Dutch Courage

Thirteen days ago I drank a can of Dutch Courage- a hibiscus and cherry flavored elixir spiked with 5mg of CBD compliments of my gym the day it shut its doors for the indefinite future. When I woke up dazed in the late afternoon four hours later, I reconciled the dozey episode to a mild cannabidiol intoxication. 

But then it happened again the next day even after I'd slept twice the number of hours as usual the night before and had no dutch courage in my system. When I slammed myself into the shower I came aware that I could barely smell the shampoo i pay extortionate amounts for if only to sense its hypnotic fragrance. Then when my dinner was tasteless I realized what was happening... 

I live with another doctor so was conscious that the eventuality of getting infected by SARS-CoV-2 was more likely a life outcome for me than an engagement that actually progresses to marriage. I just didn't think it was going to happen so soon. I had been extremely vigilant with social distancing and hygiene long before it was cool. I had even stopped taking the free samples of pizza my local bakery puts out on offer to the public every night.  Although I cannot confirm my diagnosis because testing in this country is still overwhelmingly limited to hospitalized patients and male political figures, my clinical suspicion remains high.

What I can say for certain is that twelve days have passed and only today could I finally slightly taste my revolting multivitamin and smell my afternoon poo. Or maybe it was the other way around. Smell and taste are tough to tell apart. But what's so mind numbing about it is that while I could have capitalized on the opportunity to eat cardboard for two weeks and get a little bit skinny, my boredom amidst extreme social isolation landed me instead in a compulsive food eating habit where I constantly aim to test whether my capacity to register flavor has returned. And I don't mean from one day to the next, but from one bowl of cereal after the other. 

The news headlines these days are weird and basically unreadable. Today in the BBC: 

• a man is jailed for claiming he has COVID-10 and coughing on a police officer
• Stacy's Mom songwriter dies at 52 with coronavirus 
• Man charged with bid to crash train into hospital ship 

I don't even understand the syntax of that last point. 

People stockpiling coke zero and toilet paper as if these were the things that were going to save them from damnation. I instead started stockpiling red wine and the most calorically dense ice cream i could find because if I'm gonna go, I might as well go down in a spiral of great pleasure.

Irony is all around. Found myself reading Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity today, which actually has nothing to do with the admittedly befitting title to our current state of affairs. I got a Brazilian wax just four days before the soft lockdown in anticipation of an imminent trip to Thailand which ended up being canceled by Thailand itself but not by British Airways who as if to add insult to injury upgraded me for free the morning of the flight that I never boarded. And now who is going to see my wax? Nobody! Because I am a responsible socially isolated human and anyway as my friend Sharon has said to me lately- it's better to be in bed with coronavirus than with an asshole. 

You know how when you're bored you keep getting up to look in the fridge just to see if there's anything new in there even though you know you haven't been to the shop in the last ten minutes since you last opened it? I am now applying the same pattern of behavior to my events calendar- constantly opening up iCal and scrolling for plans. Plans for tomorrow? nope. The weekend? nope. Next Week? still no plans. Next month? nothing. 2024? completely empty. There are no plans anywhere. Why is it that the first time I am really forced into mindfulness is also the most boring and uneventful time of my life? 

*checks iCal again* 

Shout out to the universe though for letting me keep my job, and for being fortunate enough to be able to work from home during these uncertain times. My flatmate who cannot conceive of the idea of intubating someone from the living room has not fully comprehended the concept of me being at work when I'm dressed only from the waist up, and on the sofa with my headphones, but at least she's stopped wandering behind my screen naked en route to fire up the kettle while I'm on a video call with my team.  

Stay safe and in love people, and courageous like the dutch. 

Sexless in the city

Today is the first sunny day in London for what feels like a millenium and still I have found myself devoting this tragic sunday to taking the crater in my sofa another inch deeper. Anyone who has ever ingested adderrall knows that you have to be doing what you intend to do for the next four hours the moment the medication kicks in, or else you'll find yourself buffing the kitchen floor with a sonicare toothbrush, color and shape coordinating your closet, and plucking your leg hair from ankle to bikini line incapable of stopping until either you've got them all or the adderall wears off. A similar phenomenon occurs when I write. Not even the prospect of a ball of fire to melt my frigid heart and warm my face could unglue me from the keyboard in those moments I start to marry thoughts to the page. I suppose I like it because i can disguise myself as having done something when the reality is having been unwashed and bedbound until 5pm. 

Have you ever seen those $20.00 pop up tents? They are marketed toward amateurs (in life, not just camping) for taking only two minutes to pitch, but what they fail to mention is that they also take a lifetime to pack away. There's a metaphor to my love life there where the first time I really fell in love it took about 2 minutes and seemed like the most incredible, easy thing ever, and then from the time it was over has felt like an immoveable feat. AND THEN just when you think you've gotten the last corner into the box, BANG that little shit pops up again to startle you and you have to begin again.

In the process of trying to find novel ways to destroy that unnatural, nylon jack-in-the-box  style habitat , getting a text like this when you're a single person living in London is really the best thing that can happen to you in terms of romance: 

Seems like a paradox in a city with 9 million people, a significant proportion of whom are highly educated, successful, beautiful, cultured, and interesting. But it's equivalently easy to be anonymous in a city so large and furthermore British people are not exactly romantic. I guess this is what happens when you get older. My love life went from being beautiful and unadulterated by baggage to terrifying and sad and also really fucking weird with loads of allegorical suitcases of every shape and size (albeit Prada branded). The last date I went on in London was with a guy who would have apparently ticked a lot of boxes, but who in the first ten minutes lamented being accused of homophobia at work (where there's smoke there's fire people), then ordering an orange juice at DINNER at an italian restaurant, then asking the waiter if there were any chips  on the menu (again, this was an italian restaurant), then gulping the entire orange juice instead of actually chewing his food before ordering a SECOND orange juice to wash down the rest of his meal. He even tried to intellectualize this by saying "I don't understand why people drink wine with their food, it doesn't help you get the food down". Dates like this render me almost hopeless when it comes to matters of the heart and commission me instead to the sofa in my robe on consequential saturday nights, massaging my roommate's feet and eating bowls of cereal for dinner while I reflect on the fact that the most productive thing I did over the weekend was charge my vibrator. 

So who is going to scoop my body off the ice when I eat shit at the Somerset House rink this Christmas? The answer is nobody. I will be sexless in the city which is still better than another handbag or a third glass of orange juice. 

35 is on fire

Since my last post I have turned 35, started a new job, gained three pounds, received and ridded myself of tonsilitis, and partaken of a family vacation. 

My birthday was by far the least eventful of my adult life. Kicked off by an email from E*TRADE wishing me a happy birthday, serving also to remind me about the shitty investment I made courtesy of an ex-lover's "hunch" about the stock market and concluded with a mini existential shiver spawned by the fact that I'm the age my mother was when she birthed me as well as the age when conception becomes physiologically more risky and complicated (and in my case also immaculate/further complicated by singledom). I woke up and had some cereal, then spent the day in inductions at my second day of work, before going out for a bite to eat with my lovely (former) fiancé (number two). I swapped birthday cake for tuna tartare on a rice biscuit. And you know what? It was one of my best birthdays ever. Because in the absence of any kind of extravagance I was deeply happy and grateful for everything good bad and ugly that had led me to that moment of feeling unfamiliarly at peace. I also got a birthday card with a tenner in it which is just the best. 

I moved out of Fartford (!!) and into a great new flat in London that is perhaps just a bit noisy but totally worth the excitement of the neighborhood. My bedroom faces the courtyard of the building so I started sleeping with earplugs because the neighbors have a habit of exaggerated late night sexual intercourse. My bike hasn't yet been stolen and only once in a while does the hot water tank stop working AND the engineer pulled an entire ecosystem out of our laundry filter last week which means the spin cycle now works like a breeze! Still can't figure out why my towels have gone from soft to irreparably crunchy after a single wash, but there is a tequila bar opening next door in October so it really feels like divine intervention has befallen upon East London!

My new job is great although partially if not totally indirectly responsible for aforementioned weight gain secondary to the alcohol consumption that is expected though not explicitly written into my contract. Sometimes  at after work socials I have to lie about the fact that I'm drinking gin and tonic when it's actually just sparkling water with lemon because at the end of the day I am still a doctor and trying not to die of end stage liver disease which in my personal and professional opinion is really one of the worst ways to go. I guess it also seems that the whole of England was traumatized by a few isolated hot days this summer and consequentially left the AC and fans on maximum despite the office temperature being colder than the Soviet Vostok Station. But I fucking love my job and the people with whom I work and it's the greatest decadence to actually have time to drink a cup of water in the day and then pee it out! 

And then there was the family vacation in Greece. I haven't had one of those for 17 years and it was as lovely as it was cataclysmic. Start with twelve family members of a common surname of which myself and my 23 year old cousin were the only two not coupled up. I always thought the piteous attitude implied with flying solo was too cliche to matter but now I have changed my mind and wholly committed to avoiding romantic or family functions in the future where it implies holding the candle. Loneliness and boredom aside, this country still requires toilet paper (which is ONE-PLY AND VERY COARSE) to be binned rather than flushed, there is also an infestation of stray cats and wasps that preclude one from eating a meal in peace. A simple lunch of french fries requires a racket that electrocutes those satanic pests, if you're fast enough to catch them. 

Then on Friday the 13th the ants invaded all the walnuts and cereal, and the electricity went out due to a fire on the island (suspected arson!) This for some reason also meant that the pump on the pool stopped working, causing the water level to go down by almost half in a few hours. And then the water supply to the villa went which meant no handwashing, no pooping, no showers. My aunt had to wash my cousins hair for her with sparkling water. I guess I didn't mind that part as much because it gave me an excuse to pop a squat and go for a whizz behind the tree in the backyard. Peeing in nature I find really connects me with the universe. On a positive note, when I developed a wicked sore throat and diagnosed myself with tonsilitis, all it took was walking to the local pharmacy and demanding a course of amoxicillin which they gave me for €1.90. I mean, this kind of uncomplicated healthcare really suits me. 

Now the winter is coming and I'm starting to dream of the next escape, somewhere with no ants, a functional sewage system, less subject to arson, and where I can pee in nature. 

Parachuting

And just like that, my foundation clinical training was complete. Well to be fair it wasn't really "just like that". Even through a slightly stiffer upper lip that the Brits have taught me, my inner drama queen knows for real it was two years of debilitating anxiety, fear, tears, anger, hysteria and paranoia. Night shifts, weekend shifts, long day shifts, thankless shifts, thematic cardiac arrest shifts, and heart wrenching soul destroying 'i can't do this anymore' shifts.  But thank God for the innate fortitude of humans , plus the psychological therapy, strategically placed vacations, pills, Google (for all the times i searched "how to love yourself"), and of course the most amazing colleagues, friends and family who supported me to survive these years that could have otherwise rendered my gene pool extinct. It feels good to be done! I am now taking a year away from the hospital to pursue a desk job where I've got 99 problems but a pager ain't one! A job that doesn't enforce being bare below the elbows, nor prohibits hand jewelry or nail polish, and allows me to wear my hair down. I'm about to be fabulous and spring back 100000X extra for years of repression by painting my nails every which way and wearing all the jewels I own at the same time. 

At one point last January I did try to intercalate some fabulosity by getting eyelash extensions. I worked a night shift that same day and remember how ashamed I felt with my peacock feathers batting away like a stripper in scrubs as I told a family that their relative was dying. (by the way I LOVED those extensions, 5 stars would come again). When you are a doctor, you are never off the clock. I first learned this just weeks after I graduated from medical school and was in a liquor shop in the Hamptons and one of my friends told the shop owner I was a fresh MD. The shop owner then told the next random customer who entered that I was a new doctor, inciting this patron (without a margin of hesitation) to confide in me that she hadn't opened her bowels for 3 weeks and could I please give her some advice? I certainly wouldn't call up my plumber to ask for some free advice, but hey ho, it's an honor to be entrusted! 

I have skated off to Hungary for a few days to spend some time with family. I have been sleeping loads especially during the day which I attribute to finally being at peace but also to my tiny mother's monstrous snoring the last two nights. I can't even believe that a noise like that could come out of such a tiny head/body and even overpower my earplugs, melatonin and benzodiazepines. Meanwhile my poor competency in Hungarian limits my communication with my grandmother and all I can manage to get out is how much I love her baked goods. Bless, she's trying desperately to thicken me up and prepare me for uxorial life before it's too late. The first of which manifested by her dressing me up like the Real Housewives of Eastern Europe:

Then she tried to give me these:

I started laughing hysterically and she rebutted by telling me these panties were very beautiful, of silk and lace! I told her there was no way she would ever have grandchildren were I to accept them (and my mother chimed in that they were too small for me anyway), but that I would take them back to London in the event I ever conquered my fear of sky diving and could avoid having to pay for the parachute. 

If anyone knows a good boyfriend, please let her know. 

detox

Another month down and only one to go before Fartford becomes a vision of my past. Between a manic stretch of back to back day and night on-calls coupled with the miracle that is the capacity for human adaptation, the time has passed faster than a libidinous politician could disgrace his own reputation. 

Further to this, I have received my first gifts from a fan! As a side, I implore any of you who read this blog and benefit either by laughter or engendered gratitude knowing that by comparative analysis your home life is really actually very nice and mine is really actually very shitty(!) to please also send presents. I just love presents! In this month I have received a very decadent memory foam pillow to support a situation that put into question my heart health. I also received an American-sized jug of bleach to detox my dormitory, and a container of melatonin gummies that are so delicious I can't stop ingesting 1.5mg a pop artificially flavored grape somnolence buttons and then snoozing in inappropriate places and times. I also received some wine and Prosecco to keep me entertained in my own company, because those who know me know that to enjoy my own company my brain must be maximally silenced. Oh, I even got a spray painted skull of some unknown wild animal with tiny horns. Not sure what to make of that one. 

I did another mandatory load of laundry. Turning underwear inside out to avoid a wash cannot be applied to bath towels. So I threw them all in, closed the door and hit start. This was met with immediate regret, and whilst I rushed to abort the mission and remove my dirty but soulfully untarnished towels, the machine was resolute in holding my items hostage until the cycle had been completed. And when it was, three hours later, I retrieved my items smelling this time not of fried potatoes, but of fresh human excrement. 

I finished my last long stretch of on calls on Wednesday at 11pm, and had an early morning flight out of London on Thursday, for which I had to pack the morning of because the suitcase I use for travel is also the device I use as a makeshift set of drawers to contain the items that cannot fit in my "closet". The suitcase occupies 85 percent of my floor space which means I also can't fully open the door to my room, turning micturition into a creative display of me sucking in and shimmying through the crack in the door to access the bog. This also means I have to empty the suitcase of the things unnecessary for travel and store them on my bed. Hence I can't pack in advance. Well I could, but then I'd have to sleep in my suitcase. But this is all just to say that I have now fekked off to Milan and carted straight up to Switzerland, into the arms of the ones I love, the pine trees, the mountains, and the smell of bovine excrement, which I can say from experience is far superior to the human equivalent.