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I had a unique day yesterday. Shobhit picked me up at work shortly after 2:00 and I took the rest of the afternoon off. I have never taken PTO for a partial day, mostly because Jennifer G told me I would never need to after she declared I was on salary, years ago. Our time sheets have half-day as an option on them for PTO, which did not used to be the case. I suppose technically these days I would be expected to use that if I took fully half the day off, but even in that case I never have. In my defense even in these changing times, I worked more than half a day yesterday. I worked about 68% of a day!
Anyway. He drove me to
Harborview Medical Center for my second dose of the monkeypox vaccine. I could be wrong about this, but I don't think I am: I'm pretty sure I've never been to that hospital. Seattle has hospitals bursting from its seams, three major medical centers on First Hill alone (Virginia Mason, where my primary care physician is; Swedish and Kindred Hospital), and Harborview is actually widely regarded as the third as it's huge in its own right, but just south of First Hill in Yesler Terrace. In any case, the Sexual Health Clinic on the 11th floor is where we went to get our vaccines.
Shobhit actually had gotten his the day before, which was a massive convenience for me, because I wouldn't have had a clue where to go, and Shobhit had already been escorted there on Monday so he was the one who escorted me this time. There's actually a covid testing site about a block away and he had asked somewhere there where to go for monkeypox vaccines, and someone actually walked him all the way there. For me, I didn't have to ask anyone. Shobhit and I just walked right up there, once we parked in the garage, whose rate was free for the first 30 minutes. And it only took us 17 minutes.
The clinic closes at 3:00, and honestly the thing that took me the longest was filling out all the paperwork. Shobhit's impatience was a little crazymaking for a moment; he clearly didn't think I was going fast enough and declared that I should just fold the papers over the top of the clipboard rather than put each page I just finished in the back of my stack. He even went so far as to grab the clipboard out of my hands and rearrange the papers. This only resulted in one of the pages getting dropped, so I don't know what the fuck he thought he was accomplishing. We literally had 45 minutes to spare, what was the hurry? Jesus Christ.
Beyond that, it was interesting to me that they just took my word for it that I already had my first dose, didn’t ask for paperwork or anything, and just labeled my paperwork as "second dose." It was also striking to me to see basically exclusively gay men there, all to get the monkeypox vaccine—or, excuse me, "men who have sex with men." It was like being at a clinic in Provincetown or something. One tall skinny guy had rather short shorts on. In any event, given
the qualifications given for who currently can get monkeypox vaccines, it was not lost on me that basically all the patients there were gay guys who like to
fuck.
The doctor who administered my vaccine, as I noted yesterday and as Shobhit had already noted it to be the new approach where they inject 1/5 the previous dosage amount just under the surface of the skin (our first dose in Vancouver at the end of July had been a regular shot, full dose), was a young Black man who very much gave off "straight guy" vibes, but then, what do I know? "Gaydar" isn't really a thing anymore. And, presumably the medical professionals there were volunteering for this task so they likely consider it important. It's occurring to me just now that there's no less chance of this guy being a man who has sex with men than anyone else, regardless of perceived demeanor. In fact there might even be a slightly higher chance, given the task he was volunteering for. (I'm sure he still gets paid. I just mean he's doing this as opposed to other doctorly duties.)
Shobhit came in with me and even held my hand while I predictably hyperventilated. You'd think I'd start to get over that by now. Whatever. Shobhit's being there didn't make me hyperventilate any less than I would have otherwise, but it was still sweet that he insisted on being there. It at least partially made up for his impatience with the paperwork.
The doctor did say that reactions to this version of the vaccine are different. I had a minor sort of welt on the injection site from the first dose for a full two weeks; a tiny remnant of it can still be felt even now. That shot was injected on my arm below my shoulder. This one was injected midway down the inside of my forearm, and he put a band-aid on it with the pad part raised so it did not touch the spot. I guess injecting just below the surface of the skin creates a bit of a "bubble," something I did not want to see and did not look at, and then the skin slowly absorbs it over time. I don't really see any kind of bubble now, but I do have some itching as predicted. Shobhit did too. In neither case does it seem to be too severe.
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When we got home, with lots of time to spare, we stopped by the p-patch so Shobhit could check on and water his garden plots. I accidentally broke through a single line of a spider web that was stretched between plants in two different plots, across the walkway between them. I saw a wrapped bee in the web now jostling a lot more in the breeze, and assumed I might see the spider return to attend to it after I hobbled its home. I was right, and found myself deeply fascinated by it, checking on the body of the bee and then resecuring strands of its web to more branches of the plant it was on.
I took some close-up pictures and even a brief video. The things a spider can do with its own body, the strength of its web production in relation to the size of its body, is truly astonishing.
I think Spider-Man would be a lot more interesting if he also spun his web out of his own butt.
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I decided to make chai, since it was so much earlier than usual that I was home. It was a very filling thing to consume, and I wound up just having nothing more than a single samosa for dinner. This worked out well for me as my weight was down this morning.
Shobhit had a potato dish made already and decided to make samosas with it, and what was left of the dough he'd made puris with the night before. This was fantastic for me as we're having an "office barbecue potluck" today and until this, I wasn't sure I'd be able to bring anything. There was barely enough dough left to make ten samosas. One of them had too many holes in the dough so that was the one I ate last night, rather than bring it today. Thus, today I brought nine. They don't have cheese or paneer in them as usual, and the filling is a bit wetter than usual, but they still work. I'm confident people will like them.
Shobhit and I also watched a couple episodes of
What We Do In the Shadows, which we're finally getting back into together, but he kept falling asleep. So, I went back to the bedroom to attend to digitizing old "talk-tapes" I recorded with Christopher.
Listening to the most recent one, recorded on Thanksgiving Day at his and Katina's house in 1998, was rather interesting, for multiple reasons. There was a moment when Danielle came over; she still lived in Spokane at the time. She actually brought a pie for us. Also, she brought up a gay friend named John who she said she had known for five years, and apparently had seen me in a photo at her apartment and declared he thought I was super good looking. I did not remember any of this, when I heard it again last night, for clearly the first time since recording it 24 years ago. I even got Danielle on FaceTime to ask her about this "John" guy, and she couldn't remember him either! Odd for a friend she apparently knew for several years, but Danielle said last night that she'd had a busy day and was "brain dead." All righty.
I had even gotten on Facebook to see if she had any Facebook friends named John. Nope. I mentioned that to her on the call, and she was in the middle of dinner with the girls. Morgan got on at one point, and she asked, "What are you doing?" I said, "I kind of just said." She replied, "Facebook stalking my mom's friends?" Ha! I guess so, yeah.
Anyway. In 1998, I had only been out for two years. I still identified as bisexual at the time, even though that was never actually true (I lied even to myself about that for three years after first coming out). It would be another six years before I even lost my virginity. So when Danielle asks, on the tape, "Do you want to meet my friend John?" I was just like, "I don't know." I don't sound scared on the tape, but I guarantee you I would have been had I actually met the guy. Which I clearly never did.
It's been an interesting experience listening to all these audio recordings for the first time since the nineties. Quite the time warp. On the 1998 Thanksgiving tape, in the background you can hear Christopher's stereo playing the 1998 Marilyn Manson album
Mechanical Animals, which I used to own. I actually do kind of like that album, and having my Apple Music subscription sure made it easy just to bring that right up and listen to it again this morning. That CD was tossed and forgotten when I got rid of the vast majority of my CDs many years ago, but hearing it again today brought back its familiarity. I still have my records of how many times I listen to any given album each year, though, which allows me to tell you this: I heard that album for the first time today since 2000. Between 1998 and 2000, I listened to it 21 times. Now I've listened to it 22 times.
I've never listened to a single other album by that guy.
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[posted 1:02 pm]
