Opaque

You know the old adage that you get out of something what you put into it. Well, I’m not willing to put the crazy hours in to get out a sculpted physique with good health and self-esteem. But, oddly, I’m willing to spend six total hours in an UN-air-conditioned Ford Taurus to do something for $100/person I could have done at home for free…

Yes, doesn’t seem to make too much sense, does it? But, it was definitely worth it. It was opaque. No, that’s not a pointless word made hip, although it’s not bad. “Dude, that was like, totally opaque!” It’s the name of a dining experience, made famous in Europe and sprouting popularity in NY and LA.

Basically, the concept is that you dine in complete darkness, and experience a meal as a blind person would, and by limiting sight you’re enhancing taste. As the website suggests, you dine in the dark and embark on a “journey of the senses.” A pretentious slogan, as this “journey” lasted less than two hours, but again, what my fiancée and I put into it was worth it.

What did we put into it? The fourth layer of hell: Los Angeles rush hour traffic on the Friday of a three-day weekend. Maybe that’s the third layer. It was brutal. No air-conditioning in my Ford Taurus. Heat radiating off the highway concrete, moving so slowly by that individual pebbles were visible … for 50 miles. It took 45 minutes for the first 50 miles and three hours for the final 54.

It was one of those traffic jams, too, that teases you with little breaks up to 40 miles per hour and then wrenches your gut with quick halts down to stop and go. We were carsick, had to urinate and were contemplating canceling the hotel and the journey of the senses. However, the traffic was just as bad in the opposite direction. We were trapped!

Yet we trudged on and finally made it through hell and back to real life. And because we put so much into it, we got that much more out of it. We were so focused on the horrors of the stalled highway, we weren’t even really imagining what was to come. When we showered up and got into the cab, it was if a new evening had begun.

The Hyatt is in Hollywood, is where some famous Bravo shows are filmed (“Top Model” I think). It was swanky and needless to say, we didn’t belong. But that was fun, too. Haha, we can do quirky, European things that require lots of cash, too (or in my case, space on the credit card…)!

Basically, the Opaque dining experience works like this: some frazzled Euro-dude with thin-framed eyeglasses and a torso-hugging cheaply made t-shirt took our food and drink order in the lobby (with the lights on). When it was our turn, a waitstaff was paged. We had Beatrice, a normal looking white girl with fair complexion who just happened to be donning dark sunglasses and was blind. She stood there at ease until the Euro-dude introduced us.

Beatrice held out her hand and waited for me to take it in greeting. “Hi, I’m Jason!” She instructed Julie to get behind her and put her hand on the right shoulder. I was instructed to put my right hand on Julie’s shoulder. And so we were led through a door that during the workweek, appeared to lead into the Hyatt’s conference room B.

Butterflies were raging. All the forewarning in the world couldn’t quell the fear in my head that I wouldn’t be able to handle total darkness and would get claustrophobic and flip out. Or that Julie would. Or both of us together, like a cascading explosion of anxiety.

Beatrice led us in. The door closed behind me and all that was left to see was residual light from under the door. Ten feet in and around a corner, and we were utterly blind.

Quick recognitions began to bombard my consciousness: “Holy shit, I’m blind” and “If I lose Julie I’m lost” and “Where are all these voices coming from?” and “Why are we going in a circle?”

I tightened my grip on Julie’s shoulder and we finally made it to our table. Beatrice took my hand off Julie’s shoulder and placed it forcefully on the back of my seat. She then took Julie away and a moment later Julie was like, “Jay? Are you there?”

Julie is convinced that she’d make a wonderful blind person. She immediately found her napkin (funny that it was still folded like a seashell, as if we could see it, or at least when we felt it, visualize what it looked like) and placed it into her lap. Fork on left, knife on the right.

Me, I was lost. I almost knocked my water over every time. The bread was easy to find but hard to butter. It took my knife AND my thumb and I don’t care that I admitted it!

The jitters wore off quickly and we quickly settled in to one of the most relaxing and satisfying dinner experiences in a long time. The food was wonderful, but it would have been so even if we could have seen what we were eating. Food may not magically taste better when you’re blind, but you definitely pay attention to the flavors more without visual distractions, which probably means the same thing.

It was fun to try and eat. You know how the Simpsons eat? Just shoveling food into their mouths as quickly as possible? I tried that. Except I missed half the time. Scoop, “doh”! Scoop, “doh”! Scoop, “Yeah, green been!” Scoop, “doh”! And so on. I gave up and found food with my fingers and stabbed it with my fork. Even if it was the whole slab of chicken, I picked it up and took bites off the end.

We played a game where we sat back in our chairs and just listened. We were surrounded by tables on all sides, some closer and some further, but all conversations within earshot. A couple to my right, Julie’s left, were literally on a blind date. She showed up after he did and left before he did. Another table near them heard about this game, and after she had left, one gentleman joked, “Dude, she’s totally fat. Did you see what she was wearing?” Two or three other tables eavesdropping like us laughed out loud.

Tables were interacting wherever possible, sharing a similar experience and similar lack of inhibitions based on the usual, appearance and shyness. The table next to us already onto desert advised us to just give up the fork and use our hands! Or that the asparagus was really tasty … if you can find it! That same lack of inhibition played in our enjoyment of our own company, too. I never had to worry about something in my teeth or a weird expression or being distracted by any passerby.

It was a very pleasurable evening, but not because of the taste of the food. It was instead for a highly unexpected reason. The visual world has embedded within it ALL the prejudices, ALL the fears of judgment, and ALL the self-esteem. Removed from that world, neighbors were friendly and open and sharing. Removed from that world, Julie and I had even more wonderful conversations, made attending a meal even more of an experience that it usually is.

If the prohibitive cost didn’t make frequent visits so impractical, I would love to experience many meals away from the visual world.

Even if I was almost blinded by the light when I left Hyatt Conference Room B. And even when it took 3 hours to get home because of re-entry into the third level of Hell. And we could have done it at home for free. It was worth it. We got out of it what we put into it.