I had moments of anger, or perhaps more frustration, but then things kept happening. I had been given a blindfold with everyone else waiting outside the theater, but if there was an instruction to remove the blindfold whenever I wanted, my date and I missed it completely. Though we were separated at the door and led through our own blackness, we both, unaware of the other, remained masked, seeing and unseeing. I had several blind interactions with the performers β one asked me to write a word about her on her body, with what I later learned was a tube of lipstick.
I quietly said no, wishing somehow that I had, and she exhaled loudly and departed. Later, I felt what I decided was an animal pelt being rubbed on my forearm. Because of these, I was certain that the performers were aware of me wearing the blindfold. Much later, I heard snickers from some of the other audience members.
Or, I imagined at some point, feeling hot light on my face and body, that I, in my place on the stage, had become part of the performance, and that if I took my blindfold off, as I at times longed to do, I would be faced with everyone in the audience looking at me, and laughing.
But this did not come to pass β rather, one of the women touched my hand, stood me up, and danced a tender slow dance with me, spinning herself around me, holding me close, hugging me, dipping herself, all the while shuffling her feet and leading us along. And I began to think about grief, what it would be like to lose someone I deeply loved, and to feel the extreme tension of their absence, and this gave me another frame in which to experience my near blindness opening my eyes underneath the black cloth, I could see orbs of light, shape, and occasional color if a performer moved close to me.
This might be exactly what that torture of loss would entail β hearing the voice, smelling the lingering scents left behind, seeing the ghostly shape, color, haze. There was a moment of big change, lots of shuffling around, chairs being moved, but mine did not. People moved around me, as though I were the pillar around which they assembled, and a woman gently rubbed my thigh. I wanted the dark world of vivid imagination, relinquished control, heightened sensation, to the very end.
