no, of course i am not drawn to men with glasses because they are readerly people. that would be a ludicrous inference to draw anywhere in the world let alone in this country where childhood myopia affects one in four six-year-olds, one in three nine-year-olds, and by the time we are in college nearly 9 in 10 are veering on bat-blind. being shortsighted in singapore is no indication of bookishness; it is (foremost and merely) the genetic and social norm (every few years the defence ministry complains about how we have the largest percentage of soldiers with bad eyesight than any army in the world…)

but i do think that one of the loveliest moments for a pair of shortsighted people is when you both take your glasses off before making out. i mean if i were sitting demurely on your couch sipping wine you don’t know what is going to happen, necessarily, but if i immediately took my glasses off as i sat down we’d both know exactly where we were, wouldn’t we? but not only that. if you are at all shortsighted your glasses are not a decorative appendage but a very real and necessary part of you — someone else who takes them off for you reaches into your personal space, prises away a part of you — the world blurs out, you blink, there’s a moment of discomfiture and real vulnerability and then — you let your trust of them overcome this anxiety. more: if you’re a glasses-wearer very few people would have seen you without them in public, and likely you keep them on almost all day except when going to bed, so the only people who have ever seen what you look like without them, who have seen your eyes up close and unshielded are people in your own household, or else those you’ve brought into your bed. so that moment — when the glasses come off — is very intimate for both of you: you and the other know that she is seeing you in a way very few people have before, and that closeness is not like anything else.