Afternoon At The Eyeball 83

Today I am sat on an undersized wooden chair covered in a rough green fabric. It is warm, very warm which makes me very uncomfortable although I am sheltered from the heat somewhat by virtue of being in an underground warehouse cunningly posing as a waiting room. Paint the brickwork white, scatter some magazines across a cheap Scandinavian coffee table, pipe some generic classical music in and you have transformed your backroom storage space into a claustrophobic sociopath’s nightmare.

I wonder if people with such conditions have nightmares - if perhaps they exhaust their daily ration of fear whilst awake and so dream only of happiness and perfection. I wonder if we do have a daily ration of fear and if so how much that would be and how we would know if it were depleted and what other emotional rations we could have. Happiness? Horniness? Depression? I imagine some people would save their rations up and use them when they really needed them. Sometimes we need to be ecstatically happy or incredibly horny or super-depressed. As a child I would save my Easter eggs for a special occasion that never arrived until they became inedible; I would probably never use my rations in case there came a day when I really, really needed them.

I have been told that I will be attended to very shortly. I’m not optimistic. Few appointments if any at all are ever held on time, apart from of course the ones that you’re late for. Generally, the more on time you are, the longer you’ll have to wait. I was ten minutes early - I can’t begin to imagine what that’s done to the schedule. I really should have taken my time over the coffee I had before I arrived.

There are two other people waiting in the waiting room; there is a third person who isn‘t waiting, or at least, not in the same way that we are - a man in a dark open-necked shirt, stood at a reception desk, tapping information into a computer or perhaps tapping randomly in order to fill the void between announcements that they are running a little bit behind today; tapping randomly to give the impression that he has other work to do.

"Fndi cojv o m oksoi 9iuj3of v a;ds ock…"

There is a man in a baseball cap and a bright yellow t-shirt on one of the other chairs. He is sat next to a little girl with curly hair and dirt around her mouth and earlier he picked up a magazine and offered it to her as if it belonged to her and she’d forgotten it. The girl looked at him as though he were the child and went back to sucking her hair. I wondered if they were father and daughter. They didn’t look similar & I thought how unusual it was to see an adult interact with a child in public without such a relationship in existence. Then I wondered if it was a good or bad thing that I thought this was unusual. Then a lady walked out of a consulting room and the girl got up and left with her and I didn’t have to worry about it any more.

The man in the baseball cap and the bright yellow shirt has just been told that he will be seen in five minutes. He arrived after me. I can see his appointment card and it is for fifteen minutes after I expected to have mine. I can only assume that he savored his coffee and reflected upon meaningless things before he came here. Amendment: other people will always be seen on time. He speaks to the man behind the computer who stops typing randomly for a few moments.

"Vvdkv s 9ufu dof\sic0id…"

I’m Nervous.
There’s Nothing To Be Nervous About.
You Would Say That Wouldn’t You?
Why Are You Nervous?
‘Cause It’s My Eyes, Innit?

Actually, I think, it’s because they are your eyes aren‘t they? I suddenly hate him and wonder what it is exactly that makes him so anxious. I assume that he has been to an optician’s before otherwise he wouldn’t be wearing glasses. I didn’t mention that before - he is wearing glasses. Also, I am at an optician’s. I didn’t mention that before either. There is probably a lot that I haven’t told you.

I am not nervous. Being nervous at the optician‘s is stupid which means I now hate this man and think that he is stupid. I wonder what there is to be nervous about. An unexpected discovery perhaps? Maybe you have a stye or a cyst. Cyst is a horrible word. The optician would call it a chalazion or a meibomian gland lipogranuloma. You might be told that you have herpes. Not everyone knows this but you can get herpes in your eye. Imagine going to get your eyes tested only for the optician to tell you that? I think I would ask for a second opinion if that happened to me.

Other things that might make you nervous about going to the opticians: you might find that have a genetic disorder which will in time cause you to lose your eyesight. You might think you will cry because the optician is the only person to be so close to you in a very long time. You might not like people interfering with your eyes. You might have a phobia about people interfering with your eyes; this is called ommetaphobia. You might even find that the person who is carrying out the eye test is someone you slept with a few months ago and never called back. Perhaps that is why you have herpes; presumably it also why they know you have it.

"Ebive ikfc f 9 fife0fi kvn dencf9 eur94u x0..."

The man in the baseball cap and the bright yellow shirt and the glasses is talking to me now. He is asking me about my watch because he thinks it is very nice and he has a similar one but doesn’t like the color. I take it off to give him a closer look and as I pass it over I notice that my hands are shaking. I wasn’t aware of it before and this is curious because I am not nervous, I am not hungover, I am certainly not cold and they are normally the only reasons why I would be shaking at any point. He hands me my watch back and begins talking to a girl in a dark blouse who has walked into the room and is writing things down on a clipboard. He starts asking her questions.

What’s Your Name?
Do You Work Here?
When Do You Finish?
Where Do You Live?
Would You Like To Go For A Drink?

I would have stopped answering after the second question if I were her. I mentally list the man in the baseball cap and bright yellow shirt’s current priorities: nerves about eye test; girl with clipboard, my watch. This, I think, is not a bad list of priorities to have. I think of what my own priorities are right now: cost of eye test; keeping things together in general.

"Kjij u9u e feiu 9ef 9tv4ucu U04NV 90..."

The man at the computer has called me over to check my details. They will be able to see me in just a few minutes. Meanwhile the man with the baseball cap and the bright yellow shirt has gone in for his eye test. I make a mental note to idly window shop minutes before my next appointment. They have my date of birth wrong; they are out by two years and this makes me younger so I don’t say anything. I don’t think it will matter too much. I feel more youthful just thinking about it.

As I am stood there feeling younger and lying to the man at the computer another man walks in - the world is full of men - and sits down. I move to the other side of the reception desk, take a clipboard and fill in the rest of my personal details myself as the man at the computer asks the man who has just walked in his name. His name is Mark. He has an appointment at half past but he is a little early. I look at my watch and think how nice it is. It is twenty past the hour. I feel sorry for poor, punctual Mark.

Just as I finish completing the paperwork a door behind me opens and a lady with lots of make-up and big hair asks me to come in and to take a seat. I sit down, remove my glasses, rest my chin in the contraption in front of me and the lights go out.

Look Straight Ahead.
Look Up.
Look To Your Right.
Look To Your Left.
Look Down.

As I follow her instructions she flicks at my eye with something and I wonder if my eyelid is inside-out. I went to school with a boy who used to do that. Other people would laugh. It made me feel sick. I try not to think about this woman doing it to me. I could not be an optician. She asks me to blink, so I do. Each time I close my eyes I get a glimpse of what I think is what she can see; a negative of my eyeball flashing into my field of vision, it is all white with golden veins streaking across like sparkling rivers flowing into my tiny pupil. I blink several more times without being asked in order to see this vision again and I think how the most wonderful things in the world are often the ones that are closest to us and how we rarely notice them.

I have an astigmatism which means that I have an irregular curvature of the cornea. The lady tells me that the cornea is the only part of the body that is not reliant on blood for oxygen, deriving its supply from the air. She asks me if I knew that. I did not. Some people who don’t believe in god and think we are a by-product of evolution cite the complex structure of the eyeball as evidence for this. Other people who think god created us all and is responsible for everything in the world ever and think evolution didn’t happen also cite the complex structure of the eyeball as evidence for this. People are funny sometimes.

The test takes around thirty minutes. As I come out of the room I see that Mark is still waiting. There is a problem with his appointment. He wants new contact lenses but he can’t have new contact lenses without a new contact lens test. Mark says he had a test recently. The man at the computer says that that was an eye test, not a contact lens test. Mark asks what the difference is and the man at the computer tells him that the eye test examines the back of the eye whilst the contact lens test examines the front of the eye to see how well a person copes with wearing the lens. Mark does not look convinced. He asks the man at the computer if he can have some lenses from his old prescription, just a few, just enough to get him through the next few weeks as he’s only got a couple left. This, I think, is what it must be like to be a drug addict.

We’re Not Meant To Give You An Old Prescription
I’ll Come Back For A New Test
I Shouldn’t Really.
I Know, But I Really Do Need Them.
Well, Just This Once - I Know What It’s Like To Go Without.

Mark’s happiness ration is reduced slightly as I step forward to pay for my test. It is less than I thought it would be. My priorities shift, slightly. The man at the computer tells me he will be just a few brief minutes as he updates the appointment schedule. I tell him that that is fine.

"Sj fiufnug9ren 9dfi-of=-oe grog-5d…"

The desk is covered in company branded sticky notes with numbers and memos written all over them. I try to read one of them but can’t make out what it says. I wonder if I should get my eyes re-tested. Maybe I screwed up in the consulting room. What if the green circles were darker and I was wrong? What if the red line wasn’t in the centre? I’m pretty certain it was but then again I have bad eyesight - what do I know? I feel nervous and I want to apologise to the man in the baseball cap and bright yellow shirt.

The man at the computer takes my credit card and smiles in doing so. I look at him in his immaculate dark shirt and his perfect brown eyes with vision that doesn’t need correcting. I want to tell him that we all get it wrong sometimes and if it is cold tomorrow I will be glad. I want to tell him that there are many things in my life I would change given a chance and that Easter eggs are given to be eaten, not kept. I want to tell him that there is no known cure for herpes and that I think he is a good person and that god probably doesn’t exist, but if he did he would probably approve of opticians so either way he is going to be ok. I want to tell him all these things, but Mark is still in the room and I don’t know the man at the computer’s name and I am shy and all these things together are making me more nervous so instead, while he is printing my receipt I scribble a message to him on one of the sticky notes:

"Mdj ooc loda clvmv vo ki ido"