Fever

There’s a riddle that used to go around, and it was supposed to test if you were capable of thinking like a psychopath. A girl attends the funeral of someone in her family, and sees a boy she doesn’t know, but a boy that is cute, a boy she likes. She doesn’t get his name or his number, but wants to see him again. How would she do that? Kill someone else in the family, obviously. Is it concerning that I got the answer right on the first try? Though I am decidedly not a psychopath. As far as ills go, this past month has been a fortunate sequence of physical ones. Alarming as it might be that my body may be falling apart, it’s liberating to be able to point to something so tangible when I sleep more than a person should, when I am tired always, passive to a fault. This, everyone understands. Besides, it’s not so comforting to think about dying when you have a fever of 103 it feels like you actually are.

Of course the past few days with covid was the worst of it. The nerves all over my body were raw and fizzling, my throat was strewn across with fifty needles. I have no voice. My brain function is severely limited. I kind of love it. For maybe two more days I get to be someone else, think differently, dream differently, speak differently. And only in this fever dream state of mind do I get to realize that I am rich beyond measure. I thought I would be lonely, self isolating and sick in four hundred something square feet of just me. And so I was, at moments at a time. I’d lie in bed, turned away from the screen that was too bright for my fever but still running because I don’t know what I’d do in the silence, and think how much lovelier it would be to have someone. I’d turn my mind back and wonder if I regretted ending things. With anyone. And then I’d get annoyed because laughing hurts my throat but I can’t help it. None of them would’ve tried to take care of me even if I was still with them. And so I am not sad, but that kind of a realization does not exactly inspire happiness either. You know what does? The fact that my phone is full of messages from friends old and new asking how I am, tea recommendations, plans for when I’m better. Today I woke up to lunch from Soot. And not just any lunch, rice and steak and curry kind of lunch. The you-in-a-dish kind of lunch. I guess I ate some of the cabbage salad that came with it too. Last night I went to sleep with the taste of San Francisco on my lips. Not that the food was from there, but Roe sent it and I know that the next time I get that dish, that is what I will think of. Munchausen’s is not such an absurd way of thinking. If I were just a little more psychologically damaged and medically informed maybe that’s where I’d have ended up. If I were a little more empty, if I had nothing. But I don’t have nothing. I am so rich I am overflowing. I get to be locked in with four hundred something square feet of love. I love you guys too, you know that right? It’s important to me that you know this. It’s important to me that this does not change and that you do not forget it.

I don’t remember a lot of my covid dreams. And most of them are not important enough to write about. There was one that’s been stuck in my head though. There was a boy, of course there was. And he doesn’t have a face anymore, so it wasn’t anyone I knew, but my god he was perfect. He was lanky and charming and so clever. He was a fitted suit over coiled wit. And I thank you in advance for your judgement, because yes evidently I had an entire relationship with imaginary man. Then one day we were walking around in a mall, but not a suburban town kind of mall, more of a mix between a mall and a museum and the lobby of a bulge bracket’s New York office. He turns to me and smiles and asks for my flash drive and I know that something is wrong. I act confused at first, act like I don’t know what he’s talking about, act like that’s not something I have. And when he doesn’t let up, I tell him he can’t have it. I don’t think it’s a big deal, because he can have everything else. I will give him every other part of me. But it is. And he throws me over the railing until I’m hanging on to the floor he stands on with a three story drop. When he realizes that I still won’t hand it over, he sighs and smiles before walking away towards this other girl waiting for him. She asks him if he got it. Not this time but we’ll get it later, he tells her. And my heart is shattered. I think about letting go, but I know that three stories is not high enough to guarantee death. I’ll just end up broken and in pain. And so in pure spite I pull myself up and decide to go home. But on my walk back, I start to notice that people are watching me. Everywhere I go they are watching and I wonder if they are spies, if they want the flash drive too, if they’ll follow me. And so I do not go home. Instead I keep walking. I walk and I check my phone incessantly because even after everything I want him to call and apologize. I want to hear that it was an awful prank or that he changed his mind. I want to hear that it wasn’t all a lie and that he loves me and that now, now he is on my side instead. I know I should throw away my phone because they might be tracking it, but how else will I hear what I think I need to hear? I keep walking and when I am on a bridge the people have mostly stopped staring. And when I am in Brooklyn, no one is staring anymore. I go to a Starbucks and as I wait, I crush my phone and drop it in the trash bin they are taking away. Someone asks how I am and I do not answer. I do not even look. I sit with my drink until the people there when I entered have cycled out. I have nowhere else to go.

I write this out because I’m pretty sure there’s some psychological analysis that could be done. I’ve done some, but in the spirit of good writing I’ll just show you and not tell. But honestly I try not to think about it because it still hurts to do so. I don’t know what the flash drive is. Maybe, it’s a hardware wallet. Probably, it’s something else. Alas, there is no lucid dreaming to be done when sick. But getting covid was still worth it. It’s ridiculous, but I’m proud of myself for going to Fairy’s new years party. It was fun and everyone was so lovely. And I made new friends, and I didn’t find myself awkward, and I tried fun party things. We got to see a guy hit by a car and splatter the sidewalk with blood a brighter shade of red than I’d ever seen before. I got to wait half an hour for a subway and watch drunk people dance and sing along to the guitarist playing in the station. It was a good night. As for the year so far, I’ve gotten nothing done. I’m meant to have a post in between this and Emergence, but it’s not so easy to write about the past since I end up juggling between what I think was important to me then and what is important to me now. I always used to say new years resolutions are stupid, but maybe I should make one. At least for writing. There are things I want now. Things I want to have, things I want to be, things I want to do. I may as well make a list. My god I don’t even recognize myself. I should get sick more often.