No Longer Four-Eyed

I finally picked up my contacts yesterday; a month and a half of glasses in enough for me, and everyone else for that matter.

I relapsed into being four-eyed again pretty easily. 17 years of wearing glasses should make that transition smooth, I guess. My switch to contacts was one shot in a rapid-fire self-improvement spree five years ago(that also included a new haircut, running shoes, and what is possibly the deadliest of all sins - online dating).

Anyway, it's good to be wearing contacts again; I'd forgotten what my unobstructed face looked like. Although my friends will contend otherwise(because they are good friends), I do look better without glasses. At least I get laid more( I realize this may be the result of my improved self-confidence from thinking I look better, but more women approach me sans-glasses than with).

I get my contacts from a trendy place in DC, Blink Optical. Outside it's pretty unassuming. Inside, the place looks like a swank lounge or club; it even has the euro-electronic muzak to go with it's stripped-down urban-industrial chic look(see, I can make up bullshit just as well as any club promoter). Hell, even the staff look like international scene regulars. Throughout the store, slumped and stacked behind the register and perched in designer chairs, Blink is sure to be employing an array of people who are at least three of these five things: a) urban hipster, b) thin, c) tall, d)European, and e) attractively androgynous.

What Blink really is, I realized, is the parallel dimension version of a trendy lounge - the version from the good dimension. It's only open during the day, all the pretty people are courteous and warm, there are no drugs(unless you count the wine - I shit you not - they serve while you wait or browse), and I can see more than three fucking feet in front of me. Euro-electronic muzak must be a multidimensional constant, however.

One thing I didn't count on, now that I have my contacts, is how it would affect my running. I developed the habit of taking my glasses off when I ran at the gym, to blind myself to the numerous gym distractions: TVs tuned to MTV¹ and VH1, group aerobics classes, inappropriate spandex displays, etc. That, and I grew tired of pushing my glasses up Kent style every thirty seconds or so.

Having all those distractions filtered out really helped my focus. Nothing existed outside of step, push, stride, breathe, plant, repeat. My times improved steadily during my six weeks of wearing glasses.

Today, I'm running and I have to work to focus. I can see everything very clearly, but I refuse to take my contacts out in the gym locker room. They go in after I wake up, and go out before I go to bed. Anything else just complicates the entire process and throws the universe into chaos. So to focus, I picked a treadmill from the line of machines that had a clear line of sight to a glass door - giving me a phantom me to stare down while I psych myself up to set a new best time.

One last hazard of this switch: I keep trying to adjust glasses that aren't there, making me look insane in public.

¹I don't know what tripping on LSD or mushrooms is like, but I imagine the disorienting effect is something like watching MTV muted and without context - utter nonsensical imagery full of big, bright colors and quick cuts.