Surround Sound

Vol. 3, Issue 50

A few days ago, I was walking the dog along a too-narrow sidewalk and I almost got creamed by a bus when I absentmindedly drifted a little too close to the curb without turning around first. I was fine, the dog was fine, but I was furious. Familiar insecurity crept in, along with the impulse to self-destruct. I both wanted to run away and pout or follow the bus to the next stop, climb on board and punch the driver in the face. 

Or drink. A drink to calm the storm. 

I did none of that. I walked home, hugged the dog, and felt sorry for myself. 

I didn't hear the bus because I am deaf in my left ear. It's been useless since birth, but after the Great Upending that came with my early sobriety, it was very easy for me to point out all the deficiencies and humiliations that caused me to drink all those drinks and take all those drugs. I outlined many of my complaints–often hysterically–to therapists, lawyers, friends, parents, my sister, to Uber drivers, but, eventually, I got tired from the heaviness of blame: My life was shitty and confusing at times like everyone else's. Now let's move on. 

Yet, there's part of me that wonders if my deaf ear had a more significant impact. For example, I've bailed on so many conversations at so many happy hours or weddings or house parties because I didn't hear a damn thing coming from the moving mouth in front of me. I just pretended I did. Totally rude of me, I know. I was very off-putting. Or maybe they found me aloof. Disdainful. Stupid. It happened so many times. How could it not affect me?

*****

When I was in elementary school, I stuck two plastic straws in my ears and made funny faces to impress some kids at my lunch table. Then an idiot named Todd smashed one of the straws and jammed it pretty far in there. I yelped in pain, sure that my inner ear had exploded. It had not, but the moment was memorable enough for me to point to as I advanced through elementary and into junior high school when, inevitably, someone would ask why my hearing was so bad. It was Todd, that bastard. Always Todd. 

That story was a lie–I had no idea why my left ear didn't work. The only evidence that I couldn't hear well was through those tests, the ones where a machine would pipe a series of bleeps and breezes into each ear to make sure they both worked. I heard no bleeps in my left ear, only a faint hum. I'd hear no breezes either, maybe a soft buzz. 

All through junior high, I'd get pulled out of class for weekly lessons from a district-appointed speech and pathology instructor, a very kind and impossibly patient woman named Mrs. Germany. She had a poofy wig and insane-looking red lipstick. We'd sit across from each other in a small empty classroom with ugly orange carpeting and work on lip-reading which, because of the lipstick, was pretty intense. She also taught me some very basic ASL, like the whole alphabet, plus a few words a highly-incentivized chimpanzee could probably understand: Hello. Happy. Rain. Sun.

If one of my overly curious classmates asked where I went every week, I'd act mysterious. "Can't talk about it," I'd say, sometimes with an anguished expression that conveyed no one could know the truth or else their lives would also be in danger. 

So in a way, the deafness helped bolster one of my stronger abilities: pathological lying. But the truth was I felt so lonely when I'd get called out of class each week; it was my first experience of feeling left out.  

*****

When I was 25, right before I moved up to New York, I finally visited an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor to see if I could get my ear fixed. Plus, I'd hoped to finally get some conclusive diagnosis as to why it never worked. The doctor did the usual standard bleep tests and some X-rays, which provided no new information. But then he noticed my blue-brown Husky-like eye color and guessed that it was something called Waardenburg Syndrome. It’s a disease that causes scattered pigmentation problems on the body, mostly eyes, hair, and patches of skin, that in rare cases could also damage the inner ear. Unfortunately, a regular hearing aid wouldn't work on me. Sensing my disappointment, the doctor tried to console me. "You've come this far," he said. I left his office and went back into my own world. 

A few years later, I investigated bone-anchored hearing devices because a friend of a friend's husband worked at one of the company's that sold them. Here's how it worked: a mic the size of a pencil eraser would be Frankenstein-fused into the back of my skull. It would pick up sound from the deaf side and toss it over to the hearing side, essentially mimicking normal hearing. 

To sell me on this device, he gave me a special prototype headset for the week to get a feel for what my life would be like in stereo. "It's a bit overwhelming, and it will take some time to get used to," he warned. That proved to be a comical understatement. 

I did my test drive while a staff writer at Philadelphia magazine and everything was so damn loud. The copier. The microwave. Conversations from three cubicles down sounded like they were happening right underneath my chair. "This must be what it's like to be Spiderman," I thought.  

But I could not distinguish all the random, sporadic noises: Was that a stapler or an active shooter? I had to take it off while sitting at my desk because I kept startling myself whenever I scratched my shoulder. 

I also went to the movies by myself, eager to get a sense of this whole surround sound thing everyone was so crazy about. I saw The Bee Movie–the obnoxious animated one with Jerry Seinfeld–because I didn't want to possibly have a miserable time or a panic attack at one I wanted to see. And, of course, it totally messed me up. My attention kept drifting over to the left side of the screen, and I felt the noise vibrations of every buzzing action sequence through my seat. Also, you guessed it: REALLY loud. If I saw Jurassic Park with that thing on I would have fainted.

And it was even worse outside. Even on short walks in the city to buy cigarettes, the blasting car horns and noisy footsteps were everywhere. I heard everything–but also nothing.

After two days, I threw the headset in my desk drawer and never wore it again. I'd had enough. My life stayed the same.

*****

But I wonder if I should give the skull ear another shot. Getting smushed by a bus is one thing, but it's also the little stuff—all the huh's and what's and leaning in too close to people. Or I'll be daydreaming in line at the pharmacy, unaware that there's a woman with a stroller right behind me asking to get by. Sometimes I’ll miss the baby crying after a bad dream. And here's an example of the type of conversation we could have on a long road trip together:

DRIVER: Did you hear me?

ME: Yes

DRIVER: What did I say?

ME: You asked me if I could throw your food at the windshield.

DRIVER: No. No, why on earth would I say something like that?

I’ve tried to repair many things since I’ve gotten sober: My teeth. My credit score. My blood pressure. I even have a Cologuard sitting on the counter right behind me. Maybe it's time to seriously consider this next step. Because one of the most intense, tear-jerking gifts of my new life is that whole being present thing. It’d be nice to get the full experience.