The better to see you with, my dear...

So I took my new contacts to my optometrist yesterday for a check-up. Everything was fine except for one minor annoyance-- at night any bright light was surrounded by a halo. Which made it look like there were cars all the fuck over the road. To cut down on the glare, I've been wearing shades at night, like a crack-whore. They're my asshole cop glasses-- polarized aviators. I keep asking my friends for their license and registration. Yeah, they still think it's funny.

ANYWAY, my optometrist nodded his head, concerned, looked deeply into my eyes, and told me it was because I had enormous pupils, so big in fact that they expanded around the edge of the corrective part of the contact lenses. He used the word enormous. He even made a gesture with his hands that implied a sort of weight, rather as if he were talking about breasts. I believe it turned him on a little.

I myself, I was a little freaked out. How can you go for twenty-five years without knowing that you have some truly exceptional physical characteristic? I felt a similarly taken aback when I found out that I had a tipped uterus-- it was like, how come no one ever told me? I've been seeing gynecologists and optometrists for many a yearn now, and they'd kept mum. I say that's medical malpractice by omission. 

At any rate, I found a sudden need to take a look at my pupils.

Here's the things about looking at your pupils: looking at them makes them disappear. They go into hiding. They shrink down like genitalia in cold water (that was my attempt at tact there, the lack of specification of genitalia, by the way). As you may already know, pupils dilate in the dark, when you're relaxed, and when you're sexually aroused. Through undisclosed means, I attempted to contrive a combination of these three factors in the bathroom, flipping on the light only after I was quite certain they were dilated. Of course they just contracted again. I had to try this two or three more times until I had convinced myself that I did indeed have enormous pupils, and also it was good that I was doing this at home instead of in Providence where I have a (male) roommate.

Well and so, I have to wear glasses at night if I'm driving in unfamiliar terrain, and I have learned two things about me: firstly, I have Pupils of Unusual Size (POUS's). Seriously. Those fuckers are huge. Also, I am willing to do almost anything in order to prove a point to myself.

I think I'm going to create a center for those, like me, who are the Particularly Ocularly Enabled. We're accepting applications now. Please include your name, phone number, and the maximum dilation measurement of your pupils. In metric units.

On the Subject of the Fitness of One's Physique

Some sort of spring fever seems to have hit the world at large, and instead of cleaning, my nearest and dearest are flocking to gyms, yoga studios, and the great outdoors for the purpose of greasing their knee joints, increasing the relative strength of their heartbeats, and presumably, nurturing that more abstract but socially hygienic goal of "physical fitness." So I, like the lemur [LEMMING] I am, got in line to jump off the cliff. I joined the gym.

Not only "the" gym, or "a" gym, but the Campus Gym. The San Diego State University gym, or the "Aztec Recreational Center" as they euphemistically term it-- a friendlier term than "The Gym Where 30 Thousand Hardbodied Undergraduates go to Lift Hundred Pound Weights on their Buttocks while Engaging in the World's Most Perfect Downward Dog." It's enormous, it's open 24 hours, it's color scheme is primarily grey. It's serious bidness.

For those of you who haven't known me since high school when my "physical fitness" consisted of hoisting a bottle of 20/20 to my lips (followed, perhaps, by ab-strengthening Toilet Bowl Worship), I have engaged in some basic physical fitness in the last ten years. I have yoga'd, I ran for several months, I mastered the Lusty Leapfrog (remember: there is no such thing as an overshare). 

And now, after a year-long hiatus, I'm attempting to reengage in the world's most obnoxiously beautiful city. And I mean beautiful people-wise. I should qualify, as this is a particularly blonde, tan, toned sort of beauty, not one to which I necessarily prescribe, although I enjoy T&A as much as the next fellow. This is Intimidating. I have Fitness Shame.

I think this is partly because, other than my pastiness and Lack of Tone, I seem to be in reasonable shape, because I am thin. This is a lie. Although I can touch my toes to my nose (a strange sort of claim to fame), I no longer have any sort of cardiovascular stamina. Even at my running peak, after six months of going 4 days a week, I could only go a mile and a half. In half an hour. People walk faster than I run. And I am PROUD of that accomplishment, my friends. 

I expect to die, but I really hope it won't be because of a treadmill Incident. I'll keep you posted.