Here’s how it works: if a person comes toward me with a needle, for any reason, my mind becomes decoupled from my body. It floats above, looking down.

Thus freed from natural human strictures, and possessed of a wild animal’s desperate desire to live, the body does everything it can to confound and evade any attempt to puncture it. Blood draws are this way, but also the administration of a life-giving - or, at any rate, life retaining - serum, and so when the needle approaches my arms begin to wave and swipe in wide arcs as though dispersing phantasmal insects. This is frustrating for the person trying to poke me, but it’s also frustrating for me, because it’s not something I’m in conscious control over. I will tell them this, and the look they give me is one that says, ”I don’t believe you.” I‘ll be, like, this is the time I’m not gonna do it. I‘m gonna hold my arms in a very specific way and they’ll be proud of me. I‘m thinking this while my left swipes toward the foe with a knife palm.

In truth, other than being tired, nothing really happened when I got the shot. Nothing bad, at least. I was tired, and I still am, although it’s difficult to discern if I’m tired because my body has become the newest front in our war with the Coronavirus or if it’s merely because I’m ancient beyond the counting of years. The worst side-effect, and I suggested something similar online, is that getting the shot makes you feel all the feelings you’ve suppressed and interred and calcified the last year all at once. That’s something you should know going in.

(CW)TB out.