Big Pharma Paranoia

I got an invitation to go out last night from one of the gymroids.  It was the first time he had sent the text to me only and not to a group, but I had to decline.  I told him I got double vaxed and that I needed a night to recuperate.  "But," I said, "here's the good news."

"Big pharma propaganda!😃" he wrote back.  All my monied conservative friends are anti-vaxers and conspiracy theorists by and large.  The crazy thing to me is, they never seem to get the flu or Covid, or if they do, it is a simple, mild case.  It has to be genetic.  It dumbfounds me.  And it dumbfounds "my peeps" how I can stand to be friends with "those guys."  I don't know.  I'm beginning to think that I'm what went wrong with the world.  Me and my hippie friends.  We acted on the belief that everyone deep down, given an equal opportunity, was a good person.  We said that, anyway, but we didn't believe it about corporate conservatives.  After hanging out with enough drug-addled creeps, though, I began to change my mind.  I've marched for Blacks, Gays, and Migrants and against the military and "Neutron Bombs."  I valued music, literature, and art.  But I don't think that is going to save us now.  I have lived through a most incredible time.  My life has been one of the easiest in the history of the world, even though I am a poor hillbilly.  No generation has ever had it so good and appreciated it less. 

I've been wrong about a lot of ideas I adamantly supported.  I'm still wrong about a lot of things, I'm sure.  I don't feel 100% this morning, and I wonder about what another conservative friend of mine wrote me: "Ever wonder why it is still being distributed under the protection of an EUA?"  I can say that the warmings on the paper they gave me this time were much more detailed than what they gave me before.  

I went to see my mother, though, in the afternoon.  She has not been doing so well.  Her back has been hurting her for months now so that she can hardly walk.  She has always exercised, so this is taking its toll.  I keep urging her to go to a doctor.  She has had shots that helped before.  

"I will," she says, but she waits to see if things get better.

As we sat together yesterday, we talked about many things including Israel and Hamas.  We both agree that this is going to upset the easy life as we know it.  

"Well," I said to her, "like my friend once told me, we've had a good run."  Even at 91, though, she wants more.  That's good.  

"I got a flu shot today," she said.  "I didn't want to get both that and the Covid vaccine at the same time after what happened to you."

"How do you feel?"

"I feel fine.  I've never really ever felt bad after getting a flu shot."

I went home to make my dinner, a big-assed salad with chicken.  I made a drink and sat on the deck.  The cat came for dinner, then her boyfriend.  I haven't seen the neighbor's cat for over a month.  I've wondered if he was ok, but he looked fine.  They looked like they always do together, her jealously herding him away from me, butting up against him until he is sick of her and goes to the edge of the deck to lie down.  The weather will turn cool next week and I look forward to eating my meals al fresco with them once again.  

Just after dinner, I got a call from my mother.  She said that after I left, she had gotten dizzy and threw up.  Then she got a nose bleed.  

"I looked at the warnings on the paper they gave me with the flu shot, and these are all possible reactions," she said.  

"Jesus. . . are you o.k.?"

"I feel better now, but I don't know."

"Call me if you need me to come over or if you need anything."

"I'm ok.  I will."  

"I'm glad you didn't get both vaccines at once."

"I'm thinking twice about getting the Covid shot now."

When I joked with the gymroid that I had gotten the microchip, he said, "something that starts with an M. . . maybe myocarditis."  

That is one of the big worries with the Covid vaccine that they didn't have previously.  

My college roommate's wife texted me wanting to know how I was feeling.  I told her I needed another night to recover and had turned down an invitation to go out.  

"At least you got an invitation.  It is dead up here.  Nobody on the streets.  All I have to look forward to is cookies."

They bought a house in an exclusive development on the outskirts nearer to the factory.  She wishes, she says, that she lived here.  And it is true.  I am lucky, I know.  

"I think I'll watch "After Hours" tonight," I told her.  If you don't know the film, it is an early Scorsese dark comedy from 1985.  

"AGGGHHHHHH

MY LIFE STORY

No, really. I hung out, pretty much lived in a loft on Church Street at that time, crazy nights. The Mudd Club, Pollack and Belushi at the Odeon, trapeze artists. Adventures. Stilettos on slick cobblestones in Soho when Soho was raw industrial space, factories," she wrote.  She is a native New Yorker and does nothing but lament having left.  I was there "then," too, and even before that, and I remembered an evening with my truly stunning girlfriend as we were walking home from a long day out.  I had bought a pair of tie-waisted harem pants from a street vendor.  They were the coolest things and I wonder whatever happened to them.  I wish I had them now.  It was late and we were wandering the streets on our way back to the Chelsea Hotel when we came to a big crowd facing a fellow standing behind a rope on  the steps to the entrance of a building.  We wandered up to see what was going on.  

"C'mon, Jimmy. . . you know me. . . let me in."

People were trying to get into a club.  I'd never seen anything like this before, so we lingered.  Then the fellow on the steps behind the rope turned to me and said, "You can't come in."

"Why?" I asked. 

"You can't come in wearing shorts."

I pulled my harem pants out of the bag and pulled them over the shorts.

"How's that?" I asked.  

The fellow pulled up the rope and said, "O.K.  You can come in."

"Fuck you," I said.  "I don't want to come in," and I took my gorgeous girlfriend by the hand and turned to walk away.  She, of course, was the only reason we were going to get in I knew.  

After about a block, though, she turned on me.  "Why are you such an asshole?  Why do you always have to be such a dick?"

I guess she wanted to go in.  And I guess she was right.  But it was late and I have always been old and I wanted to go to bed.

That night, and all the ones like it, was kind of the vibe of the strange Scorsese film.  It was as bizarre as I remembered it.  

I've promised myself I'd do some needed work around the house today.  But I don't want to.  I want to go out with my cameras and start making pictures again.  I am torn.  The morning is slipping away.  I still do not feel that all my energy has returned.  Maybe I have a long-term side effect from the vaccines.  Maybe Big Pharma has done me in this time.  You may not know this, but I am pretty paranoid about such things.  

Just another piece of the puzzle.  

The weather is turning gorgeous here, though, and temperatures will stay in the 70s today under bright blue skies.  I'd better do something, for as I've said. . . .