THE FEVER DANCE

Living in this country has done a number on my immune system. Understandable when considering the fact that I am new to the continent, but odd because I am no stranger to the magical world of deadly microbials.  A single NYC subway car when swabbed, and sampled, probably holds enough virulent virus to rival a CDC lab. All of the Purell and hand swipes in the world couldn’t keep a cold away in the Big Apple.  New illnesses and zoological plagues are born each day under the wooden benches  found on the 21^st avenue subway stop in LIC. The only thing that has prohibited a massive outbreak are the bums who sleep and bath on these very same benches daily.  Their populations have been decimated by these super germs (which has sadly taken the thrill and danger of robbery away from  Time SquareL).  Yet there collective sacrifice has kept the rest of NY’ers safe and 8^th avenue free of most loitering for the past 15 years.  (Conspiracy theorists have ascertained that Disney, with its enormous financial stake in the Broadway rendition of The Lion King, with former Mayor Giuliani’s enthusiastic blessing, released Ebola Zaire into the bum population in the mid-90’s but this of course has yet to be conclusively proven.  Many still ascertain he pulled a Robert Irsay and trucked all the homeless people secretly too New Jersey in the middle of the night.)  

Despite all of my immune systems heavy lifting over the years in the mean streets of cold and flu, nothing could prepare me for the biological warfare currently found in the Old World.  The cold strains found here are weaponized ! Escaped germs from former Soviet Lab’s run amuck causing mass hysteria from Kindergartens to Senior centers.  The Germans, well aware of the dangers of living inside a hot zone by now, ride bikes and wear strange equipment when outside in order to evade the deadly diseases.  When riding in parks, these “professionals” whisk past you like Russian diplomatic motorcades indiscriminately knocking down anyone that dares to get in there way.  The elderly go to great lengths in order to ensure their own sanitary sanity.   Traveling in groups through heavily populate areas, they use strange walking canes to protect there fragile immune systems from infected individuals.  The clack-clack sound of these special canes  collectively hitting the pavement is a warning to even healthy patrons to get out of the way!  This healthy train is making no stops for you!

Speaking of the elderly, I now have an all too clear understanding of what Grandma’s everywhere mean when they say they have “caught a chill”. I used to laugh when hearing this seemingly benign phrase mumbled  through old chapped lips. Now, I worry. A chill is no joke!  I caught my first chill a few weeks after landing and it knocked me into another dimension.  Completely broken, bent over and made that cold’s bitch, most of that particular day was spent feeling as though the Borg from Star Trek was attempting to assimilate me.  Sitting there in my mother in laws house, alone, in pain, with withdrawal like symptoms that would make the late Kurt Cobain blush, was not a picture of pretty.  Having no crayons to color in my fever drawings, and with nothing else to do, a rudimentary list was compiled of Things That I Would Rather Do Then Sit In My Mother-In-Laws House Sick Alone 1) play tag on the autobahn blind folded in a fog, 2)play golf during a severe thunderstorm warning while simultaneously flying a kite,3) go mall shopping with my wife.  As I pondered my top 3, a dread began to fill my bones.  At the same time, Vincent Price’s recital of The Raven poem began to play on continuous loop in my mind interlaced with a fierce dance beat. The fever had come.  Now usually, I love a good fever. The sweating. The shaking. The visuals.  It’s like eating mushrooms at a club except you never have to leave your couch.   The scary thing about THIS fever was that it made me feel old.  I’m talking 80 years old, man diaper on, IV drip steady, Seabond subscribing old.  

My body began to stall like a Chevy volt.  Buddy began to smell death in the air.  He climbed up onto my belly and began to look at me with the sympathy of a priest reading the last rites.  I knew all he wanted was a bowl of Aldi’s finest dog food (or for me to take him shit), but  I pretended that he really did care anyways. Shit anywhere Bud!  Godspeed my good friend.  The big ol’ unicorn in the sky will be coming down pretty soon to ride me away to a world of all you can eat China Buffet and unlimited free Champions League soccer games.  Do they use blankets up in heaven, or do the dead just wrap themselves in clouds?  After a few more psychic visions and some alien abduction nightmares, I started watching Top Gun. Being the only English movie that I had, the choice was simple andsomehow kept me alive until the girls got home. 

One good thing has come out of all this disease and depravity; With every sniffle, cough and shudder, a deep connection with the Native American’s has developed.   Let me explain. Here they were living in utopia, one with nature, wearing loin clothes every day (love those), having drum circles and painting each other’s bodies different colors.  Basically, what Greatful Dead and Phish fans have payed handsomely to do for decades.  That is, until my forefathers, the Europeans showed up on their shores.   With their incurable ailments, and bad fashion, they burst that bubble. Like a fat man in an airplane seat, it wasn’t a pretty sight in the America’s after 1609.  White was right, Indian was wrong. Empathy for the systematic destruction of their way of life in that age of innocence is now my new mantra.   When sick in bed, these war painted spirits appear to me, jolting me in the ribs like an old lady’s cane.  After peeing myself, I always apology to these feathered chiefs for the invasion of their lands by my arrogant forefathers.  There greedy hands planted colorful flags in a soil they knew nothing about. The chief always seems to appreciate my sincerity, and has never once raised his massive war axe in anger. Praise god!

Waking up drooling, and incoherent with fever madness, I allow these spirits to take control of me like Whoopi Goldberg in 1990’s Ghost staring the late great Patrick Swayze.  Doing the rain dance stark naked in the middle of the night too my wife’s wide eyed amusement is my way of saying thanks. I think we in this modern pill popping world of treating symptoms, have lost the true definition of what health really is.  We have a lot to learn from the peoples of the past, like my very own Chief Scares -The-Crap-Out-of-Me. Or maybe, this entire blog is simply the Nyquil talking and my impromptu performance is the barbiturates effect on my brain. Regardless, I’m going to keep fever dancing,  talking to the imaginary chief and waking up my neighbors in the middle of the night.