The popularity of the bizarre practice, sometimes called 'worming', has been blamed for a rise in cases of conjunctivitis. And it freaks us out just to think about it
Warning: don't read this if you're eating, prone to sudden bouts
of queasiness or unable to even think about Un Chien Andalou without
simultaneously bursting into tears and dry-heaving. Believe me, I'm speaking
from experience here.
Because this is an article about oculolinctus, an eye-licking
fetish that is currently sweeping across the schools of Japan like, well,
like a great big dirty bacteria-coated tongue sweeping across a horrific number
of adolescent eyeballs.
Sometimes known as "worming" – which somehow makes
this whole thing worse – oculolinctus is being blamed for a significant rise in
Japanese cases of conjunctivitis and eye-chlamydia,
which is actually a thing. It's apparently seen as a new second-base; the thing
you graduate to when kissing gets boring.
The craze is thought to stem from a
music video by Japanese emo band Born (there's a chance that
the eyeball-licking scene was only included to distract everyone from the fact
that the song sounds like it belongs on a menu screen for an EA Sports game
about snowboarding from a decade ago, but at this point that's just
speculation).
Tumblr, inevitably, is filling up with drawings and unnecessarily close-up
photographs of the act, and YouTube is no stranger either. One
theory about why it has taken off so spectacularly is down to the sheer number
of nerve endings in the cornea. The eyeballs are incredibly sensitive because
they need to detect grit and other small particles, and the sensation of
oculolinctus is supposedly akin to that of toesucking.
Unwilling to try it myself – because my tongue isn't long
enough, I don't want eye-chlamydia and just writing about this has made me
retch uncontrollably – I can't tell you firsthand if that's true. Luckily, one
student from the US Virgin Islands with an oculolinctus fetish has
explained: "My boyfriend started licking my eyeballs years ago
and I just loved it. I'm not with him any more but I still like to ask guys to
lick my eyeballs ... it turns me on."
However, the dangers
of oculolinctus are very real. As well as spreading pink-eye like nobody's
business, there's also a risk of corneal scratching, which can lead to ulcers
and blindness. Plus, there's a strong chance that you'll have to go to school
the next day in an eye patch. At least with lovebites you could just throw on a
poloneck jumper and be done with it.
Hopefully oculolinctus won't catch on here and will remain one
of those peculiarly Japanese fads such as bagelheading (injecting
saline into your forehead until it swells out of all proportion, yaeba (undergoing
dental surgery to give you crooked teeth) and shippo (wearing
a neurologically controlled tail that reveals your moods). Because frankly, if
oculolinctus does ever make it to these shores, I'm never going to be able to
look at a lychee again.