Lens Insana

Dorothy Parker to the contrary, ardent males and astigmatic lasses hit it off like Beefeater and vermouth. What the pass thrower seldom realizes in such cases these days is that the eyes he's making eyes at are sous cloche. How could he? Of 6,000,000 contact wearers in the U.S. last year, nearly 65% were women. Since contact lenses first became widely available in 1953, bad eyesight has not only won social acceptability; among the young, particularly, it has become a status symbol.

Less than Graceful. Credit for the change goes mostly to such improvements as the corneal lens, made of Plexiglas, which is lighter and simpler to fit than the old soleral variety, covers only the iris and the pupil rather than the whole eye. Researchers are adapting other materials, notably a hydrophilic plastic: invented by two Czech scientists, the new rubbery lens is so flexible it never irritates the eye, and is porous enough to be worn while asleep.

Nonetheless, life for the contact wearer is still far from rose-colored. Cost of fitting the lenses (after an average of six sittings) ranges from $150 to $300. Then there is the matter of removing them, a highly complicated process involving a series of postures (feet planted firmly on the floor before the mirror, back hunched, one palm cupped below the eye, the other fanned out beside it) that might seem the essence of grace in a Kabuki dancer but stir less enthusiasm when performed in a crowded ladies' room, look downright insane in a restaurant. Worse still are the moments when removal is imperative due to a flying cinder or a sudden slip of a lens, or almost impossible (on a street corner, in a snowstorm); shrewd lensmen wear sunglasses on all outdoor excursions, preferring to be thought phony rather than weepy.

Two in One. Holding onto them is quite another matter. On a basketball court, where a simple shout of "Contact!" is enough to bring everything to a halt these days, or on a crowded dance floor, where couples scrambling among the fruggers' feet have become as essential as crepe paper at any successful prom, lost lenses simply disappear. Otherwise, they get wafted down drains, into swimming pools, off ski slopes. They are lodged between the pages of books, the coils of radiators, the seats in movie houses, never again to be seen or to afford sight. Moreover, the new lenses easily get stuck, one inside the other. The wife of a Peace Corpsman stationed in Peru thought she had lost one lens and waited three months for the replacement to arrive from New York, only to discover that the one she had been wearing all along was really two.

Actually, clear-sighted, 20/20 types with nasty minds can soon learn to spot the contact wearers in any crowd: they are the ones who either stare unwaveringly at the person speaking, lest a sudden swiveled gaze leave vision behind, or hold their heads very high, blinking faster than the speed of light, the better to keep out motes and intruding lashes. Since contacts are cheaper and take less time to grind on the Continent than in England, many Britons have them made to order while vacationing there--and thus are subject to customs duties on the lenses when they come home. According to a possibly apocryphal tale, when one returning Englishwoman swore she had nothing to declare at London airport, the customs inspector tapped her right eyeball and inquired sweetly: "Are you sure?"

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