harmless and which to steer clear of. He told me he worked in development for a film company, and I told him I was an actress.
“Well, it was great to meet you,” he said, pointing his cane at a forty-five-degree angle as he readied to head out. “Listen, if you ever need anything, let me know. Or if you want to come by and have a cup of coffee and discuss movies, it’d be a pleasure.”
It wasn’t a come-on or anything, just a genuine, neighborly offer.
“Sure, okay. Thanks,” I said brightly. “Thanks a lot.”
I never took him up on his offer. In fact, when I passed him on the street, I mostly walked right by without saying a word. Yes, it felt wrong, like I was manually pushing the dial of my moral compass away from “Right and Good,” dangerously close to “Damnation and Hellfire Await.” But no matter how affable and attractive Greg was, no matter how well-groomed and gainfully employed, he was a reminder of something I had gotten very adept at forgetting. Running into him threatened my buoyancy.
And what a bubbly, delightful buoyancy it was. Only two years had passed since my visit to Dr. Hall but I felt light-years away from the dismal, dark place I’d inhabited after my diagnosis.
Sometimes, when I was working as a counselor with the circus school kids, if it was a slow day the program director would let them have a turn on the flying trapeze and occasionally, I’d take a stab at it, too. Climbing up the rungs of that ever-narrowing ladder made my stomach lurch but I couldn’t let a five-year-old show me up. And besides, I was making hay while the sun shone.
I’d stand on the platform almost sick with nerves, one arm reaching backward to the cable to keep from falling, and the other arm stretching forward, reaching for the bar, fingers shaking. Then, before I knew it, I’d be dropping, not falling but leaping into thin air, every muscle activated, every part of me awake. I could fly. With every swing, I was pushing back the darkness from inching any closer. With every swing, I was setting myself free.
I’d promised my father it would be okay and it was. It was better than okay. My life was now in Technicolor, bright enough for even my eyes.
Tip #6: On applying fake eyelashes
As a rule of thumb, the secretly blind should avoid all activities in which they are required to glue objects onto their face. This includes the application of fake eyelashes. At best, you’ll stick the lashes on asymmetrically, making it look like one side of your face has melted. At worst, the black, feathery clump will land in the area between your lid and your brow, causing people to think you’re under attack by mutant spiders.
Should fake lashes be an occupational necessity—as is the case with celebrity impersonators and actors specializing in mid-twentieth-century farce, si
mply enlist the aid of a colleague. This can be achieved by batting your real lashes and blaming your abysmal fine motor skills.
Then try to find an office job. You have enough problems without worrying about this shit.
6. NOT WITH A WHIMPER
It was hot inside that birthday cake, even in the bikini. Tight, too. I crouched low within its wooden frame, wondering what the difference was between jumping out of a cake in a bikini in real life, and pretending to, in an Off-Off-Broadway show. Art, I guessed. But mostly, the tips. I was doing this particular cake dance gratis, in the hope that the play would get picked up by producers and moved to Off-Broadway. I’d graduated college a year and a half before and had managed to get an agent and my Actor’s Equity card, but that didn’t mean I could turn down work, not even the unpaid, jump-out-of-cakes kind.
My share of the rent for our railroad apartment, perched above a taco shop in Park Slope, was covered by my receptionist job at an accounting firm, and with the cash I got tutoring middle schoolers, bartending a few nights a week, and visiting Nonny for Sunday dinner (“Here, take twenty dollars! What, am I gonna take money to my grave?”) I was getting by well enough that I could perform for free.
I wiped sweat from above my lip and pressed on the outer corners of my eyes to make sure the fake lashes there were still securely adhered. Then I ran through the burlesque choreography in my mind, readying to kick the top off the cake with a silver sequined heel. Once the dance was done and the guy in the gorilla suit carried me offstage, I’d have just one more costume change and a final scene to get through before opening night was over. So far, so good. But, as they say, it ain’t over til the fat lady sings. Or, in my case, til the blind lady maims herself.
I was worried, for good reason, about the blackouts. The play was a madcap farce from the 1960s, and what it lacked in substance, it made up for in costume design. With every new scene, I had a new costume and coiffure. This meant lots of sprinting across the dark, crowded backstage area to my dressing room and back onstage again, which is an equation for disaster when you lack both peripheral and nighttime vision. But I told myself that with enough preparation, I could handle it. I reported to the theater early every night, before the rest of the cast arrived, and practiced each transition until I could do them, literally, with my eyes closed.
Now it was opening night and I’d made it through nearly the whole performance without a hitch—the burlesque dance included. No trouble popping the cake top, no wardrobe malfunctions during the vigorous shimmy-and-shake that followed, no late entrance of the guy in the gorilla suit.
Almost there, I thought as I stepped out of the bikini and yanked on an organza gown for the final scene.
I darted out of the dressing room, pulling up the zipper on the gown as I ran. Squeezed past the prop table, felt my way around the birthday cake. A few more steps and I’d be stage right, just in time for my cue.
Except that suddenly, instead of moving forward, I was falling down. I’d crashed into something massive and heavy, just at the level of my knees, and though I was blocked from the knees down, I’d been moving with so much momentum, the rest of me went flying forward until my throat encountered what felt like a crowbar. I recoiled, gagging.
My first thought was that I’d been attacked á la Nancy Kerrigan by some ruthless rival who’d been hiding in the dark with a baseball bat. But as I pulled myself back up to standing, groping for support in the darkness, I realized that it hadn’t been a person who attacked me, but a mobility scooter. Specifically, the mobility scooter used by the male lead in the first act to get a huge laugh which, according to my calculations, was supposed to be parked way the hell over in the wings stage left by now.
What kind of an asshole can’t be bothered to stow his props in their assigned location? I thought. I’d like to give him a sharp blow to the windpipe. See how he likes it.
Not that it mattered now. What mattered now was whether I was bleeding. I shot my hand to my throat. Though throbbing, it felt intact. Then I heard my cue. Shaking, I minced my way to the stage entrance and, taking a deep breath, strode onstage.
“La—”
The word wouldn’t come out. It felt as though there was something lodged in my throat, interfering with the production of sound. I cleared my throat loudly. The audience waited. My castmates waited. The pregnant pause stretched on, past its due date, but my windpipe still felt blocked and all I could do was clear my throat again. Now my fellow actors were looking worried, and the audience shifted in their seats.
Having learned at circus school that it takes repeating something three times to make it funny, I cleared my throat again, extravagantly, as if this was a fully intentional comedic sequence. The audience tittered, and their laugh gave me the confidence to try my vocal cords again.
“Lance Weatherwax!” I exclaimed. “Whatever in the world are you doing here?”
After curtain call, while the rest of the cast rushed out of costume, excited to start celebrating, I undressed slowly. None of my castmates had seen my fall or paid much attention to the hiccup with my lines but still, I seared with embarrassment.
The blow hadn’t been just to my throat. It always happened the same way; I’d go days, weeks, or months even, without thinking about the encroaching blindness, until it almost felt as if the whole thing had been a long, drawn-out nightmare, and then suddenly, I’d be reminded. It was never a gentle reminder either but a full-on assault, like Fate was bitch-slapping sense into me.
You can run but you can’t hide, Fate hissed. This is not going away.
It didn’t help my morale that these reminders tended to happen in the theater, thanks to the industry’s insistence on blackouts in between scenes. Everyone else just followed the trail of glow tape to exit and enter the stage but that pale illumination was worthless to me. In the blackouts, it was near impossible to get myself on and off the stage what with everyone else running around and moving the furniture that I typically relied on to orient myself in the dark.
Once I’d gotten tangled in a backdrop in the middle of a performance. Once I’d stepped right off the front of the stage. Often, I’d been frozen, stuck onstage, unsure where to go, until a puzzled set runner grabbed my hand and pulled me off. I felt like a piece of furniture someone needed to be responsible for moving. It would have been easier had I told people about my night blindness but I’d tried that once and the director had raised his eyebrows and said: “You’re night blind and chose a career in the theater?” which embarrassed me into keeping my mouth shut in the future. It was hard enough to get, and keep, work without revealing that you needed special accommodations.
And now here I’d gone and nearly broken my neck on opening night. It was folly, I thought as I combed out my beehive, to keep pretending like this.
But since I wasn’t ready to either quit or risk discrimination by confessing my limitations, my only option was to get royally pissed off. If Fate wanted a fight, I’d give her one. I applied war paint in the form of Russian Red lipstick and rouge. I suited up for battle with four-inch heels, a low-cut slip dress, and a black feather boa which concealed the bruise purpling on my neck. As a finishing touch, I decided to leave on the fake lashes; they made me feel protected somehow, powerful. When I walked out of the dressing room, my heels struck the floor so hard I imagined the wood beneath my feet splintering.
On the walk over to the cast party on Jane Street, I stopped into a bodega to buy a pack of Marlboro Lights. I wasn’t a smoker really, but I did keep a pack in my purse, mostly as an accouterment. I’d found that I sometimes needed a minute to orient myself, especially when I entered dark spaces, and rather than just stand there blinking like a moron while my eyes tried to adjust to the lack of light, I’d taken to busying myself with a cigarette. It was a cover, and a good way to meet guys, too.
Unfortunately, on a recent trip to my retinal specialist, Dr. Turner, I’d learned that cigarette smoking depleted the lutein in my eyes. She wasn’t real clear on what t
hat was or why I needed it but she was clear on the fact that my retinas were already shot to shit and it was pretty idiotic to knowingly make them worse.
Dr. Turner was a big proponent of parsing out info on a need-to-know basis. This was one of the reasons I didn’t much like her, since, as a patient with a functional brain, I preferred being granted access to my medical information. The other reason I didn’t like her was that she had as much heart as the Wicked Fucking Witch of the West.
I’d started seeing her about a year or two after I was diagnosed and she’d prescribed a medication to help shrink edemas in my eyes that might be making my vision worse. Well, she explained impatiently when I asked, they weren’t exactly edemas but edema-like formations. In fact, it was entirely possible the medication wouldn’t be effective. And, she added, I might experience side effects such as tingling in my extremities, nausea, mild tremors, ringing in my ears and the frequent need to urinate.
“Anything else?” I joked. “Any risk of bleeding out my ears or growing a tail?”
She didn’t laugh.
I didn’t take the medication.
At least, not right away. A few months after she prescribed it to me, I came around and started thinking that it was worth a shot, even if it was a long one and I’d maybe piss my pants in the process. So I called her and explained that I needed a new script, because the one she’d written at my last visit had expired.
“You never took the medication I prescribed?” she asked.
“No,” I confessed. “But I’m ready to now.”
“I don’t understand,” she went on. “Why didn’t you take it in the first place?”
“You know, I’m not really sure,” I told her, surprised. I hadn’t expected to have to defend my decision. “I think I just figured it was a long shot and then all the side effects—”
“Those are all common side effects of any medication,” she shot back. “That shouldn’t have been a consideration.”
Now I See You Page 6
