Eyeball to eyeball.

 

A long time ago—back when the first war with Charlie was still raging and I was young enough to believe in medical promises—a dentist casually informed me that after he removed all my teeth, I’d be getting “appliances.”

Appliances.

Like I’m a damn kitchen.

I was hoping for an ice maker. Maybe a small dishwasher. Something practical. But no. Teeth. Plastic. Regret.

Fast forward to the current campaign in this never-ending war against my own body, and now we’re upgrading the face hardware. Since the removal of the main peeper, I’ve been walking around with a vacancy that needed filling—like a condemned building where the lights still flicker but nobody should go inside.

The eye surgeon, with the cold confidence of a man who has seen things and stopped caring sometime during the Reagan administration, wrote the following in my chart:

“Enucleation with 20 mm Medpor orbital implant, right eye.”

Translation: “Make him a pirate.”

At first, I assumed the “20 mm Medpor implant” was the device they used to actually perform the enucleation—which immediately brought to mind some kind of surgical golf tee and mallet scenario.

WHACK.

“Hold still, sir.”

But no. The Medpor is just the medically approved space-holder. A corporate placeholder for the hole where your eyeball used to live. I did a little Googling—because in America, you don’t need a medical degree, you just need Wi-Fi and anxiety—and discovered Medpor is high-density porous polyethylene.

In other words: a medical-grade golf ball.

Trust me, I stayed at a Marriott over the weekend. I’m basically a doctor now.

So then came the meetings. Not with surgeons. Not with priests. No, I met with the ocular prosthesis design group, which sounds less like a medical department and more like a secret government team that builds replacement parts for malfunctioning senators.

Their mission: build me a new eyeball.

And here’s the fun part—they’re trying to replicate the only remaining eye, the one doing 100% of the work, like some overworked intern holding together the entire company while management takes a lunch break.

Bad news: I showed up to the first meeting with a hangover.

And not a cute hangover. Not a “haha, I had a margarita” hangover. I mean a real, full-spectrum, bourbon-and-bad-decisions hangover. The good eye looked like it had been through a divorce and lost custody.

So the “model eye” they were supposed to copy looked like it had been dragged out of a bar at 2 AM by the collar.

Not exactly the kind of reference photo you want when someone is custom-painting a prosthetic organ.

The second meeting was the final design session. Thankfully, this time I arrived sober, and they included all the little red veins that normally spiderweb across the whites of the eye. No hangover meant my real eye wasn’t inflamed and screaming for mercy, so there was an abundance of “material” to reference.

Basically, my sobriety provided the necessary aesthetic restraint.

The replacement itself is like a giant contact lens. You pop it in, pop it out. It’s meant to be worn long-term—overnight, all day, all week.

Time is irrelevant.    Sleep is irrelevant.    Reality is irrelevant.

This thing is the Apple AirPod of human flesh. It’s just supposed to be in there forever, quietly judging your life choices.

But then I discovered the fatal flaw: rubbing my eye pops it out.

Apparently, the human instinct to rub your face when it itches is now considered an extreme sport. So I’m learning to rub from the bridge of my nose outward, like some delicate Victorian woman adjusting her glove.

Because if I rub the wrong way, I’ll end up literally “keeping an eye out for you.”

So now I’m beginning to suspect the thing might be defective.

Every morning I open my eyes and still can’t see a damn thing on that side.

But it looks great.

Functionally useless, aesthetically flawless.

A perfect metaphor for most of modern society.

And I can’t wait for family gatherings—especially the ones with small children—because eventually I’m going to get bored, pop that sucker out, and hold it up like a magic trick.

“Hey kids… wanna see something?”

And just like that, I’ll become a living cautionary tale.

Not a man.

Not a hero.

Just a half-blind pirate with a medical golf ball in his skull, traumatizing the rug rats for sport.

And honestly?

That’s the closest thing to joy I’ve had in years.

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