3 January 2021
Combine a rich black wit with a vigorous immune system and you run the risk of people inferring that you are being cavalier about contagion.
I am presently observing my first anniversary of living in a post WuFlu world. I didn’t know it at the time, but I have since concluded that I was among the first of Americans on American soil to contract the plague. In December of 2019 I was still employed at the QuikkStopp by the Interstate™ (aka “The Vectory™”). My shop was about an hour’s drive from the nearest International Airport, and therefore probably less than twenty-fours away from practically any spot on Earth. After several hours in the air, and then another hour on the road, many travelers are eager to get out and stretch their legs again. My shop was ideal for that, being, as I said, “by the Interstate.” We also sold gasoline and soda pop and cigarettes.
Waking up to my alarm clock on the 24th of December I felt worse than usual. (I’ve always felt that the only thing worse than waking up to an alarm clock was being late for work, so I never expect to feel good under those circumstances.) It wasn’t super disturbing. It was my biennial flu, I thought, returning to recharge my immune system. But it wasn’t quite the flu. Sure, there were the body aches and the headache and the sore throat and the congestion and the nausea… Well, not so much the nausea. That was an odd part. The nausea was low grade, but persistent. And none of it was sufficiently debilitating to persuade me to call off working. When faced with a choice of staying home and feeling badly, or going to work and feeling badly and getting paid for it, well, obviously, I go for trying to stay on top of the groceries and electricity.
Anyway, it lasted for ten days. Then, for the next couple of months, the news began to spread. By March the whole of America was awash in trauma. Masking and assiduous hand-washing and anti-human anti-social distancing were becoming popular fads, and concerts and plays and celebrations of the Christ were being cancelled (“to flatten the curve”) and people started to adjust to “the new normal.”
Well, some of us. I’m familiar with the sensible protocols of hygiene, and of not coughing or sneezing on other people, and of the importance of good rest and nutrition, so I didn’t change any of my behavior, except for being a little more attentive to the greater vulnerabilities of others. I certainly didn’t want to be any sort of “Typhoid Larry,” but I also knew that a virus is a delicate thing. If it lands on my shoulder it usually dies in a matter of hours, from dehydration or ultra-violet poisoning. If I were to suck it up into a nostril or it landed on the welcoming wet membrane of my eye, it would probably die in a matter of seconds. I did mention my vigorous immune system. It takes a much heavier viral load of an unfamiliar strain to knock me over. Wuhan Flu™ was that, in December. Now, having been recharged, it’s just another trivial nuisance. (For me! Not for others! I never said that!)
But, as usual, almost everywhere I go, I am an outlier. People are reasonably skeptical of my claims, and I’m already a natural misanthrope, so keeping my distance is no hardship. Again, even before this, I worked at The Vectory, so I knew that my chances of picking up something strange was elevated. Again, I did not change my behavior, I continued to be just as cautious and prudent as ever.
And the contagion raged. And by the end of June, new policies were being handed down by employers and by the apparatchiks of the occupation. I paraphrase: “This plague is so dangerous, so urgent, and so serious that NEXT TUESDAY we are all required to be masked.” Not so urgent that RIGHT NOW, but so urgent that LATER. Believing that hygiene theatre is just as counterproductive as security theatre (thanks for the TSA, Dubya!), when my manager advised me that on-shift masking would be required, I told him that I would not be complying, fully prepared to be dismissed on the spot. He blew it off, saying, “Don’t tell me things I don’t want to know.” Clearly, he recognized what a valuable employee I was. He seemed also to hope that this would soon abate.
I guess it didn’t. By the end of August, Mr Manager was getting too much heat from above, so he came in one morning and laid down the law. Cheerfully I repeated my position, and dourly he asked if I would sign a resignation. To this request I cheerfully complied also. I have since been advised that I was surrendering any claim thereby to unenjoyment insurance, which I realized at the time. It’s their shop, so their rules. I was just grateful for the three months of forbearance that I’d managed to squeeze out.
Presently, I am eating my savings, holding off on tapping tax victims for as long as I can afford. Massa took a lot of my money over the decades. He promises that the longer I wait to ask for it back, the more I’ll get. Meanwhile, I’m focusing my fulltime energies on literary failure.
update 210110: Mrs Axis suggests that I may be delusional to believe that I contracted this virus before it became more widely spread. Had I, considering my work environment, many others should have picked it up. Given the range of symptoms attributed to this malady, those picking it up may also have thought as little of it as I did. I cannot rule out either delusion or otherwise.
update 210122: I stop masking every time I exit a private property confinement that requires masking for occupancy. I have followed, and will continue to follow, the prudent masking and distancing protocols that independent merchants stipulate as a condition of entry. I have not lost my ability to discern the differences between “important” and “urgent” and “everything.” My disdain for foolishness is often a source of consternation for those who might conflate its broad expression for particularity, but it is not intended for those who consider provisional masking to be prudent, or even important. My disdain, or even contempt, is for those whose posture and rhetoric and highly charged emotional responses reveal that, to them, masking is everything, and any deviation therefrom is tantamount to reckless endangerment or depraved indifference to human life or safety. I am not killing anyone’s Grandma by breathing freely (except, of course, in the same sense that I threaten innocent strangers every time I take my car onto the road or dislodge a rock from an elevated hiking trail) though arguably Frau Braun did kill L’Historienne’s and Stargazer’s and The Enumerator’s and all their cousins’ Grandmama (7-11-33 => 4-17-20) through her cruel and oppressive “quarantine of terror.”
update 210223: I may have been a little too cheerful about all of this.
210331: Obedience versus Faith — It has become clear that it is not enough to observe a protocol. One mustn’t be seen discerning any of the costs or disadvantages of single-minded security. Showing doubt sabotages public morale, and if one expressed honest (albeit game and sarcastic) skepticism of its efficacy, AND celebrated instances of unexpected masklessness, one could readily be branded a delusional unbeliever. Video media are lousy with images of maddened crowds accosting the unmasked in public spaces. In some cases, people have been injured, confined, and fined, for their blasphemy. It’s like adhering to the Dicta of the Christ without acknowledging His Divinity.
Gods (Hebrews 11:6) are not alone in their jealousy.
Obedience without faith is empty.
