it ITCHES.
Well, it did, anyway. After much rather frantic vacuuming, washing, and a happy improvement in the weather – now merely warm rather than hot – things are finally okay....
It started some years ago – must be about 1990/1991 – the summer that Steven was my roommate. It was after Paul P– moved out, after his life and job disintegrated under the impact of his introduction to drugs that were heavier than he was accustomed to. Steven lived with me for three months – an obviously, even self-evidently, sweet guy, with a serene, rather saintly demeanor. That didn't, unfortunately, make me like him – perhaps the loss of a good friend as a roommate, or perhaps that saintliness, which seemed to cover up a mild, self-absorbed shallowness, acted like a minor but endless irritation on me.
Steven had a dog, a big red setter, who came with lots and lots of fleas. And it was summer... so, when I finally decided I wasn't willing to live with the dog, or Steven, any more, I continued having the fleas as roommates. It was difficult to get them out of the floorboards; and I probably hadn't tried as hard as I could, because for most of the year you didn't notice – only at the height of summer was there inevitably a sudden burst of bites.
When I moved back to San Francisco, I assumed I'd brought them with me, in the rugs or something. And then in Hong Kong, and then later here in England... because every year, at the peak of summer, usually when I was thinking in the back of my mind that this year I would be left alone, suddenly one day I would start to itch like I was being bitten. Completely maddening; hard to sleep, restless but tired, and usually lasting several weeks. At least I thought I was being bitten... a year or two later I heard that Steven had died of AIDS – which was unexpected, as he had seemed distinctly healthier than I when we shared that apartment (or, at least, he was obsessed with his health – but I suppose that was actually the opposite signal). This was all of a piece with the peculiarity that I would live when a lot of friends and lovers didn't – even my entire HIV therapy group (three years later, only two out of six us were still around).
So last summer, I started itching again. Completely infuriated and increasingly frantic, I went to the doctor to get some clear information – was I getting bitten or not? After two visits, and some extended arguing (I must have been at my most irritating with the poor doctor – itching is not amusing, and I was certain something was biting me), the doctor convinced me that there was nothing there at all – that I was simply having a summer allergy to dust, probably to dust mites at the height of summer, a result of not vacuuming enough and needing a new mattress, etc. I went out and spent about £200 or so on new bedding, and anti-dust mite sprays....
So, when yesterday it started again, I knew what to do. And glory be, it worked.
Strange, though: it reminds me of a minor event in Gaiman's Sandman, when Delirium (the personification of madness), in irritation at a highway patrolman who is criticizing her driving, curses him with the delusion that he is covered with insects – forever.
Of course, maybe it wouldn't take such a severe curse. Just, maybe, a rather small curse: if someone, say when they're told to move out of an apartment, put a hoodoo on someone so that, every summer, they would remember the fleas, the dog – and perhaps Steven himself....
Comments