IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH. OKAY, MAYBE JUST IN HEALTH.

Are there people who truly rock when they’re sick? Do their friends say things like, “Gosh, Fran, you’re funnier and brighter and more delightful than ever. You should get shingles more often!” Let me be clear. I’m never going to be the life of the party while I’m hooked up to an IV, taking a break between hurls into the toilet or nursing an owie from a hangnail I shouldn’t have pulled. I’m like most of us (except for, maybe, extreme hangnail sensitivity). I hate getting sick and, frankly, I suck at it.

 

I remember getting the flu during my first year in law school and my friend, Adrienne, banging on my apartment door, awakening me to check up on me. (Apparently, Adrienne didn’t ascribe to the belief that sleep is part of the healing process.) Naturally, I did not answer. I most likely had vomit remnants on my shirt, perhaps in my hair, and most definitely on and around the toilet. I was in no mood or condition to invite her in for tea and the latest stories about our most notorious ass-kissing classmates. (They were Republicans of a different era.) 

 

To my horror, she let herself in. My surfer dude roomie never locked the damn door. I was lying in a lump on the living room carpet. It was a change of scenery from the past thirty hours moaning and puking in my bedroom. (I get the flu so rarely that each vomiting episode comes as a complete surprise. More? How can there be more? That’s not a kidney, is it?) The sheet that I’d wrapped myself in suddenly enveloped my entire body as if it were an invisibility cloak with a fundamental defect. I was certain she could see me. My frightful state must have been apparent because she was gone in seconds. It’s possible I yelled something nasty. To repeat: I don’t rock it as a sick person. 

 

It's fortunate that I rarely fall ill. Adrienne and every other person who has seen me when I’m sick would tell you I’m a complete wuss. I’m well aware of this. I will never be the guy who wants a little bell by my bedside to ring someone every time I want more veggie broth, some Vicks VapoRub or an extra squeeze of lemon in my ginger tea which, incidentally, could use a little heating up. I will want you to go away as much as I want the sickness to go away. Misery does not always love company.

 

But it’s different when I’m dating. Sorry, Marry Poppins, but a boyfriend is way better than a spoonful of sugar. I don’t have to tone done my level of wuss-ness. My boyfriend should come to expect it. He should find something endearing about it in an absolutely-no-photos sort of way. 

 

I don’t have much to say about John, the first guy I fell in love with. I was devastated when he dumped me—it didn’t help that he wanted to pursue things with a friend of mine and may or may not have already booked that flight to Detroit to meet the parents. (What?!) We weren’t much of a match, but you have to start somewhere, I suppose. Still, one of my fondest memories involved him driving through crawling traffic from Silver Lake to Pacific Palisades in Greater L.A. to see how I was doing when I came down with the flu while studying for the bar exam. 

 

“You came!” Yes, I was thrilled to see him and perhaps a slight fever could explain why I didn’t take cover in a bedsheet as I had with Adrienne. Maybe this was the moment when my soon-to-be ex-friend, Rick, started to look more appealing. John witnessed and/or heard a couple of epic hurls, one spew landing mostly in the soup pot I’d placed on the floor by my bed just in case. He cleaned the pot and the toilet bowl—most likely the surrounding area, too. Add in the obvious risk of him getting sick because of me and I couldn’t shake the one clear thought that emerged from my fogginess, my nausea, my misery: This is love! 

 

Haven't watched in years, I swear.

Yep, forget about the extravagance of some surprise helicopter ride to Catalina Island, the classic simplicity of a dozen red roses or being the second (of three) people to get an overnight Fantasy Suite invitation at a beachside resort in Bali—Why can’t I shake the clichés of “The Bachelor(ette)”? Cleaning up someone else’s vomit without being paid to do so is the ultimate romantic gesture. 

 

Got the shot! But one nudge and
it wouldn't have mattered.

At present, I have COVID. I got it from my boyfriend’s best friend. I keep telling myself not to read anything into that. If he really resented me, he could have “accidentally” slipped and pushed me off St. Mark’s Summit a month ago as I leaned forward at the edge to take a picture of a cluster of black pine cones that appeared as though they’d been sprinkled with sugar. But then it was crowded with other hikers. So many witnesses.

 

Evan and I had spent an extra-long weekend together again, with me showing up at his place in Seattle early Thursday evening and heading back home to Vancouver Tuesday morning. I’d awakened that last morning with a bit of a cough, one that sounded and felt different from my standard cough that always triggers Evan to ask, only half-jokingly, “Do you have COVID?!” He didn’t ask this time. He just pulled his home test kits out of the medicine cabinet and we did that sexy dance of shoving Q-tips up our nasal cavities. I’d done these tests at least a dozen times, as part of requisite travel protocols and from when Evan got COVID from my mother. Not once had I worried about my own results. Even when Evan, my mother and my father all ended up getting COVID from a suddenly too memorable meet-the-parents lunch after their cruise disembarked in Seattle, I’d had full confidence I’d test negative every single time I checked. COVID couldn’t touch me. This was the first time my conviction wavered. Fifteen minutes passed in slow motion. Evan: negative. Me: negative.

 

It was a harder goodbye as I loaded my car. We wouldn’t be seeing each other for a couple of weeks. I was flying from Vancouver to Ottawa the next day to be at the family cottage for the first time in three years, a chance to see my parents again, my aunt, uncle and cousins—one of whom was getting married—and to see how much the youngest ones in the family had grown…walking, talking, reading…the oldest one mastering the art of tuning out every perpetually annoying adult to text SOS messages to friends. Evan was flying to New Mexico two days later to see friends and family. We’re still in the early stages of our relationship so it still feels odd balancing a feeling of looking forward to seeing familiar places and faces while dreading our own time apart. I should replace dreading—such a twenty-something’s overly dramatic word choice—with a healthier, more evolved description such as being inconvenienced. It would have made this paragraph more concise, to boot. Alas, this is me—wordy and not all that evolved.

 

Evan was present when I did test positive. I was holding him in my hand, his voice and image showing up on my phone screen as we FaceTimed. I’d taken too long getting back to him Tuesday evening after I said I was going to take another COVID test. My energy level had dropped significantly during the day, I had a headache and my other symptoms seemed to be spiking. I tried to will positive thoughts about testing negative. I wondered how Evan would respond after he realized what a hypochondriac I was. Who feigns fever sweats? 

 

I delayed the test because one particular sign was especially hard to dismiss: I’d skipped exercising. I have an eating disorder. Exercise, doctors have told me, is my way of purging all the food I tell myself I shouldn’t have eaten on any given day. I have biked, jogged, swam, hiked or gone to the gym six days a week without fail for more than two and a half years. There are never acceptable excuses. Something was definitely up. So, yeah, Evan got on FaceTime and we waited for the timer to go off for me to check the test. I may have said, “Oh, shit,” but there was so much woven into that expression which I use so rarely. No cottage, no visit, no wedding, no gym time, no grocery shopping, no writing in cafés…and all of it without Evan. 

 

Yeah, yeah, we’d still have FaceTime. It was the responsible thing, even if he seemed to have COVID immunity for now since he’d gone through his own recent bout. It was practical since this is another reality of long-distance relationships. It was not sitting well at all.

 

I went decades with an automatic internal messaging system sounding the same embarrassing, wimpy, illogical alarm whenever I got sick: I WANT MY MOMMY! Rationally, I know there is no curative power that comes with either a bowl of chicken noodle soup or regular doses of “You poor thing!” Still, Sick Me secretly likes a little coddling when I’m unwell. As Adrienne learned all those years ago, friends can’t fill that ticket. Let the baton pass from mother to boyfriend. Dammit all, both of them are off enjoying their travels, each duly texting at least once a day: “How are you feeling? What are your symptoms?” The only difference is that my mother’s come with punctuation and emojis and Evan’s include selfies with him in yet another western outfit perfect for his time in New Mexico, his smile both a comfort and a menace.  

    

It’s Day 7 since that first positive test. I pulled out the last kit from box I got for free at the pharmacy and went through the routine yet again. “I’m fine,” I told myself. Symptoms? Not much more than pesky sniffles.

 

Positive again. 

 

All this positivity is 
stirring up negativity!

An hour later, I was sacked out on the couch, covered in a blankie, feeling exhausted while knowing a nap was utterly impossible as it’s been this whole week. (It has to do with my dang antidepressant meds.)

 

“I’m sick.”

 

I could’ve texted Evan but why? He’s hiking today. I’ll be treated to some great pics. Let this latest round of Woe Is Me pass. I may be missing out on one of those perks that’s supposed to come with having a boyfriend, but I’m positive Evan is one extremely lucky guy right now.    

GRINDR GAVE ME COVID

True story. Grindr gave me COVID.

 

Okay, it’s not that simple, like going from Point A to Point B. I’m in a committed relationship. We’re not interested in opening it up to guys with curated dick pic collections. Seriously, is a dick pic enough for a hookup? Not a single face shot or even a pec pic? What happens in such situations? Does one guy head over to another guy’s place, both appearing disoriented when the door opens until the fly unzips? Ah, yes! There you are. 

 

I’m glad I’m not on Grindr. I’ve never set up an account. Still, I’ve learned a thing or two about the app and Grindr “culture” over the years from acquaintances who can’t seem to put their phones away lest some prime uncut specimen be only three hundred feet away. I don’t have a lot of gay friends but, if they’re on Grindr, they don’t talk to me about it. Perhaps they sense that I’d be uncomfortable. I grew up, after all, in a prudish household where repressing things was what made us feel at ease. The only birds-and-the-bees talk I ever had was a quick primer on refilling the hummingbird feeder before my parents went away for a Shakespeare festival weekend. (And, no, there was no wild Saturday night party in their absence. I simply had a few friends over to play Uno while we drank root beer. My friend, Spencer, was the best belcher.)

 

But back to Grindr. Evan’s friends have no problem talking about it. If there are different levels of Grind-ing, I suspect they’ve reached gold status and are hell-bent on achieving platinum. They’re a goal-centered lot. 

 

To be clear, these are guys in their fifties. They seem to have embraced their role as Daddy and get their egos, among other things, stroked by guys at least two decades younger. I presume it’s a quick exit when the young host wants them to linger for a discussion on the transformative powers of “Hannah Montana” or sets up the karaoke machine for a “High School Musical” sing-off. 

 

Evan gets annoyed by how much his friends are drawn to Grindr, but he enjoys the storytelling that comes as his friends run through weekly highlights. I’m mostly quiet, my smile being more about how relieved I am they got the monkeypox vaccine than the play-by-play of a backyard sex incident that required a dog-walking baggy. 

 

I may not understand the intricacies about Grindr, but I didn’t realize that listening to Grindr stories can give you COVID. It happens. I am proof of that.

 

This past weekend was my turn to be on Evan’s turf so I drove down to Seattle. We’d talked about all sorts of road trips that involved renting cabins that were either too expensive or unavailable so we decided to make it a simple Seattle weekend, enjoying his neighborhood by Lake Union, swimming, biking and taking it easy. When I walked into Evan’s apartment, he was on a call with his best friend, Dean, with Evan reading recent reports of people’s hiking experiences on a certain trail. I thought we’d ruled out hikes since Evan said any enjoyable experience required significant driving to avoid trails that were overwhelmed by Seattleites who wanted to update their Instagram accounts. 

 

It took a couple more evening texts before it was decided we’d get up at 5:30, then drive to Dean’s and head to Mount Rainier for our second hike there in the past month. No middle-of-nowhere motel this time, just a two and a half hour drive each way and a four-hour wander along a gorgeous trail.

 

Evan had me sit up front, riding shotgun, as Dean drove. I thought it was part of Evan’s plan to help his best friend and me bond, but then Evan said, “I can’t watch Dean’s driving.” Okay, not a romantic revelation. If someone flew through the windshield, it would be me. I double-checked the seatbelt. Seemingly secure. 

 

I wasn’t awake enough yet to engage in much conversation with Dean. We didn’t make a coffee stop until after the first hour on the road. Who does that? Still, I was indeed getting to know Dean. The guy didn’t require caffeine. Every yes/no question turned into an essay answer with tangents that were hard to track. I tuned out a time or two, visualizing lattes, imagining the aroma, scanning cupholders in Dean’s car. Maybe I could order two for myself. Double shots. Triples! It didn’t matter that we’d reached rural roads where the last sighting of a funky, independent café was twenty minutes behind us. We were in a region where coffee was served at roadside shacks with drive-thru windows and baristas who wore bikinis. I needed a latte even if it came with a cleavage assault.  

 

Dean got on a roll about his Grindr hookups from the week—a guy from the gym, a new twink from Mississippi, even an experience that didn’t have a satisfying ending. Two out of three ain’t bad. One week…Dean had been busy.

 

I got my latte. I showed restraint, keeping it to one. The woman who served us wore a standard t-shirt. Maybe that’s why we were able to drive right up to the window. We got to Mount Rainier and enjoyed the hike, spotting end-of-season wildflowers and lots of mooching chipmunks. No marmots, no bears. A unique cloud topped one side of the star peak. Dean and Evan noted that it looked to be safely covered in a giant condom. It wasn’t an inaccurate observation, but I preferred my more conventional interpretation: a spaceship had arrived for a study of one of Earth’s stunning landscapes. 

 

Dean talked more about sex and perhaps other things on the hike. I wasn’t obviously antisocial, but I often created space as I like hiking to be a quiet experience, taking in the scenery and trying to blot out the impression now that Mount Rainier was covered by a condom.

 

Spaceship.

 

Condom.

 

Spaceship, spaceship.

 

Condom.

Dammit!

 

I’ve gone on a lot of hikes and one of the things that amuses me is how many of them end at a human structure such as the remains of someone’s version of a “castle” or, in this case, a fully intact wooden forest fire lookout station. Yes, the lookout was placed thoughtfully at a high point with sweeping, 360-degree views of mountains all around, but instead of photographing the ridges, near and far, people lined up for selfies and group shots on and around the elevated cabin. As if a standard wooden structure eclipsed all the nature in our presence. Humans are egocentric. And weird. 

 

I snapped away at the mountain views and, yes, got one obligatory pic of The Thing that Man Made. Maybe I’ll give Everest a climb after someone gets around to building a warming hut at the summit or, at the very least, one of those quaint lending library boxes.

 

We walked back, got in the car for the drive home and stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant housed in a small-town motel. It’s best that I don’t leave a review on Yelp. When you opt for motel Mexican, the warning signs are implicit.

 

Something about being out of internet range while hiking seemed to have Dean in Grindr withdrawal. He talked more about hookups as I sipped a mediocre margarita—shouldn’t they lose their liquor license?—and watched motorcycles go by. I’m assuming they were in town for the festival set up under tents off the main road, but maybe the town was simply a Harley haven. (Could it have something to do with baristas in bikinis?)

 

On the road again—cuing Willie Nelson here seems apropos—Dean was suffering the equivalent to Grindr DTs. We were two hours out of Seattle, but he propped his phone against the steering wheel and sent emojis or woofs or eggplants or whatever it is people do in the Grindr world to acknowledge someone without saying anything. And, as it turns out, an eggplant (or whatever) was enough. Guys started unlocking their photos. Dicks, butts, sometimes even faces. You’ve reached a kooky corner of the internet when showing your face is more daring than flaunting your penis. Just an observation. Okay, judgy, too. 

 

It was surreal watching Dean at work/play and seeing the way an app for gay men looking for sex can short-circuit regular brain function. Is this what Evan meant when he said, “I can’t watch Dean’s driving”? I was at the ready to yell if Dean swerved or lingered at a green light. To his credit, the guy was a skilled multi-tasker. Even so, I’ll drive next time. My turn, after all. 

 

The next morning, I stepped out to get Evan and me our morning coffees. Snooty café, oh how I missed you! (Have you noticed that servers ignore you until it’s time to pay? “How’s your day going?” is the tired line. “Fine,” I say. They don’t want elaboration. They just want me to press a higher tip percentage on the credit card machine. I still fall for it at least half the time, notably before I’ve had my first coffee.)

 

I got home and handed Evan his almond matcha latte in bed. He cleared his throat and looked at me all too seriously before saying, “Dean texted. He has a sore throat. He took a COVID test. He’s positive.”

 

Wait. What?! 

 

We tested. Both negative. I figured that’s the way it would stay. Evan just had COVID back in June. He got it from my mother after we met my parents for lunch in Seattle after their Alaskan cruise. Mother, father and boyfriend got it; I was apparently immune.

 

By early Tuesday morning, I had a cough and a sore throat. Another test: negative. I drove back to Vancouver, making none of my customary stops in case I was a COVID carrier. By Tuesday night, my list of symptoms had grown. Denial was getting harder to cling to. Still, I have a solid track record of hypochondria so I hoped that ol’ trickster was messing with me again, making me think I felt awful. I tested.  Positive. 

 

I suppose it’s payback. If my cruise-happy mother gave Evan COVID, then let Evan’s cruisy-happy best friend return the favor. Lessons learned: never trust the (future?) mother-in-law and sometimes it’s best not to trust the best friend. Well played, Grindr. You got me.

 

What’s done is done. Let Dean take a break from his app while I catch up on crosswords. Who’s got the upper hand on a good time now?