I'm sorry for your loss of eyesight. But I hope you've instead acquired some insight. I thought your story would be amusing or somehow give me some insight into blindness. It did but not in the way I think you might.

You knew Lisa by who she was and how she acted. Why did what she 'looked' like matter at all? I'm trying not to hurt your feelings in this post but your blindness is not in your eyes but in your heart.

I had a similar experience that had nothing to do with my vision (20/20 with contacts), but rather with alcohol. Met a girl at a bar while (forgive the term) blind drunk. Took her home, and then sobered up enough to realize that I really didn't like this girl. Not just her looks, but her personality too. Only I'd dug myself a bit of a hole.

Fortunately, one of the advantages of being really drunk is that you can basically pretend to pass out and no one's the wiser. The next morning, I made my excuses, she left, and that was that.

Point being, I think your experience is just as common with sighted people, too. Haven't you ever heard of "the Walk of Shame"?

...we all know that Salon chooses articles solely on the basis of their likelihood of generating responses. But this one wins, hands down.

What's next?

"I thought I wanted a puppy but when it wasn't as cute as I expected I had it put down"?

"I loved my wife until she put on 10 lbs"?

"I'm a gay man but married a woman without telling her, and I cheat on her with strange men at the gym every week -- is that ok?"

Pssst...Salon...let us know when you decide to print articles for ADULTS.

I mean, why does anyone write any of these stories any more? The letters page will basically be composed of sanctimonious utterances peppered with words like "shallow", "chauvinist", "vain", etc. Or, there will be the typically; "I'm so smart, so intelligent, dammit Salon, where's that Proust aticle with all the funny inside jokes for ADULTS, not this crap!!!" That will be followed by the blow off; "call me when you decide to print something interesting." So, let er rip!

As for Patrick Keller, haven't you ever heard of wanting to chew your arm off rather than wake up the guy who looked so good last night when you were drunk? Coyote ugly.

When you CAN'T get a woman to go home with you, THEN write an article.

Same guy. Same book. WAY different kind of excerpt. Worth reading, even if only as a comparison.

"Seeing the World through my Wife's Eyes" (NY Times Modern Love)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/fashion/02love.html?ex=1154577600&en=4d100ceca451af27&ei=5070

Of course someone's physical appearance is going to play a major role in whether you are physically attracted to them or not. People's sex drives, just like the sex drive of every other animal on Earth, have been shaped by millions of years of evolution. And evolution doesn't care about what is "fair" or "nice" or "shallow", it cares only about maximizing your success at passing on your genes. Blaming someone for being attracted (or not) to the 'wrong' traits is just as unfair as blaming someone for being attracted to the 'wrong' gender -- in both cases, the person likely has very little (if any) control over whom he finds attractive or unattractive, so criticizing him for his personal choices is pointless and discriminatory.

Uh, yeah, attraction is key, but, um, jfriesne? He's going blind. Why would he give a damn what the woman looks like? "Gee, I wish she had a slimmer nose! Ooh, and a slightly smaller waist! Oh, and her haircut--"

Who cares? Maybe she'd like a guy with, y'know, all five senses. He'd be wise to find himself a cool, funny, kind woman who maybe doesn't have the best outer package. Her looks won't matter to him in a few years anyway.

This person apparently had the rarest of gifts in his grasp: he was falling for someone based on her personality, on who she was inside. Being shallow, however, he threw that budding emotional attraction away because her physical form didn't match some fantasy he harbored. The fact that he was going blind is the real irony here, of course.

While it's nice that he is trying to belatedly apologize to "Lisa," in fact he did her a favor. She was far better off being dumped by a man so empty and immature after just two dates, rather than having to deal with his vile attitude for any length of time. His shallowness was a blessing in disguise because it spared "Lisa" from the pain of being tied to someone with such a warped set of values.

Wow, what a bunch of right on people on Salon - who never stereotype and met their gf/bf/spouses through personality alone. Ryan's article stated a basic truth - we rely on our vision much more than we may think. How many of us know people who claim to develop great 'chemistry' with online friends which fizzle out on meeting, whether because of looks or a vague lack of spark. People always claim that they are looking for a sense of humor, kindness, good taste in music, but they want it packaged nicely as well. With sighted people, you can check out the package (ahem) at the same time you're assessing the personality. Ryan isn't claiming to be a 'good person', he's illustrating a point about human desire - the connection between our ideas of physical attractiveness and how they affect us. It's easy to be sanctimonious and pious when you're not being challenged, but I wonder how many of us would come out well from similar scrutiny of our early 20-something selves.

This excerpt showed a person with a disability getting on with life and making the same stupid mistakes someone without a disabilty might. I guess it's a testimony to the writer that we are debating whether or not he's a shallow prick rather than how he coped with losing such an important way of relating to the world at an age when many of us are trying to figure out who we are. Again, he gained insight, at the expense of Lisa as well as himself, but then most of us learn things the hard way.