Not so much Plague

I have bronchitis. Acute bronchitis. I tried to make a joke about that with my doctor, how it's such a relief to have something cute for a change, and he said, "You really need to go home and rest now." Turns out "acute" means "short-term" rather than "severe." Severe bronchitis would be "chronic" -- and it's usually reserved for alcoholic smokers who live in smog-ridden L.A. Maybe next summer...

So I'm on some kind of antibiotic, Biaxin for you medical types in the audience. I know that antibiotics are theoretically evil and of the devil, and I am aiding and abetting the creation of super virii impervious to medications of any kind. But the differences in how I feel between today and yesterday are so markedly dramatic that I really don't care. When the Super Virii of the Future show up in 10 years to kick our collective asses, I'll stand in line rump first. For now: I don't feel like death.

Being gay and sick is different than being straight and sick. Once the nurse weighed me ("Really? Are you sure?" "That's a good scale there, Mr. Bevel." "Then I've lost some weight in the last 4 days." "If you say so." "Maybe the doctor doesn't have to treat this right away?") she asked for my symptoms, which fortunately I was able to display for her in person. "It only looks like I've just stepped out of the shower," I explained. She asked when the symptoms started and I said, "The day my partner and I were returning from Toronto." "Is this a homosexual partner or a heterosexual partner?" "We're gay." "Have you had an HIV test?"

Yeah.

And I mean, okay. I know. It's out there, it's a danger, and I'm in a risk group. But I'm not an active member of that risk group. Zach and I have been together almost 5 years; we're monogamous; and we've both been tested multiple times. It's a logical question to ask, I guess. I can't help wondering, though, if she'd have asked about an HIV test if Zach were my girlfriend rather than my boyfriend. Only, you know, with a different name.

A quick book wrap up:

I finished Wuthering Heights and I'm done. I don't need to read it ever again. It's just not that interesting of a book. We get it, it's bleak: can we go now? On the flight to Toronto (and more about that in a different entry; however, I will say: Canada? What the fuck did you do to Niagara Falls?) and back I read Albert Camus's The Plague, and I'll write an entry about that soon, too. I will say that it's not necessarily the best book choice when one is, you know, sick unto death the way I was. And I don't think I'll read any more Camus. I can't say that it's a bad book; I also don't know that it's good either.

And my current book? McTeague by Frank Norris. I'm cheating a bit, both in my "alphabetically we read" plan as well as my "Mike buys no new books." I found this for dirt cheap at a pretty groovy bookstore in Toronto called ABC Books on Yonge Street along with some other book, an early American writer (c. late-1700s), writing about a murderous sleepwalker.