On Sunshine and Smallpox

Nope—not today!

It’s so clear that I’ve been screwing up massively here, because the world, at which I’ve been hectoring, admonishing, tisking and tasking…this world of ours? Well, the fact that I’ve been singing—at times consciously, at times unconsciously—the song “Trouble in River City” from “The Music Man” should tell you something.

OK, I have stirred the Catholic Church to move from the late fifties to the early sixties on LGBT issues—I’ll give you that. Oh, and then I did a pretty good with SCOTUS on marriage equality. But gun control? Rising Islamic fundamentalism? The Mormons? I’ve failed miserably.

So what I should do today is to alert you to today’s piece of really awful news, the good part of which is that you can stop worrying, as I know you do, Concerned and Brow-Furled Readers, about whether to destroy those last tubes of the smallpox virus that are in some lab in the States somewhere. Yup, the issue is over! Done! Finito!

If—completely improbably, but just to be professional, here—you haven’t done your share of preoccupation on this issue, here’s the story: on any list of the ten greatest medical accomplishments in history, the eradication of smallpox in 1975 will be number one or two. Why? Because the disease killed a billion of us.

So we kept a few vials of the virus, and Russia has another, and everybody has been scratching their heads ever since about what to do with them. Get rid of them altogether (I’m raising my hand here!)? Or should we save them for “scientific purposes” (what for? Should we resurrect Hitler to see how many more Jews he can kill?)

Nope, the whole issues is moot because, according to The New York Times, the genome for the smallpox virus is online, and there is a technology—what the boys in the labs have been up to!—that essentially squirts the four building blocks of DNA into a test tube and then arranges them in any way you want. So—in theory, and maybe in practice, since I became so disgusted with the whole thing that I walked away—you, and any scientifically-minded terrorist, could make the smallpox virus.

Why do I think that there is something so typically masculine about this? Why do I think that no woman would either keep the damn virus or publish the genome on the Internet? Or is it that I’m just peeved because I’ve had a fight with Sunshine, the bearer of papaya leaves and thus my personal savior, who is working today on 1.000002 knees?

“I was running around the rainforest two weeks ago and I fucked up my knee,” said Sunshine, as he lurched, or Frankensteined, to get my coffee.

So what had he done about it?

Waited two weeks, went to the doctor yesterday, had an X-Ray, and will now have to wait a week for the results to be read….

“What,” I sputter, “that’s fucking ridiculous! Any intern can read an X-Ray! They can give you the thing, you can go back to your doctor, who will tell what’s up. That’s crazy!”

“Nah, man, it’s the government plan. I’m used to it….”

Remember Russian medicine?

So Sunshine was lurching like a drunkard, grabbing on to things and trying unsuccessfully not to wince, and that’s when I lost it—seeing him wash dishes in the kitchen. Right—that’s twenty feet from the cash register for us, twenty miles for Sunshine.

“I AM FUCKING WASHING THE DISHES!” I told him, and then I got two tall chairs and put one in front of the espresso machine and one in front of the cash register.

“You’re going from one to the other,” I told him, “and on one foot. I’ll do the rest. I mean, how many goddamn dishes have I done in my life?”

So I grabbed a dirty cup and HE grabbed the dirty cup, and we were both pulling the cup like kids pulling a dried wishbone, when we looked into each other’s eyes and realized—what happens to the wishbone could very well happen to the cup, and would Lady be pleased? Though come to think of it, having a dish fight in the kitchen of the Poet’s Passage—where I am completely prohibited so sue me, OK?—would be tremendously therapeutic.

So there we were, having the coffee cup equivalent of chicken, when it occurred to us: one of us was gonna have to veer. And guess who that was!

“Fuck you,” I told him, and fortunately the only other person in the café was a regular, limping himself from the chikungunya, and saying, “God, we’re all fucked,” as he passed us. So I’m blazing away at Sunshine—“IF YOU HAD A KID AND THAT KID HAD FUCKED UP HIS KNEE WHAT THE HELL WOULD YOU TELL HIM!”—and the guy is looking up, periodically, with all the insouciance of a cat (actually, the guy could teach the cat) and is it doing any good? Will I get this dumb, stupid, wonderful guy to fucking rest his knee?

Of course not, so I retreat, choosing to shout at him—remember, the café is virtually empty—“YOU SITTING DOWN, SUNSHINE?!” Or, when I hear him at the sink, “I HEAR YOU, DAMMIT!” 

That’s the thing about guys, of whom I am one, though being gay does—maybe—give me another set of eyes. Because right now, Lady has finally returned from Costco, and in normal times I would help unload, but today? No, since my hip is hurting.

So now a guy has come into the shop, and guess what! He’s asked for a goddamned, fucking glass of water, for Christ’s sake, and I fucking want to KILL the bastard! Can’t he FUCKING SEE that Sunshine is injured! SHIT! So now Sunshine has to limp over to get the goddamned water and it’s not even a sale and Sunshine—of course!—will get no tip.

Well, I’ve gotten up to inspect the sales area and guess what! One of the chairs has completely disappeared, and the other? Turned with its back to the cash register, and if I never heard a chair speak—and quite elegantly—before, well, I have today. And what was it saying?

Fuck you!

Which is too bad, because you know what?

I really want another cup of coffee!