Bash Back, Bad Beans, Old Friends

Lessons on Food Poisoning and Compassion

People of Earth! I’ve been home a week, and neither Mic nor I—nor indeed, anyone in close proximity—have developed any symptoms or positive test results of the dreaded virus, so I think we are in the clear. I wish for you and yours the same negative results, though I see people catching a case here and there, I’m so sorry my friends. We got lucky.

I closed the last report at a bar down the street from Pilsen, where Mic and I split a plate of nachos that we both sadly agreed were pretty mediocre. Ah well, we both thought, it’s the company that counts. After he dropped me off at my buddy Dave’s I let myself in and crept up the stairs, grateful for the assurance that all within were deep sleepers. Dave and his family reside in a three-story condo: parents on the ground floor; Dave, Ellen, and Bonanza Jellybean above; Dave’s sister, the Honorable Melissa (she is a judge!) on the top floor. Dave’s brother lives in the converted garage. The backyard is several versions of an outdoor living room—rooftop, featuring a concord grapevine; a covered seating area for weather days and outdoor wicker with a tea table right by the gate, where I eventually had a visit with Dave’s mom Bea. It’s an elegant solution to so many modern questions, and also feels really old fashioned, like, a thousand years old. Condo living as the wattle-and-daub family compound of the post-COVID age.

I woke to a blaring headache, in enough time to see Dave off to school teaching middle schoolers with his smarts, humor, gentleness, and deep compassion. I planned to take the bus, a straight shot down to the Bash Back Convergence secret location, but in addition to the headache I was stuck, as my Oma used to say, on the pot. I always hear her at times like this, her strong German accent in my head, ‘I got the shits!’ Even worse, I had the shits in a house with slow plumbing. Reminded me of visiting New Orleans, needing to flush at least three times with every deposit; also I was trying not to throw up. I took a Covid test, which was negative; it was pretty much due diligence since I was 99% sure it was those nachos getting back at me for rating them mediocre. A text to Mic confirmed that he also had gut rumblings. I donned my n95 mask and walked out the door to see my bus pull away in the pouring rain.

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