(written on 15th September 2003)
After I had got the Internet connection my life dramatically changed. Much has been written on the impact of Internet on people’s lives, science, policy, economics, art, and society, however all those texts usually deal with a kind of general topic. The change Internet brought to my life was probably the most important of all changes I have ever experienced. I use Internet like anybody else to find news, information about IT, economics, used cars, There is also my enterprise web site on the web an e-mail box for friends and another one for business. However, let me omit all this stuff. What I want to point out is the fact that I managed to find people who I share the same interest in glasses with.
One of the first keywords I entered into a search engine was "bryle", the Czech for glasses. It brought some minor results that did not satisfy me enough. As I knew the most texts in the World Wide Web are in English I went to Yahoo! and entered the magic formula: GIRLS WITH GLASSES. And lo and behold, the portal brought several URLs that seem really interesting: Girls With Glasses, Eye Scene and Vision World Forum. I was sure, that the fact that I like girls with glasses means that there must be some other people in the world who like them too. If they have the Internet access they probably left some traces. What I did not expect was that there was this large web site where glasses fans met and discussed all aspects of wearing glasses. I hoped to find a kind of porn site with bespectacled girls only. However I found a nice community instead.
I surfed a lot then trying to find as many sites with girls with glasses as possible. Eye Scene was one of the first ones and it has been the best till today. The time I found Eye Scene, the site had been down for some time due to repairs. The people migrated to Vision World Forum where they found an asylum until Eye Scene was started again. During the first several days I kept reading the postings without joining the discussion. Later I downloaded the whole "strip" and the archives of Eye Scene called "polls". It was a huge material difficult to read. I could not get oriented in the large number of nicknames and several threads that were being discussed at the same time. It needed some systematic work to find my way through it. My excitement made it difficult too. I bent to believe everything I was reading about as I had not realized that some people just pretended to be someone else. Only after some time I managed to distinguish real people from fake ones. I used to be disappointed by the fact there were so many (I thought) people who were not honest. Later I realized that those "phonies" are just a part of Internet folklore.
At the beginning I just read. Then I started to study the discussion. My reading, which usually took all night, had one funny effect: When I sent my first posting, I forgot to introduce myself. I already felt to be a member of the community. I knew some of the frequent posters quite well. After several years they had told so much information about themselves, that I could not realize I was a new person for them.
When Eye Scene was on again I joined a few discussion threads. I read the site every day. I kept thinking about the posting during the day and in the evening I spent an hour or too reading. It was still very new for me. A site that also fascinated me a lot was Smudge Report. Soon I made an e-mail contact with Lenslover, helped him create the Czech and Polish versions of Calendar and sent him my first fiction about Bobby and Barbara. The stories I found at Smudge Report showed me a thing I had never known of: Glasses Over Contacts. In many of the stories written by Specs4Ever the main character wears glasses over contact lenses. The combination of the two aids helps a person who desires to wear strong glasses see through them. It is quite simple and I think a brilliant solution. The plus contact lenses make the person quite nearsighted and make him/her possible to wear much stronger glasses than his/her eyes would ever tolerate (see What is GOC). You may ask why anybody want to wear stronger glasses that necessary. Well, the fact is that there are people who really want to wear strong glasses - for some time at least. I am, of course, one of them. As far as I can remember, I wanted to wear glasses, strong glasses, glasses with thick minus lenses. I do not know why. Although I have asked myself for many times, although I tried to dig deep in my memory and mind, I have never found any logical reason why. I just want to wear strong glasses. It makes me happy, satisfied, and content. I feel to be the real myself when I wear the strong glasses.
The fact that there ware other people, who also wanted to spend money and effort to find the way how to get proper GOC combination influenced me a lot. I wanted to have GOC too. It seemed to fulfill my old dream. I tried to imagine what it would be like if I could walk along a street with thick glasses on my face and see CLEARLY through them. As clearly as if they really were my real glasses prescribed by a doctor. I spoke about GOC with Martin, a gay form France, who also wanted to wear GOC. I asked what it was like those who already purchased their combination. I played with the idea, I pampered it until one day when I could not bear it any more ... I took the phone and arranged a meeting with an optician. The story is described here: My First GOC. I wrote I could not remember where I had tried the new GOC combination. Now I can. I can remember the street very well.
Those early days in GOC were exciting. I wore the GOC quite often, about twice a week. I always drove to a distant part of the town where nobody knew me. (This is a very usual formulation you can read in many stories written by people, who wear GOC or do some similar simulation - more later.) There I put contacts in and the strong glasses on and took a long walk. I enjoyed when people looked at my face, at my thick glasses. I liked when they noticed that my glasses are unusual, strong and thick. At the beginning I thought everybody would show a kind of reaction, but later I found out it was not true. In fact some people either do not look at all, or they just look without showing any reaction. I think they do not notice the glasses, they probably do not realize how strong they are. Glasses fans are used to looking at other people’s glasses and estimating the power of the lenses, while "normal" people probably do not pay so much attention - or they may be just discreet.
What I do not like, and what I did not get used to till today is how children stare at my glasses. This makes me rather uncomfortable. I like when women of my age and younger look at me. I do not mind men looking too much. What I like and what I often look for is a chance to talk to people when I wear GOC. Those are the moments when I feel I am seen and accepted as a high myope. The most exciting situation, however, is a chance to speak about glasses with another strong glasses wearer. Unfortunately there are less people wearing really strong glasses than before. I have not seen anybody wearing lenticular glasses for more than a year! (What a pity!)
Let’s go back to the glasses issue now:
My communication with the Eye Scene community took a steady pace. I wrote a few fictions (see Stories) where the characters deal with their rather strange desire to wear strong glasses. My friends wrote many other stories. Specs4ever wrote about 100, Puffin wrote a large number of fictions, Tom the Hungarian, who disappeared a long time ago form the Eye Scene was an excellent storywriter, whose stories I liked very much. Lenslover keeps updating his Smudge Report bringing new pictures of bespectacled models. Alain from France created the largest collection of picture of girls with glasses and created the Natou series that made the whole community absolutely excited. Andy, Eddy, Prism, and some others created their web sites, on which they placed pictures they wanted to share with our community. Andy has a web site where there is a discussion about glasses and girls with glasses in German Language; Nekva started a web club in Czech. Eye Scene people are a good gang. I love them all.
Connecting to the Internet helped me to find friends. Until I found the community I was alone. And, you know, it is not good to be alone, especially if you think you are not normal. I used to think I was strange, too different, crazy, and freak. Now, I know I am not. There are many people like me. Who is normal? What does it mean normal? Is it anything like statistically exactly in the average? Nobody is statistically average. Everybody is special. I am special because I like girls with glasses, I like glasses, and I like wearing my GOC. Accept me as I am or go away.