I’m near-sighted but tonight, as I’m trying to work on my book (and I swear this isn’t an excuse), things are a little blurry. Is it possible I’m also far-sighted? Or am I going blind? I AM GOING TO BE SO FUCKING PISSED OFF IF I GO BLIND.

It’s these damn big pupils of mine. For some reason, they’re larger than most peoples’. I’m pretty sure of this. One time I went to the eye doctor and he leaned in and said, “You have beautiful pupils.” And I said something like, “Oh…heh, uh, okay, thanks.” And he said, “They’re very large.” And I couldn’t even say, “Eyes up here, buddy” because that’s exactly where they were.

Don’t people who have large pupils have a better chance of going blind or something? I will be so angry if that happens. But on the plus side, I’ll take up smoking! I’ve always said, if I ever get an incurable disease, I’m just going to say, fuck it, whatever, and start smoking. It’s Manhattan, who gives a fuck? I’m also going to drink a lot too, but like, unabashedly. The great thing about that is I’ll never have to worry about being a designated driver. For a couple of reasons.

No, seriously, I don’t know how people do it. Once I interviewed a man for my documentary on Marilyn Monroe fans (that seems like it was in another life) and he was blind and I wish I was still in touch with him but I lost his address and I stupidly asked him if he had email and he said no, because, he’s blind. I mean he didn’t say that, he was kind and said that the technology for web surfing for the vision impaired wasn’t up to snuff yet. It was like on American Idol when Secrest held up his hand for the blind dude to high five or when George W. Bush waved to Stevie Wonder. Coincidentally, Ryan Secrest and George W. Bush really defined my later high school years, in their own special ways. Anyway, I was interviewing this guy for my documentary and we started talking about his life and I didn’t want to ask him, “Why are you blind, what happened?” because he mentioned when he was a kid he could see, but I didn’t want to put him on the spot and you can’t just ask people why they’re blind. So I asked him about work, fishing around to see if maybe it was a work-related injury. I know, I’m horrible! He told us about work, it was a perfectly normal desk job. He asked, “Is there anything else?” and I stared at my friend Erika and it’s like I was saying with my mind, “Ask him when he went blind” and I could almost hear Erika saying back, “That’s so awkward, you ask him” “No, you” and there was a strange halted pause and Erika finally just asked him something else.

I’m a vain person. I like putting on make up and spending money on hair products, and essentially, you know, not being blind. I worry that no one would want me anymore. That my friends would stop calling. They would probably keep texting, though, and I’d have to ask my mom to read the texts aloud to me. Because my generation hates talking on the phone. This is the internet’s curse.

Two nights ago I was in a hurry to drive over to my bestie’s house and so I quickly smeared face moisturizer on, focusing under my eyes, because Proactiv dried out my skin and now I’m worried if I scratch my cheek I’m going to cause a DAMN FIRE, and I put on lots of mascara and other essentials and drove off. I put on the air conditioning, as I tend to do, and on the drive over I felt my eyes starting to sting. Before long they were tearing, and burning, and I had to pull over. Thankfully I decided not to take Mulholland on the way there. When I pulled over and saw my red eyes, mascara running down, I realized that my moisturizer had sun screen in it and I essentially used it like eye cream and the cool breeze blowing into my face caused it to seep into my eyes. Then I realized I’m an idiot. Then I bought eye cream at Costco. But that happened today, and it’s another story. Except it’s not really story, it’s me wanting to buy $80 Chanel eye cream at Costco and my mom convincing me to get Olay.

My point to this stupid story is, what if I’m causing my own blindness? But don’t we all, in some metaphorical way, make ourselves blind? We never want to see what might hurt us. We make ourselves deaf, too, not wanting to hear what might hurt us. We do this to ourselves. …No? Yeah, I tried.

The Logical Song — Supertramp