Love and Other Cold Meds

DAY: Seven
LOCATION: Sydney

You’d think after writing a book on dating, I’d know better than to get super excited about some guy I met at a masturbatory party who lives halfway around the world and works in coal. COAL. Pretty much the antithesis of everything I’d come to stand for over the past year. And yet, there I was, sick as a dog, blow drying my hair and waiting for him to bring me drugs.

Laurel came home first with her best friend, a major blessing. I was supposed to check out by 10, but she told me I could leave my luggage at hers until after our brunch. Thank god, because I did not want the international financier seeing my broken suitcase and sewn up backpack, as shallow and unevolved as that sounds. Worse, I didn’t want him seeing my next accommodation, which I had a feeling would be bare bones at best. Probably not the right mindset to be starting off this romance, but the truth was I still cared about appearances.*

Levi arrived on the doorstep with his Tumi bag, briefcase, and cold medicine, looking even sexier than last night. What was it about this man?? As the four of us chatted, I felt giddier and giddier. Chill, Amy, he lives in Switzerland. And works in COAL.

“Hey look at what book’s on the shelf,” Levi pointed to the TV stand. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

I laughed. “It’s a sign!” Of what I wasn’t sure, I’d have to read the book. But I felt like something really good.

On Laurel’s recommendation, we went to Mad Spuds for brunch, but not before wandering around the neighborhood for a couple hours. We held hands, kissed on street corners, talked about the past and the future and the present.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving in two hours. I just want to spend all day learning about you,” I whined playfully. “It’s terrible timing.”

He smiled. “I don’t know, I think everything about you is perfect timing.”

The more he revealed about himself, the more I got swept up. His childhood in Israel, his four sisters (one of whom was vegan!), his kind, intelligent parents, the summer he’d spent in Ohio working for a mall kiosk that turned out to be a small fry criminal operation. He’d lived in Australia and Indonesia, traveled extensively throughout the world, experienced poverty and wealth. He believed in moderation and hard work, and loved his life.

And he listened. He didn’t necessarily agree with everything I was saying, about the danger of technology and humans being herbivores and Western civilization going to shit. But he listened, and offered thoughtful rebuttals, and respected my opinions. I felt both heard and challenged and I liked it. A lot.

AND HIS KISS. I’d gone on a few dates, I’d kissed a few guys since the breakup. Hell, I’d even gone to Hawaii with one.** Nothing had come remotely close to the chemistry I had with James. But Levi… I could’ve made out with him on that couch forever.

“I gotta go or I’ll miss my flight,” he gently removed me from his lap. “But I’ll see you in Switzerland?”

I nodded. He’d invited me to come stay with him after the Berlin film festival. If that was even happening. We kissed one last time, and he got in his Uber. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

Running off the high of his touch and the meds, I decided to walk to my next Airbnb. It’s only two kilometers, I reasoned with myself, and I can scope out the neighborhood and save $10.

“Are you okay?” my new host Janet asked me in front of her apartment complex. I had vastly overestimated my physical condition.

“No, I’m pretty sick, I think I need to lie down,” I replied, dripping in sweat, red-faced, and massaging my already sore arms. As much as I’d been trying to avoid unnecessary consumption, it was really time for a new suitcase with working wheels.

“Oh, okay,” she eyed me, perturbed. A natural reaction when inviting the plague into your home.

Not that she seemed too concerned with germs. Stepping into the apartment the first thing that caught my eye – and nose – was the petri dish of a kitchen. Dishes piled high, pots of unknown substances left on burners for hours, maybe days. If my mom saw this… or Levi! Thank you Laurel, I silently offered up my gratitude.

My room, blessedly, looked like the photos: clean, spacious, sparse. Janet collected a $150 fob key deposit from me (a little weird but what could I do?), and gave me sheets and a towel. I made the bed, closed the blinds, and laid down for awhile.

But I couldn’t fall asleep. And as much as I needed the rest, I couldn’t really stand to be stuck in a sterile room in a creepy apartment when Sydney beckoned from behind the blinds. I pulled myself together, popped another pill, and headed out on the town.

Roaming through Darling Harbour, The Rocks, and the CBD felt even more dreamlike than usual. Being sick always had this effect on me – this increased awareness that I’m the only one having this experience of being Amy. The children playing in the park, the couples laughing over happy hour, the tourists on the BridgeClimb – everyone seemed blissfully caught up in their activities, unaware of the miraculous bodily systems and fortunate good health allowing them to do so.

Of course this is total bullshit – some of them may have been just like me, feverish and slogging through, maybe even battling cancer or something far more serious than a cold. But that’s not the point. The point is that our lenses change everything about our perceived reality. And at that moment, eating stirfry in an unremarkable Chinese hole in the wall, I felt hyperconscious of both my own fragility, and the unbelievable complexity of this physical form. A microcosm for the universal, a macrocosm for the atomic. A thing of beauty, in sickness and in health…

I really hoped I would see Levi again.

• In Walden, the bane of every American freshman’s existence and recent book of my affection, Henry David Thoreau paints an hilarious picture of society’s obsession with fashion:

“No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his
clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have
fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound
conscience…I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this;–who
could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave
as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they
should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken
leg than with a broken pantaloon.”

I fear I’ve fallen into the category of “most.”

** Yeah, I really learned zilch about taking it slow from my dating experiment. But in my defense, we’d hooked up three years prior so we knew there was chemistry, he was vegan and on a similar path, and we lived in different countries so the options were: 1. he stays with me in LA, 2. I stay with him in Calgary, or 3. we go to Maui. No brainer. Anyway, we had an amazing trip, but the timing for us wasn’t quite right.