#MOC-19: One of Two

Last Saturday I had the first of two vaccinations against COVID-19, courtesy of Moderna and the National Guard. Every day since I’ve received a text from the Centers for Disease Control, asking me to check in and tell them how I’m feeling.

When I follow the daily link they send, I’m greeted by three emoji: a green smiley to tell them I’m fine, a yellow dude looking mildly disgruntled, and a red face that’s definitely seen happier days. After choosing an expression for the day, I answer several questions. Are there symptoms I may be exhibiting that are a side-effect of the vaccination—pain at the injection site, chills or a fever, nausea, vomiting, or bodily aches and pains? Are the side effects interfering with my ability to carry on? Is there anything else I’d like to tell the CDC about my condition?

So far I’ve told them I’m feeling good. My shoulder ached the day of the vaccination and one day after, but at most it was a mild discomfort. I didn’t have any issues sleeping on that side. I really only noticed when I poked myself. But while it’s been all green smiley faces for the CDC, ever since Saturday I’ve been asking myself the same question: how am I feeling about all this?

I’m not coming up with any concrete answers.

For the last three months, most of my vaccination energies have centered around my elderly father. Connecticut might have been doing a good job of getting vaccines into arms since the first doses arrived in mid-December, but Virginia’s strategy has been decentralized and opaque. Cities and counties across the state were in different phases of vaccination. I was constantly baffled whether my dad was yet eligible, or when he should qualify, or even what agency might be able to tell him when he would be. In mid-January, Connecticut was in the top three or four states leading the way in vaccinations; Virginia was solidly third from the bottom.

I did what I could. I read to my dad over the phone the information I could find online. From r/RVA I gleaned the names of various databases local agencies that were collecting the names and numbers of the elderly and infirm, to be notified if and when they could register for an appointment. I’d go online to those databases, sign up in his name, and tell him immediately after so that he’d be on alert if they called. He had been given a number from his local doctor to call so that he could enroll for a vaccination with his local health care provider—but the number was in Ohio, and twice the automated call distributor kept him on the line for close to an hour without ever sending him to an actual live person.

At one point in January, my dad’s friends were relying on shady deals to get their injections. One of his colleagues had a daughter who heard through the grapevine that a Jewish community clinic had extra doses left over one afternoon; the daughter marched into the clinic and asked for the vaccine for herself and her husband, and then their two children. After the four had gotten their first shots, only then did the daughter ask if there were doses enough left for her eighty-odd-year-old parents. The retired professor with whom my dad used to work hopped in the car with his wife and managed to get injected within about fifteen minutes. Afterward, he asked if there was one more dose left over for my father—but no. He and his wife had gotten the last two.

Whenever I talked to my father on the phone, I could hear his rising frustration at the numbers of his friends who were getting inoculated thanks to knowing someone who knew someone who had a connection somewhere, or who had simply lucked out by calling the right place out of many places at the exact right time. But then, at the beginning of February, he called me to say that I could stop worrying. He’d gotten his first Pfizer vaccination. One of the several databases in which we’d enrolled him had suddenly given him a call and told him to show up at the racetrack at the old state fairgrounds. A friend drove him. Whatever organization was spearheading the drive provided golf cart transportation for him, so that he didn’t have to walk or stand for very long. From the time he arrived to the time he was taken back to his friend’s car, he said, was all of twenty minutes.

At the time I felt immense relief. True, it was only the first of two vaccinations, but the news had been reporting that the Pfizer vaccine offered a substantial degree of protection in one dose. Knowing he had some protection, and knowing he had an appointment for the final inoculation in March, felt like a big step in the right direction.

I was prepared to be patient for myself. My time would come. I didn’t know when, but I felt certain it would. In January, my physician seemed fairly positive that most people in the area could be vaccinated by May, but he had no solid information on when people my age, at my level of health, might be eligible. I put it out of my mind and went back to the same routine: staying at home day after day, exercising outdoors when the weather permitted, planning meals, and trying to figure out what to stream in the evenings. It had worked for a year. It could work for a few months more.

Everything was upended toward the end of February, though, when Connecticut announced it was breaking from CDC recommendations and inoculating citizens by age rather than priority groups. My eligibility rocketed from maybe by May to March first—a mere week away. I greeted the news with excitement: I had an actual timeline to look forward to. I’d been primed by my dad’s experience to expect nothing but bureaucracy in the vaccination search, sure, but fighting red tape feel a lot better than sitting and waiting. I’ve done too much sitting and waiting, both, over the past twelve months.

I developed a strategy. Our state representative weekly sent out emails with links to the major routes by which his constituents could sign up for vaccinations. I bookmarked them all. I’d stay up late on Sunday night, February twenty-eighth, I reasoned, and check all the sites after midnight, when the calendar flipped to March first. Maybe I’d get something, maybe I wouldn’t. But at least I’d have the satisfaction of having tried.

Sunday rolled around. I had my evening plans in place—dinner, the Golden Globes, then killing some time until midnight and my assault on the various websites I had bookmarked. I was considering a nap when my mail application chimed at me.

The CDC databases indicated I was now eligible for a vaccination in my area, the email informed me. Would I like to sign up for an appointment? A profile in the CDC Vaccine Administration Management System had already been created in my name, and if I would take a moment to verify my information, I could get the process started.

My initial reaction to the missive was skepticism. I was getting an email directly from the CDC? Sure, Jan. More likely it was some scammer attempting to get my social security number, right? When I checked the email’s full header information, though, it seemed valid enough. It wasn’t a spoofed address, at least. The link in the message led to a genuine government site. When I went upstairs to ask Craig if he’d received anything similar, though, he hadn’t. What’s more, he seemed to think I was playing some kind of practical joke, just by asking.

I returned to my laptop, thought about it a while, and then decided, what the hell. Turned out the whole thing was legit. The CDC had a profile with my name and address and email all ready. All I had to do was provide my cell number and ask for notifications to be sent via text instead of email. A couple of screens later, I was presented with a list of all the vaccination sites in a ten, twenty, or even one hundred mile radius, and the opportunity to schedule a first vaccination at any of the sites with available appointments.

None of the sites had available appointments.

Still. I was one step closer than I had been a few minutes before. My dad certainly never had it this easy. All through the evening I kept checking on the VAMS site to make sure it was real. We had dinner. We watched the Golden Globes. I played Minecraft after the final award, killing time to midnight. At 12:02 a.m. I logged back onto VAMS. For one of the sites nearest me, the closed Lord & Taylor in Stamford, dozens of slots had opened up for Saturday, the sixth. A couple of mouse clicks was all it took to claim a spot at nine-thirty in the morning. The site issued me a QR code to take with me that the site could scan to connect me to my information online. I had a vaccination appointment.

I went to bed that night feeling more guilty than exhilarated. The experience had been so easy for me. I hadn’t had to scrabble or negotiate, like my dad. At no point had I registered with anything—why I got in the fast lane with the CDC is still a mystery. Unlike Craig, who gave up on the other web sites when none of them opened up after midnight, I actually had a solid date. It felt a little like as the Titanic sank, I was being escorted to a well-appointed solo lifeboat, while it was every man for himself among the rest of the passengers. (The guilt lifted a little the next morning, when Craig walked into a Stamford clinic reportedly giving vaccines to walk-in patients, and he was given an appointment for only a few days after mine.)

Saturday we pulled into the Lord & Taylor parking lot shortly after nine. The National Guard ran the operation. Men and women in camo fatigues with iPads hanging from their necks directed cars into the various lanes snaking around the lot’s perimeter—first two lanes, then five, then right before to the drive-through vaccination stations, closer to ten. While Craig drove, I sat in the back seat so that the Guard could scan my QR code and check my driver’s license. Eventually a cheerful Guard approached the car and spoke to me through the rear window. He verified my name and birth date, filled out a vaccination record for me to take home, and told me he was going to ready the syringe. I had the short sleeve of my t-shirt rolled up when he returned. I felt the cold daub of alcohol, followed by the Guardsman’s gloved fingers he pinched my bicep for the injection.

Is it possible to attach too much importance to that moment the needle pierced my skin? In some ways, the entire year had been leading up to this very juncture between vulnerability and protection. Then again, how can a year’s worth of fear and worry, twelve months of isolation and hope and of mind-deadening sameness, be borne on the strength of a needle with a width measured in mere fractions of a millimeter? I’d spent the entire crawl through the Lord & Taylor parking lot fretting that I might do something embarrassing when my turn arrived. That I might sob unexpectedly. Not from the needle—at this point in my life I’m used to being jabbed and prodded by doctors. I worried I might burst into tears from the relief, from the overwhelming emotion of it all.

But when the time came, I felt nothing. A small prick, a short wait further down the lot to see if I went into anaphylactic shock, and I was on my merry way. When I got home, I got a text from the CDC. Would I like to make the appointment for my second vaccine?

2.9 million people in the U.S. received vaccinations this past Saturday—a record day for the pandemic. I was one. I was not, however, one of the people on my social media feeds posting that I sobbed when it happened, or that I was overcome with emotion on the trip there. Perhaps I’ll feel something next month, when I show up in the Lord & Taylor parking lot for my second and final vaccination, new QR code at the ready. Maybe I’ll cascade into uncontrolled emotion when finally, one day in the not-too-distant future, I gather with others. When I wave at someone I haven’t seen since before the pandemic, or when I hug a dear friend whose presence has been reduced to an occasional post on social media or a quick text. Maybe it will be when I’m surrounded by the sound of strangers’ voices, by song and live celebration. That moment of release will come. It is more, though, than can be delivered by a single syringe and a friendly, efficient jab.

Until then, I’ll continue clicking on the smiling emoji the CDC offers up every day. I’m grateful to have received a vaccination. I’m lucky to have gotten it so quickly and easily. I’m good. Truly. I’m feeling good.

#MOC-19: Pandemic Cooking with My Father

I grew up cooking for my parents. I started with scrambled eggs at the age of seven, and was put on regular weekend breakfast duty as soon as I could prove that I wouldn’t set the kitchen ablaze, or burn the food. When I joined the Cub Scouts, I learned to make such delicacies as campfire hobo stew—chunks of meat and vegetables seasoned with salt and pepper and Worcester sauce, wrapped in aluminum foil, and tossed over an open flame. At the age of 9 when my parents were out, I attempted my first recipe from the checkered Betty Crocker cookbook—chocolate eclairs. They looked and tasted like eclairs. Pretty damned good eclairs, in fact. My ambitions betrayed me into service, however; since I could follow a recipe, I subsequently was assigned dinner duty for the two or three nights a week my parents both had afternoon classes to teach.

My juvenile culinary repertoire wasn’t large. I could form and broil hamburger patties, or pull off a variety of dishes involving ground beef and a box of Hamburger Helper or Rice-a-Roni (I still make porcupine meatballs using Rice-a-Roni to this day). I could bread chicken with cornflakes and seasoning and parmesan cheese from a shaker and set it to bake, and I could replicate a creation of my mom’s she called Chicken with Celery Soup, a casserole that required several cans from Campbell, two cups of Minute Rice, and an iron-clad stomach to keep it down. I could bread cubed steaks and fry them in oil, and serve them with mashed potatoes and grilled onions. By the time I was ten, I knew how to plan a meal and accompany it with starches and vegetables. I knew to remember to make rolls. My father insisted that it wasn’t a meal without a roll.

Rice-a-Roni meatballs aside, over the decades since I’ve left home I’ve become a much better cook. I enjoy trying new dishes and techniques. I scorn the boxes and mixes that defined my childhood. I make quarts of beans to freeze and use as sides or in other dishes; I’ve made my own jams and jellies. For years I had my own little kefir production facility. I’m proud that one of my skills is to keep a mental inventory of our pantry so that not only do I know at any given time what needs to be restocked, but if the week’s plans change, I can improvise meals on the spot. I make up many of my own recipes, and liberally improvise on others.

In October I left for an unprecedented five-week stay in Virginia, to take care of my father as he underwent radiation therapy for prostate cancer. In normal circumstances I wouldn’t necessarily have immured myself for so long; I could have arranged for drivers to take him to his morning appointments and spent a week here and there checking in. The pandemic’s tendency to throw the best-laid plans into disarray, however, meant that exposing my elderly dad to random Uber drivers, or having to venture out for his medicines, wouldn’t be a great idea.

My own doctor had told me in the middle of summer that given the situation with COVID-19, it would be best to bubble myself with my dad for an uninterrupted chunk, rather than travel back and forth or pass off the responsibility with my sister, week by week. I knew for some time that I’d have to be away from home for weeks  or months. I knew, too, that I’d have to be the caregiver in a number of ways.

I confess to being guilty of foolishness: I indulged in sentimental reveries about cooking for my father. Usually when I visit we rely on restaurants for meals. Those visits are a mere handful of days, however, and this trip to Virginia was to last several weeks. Preparing meals is a form of nurture, for me, and I couldn’t think of any better way to shepherd my dad through his weeks of radiation therapy than giving him a nourishing, warm dinner to enjoy every night. And leftovers! I’d make dishes that yielded bountiful leftovers that he could eat for his lunches, or freeze to use as dinners after I’d gone.

I prepared for the trip by packing some things I might need to create a variety of meals. A large sheet pan. A cutting board. My rice cooker. A heavy cast-iron Dutch oven. Tumeric. Basil. Adobo seasoning. At the last minute, Craig suggested I take the Instant Pot, since I make a lot of meals in that. With all my recipes in the cloud at my fingertips, I departed for Virginia, my mind alight with rosy visions of sliding steaming bowls of hearty fare onto one of my dad’s plastic placemats of Gettysburg or Harper’s Ferry or some other laminated memorial of eighteenth- or nineteenth-century American history, whereupon I would bask in the glow of a good deed well done.

My first full day in Richmond, after my dad’s treatment was done in the morning, I sat down with him back at his house and explained that we’d do something similar to what I’d been doing at home, all during the pandemic: we’d cook our own meals six days out of the week, and do takeout on Friday nights, to celebrate another week down of radiation sessions. He seemed agreeable, so we sat down to plan meals and make a list. “Is there anything,” I asked, “other than the two dishes you know I will refuse to make, that you would enjoy for dinner this week?”

“Liver and onions?” he said, with cunning.

I recognized the strategy. By naming something he loves, but knows to which I and any other sane person would object, he was hoping to get some bargaining leverage. “Is there anything,” I repeated, keeping my voice level, “other than the three dishes you know I will refuse to make, that you’d enjoy for dinners this week that we both would eat?”

“What are the other two dinners you won’t make?”

“You know what they are.”

“Meat pie?”

I nodded. He was correct. Briceland Meat Pie is a terrible heirloom recipe passed down within the family for generations that, if I have anything to do with it, will die out for good in my own. It’s a labor-intensive dish with absolutely no payoff whatsoever in taste. My mother would joylessly make it by cooking stew beef and potatoes in a rickety, hissing old pressure cooker; the mixture, which was completely unseasoned—not even with salt or pepper—would be spread atop one layer of homemade pie crust in a rectangular glass dish, then covered with another layer of pie crust, and baked. The resulting pie was basically a particularly bland pasty. Instead of eating it crispy out of the oven, however, each slice is placed into a bowl and then drowned with the liquid left in the pressure cooker. The jus, as it is grandly called, is gray and flavorless and tastes like dirty laundry water.

Again, I must emphasize that there is absolutely no seasoning in the recipe. The jus picks up all of the grease and none of the flavor of the beef. Once doused with hot scummy water, the pie crust becomes gummy. The whole thing is a mess. My father, however, loves Briceland Meat Pie. My mom would occasionally cave in and cook it for him because she was at times a good sport, but she and I would pick at it with our spoons and cast each other sympathetic glances across the kitchen table while he would tuck in with gusto.

“Correct,” I said. “I will never, ever make meat pie for you.”

My father paused, as if considering playing the Sick Old Man With Cancer card. Eventually he recollected how cold and hard-hearted I am when it comes to Briceland Meat Pie, however, and asked, “What’s the second dish?”

“You know what it is.”

“Brunswick stew?”

Yes. Brunswick stew. I’m always surprised when I have to explain Brunswick stew to anyone who didn’t grow up with it. In Virginia, it’s ubiquitous; they even serve the damned stuff at all the local Arby’s. Basically the dish is a chicken stew in a tomato base with beans loaded with other vegetables—but there I go making it sound almost edible. My father loves Brunswick stew, I suspect, because it reminds him of his college days at William and Mary, when occasionally he’d escape the campus and grab a dinner at Chowning’s in Colonial Williamsburg. I too attended William and Mary, but I have no fond memories of that vile mixture of stringy chicken, overcooked corn, mushy green beans, and horrifying nuggets of my least-favorite vegetables, lima beans and okra. As a kid I would press my spoon onto the mess and siphon the broth into the basin, leaving all the solid ingredients in the bottom of the bowl. Inevitably, I’d be ordered to finish it all, and I’d have to hold my nose and shovel unappetizing spoonfuls down my throat. To this day I can’t even think about Brunswick stew without a queasy stomach.

“Anything other than those. Do you have ideas?” I asked.

My dad’s ideas consisted of eking meals out of pre-cooked foods in his fridge. He had slices of Little Caesar’s pizza that were only a week and a half old that we could use for a meal. There were some frozen cooked hamburgers we could put on buns. He had a quarter of a rotisserie chicken breast from Food Lion we could divide and eat with, oh, he didn’t know. Potato chips?

“Never mind,” I told him. “I’ll take care of it.”

So I planned out a week’s worth of meals and went shopping. The next night I set down before him a bowl with one of my favorite colder-weather meals. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a cheese tortellini and Italian sausage soup,” I told him.

He sniffed at it. “Where’s the sandwich?”

“Sandwich? What sandwich?”

“Isn’t there a sandwich with it?”

“Why the hell would there be a sandwich?” I wanted to know.

“Soup needs a sandwich.”

“This isn’t broth,” I said, appalled. “It’s a hearty meal. It has cheese-filled tortellini and big chunks of Italian sausage. The soup part is more of an afterthought, if anything. This soup doesn’t need a sandwich.”

“Well.” He wrinkled his nose. “I always get a sandwich with my soup.”

The soup was delicious. It always is. But my dad spent the meal scooping up bits in his spoon, then asking, “What’s this?”

“It’s a piece of tomato,” I’d say.

“What’s this?”

“A sliver of onion.”

“What about this?”

“It’s a tortellini,” I’d growl, beginning to lose patience.

“What’s a tortellini?”

He finished his portion—mostly—but didn’t seem enthusiastic. “I had planned to have the leftovers tomorrow,” I said, as I collected the dishes, “but seeing that you didn’t like it that much….”

“I don’t eat leftovers the day after I’ve had a meal,” he announced.

I was shocked. Leftovers are the best part of cooking a big meal. Leftovers are the virtuous reward one reaps from cooking well. I’ll work hard on a more complicated meal solely to know that I can have even more of it the following night without any more exertion than it takes to reheat the stuff. What kind of crazy person doesn’t look forward to leftovers the next day? “How about the day after?” I said, modulating my voice to a level that definitely didn’t sound like a screech.

He shrugged. “I still think that if you’re going to do soup, you should offer a sandwich.”

So I learned several things from that first meal. First: I wasn’t serving soup any longer, because my father’s idea of a sandwich consists of two slices of white bread, mayonnaise, and a couple of wafers of that dreadful pressed-meat concoction that passes as a cold cut in his mind, and I’m sorry, but I’m prideful enough that that mess is not going to make it into one of my dinners. Second: I wasn’t going to be able to craft any dinners that resulted in significant amounts of leftovers, because my dad would turn up his nose at them.

Third, as I discovered when I attempted to make a sheet-pan meal, I couldn’t make anything that required baking or broiling, as the oven has a tendency to stop working without warning—so a whole another avenue of meal preparation closed to me.

Fourth, as I found out the next day after my dad had a painful night peeing, and as confirmed by his doctor, meals with tomato were off the menu entirely. Thanks to the radiation, the acidity of tomatoes irritated his urinary tract. Dishes with tomato—I mean, that’s half my repertoire right there. Suddenly I had to rethink everything.

I spent the following weeks grimly trying to imagine dishes that weren’t too weird or spicy, didn’t produce a copious amount of food, didn’t have tomatoes, and weren’t soup. (A pity. I make some damned good soups.) Any Norman Rockwell fantasies I harbored about steaming plates of savory homemade viands flew out the window, substituted by the grim reality of what my dad’s limited palate would accept, and what his cooker could produce. So I bought ham steaks and fried them in a pan and served them with Stove Top stuffing and green beans. I’d make penne (“What’s a pay-nay?”) with pesto (“What’s in pesto? Where on a pine does a pine nut grow?”) and frozen turkey meatballs and a salad and call it a day. I’d make fried rice with the inevitable ham steaks leftovers my father left on his plate.

One time I made Salisbury steaks in the instant pot in an attempt to justify having lugged it all the way down from Connecticut. Salisbury steaks and mashed potatoes—the staple of the classic TV dinner—should be right up my dad’s alley, right? They were delicious as all the times I’ve made them, but my father picked at his and asked for a catalog of every ingredient. Even though I halved the recipe, there were two steaks remaining that I suggested putting into containers with extra potatoes that he could freeze and heat up as small meals after I’d gone.

“No,” he said. “I’ll take care of the leftovers.”

Three days later, he announced that he’d eaten one of the patties. “Oh, you warmed it up with potatoes in the microwave?” I wanted to know.

No. He hadn’t. “I picked out the meat part and scraped off the gravy, and then I put it into a bun,” he told me.

“So you scraped off the delicious homemade mushroom gravy,” I sighed, “and turned the Salisbury steak into a hamburger.”

“I put a slice of cheese on it,” he offered, as if that made anything better.

Most of the meals I ended up throwing together during the rest of the long visit are what I think of as bottom-tier dinners. The kind of things I’ll toss onto the table when I’m tired and not totally willing to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Quesadillas with ground beef and olives. More pasta with sauce from a jar. Quesadillas with chopped chicken and olives.

Weirdly, the only two meals my father actually said he enjoyed were both improvised. I’ll occasionally make a dish I call Chicken with Hummus, in which I’ll sauté chunks of chicken breast with onions and snapped green beans and cumin and lemon and other spices. I’ll then serve it atop rice with a helping of hummus on the side. It has no particular recipe and tends to be accommodating to whatever vegetable leftovers I might have in the fridge. My father ate his entire plate and declared it a winner, surprisingly me greatly. (I’d by that point made peace with the notion that, as my mother had for years, I’d have to learn to live without a ‘good dinner!’ or ‘delicious!’ as my reward.)

The dinner he liked the most was probably what I thought was the single worst of my stay. At home I’ll occasionally make bowls similar to those they serve at the Chipotle chain—a bed of brown rice topped with either homemade seasoned black or pinto beans, topped with chopped chicken I’ll season with adobo and cumin and chili powder, then simmer in sofrito. Then I’ll top it with cheese and usually a homemade corn salsa. 

The version I made at my dad’s, thanks to a lack of resources, consisted of white rice, the sofrito chicken, and a warmed-over can of Bush’s Southwestern-style pinto beans, topped with shredded cheddar cheese. The beans were dreadful—mushy and one note, with that note being cayenne pepper. There was no corn salsa.

If I’d never been to Chipotle and someone had told me this was similar to what they’d served, Chipotle would never get my business. But my dad loved the rice bowl. Raved about it. Told his sister about it on the phone the next day while I winced and questioned why I even tried.

I tried, though, because that’s who I am. I tried because cooking for someone is a way I show I care. It’s just that as I had my option whittled down for me, I might have stopped trying quite so hard.

At least at home, I can dive into the leftovers without shame.

A Compleat and Total Scrutiny of that which is BASIC and therefore GODLY, versus that which is FANCY, As tolde to yr humble scribe by his FATHER, in the year of the LORD two thousand and twenty

EXEMPLUM THE FIRST: The M&M Cookie

YOUR SCRIBE: Oh, by the way, I got some cookies from the supermarket bakery. Feel free to have some.

HIS FATHER: What kind of cookies are these?

YOUR SCRIBE: They’re M&M cookies.

HIS FATHER: Emmmin…emmmm?

YOUR SCRIBE: Look. I know you’ve heard of M&M candies before.

HIS FATHER [peering at the box]: Gawrsh. Why are these so fancy?

YOUR SCRIBE: Fancy, as opposed to….

HIS FATHER: Vanilla wafers. Or chocolate chip cookies.

YOUR SCRIBE: These are the exact same thing as chocolate chip cookies, except with M&Ms.

HIS FATHER: But the M&Ms are on top. They’re so fancy.

EXEMPLUM THE SECOND: The Gatorade

YOUR SCRIBE, RETURNING FROM YE OLDE WALGREENS: Okay, got your pills. Got several bottles of Gatorade. Hopefully it will help retain more water for your scans.

HIS FATHER, UPON PEERING AT THE BOUNTY: Why…are they different colors?

YOUR SCRIBE: Because I got different flavors.

HIS FATHER: Different…flavors? Of…Gatorade?

YOUR SCRIBE: I got original, fruit punch, and green apple, to see which one you liked.

HIS FATHER: Why would I want different flavors? The original is lemon-lime?

YOUR SCRIBE: Yes.

HIS FATHER: The others are just…

TOGETHER: Fancy.

YOUR SCRIBE: Christ.

EXEMPLUM THE THIRD: The Can Immortalized by the Artist Known as Warhol

YOUR SCRIBE: I also picked up some chicken soup, per your dem…request.

HIS FATHER: I think with the fancy Gatorade and some soup I should get some salt back in my system. Does it have noodles in it? I can’t eat chicken soup unless it has noodles, to give it some interest.

YOUR SCRIBE, WITH CONDESCENSION: Can you drink the damned Gatorade without noodles?

HIS FATHER, UPON EXAMINING THE CAN: Ha-ha, very funny. But what is this?

YOUR SCRIBE: It’s Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.

HIS FATHER: But it’s fancy.

YOUR SCRIBE: It’s not fancy. It’s the most basic chicken noodle soup there is.

HIS FATHER: But it’s fancy.

YOUR SCRIBE: What the hell is so fancy about the soup?

HIS FATHER: [points to the can]

YOUR SCRIBE: It’s fancy because it has a photo of soup with noodles on it?

HIS FATHER: Real chicken noodle soup comes in a red and white can.

YOUR SCRIBE: It’s the same damned product. This is a red and white can. It just has a photo on it.

HIS FATHER, WITH SUSPICION: It looks fancy.

YOUR SCRIBE: I am done with this conversation.

EXEMPLUM THE FOURTH: The Undergarments

YOUR SCRIBE, UPON RETURNING FROM TARGET: Surprise! I got you some new undershirts so that you can throw out those old ratty ones.

HIS FATHER, DUBIOUSLY: Those are not undershirts.

YOUR SCRIBE: Yes, they are. I got the kind without tags, because I know they irritate your neck. But see, these are V-neck, so that you can still tell which is the back and which is the fr….

HIS FATHER: Why are those so…so….?

YOUR SCRIBE: Are you going to say they’re fancy? Why are you going to say they’re fancy?

HIS FATHER: Fancy.

YOUR SCRIBE: What in the world is so fancy about these goddamned t-shirts? They’re Fruit of the Loom. They come ten to a pack for ten bucks. These are not fancy. If you got any more basic than this, you’d be wearing sackcloth and ashes.

HIS FATHER, SNIFFING: They come in colors.

EXEMPLUM THE ULTIMATE: The Supermarket

YOUR SCRIBE, UPON RETURNING FROM MARKET BEARING THE BURDEN OF A DOZEN OXEN UPON HIS SOLITARY SHOULDERS: Christ, I am worn out. Help me move these bags inside.

HIS FATHER, LOOKING WITH SUSPICION UPON THE BAGS: Where did you go?

YOUR SCRIBE: To Publix.

HIS FATHER, HORRIFIED: To PUBLIX?

YOUR SCRIBE, SWEATING AND MOVING ALL THE BAGS BY HIMSELF: That’s what I said.

HIS FATHER: Why to Publix?

YOUR SCRIBE: For several reasons. Because I’ve never been to Publix. Because they have contactless pay and I can use your credit card from my phone.

HIS FATHER: But Publix is…!

YOUR SCRIBE: New to Richmond? Yes, I know.

HIS FATHER: Publix is…!

YOUR SCRIBE: Quite nice? Yes, I thought so too.

HIS FATHER: Publix is…!

YOUR SCRIBE: [waits for it]

HIS FATHER: …FANCY!

YOUR SCRIBE: Publix is not any more fancy than Kroger, trust me. What supermarket isn’t fancy, to you?

HIS FATHER: Food Lion.

YOUR SCRIBE: You’re right. Food Lion isn’t fancy. Food Lion has a labeled aisle dedicated to the entire line of Slim Jim products. Food Lion’s pasta aisle is 95% egg noodles, 4% enriched spaghetti, and one bag of penne. Food Lion is a hole.

HIS FATHER: Gawrsh. I can’t believe you went to Publix. It’s so fancy.

YOUR SCRIBE: What is so fancy about Publix? Tell me. Explain.

HIS FATHER: Well…the people.

YOUR SCRIBE: The people?

HIS FATHER: The people who work there.

YOUR SCRIBE: What? What’s so fancy about the people who work there?

HIS FATHER: They say hi to you.

YOUR SCRIBE: So what makes Publix so fancy is that the people who work there…greet you.

HIS FATHER: Yes!

YOUR SCRIBE: What makes Publix so fancy is that…the clerks recognize your basic human existence.

HIS FATHER: Yes!

YOUR SCRIBE: Whereas at Food Lion, the employees spit on you as you walk through the door. As God intended.

HIS FATHER, WITH DIGNITY: Now you’re just being silly.

#MOC19: On Reading Again

Once a week, my devices present to me a summary of how I’ve spent my screen time for the previous week—how many minutes I’ve spent listening to music, or watching Netflix, or using social media. Reading and Reference always seem to dominate my totals; I suspect if I had a magical app betraying how I’ve occupied all the hours of my entire life, reading would still be right up there at the top. In 2019, according to Goodreads, I was finishing about a book a week for a cumulative total of roughly 16,000 pages…and I thought 2019 was a pretty slow year for reading.

(I’ve just spent a pleasant few minutes off on a tangent, trying to figure out how and why in 2011 I consumed roughly twice as many books and pages as last year. But then I recalled I spent the first half of 2011 on my own in Detroit, not working while I waited for my house to sell so that I could move to Connecticut—and that the second half of the year I had just moved to Connecticut without knowing anyone or having much to do. Plowing through 30,000 pages makes sense in that context. I’m convinced that half of those belonged to the enjoyable, yet interminable, Little Dorrit.)

One might assume in these long days of social isolation because to COVID-19, all of which I’ve spent exclusively within the boundaries of my house for extended periods of time, reading would be the ideal pursuit for enforced leisure. Even writing that sentence, I envision chilly March days under a woolen throw with a book in hand. Or, as the tense early weeks of quarantine extended into warmer weather, languid afternoons on my front porch in the early summer, feet kicked up as I spend hours engrossed in a juicy novel.

And yet, since this virus shut down the world as I know it, I largely haven’t been able to read. Not at all.

Looking at Goodreads again, the site I’ve used for a decade to track and review the books crossing my nightstand, I can see that the year got off to a brisk clip. I very much enjoyed Dorothy Parker’s Complete Broadway: 1918-1923, an endearing, funny, and hefty collection of the acid-tongued writer’s Broadway reviews. I bounced through the third volume of N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Sky trilogy in three days; I read a manual of style, Dreyer’s English, from cover to cover and very much enjoyed its quirky approach to syntax (and appreciated its advice). I zipped through a biography of Elaine Stritch, then another autobiography by artist Peter McGough.

In March, doors began to shut. Businesses closed; what remained of Dorothy Parker’s Broadway shuttered. If I read, it was headlines about spiking death rates, or news stories peddling conflicting advice on how to keep safe during the maelstrom. My poor brain couldn’t take too much of the real world and its horrors, though. It proved easier to find activities that would focus my thoughts on a tiny subset of activity, like maneuvering pixels around the screen in a video game…or shut down my brain entirely, by streaming trashy shows on Netflix.

Reading isn’t as easy as flipping on reality TV and letting it blare away. Reading requires concentration. The pandemic seemed to make concentration impossible. Reading requires imagination, and my imagination was already on overdrive, day in and day out, conjuring nightmare scenarios in which I or people I loved got sick, or ran out of access to foods and medicines or their homes.

Oh, I tried to get into books. I had a biography on Churchill I’d started right before everything shut down. Reading about London in the Blitz, though, seemed too self-indulgently cruel an activity when it felt like a biological Blitz going on around us. I’d received another fantasy from N. K. Jemisin the second week of the shutdown that in better times might’ve taken me a day or two to devour. Engaging and often delightful though it was (and as prescient as it turned out to be, with its alien foe manifesting as an army of Karens weaponizing the NYC police force against its heroes and heroines of color), it took me two months to get through The City We Became. Though the book was good, compelling myself to attempt a page or two at a time left me feeling drained. I took no pleasure in the reading.

After that experience, I stopped trying to read altogether. Weeks passed. And then I remembered Little Women.

I’d read Little Women once in early grade school, liking the adventures of the March sisters very much until the halfway mark when Mr. March returns from the front and Little Women becomes Good Wives. When the escapades became meditations on married life and lectures on anger management, my ten-year-old self checked out. I’d revisited the book in my thirties and enjoyed it quite a bit, but in the years since, my memory of exactly what happens in the narrative had dimmed to the point that if you were to ask me the novel’s plot, I would’ve told you it was a Scarface-like examination of Concord’s underground barter economy and of Amy March, who had established herself tooth and nail as its kingpin by ruthlessly cornering the market in pickled limes. Then [spoiler alert] Beth dies. The end.

I don’t know why the pickled limes made such an impression on me. But over the holidays last year, in a vanished time when people gathered in crowds in dark enclaves to view flickering images on their walls, we saw the Greta Gerwig film of Little Women. I was astonished that the pickled limes were barely mentioned. The first half of the movie resurrected some dormant memories of Alcott’s story, but I found the Good Wives half—the grown-up part I’d pretended wasn’t there in previous readings—almost the more interesting. Sometime around the new year, I downloaded a copy of Little Women to my Kindle and made a resolution to check it out once again in the months to come.

In late June, when the temperatures soared and the afternoons seemed to stretch out along with them, I made some fitful attempts to read again. It had been a long six weeks since I’d finally clawed my way to the finish line of The City We Became. I thought dipping my toes into the new entry of a silly time-travel series I enjoy might rekindle my lifelong love of curling up with a good book. Apparently the book wasn’t good enough. I tried the Churchill biography again, but couldn’t take more than a page at a time without the contradictory pulls of listlessness and restlessness both. Many times I walked to the water’s edge with different new titles. I could never submerge.

Then I returned to Little Women. I lay stretched out on a lounge in the early summer heat, picked up my Kindle, and tapped on the title that had sat there since the holidays. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” was the first sentence.

And I thought, Girrrrrl, I sure know that feeling. This entire year of 2020 feels like Christmas without any presents. Maybe I could sit a while with this fifteen-year-old life disrupted by a war splitting her country in two.

Alcott’s narrative quickly began working its magic. I zipped through two chapters. Five. Ten. I found myself finishing the book over the course of three lazy afternoons, weeping at Beth’s tender moments, cheering for Jo’s successes, sympathizing with the nuances of Meg’s marital woes, and finding a new appreciation for Amy. It honestly felt like I’d stumbled onto the joy of reading all over again.

Over the last several years I’ve been attempting to achieve a certain balance in my leisure reading habits; I keep an even ratio between novels and non-fiction; I try to intersperse some classics I never attempted along with the genre fiction to which I gravitate most readily. Though from time to time I’ll revisit volumes I’ve known and loved before, in my teens and twenties I was such a heavy re-reader of books I knew and enjoyed—like Little Women, maybe—that I’ve tried ever since to maintain moderation.

Then it occurred to me. Maybe it’s okay for me to take a break for a while from new titles. All of us in the midst of this pandemic face daily uncertainties and novelties. Every day seems to bring some new viral horror story, or an invasion of killer hornets, or a fresh anxiety to conquer. With enough ambiguity around me, did I knowingly need to chart unknown territory in my reading list, too?

Perhaps letting myself bask in the tried and true might be just the prescription I needed. Re-reading a novel isn’t a bad thing: if I’m not finding pleasure in new titles, why not return to the ones I know and love?

That’s why, after bringing to a conclusion my afternoons with the March sisters, I immediately jumped into Charles Dickens. David Copperfield is one of my all-time favorites. It’s the only popular Dickens novel I was never assigned to read during high school, college, or grad school, so I didn’t pick it up until my thirties. The earliest chapters captivated me immediately once again when I picked it up for this re-read. I laughed aloud at the absurdities of Betsey Trotwood. I cheered for loyal Peggotty and her Yarmouth relations who lived in a little land-locked boat. I shivered at the Murdstones, and smiled whenever the coach driver would assert, “Barkis is willin’.” Chapter after chapter I gulped down, delighting in the strokes with which Dickens paints his characters, admiring how even the most secondary among them gets to display moments of tenderness and humanity.

I’d breathlessly devour every chapter, then turn the page to the next. An hour or two would pass before I realized how mesmerized I’d been by the words on the page. Losing myself like that in a good story, reveling in the printed words—I’d feared I’d lost those things for good with the pandemic.

Even now, in the middle of David Copperfield’s adventures, I can’t help but think about what favorites I’ll be reading next, just to relive the glow of excitement they cast upon me years ago. The delightful social absurdities of E. F. Benson? Patrick Dennis’ acerbic satires? A deep delve into the fantasies of Anne McCaffrey? I don’t really know, and it doesn’t much matter. I’m simply thrilled to have recaptured a relish for reading again—and, thanks to Little Women, to have given myself permission to spend the next few months with stories I’ve long loved.





This essay has been written as part of the Mass Observation: COVID-19 writing project. If you'd like to join our volunteer writers, visit our Call for Volunteers at https://bit.ly/3aes2AQ .

#MOC19: Thin-Skinned

At last week’s tail end I had my first medical appointment since this mess started. I was supposed to have had a dentist’s appointment in the middle of April, but the state’s dental board had recommended its members cancel all appointments and remain available solely for emergencies…so that was off. Religious flosser though I am, I’m missing that smooth-tooth feel I relish in the weeks after a cleaning.

Because I tend to be vague about dates on the calendar—as in when they are, what they mean, and why they should be of significance to me—I tend not only to enter appointments on my electronic calendar, where they’ll be propagated to all my many devices so I can summarily ignore them after they buzz and chirp at me, but also to leave the appointment cards fixed on the side of my refrigerator. In theory, I visit the refrigerator often enough (which is to say, way too often) that on occasion the card for the next appointment might catch my eye.

This month my backup strategy worked. I noticed the card for an upcoming dermatologist’s appointment a couple of weeks early, and I wondered to myself whether or not it would happen at all. Would I have to sit in a waiting room with other patients? Or had specialists followed the same path as Connecticut dentists, and shut down their practices? I could remember one of my friends remarking on Facebook that he’d had a telemedical session with his dermatologist for a suspicious mole. Sitting in a cold office in nothing but my shorts while a near-stranger peers at my skin for abnormalities is bad enough. Was I now going to have to contort myself like a circus freak, as I guided my phone’s camera over every square inch of my embarrassed naked flesh?

I started visiting my dermatologist about six years ago because of a condition that affects the sides of my face; I was breaking out in tiny bumps right along the bone surrounding the eye sockets, which would inflame and turn scarlet, leaving me looking like a raccoon. My regular doctor was mystified; the dermatologist had me test out a series of medicated lotions and gels that turned my redness into vivid scarlet crescent moons. Eventually we hit upon a combination of low-grade antibiotics and a sulfur wash that eliminated the outbreaks. “It’s not really rosacea acne, but let’s call it rosacea acne,” he told me. (My regular doctor: “I guess it could be. Dermatology is kind of a crap-shoot, isn’t it?”)

I’m grateful for the clear complexion I’ve had since, but the price for it is having to visit the dermatologist every six months—and honestly, I truly dislike my dermatologist.

Every time I visit my dermatologist I come away with some new grievance or horror story to share. He’s paranoid. He’s grandiose. He freaks out if someone misses an appointment, because it affects his bottom line. He’s also outright offensive: there were the multiple times he informed me that “Old folks like you are my bread and butter.” (Thanks, buddy.)

Once I had to sit in the waiting room and endure him chew out his long-suffering elderly receptionist because she’d booked an appointment for someone he had banned from his office for non-payment. On another occasion, I had to listen to him scream at top volume at the poor woman again because she’d told an elderly woman from the Nathaniel Witherell nursing home that she could sit in the office for a few minutes until the home’s shuttle picked her up after an appointment—then during my own appointment he raved the entire time about the grievance until finally he opened up the examination room door (with me clutching my t-shirt to my naked chest in horror) to yell at the receptionist, “I DON’T NEED SOME NINETY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD KEELING OVER IN MY WAITING ROOM.”

Yes, I very much dislike my dermatologist, but honestly, my appointments are short and he doesn’t seem to be doing me active harm. Basically I’m too damned lazy to try to find a new one and get my records transferred and start all over again.

So although I wondered whether I’d be seeing him at all last week, his service called to remind me that I had an appointment on the 24th, and to please let them know if I needed to cancel at least 24 hours in advance. Seven days in a row they called, while I stubbornly refused to dial them back because they said that I only needed to return the call if I was canceling. I drove to the guy’s medical complex, parked and tied on my mask, then was surprised to see him waiting for me at the top of the stairs inside.

“Come in, come in.” It was more of a demand than an invitation, really, but I let him pull open the door for me, then watched as he swabbed at the knobs on both sides with disinfectant wipes, and locked the door behind him. The waiting room was empty; the receptionist’s office behind the sliding glass window was dark. “It’s just me here. I’m only seeing one patient at a time…for obvious reasons.”

It made sense. He was masked as well, and as he washed his hands and disinfected, I started taking off my hoodie and shirt. My all-over body exam usually is in October; in the spring, he only looks me over from the waist up. “How has all this affected your—?” I started to say.

“I’m down to about ten percent capacity,” he interrupted. “I have to say, I’m very disappointed in most of my patients over this. They don’t seem to understand that I have a practice to maintain, and they just don’t show up to their appointments. Now, are there any changes in your medications?”

As I hopped up on the exam table, I shook my head and told him everything was the same, although the previous week I’d had a mark on my neck that I thought was from using my clippers directly on—

But he was off on another tangent. “You know how they say a crisis is a crucible that shows people for who they are? Well, that’s what it’s done for my patients. Ungrateful, ungrateful people, all of them. It’s terrible how disgusting people are.” I closed my mouth and let him rant as he lifted up my left arm and gave it the once-over from all angles. “They’re bad enough under normal circumstances, but now I’m expected to be available to them at all hours of the day so I can look at their moles over Skype. Telemedicine sucks, I tell you. It sucks. It’s stupid. I didn’t spend years and years in medical school to look at people’s moles on a smartphone.”

I pointed to my neck again. “I did have a mark—“

“And it’s bad enough that during normal times I already think I’m being socially ostracized. Maybe I’m a paranoid person. Maybe I am. But do you know that no one in my social circle has called to check up on me? Here I am in the front lines, risking disease and death every day, and for what? Not a single call.” He laughs as though he hopes it’s amusing, this notion that anyone would ostracize him. I’m someone, however, who’s basically seen blood streaming from this guy’s eyes because a 94-year-old had to wait a few minutes for her ride back to the nursing home. So instead I’m sitting there shirtless, arms held out like the Vitruvian man, understanding how deeply possible his social exile might be, even despite his noble sacrifice of being a first responder on the dermatological frontlines with ancient folk like me. “I’m circling a red spot on your lower back because I don’t think I’ve seen that before.”

“And if you could look at this spot….” I say, pointing beneath my jawline.

“Already I’m the black sheep in my family. Everybody thinks that I’m a fool. But you know what? I’m the one with a medical degree. Do any of them have medical degrees? The answer is no. They don’t.”

I’ve heard this particular diatribe before, usually in my autumn visits right before Thanksgiving. His brother-in-law makes fun of him. His wife’s family treats him like he’s a joke. Even though I usually approach these appointments telling myself, Oh, he might not be so bad this time, I had reached the inevitable stage of the consultation in which I remembered exactly why I should be switching doctors, if only switching didn’t sound like so much wooooork, and if I weren’t such a lazy bastard. It’s only when he finally lets me put my arms down and he turns to his laptop to make some notes that I managed to say, “Last week I had a big red mark, here, on my neck. It was probably from using my clippers on the skin, but if you could look….”

“My synagogue,” he continued, seeming to ignore me. “My wife is on the board of my synagogue. Very important position. Very important position. But have any of the other board members ever invited us for dinner? Not now, of course. Are the rest of them inviting each other to dinner? I just bet they are. I bet they have dinner together all the time. But do my wife and I get invited to dinner? No. Even though she’s on the board.” I pressed my lips together, hoping the rant might climax more quickly that way. “They have an excuse not to invite us, now. But before. Did anyone invite us before? They did not,” he said, as if I were in danger of getting a word in edgewise and actually speculating an answer to the question. “I tell my wife that nobody is friends with us at synagogue, and that it’s making me crazy, crazy paranoid, and do you know how she replies? She says, ‘Well, I have friends.’ Yeah. Like that. ‘I have friends.’” I opened my mouth to speak again, but he turned around bearing an antiseptic wipe in one hand and a needle in the other. “That thing on your neck is just a pimple, probably an ingrown follicle, just keep it clean and it’ll clear up. But I am going to shave off this red spot on your lower back.”

It was a painless process of a small pinch, a light numbness, then a standard band-aid. All the while he continued talking.

“Do you think any of this is going to change once this COVID nonsense is over? It’s not going to change. It’s just makes me paranoid, I tell you. It just makes me paranoid.”

I hadn’t really said much of anything by the time our fifteen minutes were over—and yet I was exhausted. “Are you taking copays?” I asked, once I was dressed and itching to go. “Or will someone call me later?”

“I have to disinfect the entire exam room after you leave. By myself,” he emphasized, using the same tone my mom used when I was a kid and she would complain about having to clean all the bathrooms. I wondered if he expected me to grab a bottle of Scrubbing Bubbles and pitch in and help. “So no. I think you might even have a credit, but my billing guy will call you if he needs to. In the meantime, keep safe, and make sure you keep your next appointment.” Sotto voce, he added, “Unlike the rest of these ingrates.”

As I escaped down the stairs and out into the parking lot, I reflected to myself that if a crisis really does show who people are, this particular crucible had melted my dermatologist down to his bitterest essence.





This essay has been written as part of the Mass Observation: COVID-19 writing project. If you'd like to join our volunteer writers, visit our Call for Volunteers at https://bit.ly/3aes2AQ .

#MOC19: Kitchen Disco

For the last three Friday afternoons, British pop star Sophie Ellis Bextor has been streaming mini-concerts from isolation in her home in London—the Sophie Ellis Bextor Kitchen Disco, she calls the event.

Sophie spangles herself in sequins, wearing sleek dresses heavy with feathers and faux furs. Beneath a glittering disco ball she dances and twirls like the glamorous, posh pop goddess she is, all the while surrounded by the disorder of her three children (is it three? They run around so much that sometimes it seems like a hundred) and the prosaic disarray of her tiny kitchen. She’ll spin to her propulsive disco hit, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” while in the background two of her boys roughhouse and leap up and down on the window seat like their personal trampoline; she’ll change the lyrics to her hit cover of Cher’s “Take Me Home” to “Stay at Home,” crooning the entire song into a microphone in her right hand, while bouncing her toddler in her left arm.

She’ll take a moment to wander into the garden and attempt an artsy pose against a trellis while singing one of her ballads, only to have to interrupt her gentle serenade to bellow at the boys in a tone that every child recognizes to mind the dog. Then she’ll bop around in the kitchen once more to sing a cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” while trying not accidentally to kick the baby as it scoots around on the floor. (Spoiler: sometimes she accidentally kicks the baby.)

I love Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Kitchen Discos. I love how she’s hauling out elegant ball gowns from the depths of her closets to show them off surrounded by the everyday clutter and disarray of the kitchen of any mom with three young kids. I love how she hands the microphone over to her two oldest boys so they can rap for the audience at home. They rap about as well as any ten-year-olds, which is to say, horribly—but the segment gives Sophie a chance to scuttle off to a nearby alcove, where we can audibly hear her unzipping one silver concert dress and changing into an extremely short sheath of canary yellow silk. “Costume change!” she’ll announce with equal measures of excitement and exhaustion both, as she’ll trip back on her stilettos to resume the show.

As much as I need and look forward to that Friday afternoon respite as I lie on my living room sofa, phone in hand, peering at the screen as the Kitchen Disco proceeds, I suspect it’s important for Sophie Ellis Bextor as well. It’s obvious she looks forward to changing out of her mom clothes and into something glamorous, to perform for her online audience, just as it’s clear her kids relish the chance to goof around with their mom. They’ll pretend to be backup singers and dancers one moment, squabble with each other the next, then chase each other like maniacs around their mother, as kids do, while she tries not to laugh too much. It’s chaos, and comfort, rolled into one sparkling mirror ball of a half hour.

Other entertainers have been streaming from their homes during the last month as well. Ever since Broadway diva Patti LuPone sang a song or two during her appearance in her basement on a Rosie O’Donnell streaming special, giving those watching a startling view of the enormous jukebox in one corner and, more improbably, the racks of cassette tapes on her walls (Patti LuPone still listens to cassettes?), she’s popped up from time to time to give tours of the basement and entertain viewers with her frank LuPone-isms. Comedians have been doing live sets on Instagram Live; drag queens have been streaming their shows on YouTube. Another of my favorite musicians, Rod Thomas of Bright Light, Bright Light, has moved his weekly Romy & Michelle’s Saturday Afternoon Tea Dance from the cramped confines of Club Cumming to Facebook, where he DJs from his apartment and takes requests from viewers in the chat window.

For over a month now I’ve been isolated in my home. My days here don’t vary much. Meals are the milestones of my weeks; the evenings pass by in half-hour or hour chunks, depending on what TV show I’m watching. Watching livestreams from real people in other places—familiar or famous faces even—as they dance or sing or show off their perfectly ordinary basements littered with cassette tapes reminds me that I’m not the only person or family whose days have a perimeter of a few rooms. So I come away smiling after each Sophie’s Kitchen Disco, or each Romy & Michelle Tea Dance, feeling almost as if I’ve been gamboling, or crushed with no social distancing at a concert, happy for a few minutes to have forgotten our world’s troubles. In a week in which mass graves are being dug for the deceased, and in which uncertainty still reigns, there’s more than a little comfort in reinforcing the notion that we’re all in this together.





This essay has been written as part of the Mass Observation: COVID-19 writing project. If you'd like to join our volunteer writers, visit our Call for Volunteers at https://bit.ly/3aes2AQ .

#MOC19: One Bad Night

1.
It’s eleven-forty-five on the last Saturday night in March, nineteen days into my isolation. I’ve been lying in my bed for fifteen minutes, trying to will myself into sleep. But something’s isn’t right.

I feel the wrongness at my core, deep in my gut. It begins as a sense of unease—a conviction that my body has gone awry. Yet for the life of me, I can’t pinpoint exactly what. My soles suddenly feel clammy. I ease my feet over the side of the bed and out from under the blankets to give them air. Now my feet are cool, but the rest of me seems to be growing warmer. Do I have a fever?

Even as I allow myself to wonder, my skin flushes all over. My soles are dry, but the sheets are beginning to cling to the rest of my body. I didn’t feel hot when I got into bed. Maybe my fear is what’s making me perspire. Yet is it fear I feel in the pit of my stomach, then? Or is it something more? Something…contagious?

Is this it, then? Is this the day it happens to me? I thought I’d done everything right. I’d washed my hands, I’d kept my distance. I hadn’t congregated, hadn’t mingled. For nineteen days I’ve been nothing but good. And now—?

What in the world is happening to me?


2.
When did I first hear of this disease? I remember sitting alone in the waiting room of my doctor in mid-January, waiting for my six-month check-up, sleepily regretting my choice of the day’s first appointment. When my doctor finally strides in from the hallway, hand outstretched for a shake, I look up from the news story I’ve been reading on my phone. “Have you heard about this virus from that market in China?” I ask, as I slip the device into my overcoat pocket.

“The coronavirus?” he says. Perhaps it’s a doctor’s habit, but he’s always making statements into questions. “You’ve been reading up on that, have you?

“Is this something you need to be worried about?” Infectious disease is his bailiwick, so it makes sense he’d be drafted into action if this virus spread beyond China. I suppose I’m really asking, though, Is this something I need to be worried about?

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he says, as he maneuvers me into the exam room. “You know, I don’t even know how they test for that, does it even say in there?” He explains that there are standard tests for a variety of viruses, but coronaviruses are so different and exotic that he can think of only one hospital on the east coast that maybe would have the equipment to detect it. While he talks, I roll up my sleeves for the blood pressure cuff and open my mouth for his thermometer. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about right now? But I’ll be keeping an eye on it? But how are you feeling?”

“Great,” I tell him. “I’m feeling great.”


3.
I’m definitely not feeling great. Now it’s after midnight. I’m sweating profusely, but if I don’t move, I can pretend I don’t notice how damp my sheets have become. My feet are now freezing. I pull them back beneath the covers.

Do I have a cough? Am I short of breath? I know the symptoms of COVID-19. My lungs are free of fluid, though, and I can breathe without effort. That’s good, right? That means I’m okay? But this sweat upsets me. I shouldn’t be steaming beneath the blankets like this. The thermostats are programmed to keep the house cooler at night, and my bedroom window is cracked open a few inches for ventilation. On the back of my neck I can feel the cool air from outside. It makes me shiver. Chills—that’s a sign, isn’t it?

Maybe this is it. Dramatic scenes begin to flicker in my head, Me, shivering in bed. Me, coughing and wheezing. Me, wearing an oxygen mask. Me, on a ventilator. I don’t even have a clear picture in my head what a ventilator looks like. But I know they’re scarce, and they’re a last resort. Even the word ventilator terrifies me.

Oh god. I’m starting to sweat even more.


4.
Throughout all of January, the only person concerned with this new virus is the woman who cuts my hair—Melanie, a tiny Latina who never hesitates with her opinions. “I’m turning away anyone with a cough,” she tells me, when I see her a few days after my doctor’s appointment. “You’re not coughing, are you? You better not be coughing.”

“You know the coronavirus isn’t in this country yet,” I say, as she buzzes my head with her clippers.
“You don’t know that!” She stares at me in the mirror and repeats the words. “You don’t know that! I don’t care. If they walk in here and I hear them cough, nuh-uh. Not having it. Someone else can take them.”

She’s laughing when she says the words, but I know she’s serious. I’m laughing, too.

When I return for another trim shortly before my birthday, neither of us are laughing any more. “You know we went to Las Vegas last week,” I say, as I sit down.

“You’re crazy,” she tells me, as she flourishes the apron then fastens it around my neck. “Are you sick? If you’re sick, you’ve got to leave.”

“I’m not sick, I’m not sick. I was careful. I sanitized the heck out of my airplane seats,” I reassure her. “I washed my hands. But you know, we had a layover in Dallas, at O’Hare, on the way out there, for like, four hours. And I was sitting in my seat, watching the TV in one of the lounges, and they said that someone carrying the virus was reported to have passed through O’Hare only the day before…and I thought to myself….”

“You thought to yourself Melanie is right,” she interrupts, lifting the clippers from my scalp.

I nod, and our eyes meet in the mirror. “I thought to myself, Melanie is right.”


5.
Why am I so hot? Is it because I’m lying here after midnight, in the dark, in the quiet, wondering if I have a fever? Will I cool down if I open the window an inch or two more? Worse—what happens if I crack the sill wider and nothing changes?

I’m not a hypochondriac by nature. I don’t balloon colds into life-threatening illness; I don’t experience an itch and investigate WebMD until I’m convinced I have a brain tumor. Ever since this virus, though, I’m constantly on the watch for symptoms. My day’s-end survey consists of a string of self-evaluations: Am I coughing more than normal? Am I unusually short of breath? Am I fatigued? No, am I really fatigued, or am I just everyday-stress-and-strain tired out?

Tonight feels wrong, though. I’d felt fine earlier in the day. My appetite had been healthy. I’d gone for my usual exercise, done nothing out of the ordinary. How suddenly is the coronavirus supposed to hit? All I can think about are the celebrities who’ve been in the hospital, the accounts from the infected of how painful it is for them to breathe, the reports from the medical frontlines of weary doctors and nurses who’ve seen patient after patient flatline.

The longer I lie here, the more difficult it is not to panic. Yet I’m afraid to move. Moving would only confirm how damp I’ve made the sheets. How hot and feverish I really am.

So I lie still, and make mental calculations. How long has it been since my last night out?


6.
It’s the ninth of March. We’ve had these tickets for Company for some time—the new staging, with Katrina Lenk as a female Bobbie and Patti LuPone singing “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Greenwich has already begun to shut down: the schools have closed, my classes have been canceled. I shouldn’t be taking this risk. But c’mon, it’s Patti LuPone. I can’t imagine not going.

I’ve got strategies, of course. On the Metro North train, I wipe down my seat, and the grips in the headrest in front of me. I sanitize my hands. My ticket’s on my phone, which the conductor reads with a glance. No contact there. During the journey I sit very still and read my book on my device, being very careful not to touch or rub my face. And when I get to Grand Central, I walk cross-town to the theater. No crowded subway shuttle. No cab. Just a straight walk there. Once I arrive, I immediately wash my hands in the restroom, and take my seat.

The theater is crowded as curtain time approaches. Shortly before the lights go down, a couple arrives to assume the last pair of seats in my balcony row. The woman coughs as she sits—a deep, bronchial rattle of her lungs. Simultaneously, everyone in the vicinity swivels their heads in her direction. Every face registers concern. The woman makes a show of covering her mouth with her Playbill, then lets out a smaller, less dire, cough.

Is she six feet away from me? Six-ish. Maybe. The lights dim, and the curtain rises, and I allow myself to forget the people around me.

We walk straight back to Grand Central after. In the archway of Track 27, a man in a trench coat stands reading a newspaper. His face is completely obscured not only by a mask with twin respirator filters on either side of his jaw, but also by what looks like a pair of welding goggles over his eyes. I can’t help but stare. Overkill, maybe?

Melanie might not think so.

As I dig for my hand sanitizer and prepare to disinfect my space on the train for the trip home, I realize that tonight is the last time I’ll be out for a very long time to come.

The next day there’s a report that one of the ushers at the show next door to Company has been diagnosed with COVID-19. My close calls are getting closer. I’d pushed through that show’s crowds on the walk back to Grand Central. Had the usher infected anyone who’d been in that throng—no. I willed myself to stop thinking about it. Anything that had happened, had already happened. I’d find out soon enough.


7.
I can’t stand it any longer. Stewing in my fears and sweat isn’t doing me any good. I at least have to get up and check to see what’s wrong. I fumble for my spectacles on the night stand, swing my legs out from beneath the blankets. I’m definitely covered with perspiration; I can feel the cool air of the bedroom raising goose flesh on my shoulders where my skin is dampest.

Something happens the moment I’m upright. That feeling of vague unease at my core solidifies. My stomach flips, then burns. I have one of those sudden convictions that I need to get to the bathroom as quickly as humanly possible. I pad quickly out of the bedroom, across the hall, and land on my knees in front of the toilet. My abdomen compresses; my chest expands. I begin violently hurling the contents of my stomach into the john.

And yet, the entire time I’m doing it, I’m thinking to myself Oh thank god. Vomiting isn’t a primary symptom. I’ve just got a stomach thing. I don’t care how terrible it feels in those moments to be losing what feels like several days’ worth of meals. I don’t give a rip how awful the ejection sounds. I’m just relieved that in the lottery of symptoms, I hadn’t drawn a dry cough, or shortness of breath. I’m happy that I might have dodged a bullet.

When I’m done, I wipe my face and mouth with a wet washcloth. I rinse with mouthwash. Then, still on my knees, I grab the thermometer from the sink, press the button to activate it, and stick it beneath my tongue. It beeps a moment later.

“Ninety-nine point four,” I say aloud.

Curiously, even after what I’ve just been through, I feel immensely better. I’ve probably eaten something bad, I tell myself; Whatever it was seems to have been purged from my system. More comforting still is the proof I still hold in one hand that my body’s heat isn’t elevated in a serious way. I’ll check my temperature almost hourly for the rest of the night, but I’m okay. A little wobbly, but okay. For now, anyway.

I’ll take that ‘for now,’ though. I’ll take it and try to make it last as long as I can.





This essay has been written as part of the Mass Observation: COVID-19 writing project. If you'd like to join our volunteer writers, visit our Call for Volunteers at https://bit.ly/3aes2AQ .