Vision of love

Hmm, ESPN or Cosmopolitan? Decisions, decisions. \nIn every doctor’s waiting room, there are two types of magazines – one for heterosexual men, the other for heterosexual women. It is at this literary crossroad that homos like me are left biting their nails in nervous contemplation, bloodying the cuticles of otherwise beautiful jazz hands.\nIt’s like that Robert Frost poem about paths – the one that makes you want to put down your Snapple and just think about life.\nTwo magazine roads diverged in a gay wood, I thought, my hands reaching toward them. And I took the Cosmo when no one was looking.\nTucking it in between the conveniently enlarged pages of ESPN, I opened it up and flipped to one of the submitted “true life” articles. It was about experiencing “love at first sight.”\nAs an utter love cynic – one who hisses at weddings and rolled hash with pages of “The Notebook” – the concept of having such a fantastical experience had always seemed laughable, especially at the eye doctor.\nHow could anyone waiting in an optometrist’s office believe in love at first sight? I thought to myself. Everyone has corrected vision. We couldn’t see love if we wanted to. \nAs Mariah Carey’s debut album, “Vision of Love,” so poignantly noted in the late 1990s, there has always been a mysterious connection between visibility and love-ability – an eerie relationship between corneas and coronaries. \nAs children, we began bright-eyed and optimistic about finding true love. But as we age, facing cheating partners and devastating breakups, the degeneration of such visionary romance begins to ensue.\nEx-boyfriends, after all, are the cataracts of the dating world.\nMy friend Charnee, still blinded by her ex, routinely claims that love doesn’t exist. She’s completely given up on the idea of ever finding romance. During the Zales diamond commercials, when the tuxedo-clad man gets down on one knee to propose – the woman beaming with absolute joy – Charnee throws an IKEA pillow at the screen. \n“Don’t do it!” she says, flicking ash from her cigarello. “He’s cheating on you!”\nIt seems like our generation has begun developing this habit – this pessimistic attitude – of staring through the tinted lens of romantic cynicism. It’s when the disbelief in romance sets in, however, that we begin settling for mere sexual hook-ups – inviting strangers from Sports back to our apartments for embarrassing rounds of “the whiskey-dick dance.”\nNevertheless, this optimistic nearsightedness is far from permanent. Because just when you don’t expect it – like while leaving your eye appointment, for example – you see him.\nA vision of love – a man so visually perfect you want to spray him down with Renu and take your contacts out all over his body. \nYour crotch – like your faith – suddenly dilates. And though you realize it may just be “lust at first sight,” at least you’ve seen something. You remember that the opportunities for finding companionship are endless. \nYou just need keep your eyes wide open.