Day 29: Go Inoculate Myself

All hell has broken loose. I’m completely confused. Enraged, too. I don’t trust the combination, so I’m afraid to write. Tonight’s sermon was going to be about the messy quest for a vaccine and the startling movement that’s sprung up to oppose the effort. The only shots I saw were aimed at me, my work, my soul.

Nina was out for most of the day. She came back without explanation—just accusations.

She barged in without decontaminating, knocked down a stack of boxes full of gloves, then locked me out of the bedroom. Silence lasted till I knocked two hours later.

DID YOU KNOW SPLIT PEA SOUP COMES IN A TUBE?

“What?”

“What’s wrong?”

“What?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Open the door.”

“What?”

Her ears were probably enfolded in music, so I went back to googling the vaccination wars: Do you know how many governments are saying they might not buy vaccine? Last time it was merely Poland, which turned out not to be much of a problem. (I have no links because I can’t find articles about the aftermath, which indicates there was none.)

When the empress emerged, I said nothing as her eyes bored through my spinal cord. I tried to type. It’s hard to fake wisdom when you can’t think of anything but the person over your shoulder. Then it occurred to me that Nina might be joking—this could be her biggest domestic theater piece yet.

I typed that I loved her. I meant it.

“Better write fast because I’m taking that thing with me,” she said of this iMac.

I asked why, on screen.

“You know.”

I still don’t. I turned around and asked her why she was so angry. She said there was no need to explain anything to me. “You know what you’ve been doing.”

Um, no.

“You’re the only one that ever gets to leave this place.”

I’ve been trying to get her to go out more frequently.

She responded with diatribes about ‘Ric,’ my partner, my old friend, and my old girlfriend, none of whom she’s ever much liked. Her buddies don’t seem to favor me, either: She made one friend at work—a woman from Tennessee who seemed pleasant the two times I met Nina after they’d been hanging out—but her forever-best pal is downright rude. She constantly invites Nina to join her for weekends at her boyfriend’s house overlooking Woodstock, but I’m pointedly not welcome. I guess the pandemic put some of our vexing issues on hold—though one resurfaced when I began stepping out to see my friends.

“Who else do you see?” she asked. I shrugged. The UPS guy?

She ordered me away from her computer, started making dinner for one, consisting of things she knows I hate—split pea soup, dried Parmesan, stale crackers, and Scotch.

I’m posting this from my old PC, which I retrieved from the bedroom closet while she was simmering.

Not sure how long my immune system can sustain this level of inflammation. Where was Nina all day? Was she drunk? Where does she get off hating me like that? Is she serious about leaving?

Day 30: Who Vanquished the Virus?

I was channel-surfing earlier and spotted a text on one of those hyperactive financial channels: “Is Avian Flu a Buy Opportunity?” Greed is immune to H5N1.

Things do sound calmer. Midwestern power ‘failures’ that weren’t quite blackouts have subsided. The troops patrolling various cities look relaxed. Lovers of old war movies can’t help but expect them to start handing out candy to the kids and cigarettes to the babes.

CHICAGO: GORGEOUS WITHOUT JUICE, BUT NEVER EVER CALL IT A 'BLACKOUT!'The utilities rationalize the outages as flukes. Liberals see them as moral failures by private enterprise. TV ‘conservatives’ view them as proof that we should let the government seize our property and hand it over to corporations for power lines. Heckuva discourse.

Our system isn’t designed for prolonged emergencies. A problem should whack us hard and fast. We freak out, roar into position, and then jaw mindlessly till no one can remember what specifically happened.

After windy Congressional hearings, we watch movies about someone’s valiant struggle, invited to imagine that we are heroic. Or would be.

Sometimes I think we suffer from Schindler’s List Syndrome. Everybody wants true stories with happy endings. No fiction, no downers. All’s well that ends well. Pass the popcorn.

The public is looking for reasons to doubt that H5N1 is much of a killer. If people react as if this were some late October hurricane that missed the coast, we will be toast.

Day 31: Did Health Canada Seduce a Yankee Mom?

I’m sort of delighted to report that most of you claim to be bearing up better than we are. A certain number of outright failures wrote in, too. I can’t say they made me feel better. How did so many find the chutzpah to cheat on their lovers during a pandemic?

One guy reported that his wife ran off with their kids to Canada, presumably with another man. He didn’t have a particular rival in mind, so I have to wonder if she left on her own. What makes this guy certain she ran off with a dude, or even a woman?

WOULD DUDLEY STOOP TO SNOOP?Her choice isn’t very patriotic, but things might be better in socialist Canada: If you can’t get doctors to look at you, they may as well be free.

Since the insurance from my last full-time job ran out, I’ve paid doctors as needed. I have friends who fork out $1,300 a month to HMOs that can’t guarantee they’ll get treatment for anything. Should they stop paying? No way! If they survive, they’d have to get insured all over again and any active medical problems would be pre-existing conditions not covered till the government effectively mandates it. (That’s my status, of course: I’ll never recover financially if I catch the flu and need hospitalization.)

To be fair, Canada’s government has reportedly been decent to foreigners caught there when the pandemic broke out. They have access to medical attention and food, both of which are said to circulate better than they do here. Canada domestically produces more than enough vaccine for its population and it orders vaccine the instant a pandemic looms. That's because the U.S. completely stiffed our Northern neighbors back in 1976 amid panic about a swine flu emergency that never quite materialized.

Perhaps my reader’s errant wife hooked up with Dudley Do-Right, his Mountie saddlebags laden with Relenza and caribou jerky.

No-Spying Zone

I have received sinister emails about my own circumstance. Not the Ayn Rand followers who scold me for committing the crime of altruism—giving personal protective gear to people I don’t know. That’s easy to defend: The transaction was in my pure, selfish interest. I live here. Chaos is bad for me. Not to mention that if everyone dies, who’ll buy my masks?

No, it’s advice about Nina. One guy urges me to check the surfing history on Nina’s iMac. I won’t say it’s not tempting.

But listen, see—for me to assume that no one is spying on me, I have to leave other people alone. That’s my Silver Rule: Don’t do unto others what you don’t want them to do unto you. Kindly shove those suspicions up your cache.

I’m truly glad the flu seems to be abating. Demand for my products will remain keen as people reload their stockpiles—or expand them. Don’t cry for me, America.

Nina does plenty of that. I remain clueless. I sure wonder where she went that day.

Day 32: Angels Cry While We Recover From Flu

Only half a million dead globally. Cynics compare H5N1 to Y2K. Some hint that fat people deserve to die anyway. (Is the phrase ‘American civilization’ an oxymoron? Who ya calling a moron, creep!) My neighborhood wailer has gone silent. Is she sick or tired? Both?

Yet things are decidedly improving. The LES DIY is experiencing a falloff in visitors at my friend’s restaurant. The faces that show up look more like homeless and less like hapless East Villagers.

MANY OF THOSE PEOPLE STARVED TO DEATHA lot of people starved in 1918. Not for lack of food, but because healthy people stopped circulating. No one would go near the sick with food or medicine. Surviving children were abandoned. I wonder how many lives the LES DIY has saved.

Ric’s Place normally features superb, underpriced French food—not generic Chez Oignon. To those who sneered at gays when I started this blog, let me point out that he’s openly homosexual, though I don’t think he does much about it these days. Ric’s too busy nourishing the entire community, compounding pandemic losses by keeping his once-chic restaurant open for people who can’t pay.

I’ve always thought him to resemble a hearty young Mediterranean patron, with a sharp goatee and demonic flashing eyes. His slight paunch used to hint at prosperity. All gone.

Ric still thinks he’s funny: He introduces me every afternoon as El Bandito Plastico because of the masks and goggles and gloves I wear. Today he gave me an orange water pistol, which I filled and emptied to good effect, distracting Do-It-Yourselfers from their duties. They look so serious in those masks!

I wound up sitting alone for a while in a green patch behind the restaurant. Took off my mask and goggles, breathed. A glass or two of red wine and some passing smoke had relaxed me. I fell asleep in a lawn chair, woke uneasily to the sound of someone gasping.

It was the interesting woman who runs the LES DIY’s food service. She was huddled on her heels, cheekbones cradled in her hands, sobbing softly in a pool of light. She hadn’t noticed me. I wasn’t about to shock or embarrass her by declaring myself as she grieved.

I remained ‘asleep’ till she arranged her goggles and went back to work. She was piling plates when I attempted to slip unnoticed through the kitchen. When she saw me, she jumped, broke a dish. I bumped into a chair, kept moving.

When I got home, Nina looked like she’d been crying, too. She’s wracked with hay fever. She’s flushed and looks hot (the wrong kind). Her voice is scratchy, eyes sticky. Her nose is a busted faucet. She refuses to take any allergy medicine or even to discuss what’s wrong. Is silence galling? At least it leaves the door open.

It used to be endearing that she never agreed with me. Civilized conflict can be sexy.

It hurts that she won’t let me take her temperature.

Day 33: Love, Pain & the Virus of Self-Destruction

I apologize sincerely to the guy whose wife left him. I’m a dolt, whining about my own problems, sneering at those of others. That’s what bad bloggers do. Or creeps.

Now to vex more readers.

I’ve received a propaganda barrage hailing Gram Parsons, a later ex-Byrd universally regarded as the lost genius of country rock. He founded The Flying Burrito Brothers, wrote some brilliant songs, and taught the Stones a few things before overindulging to death at 26.

WHERE THE GRIEVOUS ANGEL MET HIS FATEI like Parsons’ music a lot. Heck, he invented my devilish Nina (Christine’s Tune). My cat is named after Sneaky Pete Kleinow, the Burrito Brothers’ steel guitar player (who played in Gene Clark’s final master recording session). Some of Clark’s best work might never have happened had the Burritos not invented what Parsons called “cosmic American music.”

But Parsons’ great works are no secret. His legend has come to verge on cliché. There are books about him, even a movie. Too much of his mystique derives from his having died so young (and mysteriously) in a California desert motel, after which his corpse was stolen by a close friend and burned in Joshua Tree National Park.

The brutal truth is that Parsons was a good ‘ol Harvard boy, an epochal underachiever who wasted a lot of people’s time screwing up. (Yep, I read one of the books—good and sad: Ben Fong-Torres’ Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons.) I think Parsons was a gifted musical formalist (with a limited attention span) who related best to pain—and how to counter it pharmacologically.

Gene Clark’s work is far less cynical. It’s heartfelt and it asks better questions. I can’t explain why he failed so abysmally in the music markets once he quit the Byrds. John Einarson’s detailed biography, Mr. Tambourine Man, relates how the pioneering country rock poet grew up without plumbing in a family of 15, part Native American in a tiny Missouri town so small-minded that Clark pretended his dark looks came from Chicano blood. He was terminally shy till he started making music.

A superstar at 20, Clark drank too much, took drugs, and could be impossibly insecure, staggeringly arrogant. He got into lots of fights, tried to physically attack both David Geffen and Bob Dylan. Parallel fears of success and of failure kept him careening violently betwixt them until his body fell apart at 46. Once his yearning baritone turned into throat cancer, a few further binges finished him off.

Clark worked relentlessly for many years with artists who kept coming back for more, and he left a gigantic catalog of sadly underappreciated songs. His collected works outweigh Parsons’ and his voice was immeasurably stronger, keener. Ask Chris Hillman, who co-founded both the Byrds and the Burrito Brothers.

Harold Eugene Clark sure believed in love and pain. You hear it and you feel it.

Since I’m now selling his music here, I think I’ll add some of Parsons’ stuff, too, plus both books. Let’s put on a show!