Sightless, Soundless, Speechless

One time, I did "accidentally mess up" though, which resulted in my shoulder brushing lightly against his. He turned his face to where he knew I was and grinned in reply, a hint of that shyness that all people have in new romance over his features.

His smile was the most beautiful thing, open and honest. He couldn't mimic facial expressions as he saw them on other people, couldn't copy things he saw in a movie. His smile was only his and it seemed like, to me at least, that made it all the more special.

Miles broke the moment when he draped an arm over Maddie's shoulder and his words were simple enough that I didn't even need the translation. Aww, aren't they cute?

David's face turned red and he blatantly gave Miles a sign that everyone knew. Fuck off..

I couldn't keep the giggle entirely quiet, but I was starting to not mind it so much when it happened around David. Every time it did, he tilted his head slightly to the sound and his lips curved up in a softer smile than all his others. It made me feel cute instead of awkward, made me realize that he liked those small reminders of my audible presence at his side, and it... made me wish I could give him more of those.

For the first time in any movie I'd been to, I didn't sit beside Maddie, which may seem like a strange thing for me to note when I was already learning to live on my own. The thing was that it was a moment to make me realize how dependent I had become on her translation and presence for even the smallest things. But she had her own interest, of course, and stayed with Miles. Always before, she would sign some things she thought I needed to hear, but she didn't do that for the first time in years. At first, I felt a little bit of last childhood nerves, the kind that have lingered, the kind that I would look back on and be grateful for the opportunity to have, as they meant I had lived a safe and protected life longer than I probably should have and much longer than many others have had.

But then I curled my hand into David's and he traced my fingertips.

I took a deep breath and just turned to watch on my own. Well. Kind of.

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Human beings often have a rather bad habit of getting caught up in eloquence. This isn't a criticism, by any stretch of the imagination, as that might make me one of the worst hypocrites to criticize unnecessary abuses of vocabulary. However, I think it should be noted that simplicity can hold its own beauty. For an example, the shortest language in the world is called Toki Pona and has 123 words in it. The most obvious question in regards to this is, how can that possibly work in a useful way?

Well, in short, we rely on language to communicate an idea with someone. Any combination or sequence of letters on a page, any combination of gestures or sounds or mixture of all of those, that can get this idea across is viable. If one did not have a word for the concept we know, in English, as "zebra", for instance, one might say "a striped horse" and so long as the person you are speaking with understands that concept and pictures a zebra, you have successfully gotten your point across.

Since the Deaf community is something close to home for me, let me offer another thought for consideration. I am used to being in a room of people and being unable to communicate easily with them. I am used to pantomime and games of charades. However, if you took a hearing person who did not know ASL and placed them in a room full of people who only knew ASL, then they become an outsider rather than me. In either case, a linguistic barrier exists that needs to be broken for communicative purposes. In this case, would not a language like Toki Pona, or some sign equivalent, that can describe most necessary ideas be more useful than English, which can be beautifully eloquent, but nigh impossible to ever truly master?

~From Dr. Archer's Essays on Common Linguistics and Unifiers

I wasn't really expecting what happened during that movie. It started with the first action sequence, when the vibrations started from the bass so that I grinned excitedly. Any visual explosion of light usually resulted in the shaking of my chair. What was more, David's hand would flex in mine every now and again, but I realized it wasn't just response to whatever he heard. It was response to my small intakes of breath, to the way my hand shifted with the noise.

He stroked his fingertips to my wrist, tracing the veins there curiously and my eyes went wide, my body turning warm. I think I've described that his touch was delicate, graceful, because it was how he could "see" and I was reminded of the fact in a very different way than before. He traced my palm again and I held still, thinking a lot of thoughts I didn't know what to do with when they took me by surprise, things like how he read by touch and I wondered what my wrist felt like when my pulse must have been racing. I wondered what he might read in that touch, if my pulse could form words like his Braille or morse code.

I watched the actors' lips move, but I wasn't really focusing on it as much as I usually did. I was distracted with David stroking the outside of my wrist, making a circle around it as if to piece the image together. I tried to keep one eye on the movie, but I also leaned closer to him... then rested my head against his shoulder. His fingers paused their tracing and my heart thudded with this curious sensation in my ears, the kind I got when riding roller coasters.

He hesitated while I waited with my breath held and then he finally seemed to make up his mind while the scenes played on. I think it was halfway through, or maybe a little over that, when he switched my hand to his right one and wrapped his left arm around my shoulder in a way that boys everywhere have once held their girl.

I would always have one regret after that date, just one, and that was how I didn't make my permission more obvious sooner. I should have rested my head in the hollow of his shoulder from the start and it turns out that you don't need to see or hear to find that perfect spot where you fit next to someone. You could just feel the way your shoulder turned to match the embrace, like a puzzle piece fitting with another.

The movie continued like nothing had happened while I wondered what was happening. How did I feel so connected with someone I was so isolated from? If I lived in a different world than everyone else, a silent world, then I must have lived two worlds apart from his.... right?

That didn't feel like it was right. It didn't get any less with my resting against his shoulder, his other hand tracing my wrist while I tried to keep our PDA movie acceptable. Don't judge me too hard. I was crazy smart and all that and people had high opinions of me - sometimes I thought they were every bit as too high as people were overly protective of me, actually - but I was still a teenager.

I shifted in my seat with the feelings of being close to someone and I dreaded the end of the movie when it came. We waited until the lights came up and of course we broke apart from each other while I turned to watch Maddie and Miles. Maddie translated while they talked about the movie and I grinned, but my heart was still racing, my thoughts far away from where she signed that this movie was as good as its prequel.

David kept his face where I could see it when he answered, even though it was awkward for him and my heart fluttered harder. I felt like I should have been shivering in my seat and I watched their conversation, but I think even then I knew what I was waiting for. David was smiling. I don't know. I thought maybe it was better.

They talked while we got up and I took the chance for what I wanted as soon as we walked outside, waving at Maddie.

She watched me, tilting her head, and her smile grew with my gesture. Go on and wait?

Her eyes glittered and Miles was laughing at the exchange so that I blushed. It turned out he didn't need a translation for that one and it forced me to consider that maybe my mood was a little more obvious than I would have hoped. David tilted his head to the sound, curious, and Maddie made a very obvious display of turning around and grabbing Miles to walk a little distance away.

The way the movie theater was set up, there was a side of it that was more or less isolated, especially at night. I wanted to pull David along, but I couldn't make myself do that even then, could only go at his pace while he cane walked where I led with his glow in the dark cane. He tapped the wall curiously and then turned to where he knew I was, his gaze slightly to my left.

I didn't leave him in darkness too long and since I couldn't give him my voice, I gave him his other form of sight. I pressed him gently back against the wall and then pressed my body to his, while his lips parted with his shock. He wrapped his arms around me eagerly though, his right hand stroking up to tangle in my hair, while his other caressed my back. His fingertips trailed up my head and across my shoulder blade, slowly tracing a partial picture of me where I was aligned against his body.

I wished he could see so I could ask his permission better, but then settled on lifting up to kiss the corner of his mouth. When he turned his head to press his lips to mine, it was enough of the permission that I had hoped for. For him and between us, it was clear as day.

I tightened my hold and I wasn't totally innocent by that point. I had had kisses before, for instance, but none of them would ever or could ever compare to David's kiss, at least not to me. What other kiss could possibly come close to one with a person who used their touch to see?

He cradled my hair in the softest caress, feeling it for the texture and the thin strands. His lips shaped around mine and his tongue flicked against them in the most strangely innocent gesture, as if he couldn't resist at least trying another sense to get a more complete picture of me. But then that lick seemed to only make him want more of the pieces, so that he moved the hand at my back to my face instead, curiously tracing my cheekbones. His fingertips were feather light and I couldn't keep from pressing closer against his body. Though the gestures themselves were innocent, my heart pounded in my chest when I felt how sexually aroused he was.

Because I was too. I felt needy in this soft kind of way, felt like that heartbeat wasn't just in my chest, but had traveled between my legs and through my abdomen. I couldn't hold back a soft sound and felt my vocal chords vibrate with something that encompassed that need. At first, I felt that old embarrassment, that fear that I didn't sound like I should, but David made it impossible for me to stay scared when his kiss turned fierce at what he heard. His tongue brushed against my lips again so that I parted them and he turned tentative again, those light little licks far more hesitant when I opened. My body pulsed with that strange all consuming desire of new infatuation, in my blood stream, in my veins, in his own pulse where I held his wrist to press his fingertips in their caress, so that, for the first time in my life...

I felt as if I could almost hear the exhalation that he gave me against my kiss and if I could remember enough of sound to imagine that one, I would imagine it as the emotion of desire that went with the rhythm of all those things together.

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VI. Learning To Talk

David

I have many favorite quotes in life, as most people notice rather quickly. Most of them are romantic in nature and a lot of them also come from Star Trek: The Next Generation. There is one quote that falls in both of those categories that would stick with me for a long time as a boy and it comes from a rather surprising source in the android Lieutenant Commander Data. It's a quote where he's describing friendship and here's how he defines it. "Even among humans, friendship is sometimes less an emotional response, and more a sense of... familiarity. As I experience certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways become accustomed to them. The input is eventually anticipated, and even missed when absent."

The quote became a favorite because if you look a little closer, you'll notice that he doesn't specify what kind of "sensory input" he means. So much of humanity's descriptors relied on sight, but I remember hearing that quote and smiling as a kid because it was one that I could easily understand. For me, that sensory input relies on the sound of a friend's voice, of the way their presence feels, of how their gait sounds as they walk. When I met Kelsey Archer, I had cause to consider something else.

Maybe there was something more to that quote. Maybe if you had to focus more to notice those inputs, they became more and more expected and more easily missed. After all, there is another famous quote that says "absence makes the heart grow fonder". Does that quote still apply if the person isn't really absent, but so much of the senses I relied on were muted? To me, I think that all of these thoughts applied. Every touch from someone who was so quiet became a treasured motion and every expected touch became something I would most certainly miss when I wasn't allowed it.

~David Layton, from The Sightless Memoirs

"Tell me what she's like, please, Miles!" I begged it of him when we got home.

Miles laughed, but it was a gentle laugh and I briefly had the thought that his own relationship seemed to make him a little different, but it wasn't a bad thing. "David, it doesn't matter. What does she feel like to you, mate? You told me you knew you weren't gay because girls were different."

"They are! And she feels amazing, soft and sweet, but tell me what other people see, too, please!" Of course, I didn't go into details, like how her lip gloss tasted like cinnamon and her hair smelled even better when I was that close to her. And that sound she had made when I licked her lips... It was this softest little whimper of need, made all the sweeter by the fact that sound from her was so much more rare than it was from others.

"What does it matter what other people see?"

"Because I want to know more about her! Miles, you don't get it. Do you remember those fairy tales that have fae that are shy, the ones where they'll appear to someone, but then quickly disappear when there's too much noise? Or how sometimes they're so shy they'll scare themselves with their own voices? That's what it's like being around her! Other people talk all around us and it's like she disappears... but not really!"

He sighed and I heard him scratch his hair. "I get it. Okay, I don't get it and I can't empathize, but I get the concept of what you're saying anyway. But try to get what I'm saying. I won't be able to tell you the things that matter to you, mate. Like, you know how you know what to look for in the different kinds of buttons you use for your shirt colors? You know how to feel for a point of a triangle or something, right? I'm not going to be able to tell you anything useful. You know how long her hair is. You know she's smaller and slighter. You know she's quiet and too quiet sometimes. You know she's bloody brilliant. Sometimes it's scary being around her and Maddie said she often has to write thoughts to her instead of signing when she doesn't have adequate enough words. I don't know how it'll make any difference or give you anything of value for me to tell you what color her hair is."

"Because it does! Did you know that books use colors all the time to describe an emotion? All the time, Miles! Black hats are the bad guys in westerns. Blue means calm. Green is what grass feels like and it's growth. White is how snow feels. Colors do have meaning!"

"Okay, okay. I'll tell you, but... I think it's going to make you nervous in some ways. First, can I tell you what you look like?"

I tilted my head. Do you know, in all the years we'd been friends, we'd never talked about this? I was just David and he was Miles. I hadn't really considered what I might look like to other people. "Okay, I guess."

"Do you remember that show you loved, White Collar?" I nodded, grinning. "Okay, remember the main character? Well, you look like him, mate."

Well, now I felt shy. That guy was pretty cool. He had this quote in one episode I loved about how murder was indelicate and distasteful. "Wait, really? Is that a good thing?"

"Yeah, it's definitely a good thing, David. Did you never wonder why Kacey Camden asked you to the dance that one year? You looked great then, mate. I mean sometimes I think I'd go gay for you now that you grew out of of some of the awkwardness, if you didn't hate the way I sound."

"Goddammit, I'm going to hear about that for years. Okay, but what's that got to do with her?"

"She's gorgeous." I grinned, unable to keep from it. "She's got this blonde storybook hair and her eyes are this really light blue, like swimming pool water blue. She's smaller and cute and shy."

I sat down in our chair, feeling all those butterflies all over again. "I knew it. Wait, why wouldn't you tell me that?"

He hesitated, sitting across from me. "I don't know, man. Some guys get all jealous over gorgeous girls and shit, you know? I know you're not like that, but it didn't seem like something to bother you with, I guess. You're cute, she's cute. But I also don't mean to give you the impression that she's shallow over you or anything."

I didn't even think about all that. It just didn't cross my mind actually but, like I said, I had read books and I listened to media. So I knew descriptions of the trope where a person would see someone else looking at their loved one and feel jealous about it, but that didn't register to me. I think part of it might have been the obvious reasons that I wouldn't see it when someone else would look at her like that. My "sight" was just different.

But I think another reason, one that was far deeper and more emotion based, was one I knew without doubt. I considered how she patiently taught me how to spell my name in sign language by cleverly letting me feel the letters. I thought about how she so thoughtfully didn't try to guide me through a movie theater, how she pressed against me in our embrace so that I could somehow "see" her when I couldn't have her voice. See, I didn't need Miles to tell me that she wasn't shallow over me and I didn't need anyone clarifying the fact that I was pretty sure I didn't have to worry about jealousy with her.

Much like I didn't need to see the color pink to understand that it went with love and infatuation, I could just tell. It was in the way her lips felt when she kissed, in the way she held me tighter with the want to be closer, the way she pressed my hand to her cheek to encourage me to feel more of her. Those touches were too honest, too open, too attentive.

No, I didn't worry about all the rest. I think another reason for this was that the two of us had too many more prominent, obvious problems to consider with each other. Things like jealousy just fell to the wayside when we had to expend our creativity in figuring out ways to talk with each other.

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Later on, my collegiate life would take a strange turn from meeting Kelsey Archer, but this was a mutual life change for both of us. I have a fondness for recollection and seeing the winding paths that happened in my life. I had started with the goal to have a career in IT, for instance. This goal would refine itself and end up with a different manifestation than I would have ever expected and a large part of that has to do with the fact that Dr. Archer and I had a relationship that required a great deal of creativity.

Carnegie Mellon University's Randy Pausch would be, due to his work in Virtual Reality, someone I ended up looking into when I was growing up. He had a lecture before he died entitled "The Last Lecture" and in it, he discusses a project entitled Alice that teaches kids how to program by giving them the feel of creating a game instead. He summarizes this best by saying, "The best way to teach somebody something is to have them think they're learning something else."