Tonight my friend invited me to a show in someone's house. It was a mix of dance and theatre and other performing arts. Each performer took the stage, just 15 feet away from me, but I couldn't see a thing. And as the rest of the audience laughed at everything happening onstage, I sat there wishing I could see what was so funny.
I see lots of performance, and this happens all the time. And while I've learned to bring binoculars to big theaters and outdoor spaces, this was a show in a living room—we were right there, so close to each other. Wouldn't it have been weird for me to whip out these opera glasses to see something 15 feet away? Even in a huge auditorium, someone sitting nearby will poke fun at me: "What are you trying to do? Read the tags on the actors' trousers?" And then I either have to make that person feel like a jerk by outing myself as visually impaired, or sit there feeling like a freak for being kinda blind.
Then there's this thing: My being a man peering at a bunch of female performers through binoculars has this other creepy connotation. So opera glasses or no, I am damned.
Thankfully my friend gave me the play-by-play of what I missed after the show. And in some sense, I'm not actually missing anything. I just see it differently.
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