Invisible girls with green eyes

I heard her call the bartender and I felt her palm on my forearm. She asked if I wanted a drink but I shook my head without turning towards her. She was flirting. I could hear it in her voice but I didn’t respond to her. She was invisible to me, she had green eyes.

Later I heard her again. The pub was busier then but she found the same spot at the bar and leant against me, unsteady on her feet.

“Are you sure I can’t buy you a drink?”

I told her I was sure and because I had finished my third pint I tried to explain why. She deserved an explanation. It wasn’t her fault; it was just the way I was born. Or the way she was. Either one, I suppose. It depends on how you look at it.

“I can’t see you.” I told her.

“Sorry?”

“Do you have green eyes?” I asked although I knew the answer.

“Yes.” She said.

“Then I can’t see you.”

Then she remembered. I couldn’t see the look of recognition on her face or the half smile on her lips but I could hear it all in the way she said, “Oh, it’s you.”

She knew me from the news. I am minor celebrity. A medical miracle. An anomaly. A blank on the radar. A blind spot.

When I was born my parents noticed that something about me was different. When my mother bent down to speak to me in those cute little goos and gaas I would scream. Every time. When she tried to feed me I would howl in agony. And when she picked me up I would freeze and hold my breath, catatonic with fear. I would only relax when my mother gave up trying to comfort me and passed me over to my father.

The reason was that my mother was invisible to me. She had green eyes and I have never been able to see people with green eyes. They just simply aren’t there.

My distraught parents consulted doctor after doctor, some of which I could see, others that I couldn’t, and each one told them that I was probably retarded.

When I was five I told my Dad that the house we lived in was haunted by a woman roughly his age. That’s what it felt like to me. My mother was a disembodied voice that seemed to follow me as I waddled from room to room. Sometimes the voice would be kind and calm, sometimes it would be angry and loud. I was never afraid though. Because even though she was invisible to me I could tell from the way that strangers smiled at her that the voice belonged to a very beautiful and kind woman.

My mother died when I was ten. My memory of that is my father standing over an empty bed. He stood there for three days and I am not sure when exactly she passed away. I stood at the doorway and watched him there. He held her invisible hand and kissed her invisible forehead. He told me that she looked fine. I couldn’t bare to see him like that so I turned away and walked into the other room. On the coffee table was an open book that I had never seen before. It was a photo album full of my parents wedding photos. That was when I realised I couldn’t see green eyed people even when they were just in photographs. The album was full of pictures of my dad. Alone outside the church, alone at the alter, alone at the reception. He looked so happy, a million miles from the man alone in the next room.

“That’s a sad story” said the empty space at the bar next to me. “You’ve made me cry. Look.”

I felt her take my hand and she pressed my index finger against some skin around the area her face would be. My finger came away wet. So I did something I never do. I kept hold of the girls hand and I led her to an empty table at the back of the pub. We talked all evening and both got drunk. She was interesting. She kept asking if I had ever been with a green-eyed girl and I kept assuring that I hadn’t. She described herself to me, she sounded pretty. Then she described a man at the bar with green eyes and a girl with green eyes that stood alone by the jukebox. I didn’t know if these people were really there but I didn’t mind.

I told her a few more stories about my life. Like the time I cracked the skull of a man with green eyes. He had tried to rob my house after seeing a documentary about me. I woke up to see the television floating across the carpet so I charged at it, picking up my baseball bat and swinging it at head height. I remember the crack, the invisible spatters of warmth on my face. Him mumbling “How?” and me standing over him telling him “I’m not blind.”

At the table in the back of the bar I kept drinking, she kept drinking and when I left, she came with me.

Sex with an invisible girl didn’t feel as much like masturbation as I thought it would do. It felt real. I found her with my hands and drew pictures of her in my head. We were both strong, we threw each other around the room for hours and when I grew tired she bit me on the ear to remind me that she was there, she was real.

In the morning I couldn’t see anything. She had tied her tights around my head as a makeshift blindfold. “Shh” she said from the bed next to me and took me by the hand. She led me into my kitchen and sat me down at the table.

“Just wait there. I’m going to cook you breakfast. Do you mind?”

I told her that I didn’t.

I understood what she was trying to do. I listened to her cluttering the pots and opening the fridge. It almost worked. I could almost pretend that if I took the blindfold off she would be there, the same as anybody else. And for a minute it was nice, not seeing her and not seeing anything, but it didn’t last long. I knew that if she left her number I would not call. I knew that was the last time I would ever take an invisible girl with green eyes home. In the bar she had told me my story had made her sad. She had told me she was crying and when I touched her face my finger was wet. But I couldn’t see her. For all I know she could have licked me.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nathan Good lives and works in Derby. He publishes handmade chapbooks along with two fellow crusaders under the guise timetraveloppurtunists. He was born on an Island and really misses the sea but not the seagulls.