I saw him from a middling distance: a man who looked like Einstein was fingering ladies underclothes in Penneys.
“How did I see him?” you ask, aware of my blindness. I have friends. I have lots of friends. We go places together. We go to the department store and although we’re looking for bathtub grout we wind up taking a detour through the bras and panties because the main aisle has some kind of Zamboni machine and we have to veer off the slick tiles and into the nearest department and Lo! That’s when my friend who I’ll call Irving sees Einstein of the brassieres.
“God! He looks like Einstein!” Irving says. “He’s the post war Einstein. The grand fatherly one. The one who’s sticking out his tongue in that famous photo.”
“I want to talk to him,” I say. I’m clutching Irving’s elbow the way blind people do. “Let’s talk to him.”
Irving has no judgment so he just takes me over. “Excuse me,” I say. “I am told by my boon companion that you are shopping for a brassiere.”
I won’t know til later that the man had soulful eyes. Spaniel eyes. And I won’t know til later that he was actually wearing a Princeton sweatshirt. Of course he knew what he was up to. He was Einstein of the brassieres and he didn’t care who knew .
He was quick. “Ah,” he said. “A blind man. Good. I’m told you people have an excellent sense of touch.”
“So far he isn’t crazy,” I thought.
“At your service,” I said. “Just remember that touch and imagination are not the same.” (I don’t know why I said this. But I was talking to Einstein of the brassieres after all. You have to take your opportunities when they appear.)
“Listen,” he said. “This bra isn’t for me.”
“Ah,” I said.
“It’s for my—“
Then there was the deafening noise of the Zamboni which was backing up like a portable wind tunnel on casters. Einstein’s mouth kept moving but Irv can’t read lips and he couldn’t talk anyway.
“So what do you think?” said Einstein after the racket stopped.
“Hmmm.” I said. “This is tough.” I feigned introspection. “Here’s what I’d suggest,” I said then.
“What you need to do is stay away from brassieres for at least a year. Studies have shown that women and even teenage girls know how to buy their own bras. What you need to do is channel your good Samaritan energies toward something that wouldn’t ordinarily occur to your magnanimous and enlightened nature.”
“Like what?” he said.
“You’ll have to figure that out on your own,” I said. “It will be a spiritual thing.”
“Come, Havisham,” I said, for I never use Irving’s real name and of course even that’s not his real name. “We must proceed to the industrial unguents.”
We knew of course that Einstein would go on fingering the B cups while imagining some god awful outpost of his private and abysmal latency period and the concomitant fantasy of a school marm or librarian.
We agreed that you can’t solve everyone’s problems. We agreed that contemporary department stores offer untold advantages to fetishists since they can’t afford floor walkers anymore.
The whole thing gave me the creeps.
“That’s what they get for doing away with the catalogues,” Irving said.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
I concur with Georgia. SK and Irving *might* have been correct about Einstein’s “fetishist” motives in the lingerie department, but with the “Zamboni” roaring, they will never know. Is it OK to project your suppositions on this unknown human being without checking out these suppositions first? SK, how do you feel when people do this to you? Perhaps your suppositions of fetishism are correct. SK, you, by your own admission, have LOTS of friends and a wife. Some men don’t have the luxury of these relationships, and cope in other ways. Your words of advice to him as well as your snap analysis of his situation “god awful outpost of his private and abysmal latency period” sounded like ridicule to me. Did this man deserve your ridicule? People live different lives, and there is something to be said for society deciding that there is a “best” way to be. Perhaps he, as a possible fetishist should be ostracized; you, as a blind man should be ostracized; me, as a woman who did not choose to be a mother should be ostrasized. This is getting awfully scary. Yes? I rant like this because you are a good guy, an important and articulate mouthpiece for the rights of people. It’s important for all of us who believe in the dignity of humanity to be self-aware as we comment on the world around us.
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My husband has been known to purchase gifts for me around Christmas time at Victoria’s Secret. I do not accompany him. What makes it interesting, though, is when he wears his “preacher outfit,” i.e., a nice suit and his clerical collar, into the store. Heads do turn. — Georgia
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