A Hearing Impaired Dude Walks into a Bar by Edan Armas

I have been writing this blog for 6 years now! I’m amazed it’s been that long!

And now it’s my first time having a guest writer on my blog! Edan Armas is a fellow Stanford Senior, majoring in Human Biology with a Concentration in Neurophenomenology of Emotion. He’s also an amazing writer and has a powerful voice. He grew up in Roselle, IL with hearing aids and part of a big family.

Recently, Edan introduced the Stanford Spoken Word Collective and recited his own poem at the Stanford’s Family Weekend Entertainment Extravaganza! The Entertainment Extravaganza represents a small sample of Stanford’s amazing art groups and artists. Edan literally had the audience eating out of his hands. His poem and voice just blew us all away. It was awesome!

I’m so glad Edan agreed to share his poem with my blog readers, because it really resonated with me. I don't go out to bars often but Edan's experience translates well to most noisy situations. His voice in the poem is an amazing and fresh way of looking at things.

Without further adieu, here is his amazing poem.

A Hearing Impaired Dude Walks into A Bar
so a hearing impaired dude walks into a bar and
is the joke
tonight
as I make my way through the mass of bodies
I know I have a limited number of opportunities
to ask people to repeat themselves before I become other
so I hold my hearing loss in my hands like a drink,
careful not to spill
and grimacing every time I have to take a sip

it is new year’s eve
the air is soaked with music
either Cardi B’s “I Like It” or maybe that one Havana song
but I am too embarrassed to ask which
content instead with bending my body to the muffled bass
as I silently pray for the countdown
because it will be the only set of lyrics I will
be able to shout along with everyone else

the day I turned 21
the bar was supposed to be this quintessential coming of age experience
but instead it was like rediscovering the dentist
because
1) it sucked
and
2) every conversation I had was like pulling teeth
people having to put their mouths so close to my ears
my hearing aids would come away wet with the
condensation of their tequila breath

it is here i realize that all those stories about
meeting the love of your life in a bar
probably never included someone like me
which doesn’t bother me all that much
considering these types of environments
are practically grad schools for able-bodied
frat boys who can’t seem to hear the word “no” anyway

my friends say
“alright so the bar is not your scene”
but here’s the thing
i am hearing impaired like i am latino
mixed, not quite one or the other
where identifying with either is always work
so i want to work on this
crawl into a beer garden and
plant a new story for deafness

i want to walk into the cologne fumes
of The Patio, dap a tech bro and say
tonight, both of us are going to have difficulty enunciating

i want to ask and ask people to repeat themselves
and ask again when i don’t hear it
because i cannot relearn damaged hair cells
but maybe i can rediscover what it’s like to be
unashamed of asking for what i need

and maybe
in the far and distant future
i will work as a bartender in a club
just so i can create a drink called
“WHAT?”
and confuse everybody

but until then i will dance alone
in my corner of the bar
my body owed to nothing
except the sound i create for myself