At the Miami Book Festival Vidal and I walked around with a poet who had recently returned to the US from Viet Nam. We sat in a Cuban coffee shop and I mentioned causally that I’d love to visit Viet Nam some day. “If you do,” said my friend, “you better leave your dog at home.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because they will eat him,” he said.
As I walked downtown Miami I thought about my circumscribed freedom. Its true: there are lots of places you can’t go with a guide dog. Without civil rights you can’t navigate. Once on a trip to Italy I met all kinds of obstacles—social obstacles. The Italians were not disability “hip” and I encountered restaurant waiters, tour guides, hotel employees, and store owners who were all opposed to my dog. I felt conditional and fragile everywhere I went. My version of Italy is not an able bodied person’s Italy—its a paranoid tippy toe through hostilities. Just try to enjoy the art.
At La Scala, perhaps the world’s most famous opera house, Connie and I and guide dog Corky sat in a luxury box with three patrician women, all strangers. They were disapproving of the dog’s presence. Disapproving of us as foreigners. While we listened to “La Forza del Destino” we were getting “the stink eye” from those bibulous, over-dressed, powdered women. Though I love opera; though it was the dream of a lifetime to go to La Scala, I turned to Connie and said “let’s get out of here.” We scarcely made it through the first act.
You can feel disdain even when you don’t see it with precision.
Planet of the Blind 