Only candles light the stairwell behind us and illuminate the perimeter of the particularly cramped, humid room. Our dining room will be much darker than this. I bite my lip. My eyes dart around, focusing on every lit pinprick of light. The purpose of a “blind dinner” is to take away what I consider to be our best sense: sight. But am I really ready for that?
“Everyone grab a buddy and keep close,” the trip liaison calls out. I can barely see her over the silhouettes of nodding heads.
Immediately I latch onto the small backpack in front of me and feel Tori’s hands around my waist. “I hope you don’t mind,” she whispers. “I’d like to sit with someone I know.”
I shrug and watch as group after group disappears into the darkness behind the huge curtain in front of us. I’m feeling this odd wiggling inside my stomach, and grip the fabric of the backpack harder. Suddenly, my feet are leading me forward. Past another five or six kids. Around the side of the huge curtain that’s pulled up and away. Plunging me into total darkness.
“Ow! I just hit the wall,” I whisper as I stumble, rebounding off the corner. I am glad no one can see the klutz at her best. But Tori giggles.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” she asks.
I shake my head, but remember she can’t see the gesture. “No—”
I am now wedged between what feels like two chairs. I try to step forward. Nothing. Wiggle. Nothing. I lose my grip on the backpack. “Uh…help?” I call out. Without my sense of sight, I cannot see my escape route. I feel helpless.
A few people somewhere in the room laugh. I try again. Louder this time. “I can’t move,” I say. “I’m stuck.” I frown and find the back of the chairs; I try to push them away from me. Nothing. “Hello? I’m stuck!” There’s a laugh in my voice now, but I’m not panicking like I thought I would. I know someone will come to the rescue. Someone who’s a master at navigating in this environment.
I hear some rustling, and then a male voice exclaiming something in Spanish. He’s right near my face. He feels for my hands and I gladly let him take them. “You’re stuck?” he asks. I nod, but forget that he can’t see me. So I just grunt.
And then he yanks my arms straight.
I pop from between the chairs and he leads me over to my table, placing my hands on the back of the chair. “Sit, sit,” he says, clearly enjoying my lack of coordination.
I slump slowly down into the chair. Again, Tori giggles when she finally sits next to me.
Placing my hands cautiously on the edge of the table, I slide them forward, feeling my way across the rough fabric of the table cloth, hooking my fingers up and over the curve of the cold rectangular plate, and sliding them in— “Oh! What the heck is this?” I pull my hand back from the slimy goo.
“Which end did you start on?” I hear Tori ask. Her quiet voice is hard to discern from the rumble of forty or so diners around us. It was their chattering, not forks or knives clattering. We weren’t allowed those. Too dangerous for first time blind people.
“The right,” I tell her. But then it hits me. “We’re supposed to start from the left. Right.”
She laughs and says, “I think you just found dessert.”
Looking away from the spot where I think Tori’s head is, I tentatively lift my hand to my nose. And sniff. “It’s chocolate!” And now my fingers are in my mouth.
Two and a half hours drag on. A show is preformed, somewhere in the room, at some point in the meal. The smells of coffee, cinnamon, baby powder, and lavender, and the sounds of elegant Spanish, chirping birds, a bubble bath, and a train barreling down its tracks overload what senses we have left. A beautiful opera ballad rattles our heads and ribcages with its grace and power. And because of the constant barrage of sounds, smells and tastes, I’m exhausted.
Somewhere towards the end of the soprano’s last string of vibrato, I find myself asleep. My cheek on my hand, my elbow on the table. Then I’m blinking, wondering how long I’ve had my eyes closed. There is a lit candle somewhere in the room, and there are shapes and colors. Dim shapes and colors, but still… I can see. My eyes are burning, painfully throbbing at being assaulted with the small amount of light, but still… I can see.
And I’m wishing I had taken a video to prove that I’m not lying when I recount and act-out everything I’ve just experienced for my friends. This night is something I will never forget and will always appreciate.
—Lindsay Goulet
Around the Atlantic on SAS 