Michael: It's very hard for me to imagine falling in love without that visual connection you describe so poignantly. I feel stupid asking this, but do you think you can fall in love with someone without really seeing her face?
Joel: That's hardly a stupid question. For the moment, I can't imagine how. I know that the blind do get together romantically, with the sighted and with the sightless. I even read stories of deaf-blind couples who have never seen or heard each other, though that sounds more to me like some kind of cellular binding than what I think of as love. I'm not insensible to what's left for me to perceive for inspiration aside from faces and eyes. I can still hear a tender, intelligent voice, make out the contours of a feminine figure and the drape of the
clothes, and appreciate the scent of a woman, to risk conjuring up the image of a cantankerous, suicidal Al Pacino. But all these things, together, comprise a kind of erotic abstraction, the idea of love as a house in the rain with no address and no door.
Michael: You used to flirt a lot. In fact, I found it annoying sometimes trying to carry on a conversation with you if you spotted an attractive woman across the room. I imagine you still flirt sometimes--what's it like now?

Joel: I don't remember flirting in public, ever. I've always been too shy. I do recall your annoyance with me during intermission at a Sam Shepard play. I was only gazing around the lobby with hopeful longing, except that night blindness and proliferating retinal blind spots must have made my scanning look blatantly, embarrassingly intense. These days, I don't flirt, either. If I were regularly in the company of someone nice and developed a slowly accumulating attraction, and imagined it might be mutual, I would find a way to show my interest. But presently, no such opportunity exists. When I go alone to things, like literary events and live music, I don't "see" anyone, so no contact is made. At parties, I'm congenial with women, but can't get a useful impression quickly enough, and wind up talking to men, where all we're both looking for is substantive conversation.