Your interruption in service explained

On Sunday night, while at work, I came down with what’s been determined to be a stomach virus of rather impressive proportion and duration. At the time it really hit me, following a spate of chills and increasingly-taut stomach feelings, I was trying to help some poor girl order something; I held up a finger, said “If you’ll excuse me,” and bolted restroomward.

Growing physically ill in New York City is no picnic. It’s not a picnic anywhere, but I suggest to you that large metro areas hold their own special brand of terror for the sick because there’s no place to hide. No privacy for your misfortunes. This fact can be a double-edged sword: no privacy for the privacy-minded = bad. Potential aid from passing Good Samaritans = good. In my own experience with the latter situation, my Good Samaritan actually wound up impeding my recuperation by many factors. Here’s briefly what happened: I was in the restroom, just moments away from booting up my homemade brownbagged dinner (eaten in a “Hey, maybe these are just hunger pains” mindset), when a voice asks “Are you alright?” “Fine,” I say unironically, “just feeling a little ill here.” “That’s what I thought,” he responds, and leaves. Now, I’m touched that he even thought to ask after me, the pair of feet and knees knelt to the toilet bowl. The upshot, however, is that I was unable to, ah, finish. The physical reaction completely stopped due to the social obligation. Which is a very strange sentence and a strange idea as well, but it’s the way my body reacted – it switched out of emergency evacuation mode and went back into emergency mangagement mode. I hope this isn’t too grotesque for any readers but I find the whole mini-episode to be rather funny; you can trust me when I say, however, that there’s small chance of me interrupting an evidently sick person’s processes should I see a pair of knees and shoes in the distress position in a public stall.

I got myself up to Kate’s place and fell into the bed she’s prepared for me. As it turned out, Kate developed symptoms herself within hours. Now, let’s be clear about the timing and the source of our respective illnesses. Surely it hadn’t been my coming to Kate’s on Sunday evening that spread the illness, right? Surely we had both been exposed by that point, and would have gotten sick separately? Surely we were both already doomed to an unholy night of bathroom visits? Anyway, we deduced from the timing of our falling ill that it wasn’t food poisoning, and also that we’d both been exposed to the same Patient Zero. Unfortunately for me, Kate’s symptoms were more intense but short-lived, and she’s completely healed; my symptoms were less severe but are still, ah, ongoing. I will spare you details. Hereupon followed full days (Monday and Tuesday) of bummish recuperation. But I’m still rather weak and only this morning have I had the necessary gumption to sit at a desk and type instead of review episodes of Sex & the City (poor Jack Berger) and Arrested Development (“I’m a friend of Dorothy’s now”).

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Yesterday marked the 1 month anniversary. I didn’t realize it until I was on the subway coming home from Kate’s. I’d woken up from a dream yesterday (Tuesday) morning in which Jon and I were driving to a suburb of Rochester, NY, where most of my cousins on my Dad’s side live. I think we were going to George’s house, but the roads and the house in the dream weren’t corresponding to George’s roads or George’s home. There was an understanding however that it was George’s house we were heading for. The going-on that day in the dream was a clambake or barbecue. Jon was driving. He was short-fused about something. I don’t know what. I think we overshot a turn—didn’t turn right at an intersection or something, and right there would’ve been George’s house, but because we missed the turn we kept going and found ourselves at some strip mall, the sight of which told us that we’d missed the turn. Going back, we found the house in question – again, nothing like George’s actual house – putting the car in park I remember, um, animals coming in through the windows of the car, which had become a truck or a Jurassic Park-style Land Cruiser.

This dream mirrors closely a little story in which the three Lobko kids were separated from Mom and Dad as we caravaned from Syracuse to Rochester on the day, I believe, of Tasha’s wedding. It was midmorning, and we had only so much time before the window of time in which we were to arrive at the hotel, shower up, and get to the church before the activities began closed. My parents were in the lead, and somehow – I don’t know who was driving in this real-world version – actually, I think it was Jon, because I recall him pulling funny stuff on this trip such as flooring it and passing our parents on the left, leaning over me in the passenger seat so as to goad my parents with feral Mad Max-style facial expressions – but anyway, my parents took an exit and we missed it. We aren’t the best with directions, and don’t know Rochester very well, much less its environs. In the way of such stories, our parents’ cellphones were either off or in the trunk or their car. We didn’t have the numbers for our relatives. By this point we were driving around some very green pricey residential district with a rolling road and a lake visible between the houses on the left. We’re very sure that the wedding would begin and end without us. Oh right! I remember now that we had to stop at a mall, possibly the Irondoquoit, and asked in the Service Center of Sears to use their phone book. From here we were able to call our relatives to get the name of the hotel they thought our parents were heading to and then all of the hotels by that name to see if they had a reservation for Lobko. That’s basically how we arrived. And I seem to remember that all of the anger pent up by the implication of our being late to or missing the wedding, the fury that travelling snafus always inspire in my family, it all sort of bubbled off in a fake expression of fury and anger; I remember us raising our voices and yelling a bit, but in a comical way that implied everyone was getting out their frustration with no damage done to the overall good feeling the day as a whole requested of us. It was the kind of voice-raising and emotional release you might see on All In the Family: over-the-top, nothing to be scared of, and actually pretty funny.

*

Little things have been setting me off. On the subway, a picture on the Daily News of the 7-year-old girl, in a white dress, lying in state, whose bleak familial situation and abusive parents were overlooked by New York City’s social services. At the bookshop, an overheard off-the-cuff remark that a friend of mine’s brother may have killed himself years ago (I had just entered the room when I overheard this and couldn’t follow up at the time). These things sent me into minor and major tailspins, respectively. But it’s right that they should do so.

*

I’m spending the rest of my morning writing emails. Everyone who hasn’t heard from me and has reason to should expect one, if not today then very soon. Everyone be well; avoid the stomach thing.