I don’t cram myself in with the cantankerous workaday crowd on public transit. I don’t work in an office where people are too busy or too stupid or too entrenched in their days to stay home when they’re sick. I barely even take the elevator. Not to avoid people; just to avoid the nightmare of riding our whacked out elevators. Even still, I avoid touching my eyes or nose. I don’t hang around small children who wipe their noses with their gloves or, glick, their tongues. My most common company is my Fetcher, who seems healthy, and my dog, who also seems healthy.

So how is it I have a cold? First, it was a sore throat. The kind of sore throat where you don’t ever want to swallow because it burns and it scratches and it makes you wince. That passed quickly enough, gratefully. Then came the coughing. Strong and scratchy. Gravelly phlegm that might have a little but not so much to do with my five daily fags. Disgusting. Annoying. And occasionally just a little satisfying, still. Then came the sneezing and sniffling. No. That’s not right. It didn’t follow the gravel phlegm, it was compounded to it. Do you compound to or compound with? I’m assaulting myself rigorously meanwhile with a regimen of garlic, Vitamin C, Dristan, Advil, cranberry tea, salt water, and, mostly out of habit, Echinacea. I think I read that Echinacea was useless but I still take it out of habit.

It’s just a cold. I cannot tolerate a cold. I hate when my body is materially compromised. I have a friend and once, when I complained of a cold, she said, “just a cold? Just a cold? Do you feel tired? Do you ache? Do you hate getting out of bed? Do you feel like shit? Just a cold. Colds are the worst. You feel like hell and nobody cares because it’s 阻ust a cold’.” She is very wise.

So far, I feel pleasantly removed from my body and I’m not overcome with the lethargy and ache of a cold; but I still haven’t really moved beyond the gravel phlegm and the sniffling.

SS