Out of My Comfort Zone and Into the Nail Salon

So for the past 7 years I have carted Other Bill to and from appointments with a plethora of MD specialists. Dermatologists, Ocular Oncologists, and Paleontologists, because we are getting old as dinosaurs. I consider it an honor and nothing more than my husbandly duties. But throughout the Covid years, it has been especially irritating, because instead of sitting in an air conditioned waiting room, I’ve been reduced to uncomfortably squirming in my hot car for hours while he gets tortured alone by various physicians. Now and then he wants to “Do Something Special” for me, which usually takes the form of a seafood dinner or a pulled pork sandwich from our favorite barbecue place.

 

So last week he made the “Do Something Special” announcement, but it took a different turn this time. Instead of shrimp and crab claws, he said he wanted us to go get pedicures.

 

I was skeptical and hesitant. The last time I thought about anything pedicure related was when I heard the appalling news of a coworker who had to go to the hospital for IV antibiotics after a bad pedicure left her with a nasty, ugly, painful infection.

 

My response to his idea was one word: “Why?”

 

Now I’m sure there are actually some straight men who get pedicures, and I suspect there is a greater percentage of gay men who partake in foot related hygiene. I have, however, gone nearly 65 years without paying someone to touch my feet. The little homophobe I carry around in my head tells me it is just unmanly. I consider it a silly luxury done mostly by Karens who do nothing but complain, beginning with the clipping and not ending until the undertipping. Besides, people don’t want to be looking at my ugly feet. My baby toes are bizarrely curly-cued, and I have a ganglion cyst on my left ankle. They are also OLD feet, and my toenails are rapidly starting to look like the thick, yellowed clippings that Nancy Reagan, according to her diary, found in Miss Lillian Carter’s bedroom of the White House when they moved in.

 

Other Bill said there was a guy in his office who swore by pedicures and got them all the time. The guy is straight, which perplexed my little internal homophobe guy.

 

Thinking that I would be a lot happier with an all-you-can-eat stone crab claw dinner, but remembering the gift-horse-in-the-mouth thing, I figured I could gently get him to change his mind.

 

“Where do you want to get it done?” I asked, knowing he hadn’t researched anything, and I was right.

 

“I don’t know, the closest one, I guess,” he said.

 

I made a face and then described my co-worker’s infection. In vivid, full-color detail that I made up. I lied about things like purple pus, Novocaine-free incisions, and radical pain.

 

He said he would research it. The next day he came home with a name of a place. No one recommended it to him, and when I pressed him and on the location, it was, shockingly, the one that was closest to us. Clearly he had Yelped “Nail salons near me.”

 

“Let me do some research,” I said, figuring I could come up with dozens of excuses as to why it wasn’t convenient to do research. 

 

Nevertheless, I searched for the best pedicure, just in case. The highest recommended joint was in Miami Beach, a city that is closed off to people who are as unattractive as we are. They have gated checkpoints. Even if we could forge the online screening and the notarized selfie-uploading process and get an appointment, we would probably have to pay $50 more just to park.

 

The next highest rated on the list was, oddly enough, The One Closest To Us.

 

I was hoping if I said nothing, he would just forget about it and bring home a nice fish instead.

He didn’t. After asking me about my research, I told him the name of the one I found, hoping he wouldn’t put two and two together and say, “Isn’t that the one I found?” To his credit, he remained mute, but I did notice the Eyebrow Arc of Irony.

 

So he made appointments, and I reluctantly drove us there, wishing, like Elaine on Seinfeld, that I was fluent in Korean so I would know what the technicians were saying about my calloused, nasty, 65-years-of-neglect, Lillian Carter dogs.

 

So, you know those wonderful massage chairs we used to go sit in at the mall until the manager of The Sharper Image threatened to call the police unless we left? This pedicure place HAD THOSE! 

 

True, I was way out of my comfort zone at this joint, but some mechanical neck-kneading was just the thing for it.

 

So soon my technician arrived with a box of unknown liquids and tools. I told her it was my first time, and she -smiled. I sensed she didn’t understand me or, more likely, was thinking, Great, another gaebul-headed jerk who doesn’t know he’s supposed to tip me.

 

She gave me a menu of pedicure choices, one of which was a vegan pedicure, which made me wonder if I had to eat my toenail clippings. I selected the midrange one, and was prompted to order a flavor of sugar scrub. Being a native Floridian, I chose tangerine.

 

She put a foot bath condom over the soaking bucket and a towel on the footrest, and before I could blink she had clipped all my toenails with the speed of a Weed Eater. She then pointed to the water, directing me to soak my feet for a few minutes in a hot bath. It felt really good. After that she took out my left foot and held up something that looked like a dental tool, but it was a tiny spoon-shaped pedicure pusher-backer. Then with speedy precision she snipped away my ugly overgrown toenail foreskin. Amazing! 

 

The best part, though was this: After she put some sort of goop all over my feet, she whipped out this cheese grater and started painlessly scraping all my callouses and dead skin off. And there was a lot of it. Sixty-five years of it, to be exact. Other Bill pointed it out to me, and I looked down, and saw this mountain of Parmesan heaped up on a towel.

 

“Gross!” I said.

 

Other Bill, who is connected to my brain via Bluetooth, made the cheese connection and said, “We should have spaghetti for dinner tonight!”

 

Then came the orangey sugar scrub, a big glob of moisturizer that she rubbed from toes to knees, a brief leg massage, and finally, steaming hot towels. Just as if my feet were flying first class.

 

I am a changed man. I don’t care who makes fun of it. When I touched my feet, they didn’t even seem like mine. “I’ve never had soft feet before,” I told Other Bill.

 

I was allowed to remain in the chair until Other Bill was finished off. Embarrassingly, his cheese scrapings couldn’t hold a candle to what I had sloughed off.

 

I really enjoyed the whole experience. It has totally opened my mind. Now I’m wondering what other services I have missed out on that I might now experience. Waxing? Eyebrow threading? Anal bleaching? Maybe next time Other Bill wants to Do Something Special for me, he’ll hire me a muscular, curly-haired green-eyed Italian hustler for an hour or two. Or maybe…MAYBE a female prostitute.

 

Probably not. A man has to draw the line somewhere.

 

They Really Should Warn You About This.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

For years my urinalyses have indicated trace amounts of blood. My old MD said it was probably because of the blood thinners I have been eating from conception until this very day. My new doctor, an osteopath, said maybe it was time to have that checked out and referred me to a urologist. 

 

The first visit was very sublime. The office was just a table with paper on it, a stool and a chair. He prescribed for me a CT scan, and said when I came back, he would look into my bladder to see what was going on. He asked me if it was all right to examine my penis, and since I’ve never said no to any man who asked me that question, I agreed.

I guessed that at my next appointment he would be putting a teeny, tiny, possibly microscopic camera in my wee-wa under general anesthesia, but when I confirmed it, the urologist said, no, but  “we’ll make sure you’re very numb.” Fine. Let’s just get it over with and confirm the Coumadin culprit, and I’ll be on my merry way.

 So I got the CT scan, no problem, and returned to the uro, and on the way I convinced myself that there would be no insertion into any orifices, but  I would swallow a salt-grained size video camera instead of having, say a Polaroid Land Camera jammed up my urethra.
I was escorted into this room that was waaay different than the previous appointment’s room. The first thing I noticed was this giant chair with stick man legs and feet. On the seat and floor were Great Dane-sized, absorbent doggy pee-pads.

Jesus, I thought, did they mix me up with someone who was having an abortion, or maybe the CT scan revealed I was pregnant, and they were terminating my pregnancy? I began to quiver.

The next thing I noticed was a large, pre-loaded syringe with an unusually large needle. I thought that this was the lidocaine that they were going to inject into my quivering schmeckle, but there was also a band-aid next to it. Now, how in the hell were they getting a band-aid to stick to that?    

I turned around to see a cart with a computer monitor on it, and next to it was what looked like one of those wands you pull out of a tube at a do-it-yourself car wash. It was soaking in a large clear tube containing—what—sulfuric acid? This was nothing shy of a Halloween Horror Night torture chamber. Although during my tenure as a homosexual, I had met many a penis that could most likely easily accommodate this wand, mine was not among those so gifted. Far from it. I broke out in a sweat.

The final thing I observed was a scoop of clear wet gel that looked like, and I’m dating myself here, Flubber (Google it). Next to it was a syringe full of lidocaine, this one with no needle, just a ridged tip. Finally there was this metal wire thing that looked very similar to the speculum they put in Other Bill’s eye to stretch open his upper and lower eyelids before his monthly eye shot. Where was this instrument going, and what would it stretch. I had a pretty good idea, so all I could do was sit down, whimper and weep.  

 
The doctor then came in. “How are you doing?” He said.

“I’M FREAKING OUT!” I said, using my outside voice.

He tried to calm me down and went through what he was going to do. “First, we”ll give you a shot of an antibiotic—”

“Where?” I interrupted, gazing with terror at the needle in the syringe.

“In your butt,” he said.

I let out a huge sigh of relief. Like a deflated balloon. No needle to the pecker.

He continued, “Then the nurse will sterilize your penis.”

I pictured a vat of boiling water. Then: Wait, did he say nurse? Probably a female nurse? I surely didn’t sign up for that. The last time I exposed myself to women was 20 years ago when I was still attractive enough to be allowed on a nude beach. And at least I got to see their goodies too. Not that I wanted to.

“Then the nurse will squirt some lidocaine into your urethra, and we’ll wait until you are good and numb and then do the procedure.” 

He didn’t elaborate on what “the procedure” involved.

“It’ll only take 30 seconds or so. You will experience some discomfort, but it’ll be in and out before you know it.”

I was drenched in sweat. I looked over at the car wash wand and then back at the doctor.

“Do you want to do it or not?” Doc asked.

I’d be a lot more willing if I had a Valium,” I said, sucking sweat from my mustache.

He totally ignored that. If he were a top-notch doctor, he would have pulled a bottle from his pocket and offered me two or three. Instead, he was probably thinking “Great, another junkie.”

“So do you want to have it done or not?” He repeated.

I’ll give him this: at least he offered me an out.

I sighed and consented.

“Great, just remove everything from the waist down, and the nurse will be in in a minute,” said he, before I had a chance to change my mind. 

There was a paper blanket now on the octopus big stick-man-legs chair. I didn’t know if I was supposed to move and sit in the chair, or leave my bare ass sitting in the vinyl chair I was in. I opted for the latter, because it was farther away from where the nurse would enter. I modestly covered myself with my shorts and underwear as the nurse came in.

She was a jovial Jamaican woman who came in and said, “Oh no, baby, I need you in the big chair, but first stand up and face the wall, and I’ll give you your shot.”

When I was a kid, I was sick a lot. I frequently visited my chain-smoking pediatrician for tetracycline shots, an antibiotic no longer in use because it forever stains your permanent teeth a dark yellow. The shots were thick. It felt like they were injecting a quart of Miracle Whip into my ass. This shot, however, was almost painless, thank you Jesus.

She caught me cowering at the car wash wand. “Has that been autoclaved?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she laughed, “too big for the autoclave.”

That’s exactly what I needed to hear. “But it is sterile, though, right?” After all, I didn’t give up penetrative sex in the AIDS era only to be infected with god-knows-what.

“Of course,” she comforted.

After the shot she had me sit in the big chair, and she said she was going to wash my penis, put some numbing gel in it, and then clamp it.

“CLAMP?” I said, once again using my outside voice.

“Yes, it won’t hurt. It’s just to keep the gel in.”

So it was a clamp, not a stretch-me-out speculum. They really should give you a briefing on these foreign objects before the patient is allowed to draw terrifying conclusions.

She then bathed my organ in cold betadine. I was surprised that she could even see the little fella, because it, and the rest of my body shriveled up in terror. The goop and the clamp followed, and she said the doctor would be in shortly.

This gave me time to ponder why anyone in their right mind would choose to be a urology nurse.  Is there something rewarding about giving penis baths and clamping dicks that would steer one into this career path? I mean, I guess it is a little more attractive than a proctology nurse. Does the RN salary rise with the scale of the gross-o-meter?

Soon the doctor came back in, with yet a different female nurse, and my blood pressure spiked. 

As he donned gloves, he said, “I’ve never had this procedure done to me, but I did do it to my father.” 

He must really hate his father, I thought.

“You know, I said, “all rookie cops, before they are allowed out on the road, are mandated to be tased,” 

“All of them?” He asked.

“All of them,” I emphasized. “So you should try it.”

He pulled the car wash wand out of its soupy tube, and he said, “I promise to be as gentle and as cautious with you as I was with my father.”

This meant nothing to me. Maybe his father abused him as a child, and that was how he finally got his revenge.

Then I felt this painful poking and stretching down there. I was gnashing my teeth.

“I can’t seem to get through,” he told me. “Your pee-hole is too small.”

He actually used the word pee-hole. So great, in addition to pain and suffering, he added to that size-shaming. And in front of the nurse, who instinctively knew what to do when he told her to go get the sound.

Because I look at a lot of porn, I already know what a sound is. There are some men out there who find erotic pleasure having stainless steel rods inserted into their pee-holes all the way down through the urethra into their bladders. Maybe some women enjoy it as well, but I don’t watch that side of porn. I’m not judging, just having a hard time understanding. Which is the exact sentence my mother used when I came out to her.

So  the cold metal tapered rod, the circumference of a magic marker was then brought into my view.

“Oh my god!” I shrieked, as my eyes rolled up in my head. Picture Bill Murray in Steve Martin’s dental chair in Little Shop of Horrors. But an eye-roll of fear, not anticipatory pleasure.

“It’s okay,” he said, “I’m not going to put it all the way in.”

Was that supposed to bring me comfort?

Then there was this horrendous sharp pain when the sound went in, and again when it went out. 

Then at last the wand went in. And in. And further in. The doctor was trying to talk me through it by telling me to inhale and exhale deeply. All I could do was push on the stirrups. 

My fight or flight response was pushed all the way over to flight.

An image came up on the screen, and I didn’t look at it. The doctor was using his whole body to twist the car washer to get a panoramic view of my bladder.

“I don’t see any cancer cells,” he mused.

I didn’t care. I just wanted it out.

“Oh, but I do see thickening of the bladder wall. Look at the screen. See that? That’s your prostate. See how it is choking your bladder? See those wrinkles there?” Those are stretch marks.”

Thirty seconds my ass. Surely I’d been in agony over an hour. Finally he retracted the wand, which was just as painful coming out as it was going in.

“Do you feel the urgency to pee?” He asked.

Yes, and the urgency to run like hell.

“Okay, we’ll get you cleaned up and you can use the toilet,” he said. The toilet being a potty chair in that room that funneled down into a plastic jar.

The doctor left, and the nurse lifted the lid. “You can stand or sit, just make sure it goes through the funnel.”

I was feeling too faint to stand, so I skittered over to the toilet and sat down. Peeing right next to a nurse. This whole event was an exercise in humiliation.  I looked over at the big chair.  The Puppy Pee Pads were drenched, and I noticed my ass was wet. Without my knowing it there had been some kind of fluid (perhaps windshield washer fluid to keep the camera lens clean?) being pumped into me during the procedure.

The nurse finished entering data and said, “The doctor will be back soon. Have a nice day!”

“Too late,” I said, looking down at at my sad, bleeding willy.

While I was was waiting, I wondered why, in the name of God, you get to have twilight anesthesia during a colonoscopy, but with this you get only a squirt of clear toothpaste up your wiener that doesn’t do shit.

The doctor came back in and said that if I didn’t have surgery, I could look forward to a lifetime of catheter wearing. “And you don’t want to do that,” he told me.

Maybe I do, I thought. Maybe I could learn, like porn star amateurs, to enjoy sliding things in and out of my winkie the rest of my life.

He explained the surgery, and being the junkie I am, I got excited that it would be under general anesthesia. He explained he would go up there again and shave down my prostate to its 16-year-old dimensions. I immediately pictured him sticking up there a Norelco Triple-Header or a belt sander. 

He further explained that after I recovered, the down side would be that I could still get a boner and have an orgasm, but I wouldn’t be able to ejaculate.

Why is that a down side? Was I expecting at this age to become a father? With whom?

The hell with it. I’ll suffer through the surgery, and screw the retrograde ejaculations. Think of the money I’ll save on paper towels.

When I was in second grade, my doctor gave me a book to take home called “A Visit to the Hospital,” which explained in 7-year-old language what would happen when I got my tonsils taken out. Here and now, I am offering to pen “A Visit to the Urologist”, suitable for senior citizens, that explains that no one is going to stick a needle in your tinkler, and that metal thing is a painless clamp, not a pee-hole dilator.

I don’t think I’ll mention the sound, though. Some people like surprises.

I 

A Trip to the DMV

 

It has been almost eight years since I was last forced to go to the Florida DMV. The last time I went to renew my license, things couldn’t have gone more smoothly. I made an appointment, got there on time, went right in, got my picture taken, paid, and was in and out in ten minutes. 

 

Since then, our thoughtful governor who is fiercely advocating that all Florida residents get injected with the Delta variant, has grasped control of the DMV and turned it into hell on earth. During the early Covid days, they still had appointments, but they were impossible to get. Plus they only scheduled two weeks out and were always booked due to the limited number of appointments each day. And now they don’t even offer appointments.

 

By the way, and I know this has been a long time coming, but I have decided to let everyone know that my gender is now female. It was a difficult decision, and with it came gallons of tears. Like many of my trans/non-binary sisters/its/they-them people, I did not spend months with gender reassignment surgery or grueling laser hair removal (which, if you know me, would have resulted in a 10 pound weight loss), or wardrobe replacement shopping. I became female through a simple typo by the DMV in 2013. I don’t know if it was a homophobic act by one of the snarky, overpaid-for-what-they-do DMV clerks, or just an honest mistake, but my license lists my sex as  F. I noticed it about 5 years ago, but decided to wait until the next renewal so I didn’t have to pay $25 to correct an error (or deliberately hostile act) the DMV made. This is a prime example of the motto of the state of Florida: “Never accept responsibility for your mistakes, unless you can charge for it.”

 

The Florida DMV now allows you to renew your license online with a credit card. But, I found out after searching weeks for a phone number to call, if I wanted to go back to being a testicular hanging person in the eyes of the state, I would have to make a personal visit to Hell and bring 3 forms of government identification: a passport, a certified copy of my birth certificate, and another document. It was as if I were applying for a DOD top secret security clearance.

 

Great. So Other Bill and I took a day to not only renew our licenses, but to get a sticker for our new hybrid car so we have free passage in the I-95 express lane, which also cannot be done online. I carried with me my current passport, my expired passport, a certified birth certificate copy, a photo of my previous driver’s license that listed me as male, as well as my genitals, which I was prepared to put on display if need be.

 

So we got up early and left at 7 am to get to the DMV, which opens at 8 am. When we got there we noticed the line stretched from the entrance to South America, and after fighting to find a place to park, we got in line. There were easily 200 people ahead of us. People in line were sitting in lawn chairs they brought from home. I sat on the wet pavement with a folded beach umbrella. Tropical Storm Elsa was approaching, so I was hoping for a big storm that would chase away the unbrella-ed.  

 

While we were waiting, I wondered how many people in line thought they were there for the virus infusion. Even after the doors opened, the line failed to move. I waited for what seemed like hours but was only five minutes before announcing to the crowd, “Fuck this shit.” We left.

 

Florida, in its infinite wisdom, has contracted with a company to issue tags and titles, so I drove us to one of those joints (after we got back from Brazil). Big bold letters pasted on their windows read, “WE DO NOT RENEW DRIVER LICENSES HERE.”  But I hoped we could still get the hybrid sticker. We got there at 8, and there were only 4 people in front of us. But they didn’t open until 9. Other Bill went home for the house phone so we could pass the hour playing Words With Friends. He also brought back cookies. Gotta love him. So we played for an hour while we inhaled the vape stench of the fourth in line and listened to the off-key hymns sung in Spanish by the first in line. I was glad someone was praying.

 

A little after nine am, Herr Bigshot came out and loudly announced the procedure for registering (via the one kiosk inside the door). He told us there were four fields we had to enter: Cell phone number, first name, last name, and if we were there for vehicle registration, title, or handicap registration. I repeat, four fields.

 

The first three in line each took 10 to 12 minutes (3 minutes per field) to complete this difficult task. Oh, and they all had questions that required lengthy answers.  I tried not to crack molars while weeping and gnashing my teeth.

 

Finally, I registered, and we took a seat. I already had the form filled out, so when we were called, things sailed by quickly, I’ll give them that. I suspected by the attitude and look of our clerk that she was an ex-DMV employee. She had thick glue-on eyelashes that could have easily been pulled off and used as whisk brooms, Ginsu Knife-filed acrylic nails, and her eyebrows had been shaved and redrawn, ala Divine.

 

But we did escape with the sticker. A $5 sticker cost us $8.81 with the contractor’s surcharge.

 

So after all that, I decided that rather than go back to the DMV and wait in the hell line another time, I would just renew it online and keep my state-assigned gender reassignment.

 

So my pronouns are she/her, and I expect you to abide by that.  I will also accept they/them, but only in writing. Thank you very much. And remember: Trans Lives Matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How I Spent My Inauguration Day, by Bill Wiley

 

January 20, 2021

Hello, beautiful, warm Florida winter day. And what a day it would be. The Orange Menace would leave the White House, and sanity in Washington would be restored. On top of that, Other Bill had a 2:45 appointment at Marlins Park to get his first Covid vaccine. It only took 109 phone calls to try to get scheduled the previous day, but by gum we had done it.

 

I was not fortunate enough to qualify for getting a vaccine due to the vast generation gap between Other Bill and me. 21 years to be exact.

 

(Editor’s Note: It’s 21 months, not years.)

 

So at about 1:45 we turned off the TV and got into my 12 year old Honda Civic and headed down to Miami.

 

(Editor’s Note: Due to the advanced age of the author and his illogical fear of getting lost (he does have a GPS), it should be noted that he is terrified to drive down I-95, recently renamed the George Zimmerman Honorary Expressway of Death. After crossing the county line, all music is turned off, and conversation is ceased so all that is audible is the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the driver as luxury SUV’s and sport bikes flip him off and try to run him off the road. And now, back to his story.)

 

We made it confidently and safely to Marlins Park, an enormous baseball stadium that looks like a giant spaceship. There were no vaccination signs, so after passing what I thought were blocks of parked cars, I found a policewoman and asked her where the entrance for the Covid vaccine was.

 

“See these cars?” She asked, doing a sweeping, Carol Merrill arm gesture aligning with the rows of “parked” cars. “This is the line for both testing and vaccines. Go down to 17^th Street and make a left, and find the end of the line.”

 

I thanked her, and we went on our way. Seventeenth Street was 5 blocks away. The end of the line was Mallory Square in Key West. After we arrived, I made a U-turn and began what was to be a generational wait in a car with granite seats.

 

(Editor’s Note: The end of the line was only 7 more blocks.)

 

Thus began hours of horn honking and clogged traffic turning onto 17^th Street. Some entitled cars cut in front of us, and we could do nothing about that, because this is America, and even worse, Miami, and if you want to live, you just assume that everyone has a Glock-in-the-box or an AR-15 on the floorboard. There was one mild altercation with a woman in a giant Lexus (it’s always a Lexus), whom I thought was cutting in front of me, but was just making a turn from the wrong lane. She zipped down her enormous window and cursed a blue streak at me. Fortunately, it was in Spanish, so there was no way for me to be offended, because, um, nolo comprende, as they say in the Latin legal community.

 

At one point a cop came into my view. I could hear him asking the person in front of me if they were there for a test or a vaccine.

 

“Great!” I told Other Bill. “The line should be cut down now, because probably half of these people are here for a test and will go into another lane somewhere.”

 

It was the first of many ultra-naïve statements I would make that day.

 

Indeed, the cop wrote something on the windshield of the car in front of us, and they got out of the line and drove away. So the line decreased not by 50%, but by one car.

 

The officer came and asked me why we were there, and I almost said, “because there’s nothing I like better than idling and wasting gas,” but quickly thought better of it.

 

“We had a 2:45 appointment for a vaccine,” I said. At that time, it was 3:30.

 

“That’s okay,” he said, and he scribbled a day-glo “V” on my windshield, and we proceeded with the speed of a banana slug.

 

“So what time do you think I’ll get the shot?” Other Bill asked me.

 

“Hmmm, I don’t know, 4:30?”

 

That was ultra-naïve statement number two.

 

An hour later, or was it two? Who knows. The entire process was a time warp. Anyway, eras later, we pulled into a stadium entrance and the single lanes then became three lanes. Now we were progressing, I thought.

 

That was unspoken ultra-naïve statement #3.

 

Not long after that, everything stopped. No one moved for a half hour. People began getting out of their cars. To stretch, to smoke. I got out, brushed the granite dust off of me,  and did some attempts at toe-touches. It was then I looked back and saw that the long line behind us had disappeared. What had happened? Were they sent home? This was unanswered question number one.

 

We both began worrying that due to the prolonged stationary status of the cars, combined with the disappearance of the line behind us, they had run out of the vaccine. I thought it would only be a matter of minutes before they would make us turn around and go home.

 

(Editor’s Note: Nothing about this prolonged shit show was measured in a “matter of minutes.”)

 

Many moons later, traffic began to crawl again until we reached a turn in the road.  More delays as three lanes were merged into two. As we made the turn, I assumed we were now in the final stretch of the process.

 

That was mega-naïve assumption #1.

 

Not long afterward, the 12 year old Honda Crapper began to complain. When I stepped on the gas, it sputtered and snorted and stalled. Repeatedly. Visions of pushing a dozen-year old piece of junk the rest of the way danced in my head. I wondered how many people in line were running on empty. There would be money to be made here as a gasoline vendor or snack seller.

 

I eyed two porta-potties that were put out for law enforcement use. I had earlier consumed my recommended daily allowance of iced Diuretic Tea, and although I didn’t  have to go, I thought it would be a wise idea. Since we were once again not moving, I put on my rubber gloves and adjusted my N-95 mask and proceeded to go to the can.

 

(Editor’s Note: Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, the author has become a paranoid germaphobe. He has had to file environmental impact statements with the EPA due to the volume of PPE he’s gone through. He is easily spotted at Aldi, being the only one wearing an Ebola-grade hazmat suit with taped gloves and cuffs. He keeps a bottle of isopropyl alcohol in his crappy Honda Civic for post-possible-exposure gargling and nasal snorting. “It may sting a bit,” he says, “but it kills bugs dead, like Raid.” And now, back to his show.)

 

After that, I threw out my gloves and went and cleaned my hands.

 

(Editor’s note: That would be a Silkwood shower with the above mentioned alcohol with a side of Brillo.)

 

There was a cop at the “last” turn in the road, and Other Bill asked her if she knew how much longer it would be.

 

“Mmmm, probably two more hours,” she said.

 

It was then I wanted to go pick a fight with one of the people who had earlier cut in front of me. With any luck, maybe he would shoot me in the head. We were already on hour 3.

 

Instead I insisted that Other Bill go use the Porta-Potty. 

 

“But I don’t have to go,” he said, like a toddler.

 

“Will you be able to say that in two hours when you can’t get back to the john?”

 

Reluctantly, he complied and then came back and washed his hands.

 

(Editor’s Note: Other Bill thinks the author’s worries about sanitation are ridiculous, but he nevertheless appeases him by washing his hands in isopropyl whenever he touches something.)

 

There was another lengthy pause with no movement. Were the shot-givers taking a lunch break? Unanswered question #2.

 

In time, an official with an iPad stopped at our card. “Do you have your bar code?” He asked.

 

“I never got a bar code,” Other Bill said.

 

“They should have sent you a bar code,” he said.

 

OB then tried to shift the blame to me, “Did you get a bar code?”

 

Let us take a short time out to talk about Other Bill’s complete inability to comprehend technology. Every time he has to sign in to an app, he doesn’t remember his login credentials, and then gets mad at the laptop for not letting him change the password. I have watched him look for hours to try to locate the Escape key on his keyboard. I have endlessly shown him how to share a URL, yet he still struggles mercilessly. The primary macro that runs in his brain is text that reads: “I don’t know how to do that.”

 

Editor’s Note: Other Bill just finished reading the above paragraph and didn’t understand it.

 

I am sure there was a bar code on his phone, or in one of three of his email addresses, but he insisted he never got anything.

 

Naturally, he doesn’t have any of those email accounts on his phone, because his phone is pretty much a single-task machine. Making calls is its only function.

 

So then I began the Herculean task of trying to install his Gmail account on my phone. My phone is a 2006 Android relic that should be hanging in a technology museum somewhere. We were in the heart of Miami, yet I could not get a signal. Then we began worrying that if we couldn’t get the damn bar code we’d have to go home. 

 

“What’ll happen if we can’t find the bar code?” Other Bill asked the portly official.

 

“Well, you can still stay in line and see if the nurses will still give it to you.”

 

I hadn’t cried for a long time. It had been hours since my ugly Lucy-esque bawling during the inauguration when the poet spoke. I felt that familiar tingle in my sinuses.

 

(Editor’s Note: It was the isopropyl.)

 

Cowering in fear, we soon were approached by Ashley. Sweet and understanding and well-informed Ashley, who also had an iPad, but also had an alphabetized list that was as thick as the Biden family Bible seen earlier that day. Other Bill’s name was on that list, so in no time he was registered, and she put another mark on our windshield. We were so grateful and relieved that we are going to buy her a Mercedes SUV.

 

(Editor’s Note: No, they won’t.)

 

There was another tortured lifetime of no movement, so I decided to walk up to try to see the front of the line. I walked up until I could see a tent, which I assumed was the vaccination site. That was mega-naïve assumption #2.

 

I told Other Bill when I got back that there were “only” about 30 cars to the tent.

 

The sun was setting, but we stayed put.

 

The two adjacent lanes split off. We passed the empty decoy tent I saw earlier and made another turn into a dirt parking lot with another 18 blocks’ worth of zig-zagging cars. Suddenly, I felt the urge for a cigarette. For the first time in 40 years. I wouldn’t have said no to a bottle of vodka, either.

 

As we joined the zigzag, Other Bill passed the time and started naming drivers for each car. There was Smokey, directly in front of us, who got out of his car every hour and smoked a cigarette.

 

(Editor’s Note: Every time Smokey lit up, your author would shut the car windows to keep out the Covid Smoke Germs.)

 

Each time we zigged or zagged, Other Bill would continue the stories he made up about Smokey, OT (which stood for Old Timer) or Whip, who was the one who always whipped around the hairpin turns, and the woman he called Mo, named for no apparent reason.

 

(Editor’s Note: By this time, the author was biting his tongue, trying his best to not shout out, “Will you please shut the hell up about these characters and get me a Benson and Hedges Menthol Light and a fifth of Absolut?!” He passed the time trying to calculate how much it would cost him to divorce Other Bill. Sadly the bottom line was too much.)

 

I was worried sick about the dog, because she had never been left alone at night this long. By then, I figured, she had already peed in the house. Likewise, I also had to pee again.  I have to confess that during this pandemic I keep a portable urinal in the back seat of my car, because when I take Other Bill to the oncologist in the mornings, I have to sit in the car for hours while he goes down the assembly line of doctors, technicians, and nurses. So while that is going on, I can simply relieve myself into the pot when I’m in the back seat. I figured that it might be just as easy in the front seat. At this point we were too far away from the porta pots and were not allowed to leave our cars. So I set to work.

 

Big mistake. I won’t go into details except to say that I may never wear those pants again.

 

(Editor’s Note: Those pants are still unwashed and in the laundry hamper.)

 

By the time we realized it would be after 8 until we could leave, it was dark as midnight out. After our 18 zigs and zags were complete, another official stopped us and asked us for our consent form.

 

“I don’t have a consent form,” Other Bill told her. I knew it was somewhere in his email with the bar code.

 

The official supplied him with a blank form. 

 

Now, I have been meaning to keep a pen in my car at all times, but they tend to get tucked into a shirt pocket and taken inside the house and then washed in the laundry. All we had was a Sharpie. It wouldn’t do.

 

“Do you have a pen?” Other Bill asked her.

 

“I’ll find you something,” she said, and soon returned with a stubby golf pencil. 

 

Naturally, neither of us brought our reading glasses, because we had no idea we would be filling out a paper form in the dark with a writing device that wouldn’t fit in our hand. Other Bill, with his eye problem was more useless than I was, so I started checking boxes.

 

I came to section 2 of the form, which asked, inexplicably, for insurance information. I was ready to spit nails. Fortunately, the official told us we could skip the insurance data, and Other Bill put his card away, which he couldn’t read. I think it might have actually been his library card, but since it’s not nice to tease the blind, I said nothing.

 

By this time we could see two never-before-seen tents, and we were happy to see masked workers entering data into iPads and giving shots.

 

Then a National Guardsman came by and asked how many shots we were getting.

 

“Just one,” I told him.

 

Oh good grief, I thought, we have sat here six hours, and now they are counting people to see if they have enough vaccines. We gritted our teeth and held our ground.

 

Unknown minutes/hours later, a nurse came and also asked how many in our party were getting shots.

 

“One, unfortunately,” I said solemnly, pointing at Other Bill.  “Just him.” 

 

“Do you want to get one? I can give you one if you want one,” she said.

 

I looked up, and there was a blinding halo glowing around her head, and I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

 

“Are you serious? Really?” I asked, close to tears.

 

(Editor’s Note: Again, isopropyl.)

 

“Sure, no problem,” she said. “Let me get you a consent form.”

 

Other Bill told her he loved her and would have hugged her, had it been legal for him to exit the Civic.

 

We were both ecstatic. We couldn’t believe we were that lucky. She came back with a fresh consent form, and I was shaking as I filled it out with the nub of graphite.

 

The vaccine is very fragile and has an out-of-freezer shelf life of 4 hours. Since we were second-to-dead-last in line by that time, we learned that they had two use-it-or-lose-it syringes left. I was lucky enough to get one of them. 

 

And then, after 6 and a half hours, it finally happened. I have been never been happier to take a needle in the arm in my life.

 

(Editor’s Note: Except for that one time the author tried heroin. JK!)

 

We never got the woman’s name who made our day (and night). But we will find out and buy her a Lamborghini.

 

(Editor’s Note: In the unnamed woman’s wildest dreams.)

 

So after the shot, we were released, and we were ready to get home. The dog was hours late for her evening meal and potty walk. But we couldn’t go yet. We were directed to another lane where we had to sit for another 15 minutes, presumably to be monitored for reactions.

 

And then it was over. We raced home in the I-95 express lane.

 

(Editor’s Note: The author always sets his cruise control at 55 and not a click higher.)

 

It was once again a beautiful day. Biden was in office, Trump was at the beach, sulking and calling attorneys, and the two of us were 50% vaccinated against this horrible disease.

 

And when we arrived, the dog was there, toy in mouth, happy to see us. Miraculously there was no dog poop or pee anywhere. It was a great day after all.

 

(Editor’s Note: Look on the dog’s favorite chair you never use. You’ll find a gift from her.)

 

The best news is, we get to get to go through it all again in 3 weeks.

 

Maybe this time Other Bill will bring his bar code.

Using my unsurpassed skills as a graphic artist, I have made this map of our journey.