november 15 2023
Today is a day.
I wake up early, 4 hours before we leave for the airport, and head to the walk-in clinic by the London Bridge. My doctor is a petite brown woman with long hair and purple lipstick. She tells me I have shingles. I feel like bugs are crawling all over my body. I sent a picture to my mom, a nurse, the night before and she said the same thing. She said it wasn’t a big deal and that it would go away eventually.
“Relax. You are young,” she murmured while I whined and cried. She laughed at me playfully and teased me about it, told me that I am like a baby. I used to hate asking other people for help and so I never did but then my body started shutting down on me. It’s been happening again all year but this is by far the worst of it. The shingles rash isn’t that bad but to me, it looks heinous - a garish neon red sign that reads “BITCH, YOU’RE STRESSED OUT”.
I fill out the script at the pharmacy down the road then head back to the hotel to meet Ben, my tour manager. He is suffering as well. He thinks he has a UTI. Or something. We both shiver and shake our heads then burst into laughter. We’re in bad shape. My eyes are wild and frantic, my shirt is wrinkled and I know I’m giving off a slightly sweaty musk. Ben has bags under his eyes and his hair is wet, he’s been wearing the same pants four days in a row. Neither of us got any sleep last night. I apply anti-itch cream to the entire right side of my body and he calls a clinic in Amsterdam to make an appointment for when we land.
The drive to the airport is long and somber and peppered with our paranoia-fuelled speculation. Our Uber driver pretends not to listen as Ben tells me about his history of kidney stones, a recent hookup gone awry, his plan to start EMDR therapy and how he’s worried about the future. We had gone out two nights before, after playing Pitchfork Festival at the Roundhouse in London. Everyone from management was there and so were two friends of his - these extremely English, Northern broads. I barely understood a word they said but they smiled a lot and we all danced together at the after party.
Orange leaves blow across the windshield and I’m catastrophizing. My greatest fear is that the rash, already crusting over, will spread to my face and I’ll be disfigured and have nerve damage and develop an autoimmune disease and become incapacitated and have to become a shut-in and garner a large hospital bill from experimental treatments and I won’t be able to work and I’ll never have kids and I’ll develop a hump back from stooping over in pain every day for the rest of my life until I get an aneurysm and die suddenly in a public square in some foreign country I’ve been hiding out in - pennyless. I pop an anti-viral and it looks like a giant tic tac. Ben tells me to remain calm.
“We have to be on our healthcore shit from now on,” I say.
“Alkaline activities only,” he replies.
We get through security at Gatwick and sit down to eat at Wagamama while we wait for our flight. My side is itching like hell but the chicken donburi is good so I try to ignore it.
On the plane, my anxiety takes over. There is a man in the seat behind me and his vibe is very sketchy. I spotted him as we were boarding - he was fidgety and skittish and pale, wearing a fuzzy blue bucket hat in 20 degree weather, sweating. Our plane was grounded for 40 minutes before we took off and the entire time he kept pushing his knees into the back of my seat and leaning towards my window to stare outside.
To make matters worse, take-off is jarring and uneven. The plane rumbles laboriously as the pilot makes a sharp turn to the right. I watch the wing dip down towards the Earth, invisible forces dragging it below the horizon, engines whirring. Everything shakes. Everyone on the plane looks around at each other. Whispers rise. A middle aged woman two aisles down lets out a big gasp. This could be it. I close my eyes and tell god I did my best. I send my boyfriend telepathic kisses. I pray for my family. I say a curse for anyone who attempts to release a posthumous album of my demos. I clasp my hands together and make a deal in case I live - I promise to do my best to always be around the people I love, just in case.
The plane jerks then steadies. We go up.
