Breaking Blind
Preface: This is a purely fictional story written by myself, a long-time lurker in the community. Contrarily to what the title suggests, it is not at all a story about blindness; the term is used figuratively. Enjoy.
……It was a normal morning for Robyn, standing up in the subway, concentrated as ever on her ebook reader. Standing at an impressive 5'10’’ with a perfect hourglass figure and silken long dark brown hair, she was quite used to attracting stares from the other passengers. This attention was nothing but an inconvenience for Robyn, as she had never much cared about her seductive power, as every man she had met had been deeply uninteresting to her. The truth is, she just didn’t care about any of that. She had bigger, better concerns. She had earned a generous scholarship about year ago and was finishing up her Master’s thesis in Climatology, with no time to spare on petty flings here and there. Her experience with such things had led her to believe that the whole romance thing just wasn’t for her. And that was perfectly fine.
……She was reading a recent study about changes in the La Niña Southern Pacific weather phases when she noticed that she arrived at her stop. Hurrying out of the subway with her bags, she saw that she got a text from her friend Jessica. Her frantic tone conveyed perfectly even through text, Jessica wrote that she urgently needed Robyn’s help, and could she please come to her office as soon as possible? With a sigh, Robyn replied that she would come, slightly annoyed at the distraction. Jessica was a good friend from undergrad and now a fellow grad student, and they mostly got along fine, but Jessica always seemed to be in a life and death situation requiring Robyn’s help. Of course, being the gentle and empathetic – gullible and spineless, she thought – girl that she was, she always ended up giving it to her, despite the hassle. Not as organized as Robyn, Jessica often ended up rushing for deadlines and pleading with her friend quite dramatically for help. Robyn knew that this text was exactly this type of situation, and braced herself for her friend’s usual antics as she walked towards campus.
……She made her way up to Jessica’s office, her friend immediately jumping up to greet her. Of similar height and build to Robyn, the two girls could almost pass off for twins or at least sisters, were it not for two key differences: Jessica had long blonde hair and she wore a pair of rather large, light brown glasses. Her sideswept bangs lightly grazed the top of her rectangular-shaped glasses, framing her features perfectly. Upon seeing her friend, she exclaimed: “Oh, Robyn! Thank God you’re here. I really need your help.”
……“What is it this time, Jess?” she replied with a hint of frustration in her voice. “You’re not the only one who has their thesis due very soon, you know?”
……Putting on a sad face at her friend’s attitude, Jessica pleaded. “I know you have a lot of work too, but if you don’t help me with this I’m totally screwed. You remember when I told you about the talk I was supposed to give tomorrow?”
……“Yeah. You mean the one in front of the WMO?” she replied. The WMO stood for the World Meteorological Organization, one of the leading scientific groups in Climate Science. “What about it?”
……“That’s the one. Well, see, my presentation is tomorrow, but I didn’t realize until now that it’s at the same time as my thesis presentation! There’s no way I can make it to both, but I can’t cancel now, this could be my only chance to make an impression at the WMO!”
……Letting out an breath of exasperation, Robyn replied. “Well, I told you to get an agenda exactly fort his type of situation. I guess you have no choice but to cancel the talk at the WMO. You’ll have other opportunities, I’m sure.”
……“You don’t undertand, Robyn. This is too important! The WMO is never going to ask me to give a talk again if I cancel now.” Jessica hastily replied, obviously on edge from the situation. “You know I wouldn’t burden you with anything if I had another choice, but I need you to do the presentation for me. You can definitely do it, I mean you know all about my research and I’m sure you could pass for me in a pinch. Come on Robyn, it’s the only way.”
……“Wait, wait just one minutre here,” Robyn said, attempting to calm down her friend. “That’s ridiculous. If we get caught, it’ll definitely be the end of your career. It’s out of the question. You just need to call them up and tell them about the situation,” Robyn continued, doing her best to appear stern yet understanding. “Maybe after this you’ll learn your lesson about properly organizing your schedule.”
……At this, Jessica’s mood turned from frantic to gloomy in a matter of seconds. Sitting back down on her chair, her voice turned almost to a whisper, looking down at the floor pitifully. “I know, you’re right… it was a crazy idea anyway.” Whipping her glasses off and throwing her arms on the desk, she plunged her face in between her arms and quietly began sobbing. Still a little bit annoyed at the situation, Robyn had to admit she felt sorry for her friend and this situation she was put in. After a few uncomfortable seconds of hearing her sobs, Robyn said, rolling her eyes: “Fine… I’ll do it for you, but only cause I hate seeing you like this.”
……Jumping up from her chair at lightning speed, Jessica began hugging her friend tightly while crying out “Thank you thank you thank you! You’re the best, Robyn.” After a few seconds of hugging, Jessica said, “Here, I have my slides on a USB key, I’ll give them to you so you can look over them. That USB should be around here somewhere.” Jessica started looking around on her messy desk, throwing papers off here and there, not realizing that she was squintly madly, completely unable to find such a small gadget on her desk without correction. Robyn saw her friend’s glasses upside-down on the desk, the powerful and large lenses brilliantly catching the light in the room, the lenses showing white concentric rings all along the edges. She picked them up and handed them to her friend, telling her: “You’ll have better luck looking for it with these.”
……Thanking her friend, Jessica put on her brown speckled glasses and immediately stopped squinting, her eyes returning to a focused glare. “Ah, here it is. I’ll show you the slides. The title of the talk is…”
……The next day during her morning shower, Robyn dyed her hair the same shade of blonde as Jessica, and proceeded to make her way to the convention center. On her way there, she looked in her mirror and noticed that she did, in fact, look a lot like Jessica to the untrained eye. I look like a slighly more attractive Jessica, she thought, vainly. Indeed, her features were slightly more striking than those of her friend. Soon after this thought, a man approached her in the subway, greeting her in the telltale mix of admiration and anxiety that was common among those who sought her out. Gently rejecting him, she lied to the man about having already having a boyfriend, and after a small bit of awkward chatting, her would-be suitor waved her goodbye. She looked at him walk out of the subway, and noticed that he was a conventionally handsome man by any standard, and his demeanor had been charming enough. No, she didn’t reject him because he wasn’t good enough for her. She was just genuinely not interested at all.
……A little while later, she met with Jessica in the backroom of the stage a few hours early to the presentation to finish preparing. Having begun with her friend the day before, Robyn felt comfortable with the subject matter but still somewhat resented having to do all this for Jessica. “Wow, nice hair, Robyn,” said Jessica upon seeing her walk into the room. “You feeling ready? We just have to do the final touches like make-up and hair. Here, put on this outfit.”
……They spent a long time making sure everything was right; they curled her hair and bangs, they did her make-up and they even practiced imitating the sound of Jessica’s voice. Eventually, it was time for Jessica to leave to make it to her other presentation. “Oh, I almost forgot,” said Jessica. “The finishing touch.” At that, she took her glasses off and placed them on Robyn’s nose. “There, now it’s almost like looking into a mirror.”
……“But Jess,” Robyn replied as she was sitting down in front of the mirror and the glasses were placed on her face, plunging her into a deep blur. “Your glasses are way too strong. I can’t see a thing out of them. How am I supposed to give a presentation with these on?”
……“Well, you don’t need to see the audience to speak to them. Come on, it’s not that bad. If you wear them we really don’t have to worry about you getting caught.”
……“I won’t wear them,” Robyn sternly replied, taking the glasses off. “If you can still look like you without your glasses, then I don’t need to wear them.”
……“Ok… Fine…,” the natural blonde replied, her expression suddenly regaining its gloomy and bruised quality that came ever so quickly to her. “It’s easy for you to say. I guess I’ll just get caught and my career will be finished.”
……Robyn could see Jess beginning to tear up at the idea, and again she acquiesed, letting her friend have her way again. “Alright, I’ll wear the damn glasses, but you owe me big time,” she said, placing the glasses on the counter in front of her. “Those things are gonna make me blind, and you’ll be sorry.”
……Immediately cheering up and giving her friend a hug, Jessica said: “You’re the best, Robyn! Don’t worry, you don’t actually get nearsighted from wearing someone’s glasses. You’re just gonna get a headache. Here, take some of these,” She said, taking out a bottle of Tylenol from her purse. After putting her contacts on, Jessica announced: “Alright I have to go now. We’ll talk right after the presentation, ok? Good look out there!”
……Alone in the room with only around 30 minutes before the start of the presentation, Robyn looked at her friend’s glasses sitting there on the table. With a resignated sigh, she took them and put them on. Oddly enough, the glasses seemed to fit quite comfortably on her face, and were not at all unpleasant to wear. Except for the fact that she couldn’t see a damn thing with them on, of course. Looking around the room, she saw no distinct shapes, only soft blurs of color. Trying to read the papers on the desk was useless, she could practically not even register that there were words on the paper at all. Getting up, she looked outside the window and with a bit of effort managed to focus on the street, briefly making out the letters on a stop sign as well as the name of a café. Well, at least there’s that, she thought, I can see things twenty meters away. For like, two seconds… if I try really hard. Turning back towards the room, she caught sight of the full length mirror across the room, and with a bit of effort focusing, she caught a glimpse of Jessica staring back at her. She had to admit that the glasses did strongly reinforce her resemblance to her friend. Soon, she lost focus of her reflection and developped a headache from the effort at focusing. Almost blindly scanning the desk, she found the bottle of pills her friend had left behind and swallowed a couple of them. Afterwards, she reached up to her face with both hands, beginning to remove the glasses, but decided against it. I better just keep these damn things on if I want to get used to them before the presentation. I can deal with a little headache. With that, she went back to the papers on her desk and soon managed to put the words on the page into focus. She decided to spend the rest of the time she had before the presentation to prepare, struggling to read her sheets through a set of powerfully large glasses.
……“Our next speaker is a young and promising graduate student here to talk to us about her groundbreaking article displaying impressive findings in the Paleoclimatology of North America during the Neolithic. Please welcome Miss Jessica Vandercook.”
……Over the clapping of a mostly blurry audience of around eighty renowned scientists, Robyn began her presentation. At first, she was nervous about not being able to see much of anything, or anyone for that matter, but she soon found her bearings and became more comfortable. In fact, she even came to believe that she was more confident wearing the glasses than not. Public speaking, she thought, was much easier when you didn’t have to see the audience. Though she wouldn’t admit it to herself, she quite enjoyed the feeling of her friend’s glasses on her face, and for the first time was pleasantly aware of the stares of all these strangers listening to her and admiring her. With the glasses, she felt more intelligent, respectable and most difficult of all to admit, sexy. She had a great time giving her presentation, and the audience seemed to love it.
……After the presentation, still very much exhilarated, she arrived at the backroom to get her things and get ready to leave. Before leaving, she paused in front of the mirror and noticed that she was still wearing the glasses and that they were still making everything quite blurry, although she had gotten slightly more used to it. She should have had no hesistation whatsoever to take them off; in fact, she was still reeling from the headache and dizziness that the blur was giving her. Yet she paused in front of the mirror. What if someone from the audience sees me as I leave? No, it’s best if I keep them on. With that, she headed out into the blurry world that she had grown partially accustomed to.
……Riding in the subway, she felt much different than usual. Although she definitely couldn’t see anyone staring at her through her strong glasses, she nonetheless felt the stares. However, this time, she was actually enjoying the attention, knowing that the other passengers were staring at her smart, bespectacled figure. She somehow liked being seen with the glasses, and felt much sexier with them.
……Suddenly, a man approached her and began speaking, startling the temporarily visually impaired woman. “Hello there Miss Vandercook,” said a man whose only discernable characteristics were that he was taller than her, that he had brown hair and that his voice was pleasing and obviously that of a relatively young man. “I just wanted to congratulate you on a very nice presentation today. Your work is truly enlightening as well as inspiring.”
……He offered his hand and presented himself as Mark Williams, a fellow climatologist doing his PhD at another university in town. They spoke a bit about work, after which he said: “It was quite nice talking to you, Miss, but I have to get off here. Could we maybe have coffee tomorrow and talk some more about your work? I still have loads of questions about your thesis.”
……At this, Robyn was taken aback. Mark was obviously interested in her, and this was nothing new or unusual; she was used to getting hit on a lot. What actually surprised her was that for once, she was genuinely interested in him as well, and before she realized what she had said, she nervously blurted out: “Sure, that sounds good.”
……They exchanged numbers and he got off, but Robyn was left thinking about her peculiar behaviour. Even though the headache had not subsided, she felt better about herself than she had in a long time. Readjusting the glasses on her nose, she felt as if they had always belonged there.
……Her heartrate up throughout the whole trip back home, she couldn’t help but pleasure herself as soon as she got home. She imagined how this Mark guy really looked like, but secretly she enjoyed the weight of the glasses on her face. Afterwards, still spread out across her bed, she tried to talk some sense into herself and took the glasses off for the first time since she had been with Jessica. Ok, Robyn, I don’t know what’s gotten into you but these are just glasses. Glasses that happen to give you huge headaches. You’re at home so there’s no need to keep wearing them. You’re just going to give them back to Jess tomorrow, not go out on a date with that random guy, and forget any of this happened. Yet, despite all her reasoning to the contrary, she could not take her eyes off of the glasses lying in front of her on her bed. Since she took them off, everything became instantly brighter and clearer, but also strangely enough much larger and less interesting. It was as if this magnified world she were returning to had lost some of its charm. Putting these thoughts behind her for a while, she looked up this “Mark Williams” guy on Facebook to see what he looked like. To her pleasant surprise, he was quite handsome, well-built and tall. She almost added him as a friend, but she realized that he hadn’t actually met her. He had met “Jessica.”
……She was bummed out after this realization. Of all the times she had to meet an interesting guy, it had to be when she was impersonating her friend. Staring desolately at the glasses refracting and reflecting the room’s light ever so gracefully, she decided to put them back on for a bit, just for the hell of it, to compare her vision with and without. As soon as she put them back on, though, she heard her phone ring and reached into her purse to pick it.
……“Hey, Robyn, how did it go?” Jessica asked apprehensively, eager to hear the answer.
……“It went really well, and no-one noticed a thing. You have nothing to worry about,” Robyn replied, staring off with her friend’s glasses, once again minifying and obscuring her field of vision.
……“That’s so great! Man, I owe you big. Can’t believe I got through this day in one piece, my nerves are totally shot. My eyes are killing me, too. I don’t react well to contacts. Speaking of which, how did you manage with my glasses? You did wear them, right?”
……“It was really horrible, Jess,” Robyn lied. “Couldn’t see anything but a hazy blur the whole time. Your eyes are really bad!”
……“Yeah,” Jessica replied, laughing. “Well, you won’t need to wear them ever again. Oh and don’t forget to bring them to school tomorrow. I’m tired of these contacts already.”
……They chatted a bit more, and unbeknownst to her friend, Robyn wore the glasses the whole time, right up until she went to bed.
……When she woke up the next morning, the first thing Robyn saw was the glasses atop her nightstand. She hesistated for a moment about whether or not to put them on. I do have the date with Mark this afternoon, and I’ll need to be wearing them for him to recognize me as Jessica, so I might as well get used to them right now. Having convinced herself to do so, she put them on, plunging into the blur. Except, as she soon found out, the blur was much more manageable this morning. Apparently putting them on first thing in the morning made them easier to handle, and with a little bit of effort to focus, she could function more or less normally with them on. After breakfast, when it came time to get ready for school, she realized that she couldn’t wear the glasses to school; if she did, everyone would think she was Jessica. And of course, her friend would not understand at all. She decided that she would just stay home and skip school in the morning before meeting Mark in the afternoon.
……She coordinated with Mark to meet at a coffee shop near her university, and around 1:00 p.m. they met up. Their date was really great. Mark was interesting, smart and handsome and they never seemed to run out of things to say to each other. Most of all, there was a strong mutual attraction the likes of which she had never known. After around three hours of continuous conversation, Mark had to go and they said goodbye, agreeing to meet again soon. At this point, Robyn stayed in the café and caught her breath, thinking about confusing recent events. She had met the most interesting man she had ever seen, but she had done so while pretending to be someone else. While wearing someone else’s glasses. Her thoughts turned again to the glasses. I should take them off now, Mark is gone. She didn’t want to take them off, but she couldn’t really come up with a reason to keep them on.
……While these thoughts were running through her head, she saw her blonde friend walk into the coffee shop alone. Panicking, she removed the glasses from her face as soon as possible and tucked them into her purse. Thankfully, Jessica didn’t see her and proceeded to stand in line at the cash to order her drink. Relieved but still anxious, Robyn went up and greeted her friend, who had suddenly grown larger and more focused.
……“Oh hi there Robyn!” said Jessica. “I didn’t see you there. Hey, where were you in class today?”
……“I was exhausted and so I decided to sleep in,” said Robyn, bending the truth. She really doesn’t look as good without her glasses, Robyn thought upon seeing her friend for almost the first time without her distinctive eyewear. Wearing them really makes her face look much more symmetrical.
……“So, Robyn, do you have my glasses? These contacts are killing me. Look at how bloodshot my eyes are.”
……Clutching her purse with the glasses in it a little tighter, Robyn said, almost by impulse. “Oh… Shit. Sorry, I forgot them at home. I’ll bring them tomorrow, sorry!”
……“Damn it. That’s not like you Robyn. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you forget anything! I guess the blonde hair is making you more like me. But it’s ok, I guess I can deal with these contacts until tomorrow.”
……They finished talking and ordering coffee, and as soon as they were away from each other, Robyn reached into her purse and slowly slipped the glasses out, examining the polished lenses and the speckles of light and dark brown which constituted the slick plastic frame. Able to finally relax after such a close call, she gently put the glasses back on and left the coffee shop.
To be continued…