It is a big deal

I’ve exposed myself.

Not to small children; and always fully clothed.

No, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and put myself in situations that are simply irresistible to the little Covid-19 viruses. They look at me like fresh meat; someone who is old and unable to resist their charms. Someone of the sort I often hear referred to as one who would have probably died anyway.

Jackie and I have visited the innards of restaurants and dined in what I laughingly call mask and wipe conditions. We’ve sat on our favorite Arcade bench on Sundays stuffing our faces with Acai Bowls while surrounded by hordes of visitors who’ve left the safety of the big city and brought their asymptomatic disease-ridden bodies to our normally pristine Ojai.

We sit apart from friends at weekly backyard tete-a-tetes, yet we feel little compunction touching a hand or sitting while a guest stands over us and delivers a dissertation filled with water droplets dredged from their innards.

Our beloved cars are no longer sanctuaries. I took a good friend to the doctor on Wednesday. Our sixty-mile round-trip was punctuated by sidelong glances at each other as we silently wondered if our travelling companions included the little Covid guys. It was a long trip.

Jackie and I ended our customary five-mile hike through the Arbolada with a visit to Java and Joes where we waited for our coffee and reminisced about the passing of one of its owners. Lorraine, a delightful personality had died just prior to the ascendancy of the virus and was blessedly relieved of that nightmare.

Having memorized the Java and Joe protocol, I invited Ralph to join me on Tuesday. A good friend with a perpetually smiling face, I enjoy his company. Since his coming over from the Dark Side because of Trump’s ascendancy, Ralph and I tend to agree on the larger issues more often.

So, I was surprised when half-way through our medium roast coffee, he said, “Why are they making such a big deal out of this George Floyd thing?  Protests, riots, speeches, cop blasting. The cops are always doing something stupid. That big funeral. When have they ever done anything like that for others? And anyway, what about the Mexicans. They’re always getting the short end of the stick. And they don’t riot in the streets.”

I had to take a breath and pause before answering. But all I could say was, “It was a tipping point. Blacks have been screwed so often that the Floyd thing just set them off.”

We finished our coffee in relative silence, hoping we hadn’t pissed each other off. I walked home thinking what a lame thing I had offered in defense of the events precipitated by Floyd’s killing. A killing that was launched by a counterfeit $20 bill. A killing shown on national TV just like it was the Super Bowl. A killing perpetrated by a cop who treated it like a sporting event. A killing that some of our elected leaders took far too long to condemn. A killing that some attempted to bury by focusing on the looting done by the demonstrators.

If I had been more knowledgeable at the coffee shop, I would have itemized the things that had contributed to Floyd’s murder and more specifically why African Americans are making, as Ralph said, such “a big deal” out of it.

Because the median White family has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family.

Because in the last quarter of 2019, the median White worker made 28 percent more than the typical Black worker.

Because the U.S. poverty rate for White men is 7 percent, yet it is 20 percent for Black women.

Because, for each 100,000 Americans, 55 Blacks have died from the coronavirus, compared to 23 Whites.

Because African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.

Because African Americans and whites use drugs at similar rates, but the imprisonment rate of African Americans for drug charges is 6 times that of whites.

Because on average, nonwhite school districts received $2,200 less per student than districts that were predominantly white.

Because, in 2019, African Americans were more than three times more likely to be killed by police but were less likely to carry guns.

Yes, I would have cited these statistics and convinced myself that Ralph would clearly understand why this is such “a bid deal.”

But then he might have paused and said, “You’re a Jew. You’ve had your share of holocausts and lesser acts of discrimination. Where are the Jewish protests and street riots? The flamboyant displays of anger and the resounding demands for action. The cop bashing.”

And if I had thought of it, I would have said, “The difference is that whenever I am threatened, I run toward the police, not away from them.”

Too much separation

Made margaritas last night. My special recipe calls for Jose Cuervo ready mix (it includes a modicum of tequila), another half-jigger of straight tequila (any old thing will do nicely), a wedge of lime and lots of ice.

The ice lends a cooling feel to your hand on hot late afternoons, except when it is poured into a cheap cardboard Dixie cup. Which is how we served it to four friends at 6pm yesterday on our patio in the waning heat of the afternoon. These Covid-19 gatherings have become more frequent since the virus became our guest… and progressively more inebriating.

Abiding by the rules of social distancing, we maintain six feet of separation, sort of. The first of our meetings was held in a school parking lot where space was plentiful but where the surroundings resembled East Berlin before the wall fell. We have since advanced to our participants’ backyards. To avoid depositing the virus in the sanctity of the home, we enter through a side gate. Lack of access to the host home during the patio party requires a degree of advance bladder planning.

Picking a seat on one’s patio is an adventure that involves thinking about the needs of your companions. Those who have some physical limitations are granted the seat of their choice. Seats are often reorganized after getting settled, sometimes more than once.

We began our parties by bringing our own snacks and beverages to avoid cross contamination as we foraged through piles of chips, a bucket of guacamole and freshly popped corn. That requirement has been less firmly applied of late as we bring snacks to share. That chink in the armor has been extended to the serving of alcohol. The use of  ever-increasing volumes of alcohol has loosened our tongues and our ability to maintain the six-foot rule. We brush by each other as we grab food and have difficulty remembering which paper plate is ours. Unlike glass, Dixie cups are never refilled; a fresh one is provided to minimize the mixing of the host’s germs with those of the guests.

A single cough or sneeze from one of our participants often quiets our otherwise noisy group as we mentally analyze the implications of this violation. Sheila, our host two weeks ago had, in addition to providing some lovely snacks, coughed twice and said, “It’s only an allergy.” To which I responded with Walter Cronkite inflection, “Six people were found dead on the Cohn’s patio this morning. The only survivor, Sheila, was heard to say, “But I was sure it was only an allergy.”

Regardless of the level of alcohol in my brain, I am sharply aware of all these risky moves. I used to calculate the number of days that I had to wait after each violation before my Covid-19 symptoms might appear. But there were so many of the violations that the practice was abandoned when I realized that an Excel spread sheet would be needed.

In addition to the peccadillos occurring on the patio, there were other less joyful opportunities elsewhere for virus mating. Around the home, door handles, car steering wheels, my computer keyboard and the mailbox were all highly suspicious and required enough hand soap to make Proctor and Gamble my new best friend.

Westridge market is a veritable cornucopia of opportunities. Selecting bananas, squeezing bagged loaves of olive bread, or reading the ingredients in a jar of avocado mayo was the least of it. The simple act of grabbing and dragging a shopping cart from a reluctant stack was enough to send me to the ER…regardless of whether it had been drenched in disinfectant.

Eating prepared meals to support local eateries was a crapshoot. Buying a Greek salad at Rainbow Bridge was unassuring despite its claim to being gluten free, organic, vegan and free range. Ordering take-out from Hakane Sushi was like participating in a Zombies Overrun New Jersey movie when I visualized the helping hands that had caressed my California roll. No amount of sake could erase that thought from my frontal lobe.

Pumping gas, a now infrequent event, includes the use of a paper towel kindly provided by the local Chevron station. Trying to wrap the towel around my hand is akin to tying my shoe with one hand. But then I forget about the germ-laden keyboard as I enter my zip code.

Face masks do little to comfort my anxiety. Wearing an NP-95 mask left over from the Thomas fire riddles me with guilt as I consider all the first responders who may be doing without. Wearing a home-made cloth one, while attractive, is surely unsuitable to keeping the virus from flying directly through my nostrils or embedding itself in my welcoming brown eyes. Much like Woody Allen in Sleeper, waking to a world that embraces smoking and banana cream pie, I assuage my concerns by fantasizing that the use of masks was really the cause rather than the prevention of the problem.

Our next patio party is Saturday. It’s one of the perks that come with pandemics.

What earthquake?

There was a 3.7 earthquake in Los Angeles this morning, and no one seemed to care.

My morning corona virus routine began with a treadmill romp in the exercise room. Walking at a three miles per hour blazing pace, I stared at the TV and soaked up the morning news on my local ABC station.

Miriam Hernandez was saying something about an earthquake and finished that intro with a hand-off to John Gregory who was standing at the epicenter of the quake in Windsor Hills. It is a small hole in the wall near Inglewood; a larger hole in the wall famous for the Fabulous Forum where Kareem and Magic taught basketball to lesser mortals who were foolish enough to challenge them.

The Lakers have long since departed the Forum for fancier digs downtown. The once fabulous venue now hosts events including the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, Men’s Freestyle Wrestling World Cup and my favorite, the Super Flyweight World Championship.

The excitement generated by these events might normally have been eclipsed by a 3.7 quake. But there was John, standing alone in the street, attempting to rouse us from our coma-like, corona-induced slumber. He did his best with mind-grabbing one-liners including no injuries have been reported, no visible damage can be seen, and calls to 911 were underwhelming.

To put things in perspective and add an element of humor to his broadcast, John might have given us a quick tutorial on the Richter Scale.

Developed in 1935 by Charles Richter at the California Institute of Technology, it’s a logarithmic scale that probably means nothing to you, so I will skip any explanation of it. Suffice it to say, the scale measures a quake’s amplitude by the size of the wiggles on an earthquake recording…just like those on an EKG readout of your heart. Being logarithmic, each whole number increase in Dr. Richter’s amplitude scale is ten times greater than the previous number. At 6.7, the amplitude of the 1994 Northridge quake was 1,000 (10x10x10) times greater than the 3.7 one this morning.

Continuing to impress you with my knowledge of logarithms, the Richter Scale also measures the energy released by a quake. Even scarier than amplitude, each whole number increase is about 30 times greater than the prior number. Ergo, the Northridge quake released energy that was 27,000 (30x30x30) times greater than the one being featured by John this morning. More to the point, that is why my fish tank fell over in the Northridge quake while I slept blissfully through today’s puny tremor.

The quest for Covid-19 newsworthy items continues to dominate the media, further stretching John’s ability to satisfy our appetites with something like a mini-quake. However, I have noticed a slow creep of other news items that had once filled my TV screen, prior to Man vs. Covid-19.

For example, two days ago, a mass murder in Canada got a half-day of coverage, then exhausted its welcome when the police in a small New Jersey town got an anonymous tip about a body being stored in a shed outside one of the state’s largest nursing homes. Arriving there, the cops found 17 bodies lying about with Covid-19 etched on their foreheads. This was enough to shove any news about this Thursday’s NFL draft to a status well below the day’s most appealing pasta recipe.

Poor Joe Biden, who has never worn the mantle of Mr. Excitement, was pictured exhorting his admirers to storm the White House. He was quickly placed on the inactive list when he was upstaged by a Covid-19 mother in the Bronx tending to the needs of her six kids and a dog.

Donald Trump briefly tweeted into the spotlight when he decided to stop all border crossings. The business community angrily noted that this would cut the number of day laborers by two-thirds and further threaten the already fragile food chain. Realizing that he had just alienated his base and potentially caused irreparable damage to his favorite cereal, Captain Crunch, Mr. Trump said his tweet had been misinterpreted and was meant to apply only to crossings made from American Samoa.

Signs that the virus is losing some steam make new crises harder to find. Or maybe we are simply becoming bored with the whole thing. Face masks, while de rigueur, no longer attract the attention they once did. What started out as a quest for the holy grail has turned into a complete face-covering wardrobe with masks for day use and others specifically for nighttime entertaining.

Flag waving, horn honking moms wearing cowboy boots filled TV screens for a time, until mildly disinterested viewers realized that these protesters were a poor substitute for the Tea Party. Tired of schlepping the heavy flags and with a growing inability to understand how their deaths from the virus might make them more patriotic, they closed up shop and joined the ranks of those other patriots who refuse to vaccinate their children.

But not to worry about content as there will shortly be juicier Covid-19 adventures to fill the void. As noted in today’s Washington Post….

By the end of the week, Georgia residents will be able to get their hair permed and nails done. By Monday, they will be cleared for action flicks at the cineplex and burgers at their favorite greasy spoon.

And it will almost certainly lead to more novel corona virus infections and deaths.

As several states — including South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida — rush to reopen businesses, the sudden relaxation of restrictions will supply new targets for the coronavirus that has kept the United States largely closed down…

An 8.0 quake will seem like a walk in the park.

Who’s in charge anyway?

Brandi of Fancy Free Photography just sent us a link to our wedding photos. Viewing them, I smiled so much that the persistent rain clouds parted, and I felt physically uplifted. My breathing quickened, my eyes refused to blink, and my fingers clambered over my Dell keyboard as I scrolled haphazardly through the evidence of our wedding day.

Almost two hundred pictures leaped off the screen. Jackie, me, the two of us, our guests, the Rabbi, and the harpist cascaded down and across the screen, everyone a keeper. I could not get enough of them. They are worth the price of admission, but they hardly do justice to the herculean efforts that changed the occasion from a standard wedding of two lovers to an odyssey that might never have happened.

A year ago, as we shared Jackie’s sauna in her castle dungeon of a garage, we spoke of marriage and promised ourselves to each other. Even then it seemed like the beginning of a quest, complete with digitized monsters and other obstacles that block the hero’s path as he seeks the prize at the end of the latest video game.

Some gamers have what it takes to overcome a myriad of challenges. Taking the correct path, acquiring the latest weaponry and being quick on the draw are vital components. But the key to gamer success is accepting setbacks and then coming back for more. Nothing can divert their attention from the final objective. Difficulties on the way are quickly analyzed, corrections made, and then they’re back at it. Time is of little consequence. It simply must be done. No excuses or exceptions are permitted.

Jackie is a black-belt at overcoming obstacles and achieving her goals. Her talents would make short work of 2019’s most popular video games. Resident Evil, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Sekiro, and Devil May Cry are child’s play for this woman. Older games like Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto 2 would be rejected out of hand as not being worth her time.

I’ve seen it up front and close. I consider myself diligent and loathe to procrastinate, but compared to Jackie I’m a slug. I look like a three-toed sloth compared to her cheetah-like movements. One better stay out of her way when she’s set her teeth. Best to just lean back, relax and watch things evolve.

I participated in determining the number of wedding guests. What started out as a family-only affair quickly grew large enough to repopulate Pompei following the eruption of Vesuvius. Other than that, my contributions to the event’s details consisted largely of cheering Jackie on with “Sounds good to me. Whatever you say, sweetheart. And, I’m available when needed.”

The wedding venue Azu, food selections, the officiating Rabbi, photographer, florist and harpist all fell nicely in place. Plans were completed and deposits paid. Then the corona virus appeared, uninvited and apparently angry at its exclusion from our guest list.

As the magnitude of the virus epidemic became pandemic, alterations to our wedding plans went from annoying to maddening.

Out of town guests dropped like flies. Who could blame them when their seat companion might be Senor Corona? Weddings are seldom first choice in most people’s vacation plans. Some guests, anxious to find any reason to stay home, might have been grateful for the rising rates of hospitalization reported by a media starved for news.

Much like a CNN talking head on election night, we constantly evaluated input from friends and relatives and considered postponing the blessed event. But, like a peregrine falcon zeroing in on a rabbit, Jackie stayed focused. “We are doing this now. No postponement. I’m not planning this thing again.” My weak contribution of a series of yes dears sealed my fate.

Pronouncements emanated from the Oval Office and the Governor’s Mansion. All seemed to have been conjured up solely to deep-six our wedding. No large gatherings. No gatherings of more than ten. Stay six feet apart. Stay home. This means you, Jackie.

The guest list declined by a quarter, then another quarter. In a show of solidarity, people dropped out who were never even on the guest list. I had visions of the attending, sad-faced guests wishing us well while contracting the virus from eating wedding cake, then falling at our feet. We decided to move the wedding to our house, thereby eliminating the potential cost of body removal from Azu’s bill. The guest list was trashed and a blizzard of E-vite mailings uninvited most of the remaining stalwarts.

The harpist was the first to quit. Jackie found another in the middle of the night. The florist threatened to throw the boatload of flowers over our fence to avoid contracting the malady, but Jackie sweetly reminded her of the contract she had signed. The cake baker left a terse message declining the pleasure of producing it; Jackie decided that cookies were good enough. The officiating Rabbi developed a nasty malady that prevented her attendance. Jackie called half of Ventura County and found a replacement who felt rabbinically protected from the heathen virus. Jackie was not to be denied.

On the off chance that either President Trump or Governor Newsom might swoop down on us, we performed the wedding in two shifts, each with few than six people. Others, stuck at home, could view the shrunken event via Zoom; at least we saved money on the food.

The threat of rain abated an hour before the event, and it remained bright and warm until an hour after its conclusion. I attribute that heavenly blessing to Jackie’s can-do reputation which goes well beyond these earthly environs.

Looking at the photos, you’d think that we always planned it that way. Maybe we did, but we just didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t your common garden-variety wedding. But then with Jackie in charge, you knew it was going to be spectacular.

The most precious thing

What is the most precious thing in the world?

What are the characteristics that make it so? A short list might include beauty, timelessness, desirability and scarcity.

Until last week, my most precious list would have included a unique jewel much like the Hope Diamond. At 45 carats, about a third of an ounce, the Hope luxuriates in Washington DC’s Museum of National History. Legend has it that the diamond is cursed and the owner, or anyone else who touches it, will die. Sort of like forgetting to clean your doorknobs of the Corona virus. If the stone was in the Museum’s gift shop, its price tag would be about $350 million plus tax. Not sure if they offer gift wrapping.

The Mona Lisa is also in the running. Housed in the Paris Louvre, the lady with the mysterious smile is estimated to set you back nearly a billion bucks, plus tax. Framing is extra. The Italian noblewoman, believed to be Lisa Gherardini, was painted by da Vinci around 1503. She displays an enigmatic expression that undoubtedly reflects Lisa’s awareness that twenty-first century art connoisseurs would assuredly be foolish enough to pay her over inflated price.

Faberge eggs have captured the imagination since the 1800’s when they were produced in Czarist Russia. Most were made for royalty, but the majority did not survive the revolution, or the misguided melting of the undervalued eggs for their gold. One such egg, purchased at a flea market fifty years ago for $14,000, currently has an estimated value of over thirty million. The ignorant flea market purchaser kept it in his Midwest home located next to a highway and a Dunkin Donuts until an antique dealer spotted it sitting next to some cupcakes on the owner’s Formica kitchen counter.

These three items have at least one thing in common. None have any utilitarian value. If you awoke next Monday morning and discovered that your Faberge was cracked, your diamond shattered or the Mona Lisa looking like DC Comics’ Joker, you would probably shrug and say something like easy come, easy go. Then turn over in bed, snuggle with your sweetie, and your morning would go on as always, without the diamond, the painting or the egg.

The most precious list takes on a wholly different flavor when we are faced with something that can seriously impact how we live. The current Corona crisis helps put things in perspective. Especially at the grocery store. Tough times with real or imaginary shortages of taken-for-granted items, often reveal some of our baser instincts.

In 1967 we lived in Chicago when we had 27 inches of snow in a single day. The freeway shut down and people used it as boardwalk to the nearest market. Gallons of milk disappeared from store shelves, probably into homes where it was never consumed. It surely spoiled before it could be wolfed down by people who hadn’t had a glassful since they were in Mrs. Weintraub’s first grade class.

Moving to Los Angeles that same year to avoid future blizzards, we were welcomed with earthquakes. The worst was the 1994 Northridge quake. No electricity. No open markets. We became a third world country overnight. Hot dogs from our non-functioning freezer were roasted over our still operating gas stove. Candles provided light. Empty fifty-gallon metal barrels appeared on the street; their burning wood scraps providing a place for people to gather. We avoided driving our cars, fearful that we might never find fuel in gas stations that could no longer pump it. Hush hush messages were shared with friends whenever a secret stash of store-based vitals was discovered; we invariably arrived too late to grab anything that we didn’t really need anyway.

The blizzard cleanup and the quake reconstruction were short term impediments to our lifestyle. They were localized, allowing billions of people to be mere TV voyeurs watching the drama unfold without being directly affected by the events. We intuitively knew that our lives would be restored to normalcy before the next Olympics.

In agonizing contrast, the Corona madness has the entire world at its feet. Any permanent respite is impossible to predict with any certainty. At seven every morning we watch ABC’s George Stephanopoulos lean forward in his Good Morning America swivel chair and tell us how god-damn awful this thing is. How the rate of infection will soon fill every hospital bed, the Superdome and all the sea-going Maersk shipping containers with victims who have no ventilators and no hope. How anyone George interviews is deemed crazy by him if they say things are getting under control. We multi-task by staring at the streaming crawler spewing more bad news at the bottom of our TV screen…repeating these disasters every sixty seconds. Like lemmings, we are too paralyzed to turn it off and switch to the fifteenth episode of the fourth year of our favorite depressing Netflix series.

Images of food shortages race through our frontal lobe. Some of us remember World War 2 ration books, victory gardens and meatless Mondays. We mentally inventory our available foodstuffs. We have no idea when this worst of all flu seasons will end. We see the Vons’ parking lot filled from six in the morning into the night. Cars sliding snail-like up and down the aisles looking to catch a break. We think they must know something we don’t. So we join them.

We grab an available cart, ladling germs onto the palms of our hands. We enter through the automatic doors, thankful we don’t have to touch them. We grab a disinfectant tissue and wipe our hands and the cart’s push bar. We dispose of the tissue on top of the overflowing garbage can.

Once fully inside, we stop. Where are we going? Left or right? So much to choose from. Better make up our mind quickly before someone else snatches our number one item while we procrastinate like Lot’s wife. We finally decide.

We stare at the overhead signs. And then we spot it. Paper Goods. We move quickly. Our heart is pounding. We look down the chosen aisle. Our eyes shift right. A sea of off-white metal meets our gaze. Having never seen an empty Vons display rack, we are momentarily stunned, unable to move. How is this possible?

Now we know what the most precious item is. What will change sensible shoppers into glutinous hoarders. What we can’t do without. Names that had little importance two weeks ago have come to the top of our most precious list. Northern, Charmin, Kirkland, Angel Soft, Cottonelle, Scott. All gone.

The Hope Diamond, the Mona Lisa and Faberge eggs are still available. But who gives a shit?

I’ve had enough Corona

Went to the board meeting at the synagogue Monday night. It’s a once a month thing that lasts about two hours. I generally last about one hour and then begin to fidget.

The chairs are reasonably comfortable but even the cushiest Ethan Allen lounge chair begins to grind into my butt after about thirty minutes. Jackie tells me that I have no meat on my fanny; I trust her judgment since she’s had ample time to explore the terrain.

Fidgeting can also be accompanied by pen twiddling, paper shuffling and tiny facial grimaces whenever I think the speaker has outworn his welcome. The face thing began earlier than usual that evening when one of the board members launched into a dissertation on the ravages of the Corona virus. Although a physician with access to the latest medical advances, I found his warnings akin to what the dinosaurs must have discussed as they anxiously awaited the giant meteor that ended their 150 million years reign on earth. We’ve only been around for 300,000 years, so we’ve got a lot to learn. Especially since learning from history is not one of our strong points.

Although there is overwhelming scientific support for the meteor theory, there are also believers in a virus borne plague that may have decimated the dino population. Dead animals who contracted the malady, let’s call it the Budweiser virus, were in turn eaten by the survivors. Then they succumbed to the virus that had ridden the coattails of their ingested friends. And then there were none.

My doctor friend did not predict a dinosaur-like event. But visions of prophylactic measures ran through my brain as he itemized what we should do to assure our survival. High on the list was hand sanitizer. But would there be enough Purell to save us from the Corona virus? Or would we emulate our luckless T-Rex ancestor by wandering down Ojai Avenue like zombies, seeking the flesh of former friends to assuage our hunger.

The following day I attended my Creative Writing class. The room was packed with senior citizens who were ideal Corona candidates. Old, a bit klutzy and with already compromised immune systems. Not to worry, since some of us had come armed with the now ubiquitous life-saving Purell elixir. However, my comfort level dropped several levels when one of my classmates announced that Purell was to be avoided because it causes cancer. She assured us that she had confirmed this on the web.

Terrified, I was left with a choice. Risk the Budweiser-like elimination of all human beings or suffer an oncological nightmare rendered by the emperor of all diseases. I fidgeted in my seat, fumbled with an over-sized paper clip and was inattentive while my colleagues audibled their heart-felt essays. The class ended and I wondered if an afternoon martini might restore my confidence.

A trip to the athletic club temporarily put off the martini. Peter was on the neighboring treadmill. Of similar ages, we greet each other, review yesterday’s news and share thoughts about how this country should be run. Realizing the futility of it, we move on to more important things. Surrounded by a sea of Kleenex and sanitizer wipes. Peter’s treadmill is gleaming from his efforts to keep it clean and germ free. He feels impervious to the virus.

We simultaneously complete our workout. I blithely pick up my germ laden cellphone and am about to walk down the stairs to the locker room. Peter calls to me. “Take this cleansing wipe, spread it out and use it to hold onto the stair railing.”  Not wishing to offend, I gratefully accept the moist tissue and make my way to the locker room. I immediately violate any benefit of the rail wipe when I dial the combination lock and collect a boatload of happy, invisible germs onto my fingers.

I enter the shower stall and wonder how much scrub time I should devote to each part of my body. God knows what’s invading me through the soles of my feet. The soap dispenser is particularly nettlesome. It’s a twelve-ounce bottle that requires a downward push on a plunger to dispense a marble sized glob of soap. I wonder who had been there before me. Did they deposit alien germs on the plunger? Am I to be undone by someone who is ignorant of proper shower etiquette? Why is there no Purell sanitizer in the shower stall? Doesn’t the club know that failure to sanitize could spell doom for all humankind?

Newly sanitized, I listen to KPCC as I drive home. Generally interesting, this NPR station normally covers a wide array of stories. Of late, the mind-numbing focus has been on Corona where statistics abound and are updated every nanosecond. Interviews with health professionals fill vacant airtime. Their message universally includes the case count, the death count and the don’t count on any vaccine for a year mantra. It concludes with an admonition of “don’t panic.” All of which causes me to panic.

I now listen exclusively to KUSC, the classical music station where, blessedly, Mozart never heard of Corona, or any other virus, while composing The Magic Flute.

Jackie and I plan to marry on March 22. Seventy-five invitees have decisions to make. Should they risk virus oblivion or throw caution to the wind, drink wine, eat good food and laugh with friends. Thoughts about my own well-being regularly enter my consciousness. It is not a fear of contracting the dreaded illness. It’s being physically unable to attend my own wedding. An event that includes flowers, photos, a cake, a harpist and, potentially, a bunch of forfeited deposits.

I lie half awake this morning and wonder what would happen if I am sick on March 22. I decide that nothing short of a meteor direct hit will keep me from it. I see it now. Although bed ridden, I arrive at the wedding venue speeding down Ojai Avenue in a white LifeLine ambulance with sirens blaring. We have a reserved parking space right in front. I’m wheeled from the vehicle on a gurney. A drug infused IV is embedded in my right arm. I sign the Ketuba. I’m under the chuppah with lovely Jackie hovering over me. We recite our vows. Rabbi Lisa pronounces us married. I’m happy.

After all, who needs Purell when you’re in love?

I nearly died

I nearly died.

I woke at 5 am, having been summoned by the alarm on Jackie’s iPhone. It’s both a blessing and a curse. Although I could sleep a bit longer, the too-early awakening lets me inhale the remains of last night’s memories before she leaves. If I’m lucky, I get a kiss before I brush my teeth.

A working girl, Jackie easily exits the warm bed, performs some rudimentary magic on her cute body and then heads into the darkness and drives to the athletic club. This inviolate routine brings her there precisely two minutes prior to its 5:30 am opening. She selects a parking space that might as well be reserved for her and assumes the prime position at the club’s front door. First in the gym is a badge of honor that she covets.

I, on the other hand, have not worked in twenty-one years and believe it is my right to sleep late. Not willing to flaunt or take advantage of my enviable position, I arise at 5:45am, toss the warm covers and immediately feel the stabbing chill of a house that has been deprived of fossil fuels for the last eight hours.

We have a treadmill, an elliptical, a stationary bike and a weight machine. Our third bedroom is devoted to these devices and, with its cool rubber flooring, looks like a display at a fitness store. A creature of habit, I disdain these home-bound devices and drive five minutes to the club where I socialize with others who habituate the establishment. I occasionally cross paths with Jackie, and proudly give her a kiss for all to see. I wish her well as she heads to her Pilates session, squeezes in an hour of hot yoga with twenty other female masochists, drives thirty miles to Camarillo and manages to get to work looking refreshed and radiant. I tire merely thinking about it and consider a nap.

I have a key-less locker at the gym that sets me back twelve dollars a month. An extravagance that could be avoided if I were willing to use an unassigned keyed locker. But that would require handing over my car keys to ensure that I return the locker key. It also means playing locker roulette since I would have a different, though indistinguishable, locker each day of the week. An exhausting thought.

My locker alienates me. It’s just a bit too small and, often without warning, regurgitates some of what I have put in it. Especially prone to this phenomenon is my shaving kit which seems intent on painfully landing on the toes of my left foot as it cascades to the floor.

I often prematurely lock it, requiring re-entry of the combination; something that I shall surely forget as I age. I have visions of marching bare-assed to the front desk to beg Erin for the now forgotten three numbers that will admit me to the locker and its assortment of clothing that will mask my embarrassment.

It accumulates unwanted items including a spare pair of ugly, baggy gym shorts, weight-lifting gloves that have their own sewn-in pain inducers and an orphaned metal shaving mirror that Jackie gave me two years ago. I dread discarding it for fear that she may one day ask about it.

As I put on my gym stuff, I banged my left index finger on the sharp edge of the locker door. Thinking nothing of it, I proudly walked without the aid of the railing, up the stairs to the treadmills. As I began my one-hour routine I noticed a drop of blood on my locker bitten finger. And then another drop. Was I going to bleed to death? I staunched the flow with an old used tissue that had resided peacefully in my shorts pocket. Gradually, thoughts of life’s passing cascaded through my mind.

Should I stop my routine and get some antiseptic from the front desk? Maybe a band-aid. Was this hole in my finger the easiest route for the Corona virus? Would I be the first in the county to be diagnosed with it? An eighty-year-old man close to death in the Ojai Valley Community Hospital. The club shut down tightly until everyone is screened. The media will have a field day. All that treadmilling, twice a week work outs with Robert, and healthy, tasteless food. All for naught.

Admit it. You’re a hypochondriac. The older we get, the more we see death in everyday events. The grim reaper standing ready to announce our demise without prior notice. Home in a two-bed window-less room, our last earthly habitat. Caregivers, friends and relatives tending to an almost lifeless body.

An insatiable desire for candy portends diabetes. A nagging cough, a symptom of tuberculosis. A momentary stab in the belly, stage four pancreatic cancer. A pink tint to your stool, hemorrhoids, colitis or worse. Feeling not quite right, kidney disease run amok. A headache, a debilitating stroke. Momentary tremor, Parkinson’s. A spot on the nose, malignant melanoma. My god, it’s a wonder we have time for anything else.

I gutted out the last forty-five minutes on the treadmill and thought about all the things that I had yet to accomplish. A promising life snuffed out by a locker door. Failure to take it seriously enough to seek emergency medical treatment. I could have asked Erin for a second opinion but was too proud to admit that I had ignored impending doom until it was too late.

I took a longer than usual shower. Shaved before the water could warm to conserve whatever time I had left on this earth. But then, dressing slowly, I figured why rush? It’s a done deal. The virus had already embedded itself. Whatever will be, will be. Take it like a man. Suck it up. Handle it with your usual grace and self-confidence. Nobody lives forever.

Then again, who says so?