The plan was that Joel would get tested for Covid19 on the first day of his vacation. He had been tested once before at a drive-through site, scheduled the night before for the following morning, after someone at his work had tested positive. That was easily set up as he is an essential services worker and that skips you to the front of the line. Or did. Early in the week before the 4th of July holiday weekend, he attempted to set up a test at the same site. It was two days before his vacation was to start, and the site was unavailable to him. We both tried the next day. No luck.
Joel's vacation began as we both continued to try to get him scheduled for a test. We started putting in symptoms like coughing. That was honest, as he is what I would call a 'light' smoker. He never smokes in front of me but, as he says, it is his only vice as he doesn't drink and is vehemently anti-drug. Even now-legal drugs. Vehemently. Anti. Anyway, coughing didn't do the trick. By the end of the week, we were adding symptoms left and right out of desperation, as well as indignation that he couldn't get the test based on his being in a high-risk, essential services industry with co-workers testing positive all around him. It seemed that with the holiday falling on a Friday, they were evidently scheduling even less tests. Finally, on Sunday night, I was able to get him scheduled for a test on Tuesday morning. That was day seven of his nine-day vacay. On Thursday morning, he asked me if I had checked the email address that we share to see if the results had come in. They hadn't. It was his last day of vacation. On Thursday evening we spoke on the phone, signing off after he said that he would text me at bedtime, as he always does. I checked the email at 8:15. His test results were negative. They had been sent at 7:47. I woke him up when I called to tell him. What do you want to do? he asked. What do YOU want to do? I replied.
He got to my house at 9:15 and stayed until 11:30. There was music. There was tequila. There was barefoot dancing. I had only seen him twice since February and we packed everything that was supposed to happen during the previous week into those two hours.
I was going to call this post: Covid Booty Call, thinking that would be a humorous title, and don't we need more humor right now? But I am intimately aware of the hardship in being in relationships, whether of a romantic, friendship, or family nature, during this awful time that requires having to stay apart. It's just plain damn hard and unfair. I feel it with all of my friends, and acutely with Joel. I envy my married friends, and believe me, that's not something I generally do. I keep thinking and saying to people that this isn't forever. Truthfully, I expect we might be about a third of the way through it at our current five-month marker. Can I muddle through another ten months? Yes, I can. But it gets harder as time passes.
I have not read Love in the Time of Cholera, though I have read another novel by Márquez. Maybe I will read it sometime during the next ten months. If I was really ambitious, I would study Spanish! So I could read it in Spanish! Oh, who am I kidding? I'll be lucky to get my garage cleaned out during the next ten months, much less learn a language that has eluded me for a decade and a half. Joel did promise to help me with the garage when he is next on vacation. And, believe me, we will be ON TOP of this testing thing when that next occurs. Until then, I am resigned to endure another hundred days of solitude. As Pepe LePew would say: Le sigh... Hug someone safely. Do it for me. And thank you for reading my blog.
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