This is Garrett Murray's Maniacal Rage

I wrote this in 2004:

When he told her about it she didn’t get it. It was like she didn’t hear what he said. She was just staring at his hair and chewing her gum with her mouth open. He kept doing that thing with his face that people do when they think you heard them and expect an answer but haven’t gotten it. You know, when they widen their eyes and move their head forward in little quick movements. As if they’re saying, “Well? Well? Well?” But she didn’t notice that. She couldn’t take her eyes off his hair.

It wasn’t that he had particularly interesting hair, it’s just that she had left her daily contacts in overnight by accident and they dried onto her eyeballs. Because of this her eyes were especially dry and they felt like those round Cheetos that come in that large metal can. She was trying to move them to look at something else but they wouldn’t budge. Granted, this didn’t interfere specifically with her ability to hear, but she was so focused on attempting to get her dry eyeballs to move that she was effectively ignoring everything else going on around her.

He finally got tired of waiting and slapped her in the forehead with the heel of his hand. Her head whipped back and her left eye popped out of its socket. He wasn’t expecting this so he panicked. He told her he was sorry and that he would call an ambulance for her but she refused. She could finally see something other than his hair and even though it was amazingly painful she wanted to enjoy her new view for a while. Besides, no one ever got anywhere by calling ambulances.