Contactus Orbitus

They say that making good eye contact is, well,... good, indicates healthy self-esteem and respect for others. I've been told I make good eye contact, however now I'm beginning to question the logic in that. I don't think people REALLY want good eye contact. It may be a generally espoused concept in the "This is how to get a good job" or "This is how to win friends and impress squirrels" handbooks, but the slovenly, heathen, heaving public in their deepest of deep places doesn't really want to make or have made at/with them good eye contact. Those that don't make eye contact, good or otherwise, are appellated "shifty-eyed" which connotes a world of meanings. Not only the obvious, eyes maniacally struggling to escape their sockets to avoid intercourse, but the implication of dishonesty, not "meeting the eye". It is said that rapid blinking is fair indication of fibbers, or maybe the speaker is merely trying to dislodge the great whelping calumny that is desperately clinging to his sclera. To disrupt the painful construct poinking desperately into the gelatinous, moist sphere through which here peers into this dis-reality ripe for his manipulations.


So, what is too much, too little, too extended, too penetrating, too contact-y good eye contact?? When I am playfully yet oh-so-tenderly situating my orb 'gainst yours.... Oh, you mean I don't actually touch my ball to yours??!! Well, hell... no wonder folks having been giving me the evil eye. Maybe my good eye contact has been a tad too painful, rather like the little man that comes to poke you in the eye. You know him. The dapper one that shows up at your door the morning after you have snorted just a bit too much coke, and you wake to the light like a thousand tiny needles trying to edge themselves 'neath the delicate margins of your thin eyelids. As you stumble about for water, the little man knocks lightly and you answer knowing he will be there with his wee pointy finger or jabby small stick. A quick poo-hoo to the eye and he smartly turns and retreats leaving you to gasp painfully, slapping palm over socket, in full knowledge that you have deserved every prickly nanosecond of that poking. But now you can relish the rest of the day, saunter lazily to Mi Michoacan, order up three tasty 30peso taquitos of your favorite carne - be it barbacoa, carnitas, o bistec - a dollop of runny refrieds to adorn along with some finely chopped cilantro, a dash of real red picante and a few slices of pickled jalapeño (o habañero as is your wont to abuse yon colon). A steady trickle of baby beers should round off the meal while I sit on the sidewalk and gaze at the passers by waiting for the sun to zenith and sink to the horizon signalling another day past and another night of frolicking. Hmmmm.... I digress, but so pleasantly indeed.

As for eye contact...overrated in so many ways. In much the same way that the gurus of polite and gentile society demand that we make our eyes contact pleasantly and our hands shake ever so simply and our Thank You's quite so sincerely, yes, all good in theory but the practice makes the normal folk so very, very nervous as do most of the things I propose and pursue. The conundrum of the not normal.