Last time I went in for the eye-test marathon there was a new person in charge of all this marvellous equipment – a young lady. I am never at a loss for things to say, because I find other people’s jobs in life quite interesting. In fact, I’m quite nosy, which I think is a good trait in anyone. As soon as you lose that interest in other people and what’s going on around you, you might as well be in an urn somewhere.
So I was asking this young lady the usual stuff – where she came from, why she had become an optician – and we were chatting away and she was perfectly nice and I was only lying a little bit about how long I wear my lenses each day and how often I clean my hands and so on and so forth. And then it occurred to me, because she was a very pretty young woman, that opticians probably have to deal with more than their fair share of sexual harassment, and wouldn’t it be terrible if a man was in a room like this and he suddenly lunged at the optician. Obviously it’s a fairly intimate situation – you’re in the dark, you’re a man, she’s a woman, she’s touching your face and speaking to you in a soft and slightly concerned way, there’s a certain tenderness involved, and let’s face it, a lot of the time men are thinking about sex. I know I am. So I asked her. I made the mistake of saying out loud, ‘Have you ever had a man lunge at you when you’re in the dark like this?’ and I noticed that she backed away slightly, presumably thinking that my asking the question was a precursor to going in for a grope.
I don’t blame her at all. She had a large, partially sighted middle-aged man sitting maybe nine inches away from her in a darkened room, asking her if she had ever been grabbed in just such circumstances. Of course I didn’t mean it that way at all.
I immediately reassured her that I was not planning a lunge. Perhaps I stressed it a little too strongly as I think – though I may be imagining this – she seemed a little disappointed. I don’t for a second think she had really wanted me to lunge, but as soon as I made it clear that the thought hadn’t actually crossed my mind she looked a little offended. Or maybe that involuntary shudder she gave was one of relief. Either way, I immediately regretted the forcefulness with which I had pointed out that I had absolutely no interest in lunging at her, so I tried to redress the balance by saying, ‘Not that you’re not perfectly lungeable. You are very lungeworthy indeed. I am sure you have been on the receiving end of many lunges in your social life and long may that continue.’
Really I should have just shut up, but I am so convinced that I can salvage most situations with words that I pressed on, and at this point made matters slightly worse by saying, ‘If it does happen at work then I suppose you shouldn’t be too flattered because, of course, the person doing the lunging is having his eyes tested, so presumably he can’t really see what he’s doing in the first place.’
By now she had realized I am an idiot and had decided not to take offence, which was good news for me because I then got to discover the following bombshells. As I suspected, quite often men will reach out and try to cop a feel or a squeeze or even brush against the young lady accidentally on purpose as she’s fiddling with the silly glasses on their face. In particular, she said, it happened when she was working in the City, where the financiers hang out, and where young men who earn far too much money and as a result behave rather badly are particularly lecherous. She said she got quite adept at spotting the type and heading them off at the pass. Who’d have thought this would be one of the regular hazards of working in the field of sight-correction? But it gets better. She went on to inform me that apparently young female opticians don’t have to endure anywhere near as much lunging as young men. You might find this hard to believe, but I have it on good authority, straight from the optician’s mouth, that sometimes a male eyeperson – I’ve got bored writing optician – might pop out for some reason, just to see if they’ve got lenses in stock or whether or not they can get those Armani frames in pink, only to discover when he comes back into the room that the lady in question has undressed herself and is sitting there, bold as brass, waiting for the next step with her threepenny bits hanging out. I asked how the men deal with it and was informed that normally they just back out of the room and ask one of the ladies in the shop to go in, or offer the amnesty ‘OK, I’m going to go out again and we’ll pretend this didn’t happen’ – crushing words for anyone to hear when they’ve just laid their intentions out for all to see.
I was raised in more modest times, when ladies would attend dances once a year in the hope of meeting a young man with good prospects to make a life with. I don’t think I am quite prepared for a world filled with fumbling molesters and middle-aged exhibitionists stripping for action in small rooms just yards from the pavement where the rest of us are traipsing past. But part of me is secretly thrilled. It means that all those letters I read as a kid in Men Only and Knave and Escort in which lucky window-cleaners or plumbers or gardeners were offered a little extra something by the lady of the house weren’t necessarily just made up by losers, for losers.
Because I have discovered – late in life, I know – that up and down the country in the small, dark, cosy, womb-like interiors of opticians’ cells, women are taking off their brassieres and waiting for some poor young bloke, who’s probably only a year out of optician school, to come back in and deal with their matronly advances. And if you don’t think that’s a good reason to love life, then I’m giving up on you.
Why Do I Say These Things? Page 25