But what kind do I want?  I’m redefining my face, and even if I’ll only be wearing them in the privacy of my own home, I still want to look bitchin’, right?  The whole thing became a challenge I hadn’t anticipated.  Do I go for something diminutive and risk looking impish and fragile like Moby?

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Or maybe something bigger and round that will make me look intelligent and cultured but with the ability to fuck shit up should I need to, like Sylvester Stallone in Tango and Cash?

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Or do I go the super-nerd, hipster route, where I find the most ridiculous, chunky assed horn rimmed spectacles on earth and make like I’m so confident that I’m embracing the very thing that would otherwise be subjected to ridicule and derision?  Maybe throw some white tape across the bridge and really make like I’m taking the power back for dweebs and irony-savy fuckheads?

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And where do I get them?  A drug store seemed the logical place to start, but all I found there were glasses for people whose vision was far worse off than mine, namely people in their 70’s and 80’s.  Style wise, they were designed for that same demographic and deciding I didn’t want to align my choice in eye wear with the lesion covered old man dosing off in the pharmacy, I took my leave of the drug store and looked elsewhere.

Being the fashion-stagnant maven of haute couture that I am, Target and Wal-Mart were the next logical choices.  Both places were a bust, unless I wanted something with leopard print arms or maybe an elegant powder blue tortoise shell finish to them.  Can it be this difficult to find a pair of reading glasses?  Doesn’t Dolce and Gabana or Versace make anything for an early thirty something with slightly blurred vision who wants nothing more than to be able to get stoned and drive after sundown while retaining his ability to make heads or tails of the lines in the road?

On to Barnes and Noble I moved and again found nothing very suitable, but by that point I’d had enough.  Something, anything would do.  And I had to ask, why I was making such a production of this?  Maybe there’s a part of me who has always wanted glasses.  Not cause I required them or was somehow envious of those who did, but because of their utility as a prop.

With glasses, I can be the guy who sits quietly, observing and listening in on other people’s conversations, and then, right at a critical moment I could interject my own thoughts, which might normally seem mundane and bereft of validity or insight, but not after having taken off my glasses and thoughtfully chewed the end of them for a moment.  I’d suckle the rubber covered point for an absent minded second, maybe twirl them in a couple of half circles between my thumb and forefinger before blowing everyone’s minds.  ”You know, the issue here is not whether the sandwich is better with or without the crust.  What you have to ask yourself is, why are we arguing about the crust at all?  You must question everything you believe.  Crust, for all intents and purposes, is a patsy; a scapegoat for everything else that is wrong with the world and in turn, in our own lives.”  And people would agree.  They would nod in compliance as I sipped the last of my espresso and adjusted my beret.  And they would do this not because I was correct or had said anything even remotely significant, but just as you’re not to hit a man in glasses, neither are you to argue with him.

So I grabbed the fist pair I found that weren’t too ridiculous and made my way up the register.  When the lady at the counter asked me if I wanted a bag.  I replied “A bag?  You’re asking me about a bag when the fact of the matter is, a bag can’t really hold anything now can it?  I mean, metaphoristically it’s an empirical matter of subjectivity, is it not?  At least that’s what Kant would say.”  She responded with a mildly bewildered smile and gave me my  receipt.  Dolt couldn’t argue with me, that’s for sure, and did no better than to thank me for shopping at Barnes and Noble.  I hadn’t even put the glasses on yet and people were already treating me with an air of respect.  Like a man who knew things and wasn’t to be questioned.

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I ended up with the Moby variety of corrective lenses.  They’re thin and wiry and perhaps a mite too strong, bringing on a mild vertigo like euphoria.  No one is likely to punch me in the face or question a thing I say, however off the wall it may be.  They’re a perfect fit for a man of what people will assume, is my superior intellect.