Help! I Fell in Love with My Optician: How It Wasn’t Just About Eye Contact for This Writer

What is the sexiest thing a person can do to another person? No. Don’t answer that. I’ll tell you. It’s to hold their gaze. To maintain eye contact. To not blink. To not look away.

And here I am, staring deep into her eyes. She is staring deep into mine. Glossy lashes line her dark eyes, our faces so close together that I can feel the warmth of her breath on my cheeks. Any little movement and our lips would accidentally touch. I have to stay focused. I’m here for my annual eye test. Focus. Focus. Focus.

Lately, everything has been a bit blurry. I lost my sight around the time I turned 50. I did what you normally do when this happens: I half-closed my eyes, Marilyn Monroe-style, and decoded the words on the page. But over the years, my vision got worse and there was no way around it: I needed glasses.

My eye doctor – who I think is around 40 – asks if I see better with option one or option two. The problem is that I can’t see any difference between the two. I want to get the right answer, just to please her. She repeats the question and I look at her longingly, not sure how to respond.

“Is it wrong to be attracted to your eye doctor?” I ask my husband later. “You have no idea how she stared into my eyes.”

“It’s her job to stare into your eyes,” he notes. Which is true. So I try not to dwell on the way she gently moved my head so it rested on a metal rim. Or the icy blast of air she blew on my eyeballs. Am I the only one, or is the whole optician thing strangely erotic?

I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve never been attracted to another woman before. I’m overwhelmed, intrigued, and, frankly, intoxicated by the whole thing. But here’s the thing. I don’t think this is about eye contact. Or the plot twist of unexpected movement when you thought movement was no longer possible.

This is about how we’re systematically removing contact with people from our daily lives, so that we’re now vulnerable when we’re actually physically close to them. Have you noticed how we’re automating everything from grocery store checkouts to airport checkouts? How and when did we think it was a good idea to replace humans with machines? I don’t know the answer, but I want to leave the question there, floating around in our collective subconscious. As a reminder for when we’re told this is all part of human evolution, and our world falls apart in yet another global disruption.

This is the truth. We can remove people from our existence, but we cannot stop our natural instincts when we connect with another human being. Isn’t this what inevitably happens when professionals like doctors, fitness trainers, and dentists come into our environment? Strangers whose job it is to get close to or even touch our bodies.

Just last week I had an appointment with my new gynecologist. We immediately noticed that we have a mutual doctor friend, children the same age and identical taste in shoes. She immediately feels like my new best friend and we declare that we really need to have a drink with our mutual friend, before she embarrasses me completely by saying, “Okay. Let’s get you in the stirrups.”

Back to my eye doctor. I’m sitting there, in the half-light. She tells me that I definitely need glasses. I also have a halo around my cornea that could indicate high cholesterol, which I need to get checked. Which explains why she’s been staring so intently into my eyes. And yet, and yet…

As I stand up to leave, she says, “I hope you don’t mind me saying this. But there’s something about you—I think you have a really nice energy.” My husband says I’m making this part up. And I make things up. Making things up is part of the job description of a storyteller. But I didn’t make this part up. Maybe, just maybe, my eye doctor felt some kind of connection between us, too.

I choose new glasses. It is one of the mysteries of modern life why, given the choice, you always go for the most expensive ones. With the extra varifocal, non-reflective, anti-smear lenses, they cost me nearly £500. Deep sigh. On the plus side, if I buy them, I will have an excuse to go back and see my ophthalmologist. I will let you know how it goes.