The other day, we went to a liquor store in order to score a bottle of Kahlua for some baking project The Beneficiary has got in progress. She's a 100% non-drinker, and it takes no more than one quick shot of Kahlua to remind myself that liqueur will make me projectile vomit harder than I did when I tied into that bad mescaline I got back in '69.
Don't know if I told you about that. The time that I was on my hands and knees puking so hard that I'm pretty sure my asshole inhaled? I did? Ah, well, moving on then.
Any more than a quick, one-time rinse-and-swallow of most liqueurs has much the same effect, although to be fair I do better with Kahlua than with others. Even so, that bottle will likely still be up in the depths of the pantry till the end of time or until it slowly morphs into rum-flavored cookies and glazed frostings. In that form, by the way, my body will actually retain the stuff as evidenced by my beer gut and my ass, both of which are yet again using COVID/Holiday measurements (a scale that rough-estimates to the nearest foot instead of screwing around with your plebeian inches).
Where was I going with this? Ah, right, the liquor store.
No one but me was wearing a mask. On the other hand, this was a pretty small store and there wasn't exactly any crowd-forming or socializing in progress. Everyone was all about getting in, picking up their sloshing containers of whatever and then hustling back out to the pickup where their girlfriend was waiting to get liquored up enough to put up with them.
I waved at The Beneficiary through the store's front window.
No one got anywhere near me except for the raggedy-assed clerk, and she looked likely to drop dead any second anyhow of any of a number of things which were unlikely to be COVID related, mostly because no self-respecting virus would have anything to do with her. She did, however, look to be a probable vector for any combination of your basic low-rent diseases, and wearing a mask, or even a full latex-infused Haz-Mat suit, while around her even back in the good ol' pre-pandemic days would have been a good idea.
Then it was off to Sam's Club and/or Walmart to pick up a pile o' crap. The weather has lately cooled right dramatically, which means that pets getting heat-stroked in a locked car is a zero-likelihood event. This is a considerable relief to both the dogs and to the mouth-breathers who can't figure out what else to do with the dogs when they do non-dog-related stuff. So, headed across the parking lot to the front doors we passed a buttload of cars containing various-sized dogs frothing and yapping at us in absolute transports of territorial frenzy as we walked around them.
The Beneficiary said, "That reminds me. You start aggravating non-mask-wearers again today, and I'll lock YOU in the car with the window cracked for air. "
"Wait, wait, hang on a minute," I said, "let me get this straight — All I have to do is fuck with some brain-damaged redneck in Walmart and you'll lock me in the car so I can just nap while you do all the shopping? Cool. I can do that!"
This resulted in being victimized in a Domestic Violence incident. I was still rubbing my sore arm when we got to the shopping baskets — she's got a pretty good punch for someone still in therapy to fix her broken arm and all.
But it turned out that I just wasn't destined for a nap that day. To my considerable astonishment, virtually 100% of the people were masked-up.
At first I assumed that everyone had remembered my last discussion on the matter with Cammo Boy and his Ragpicker and they'd seen me coming across the parking lot toward the store. But then I considered the thin possibility that not all that many people cared about my opinion one way or the other (I KNOW, right?) and just maybe there was another reason.
Maybe THIS is the difference: The vaccine has now actually been invented. It's a real thing and is going to happen, and ideology, sides, or shit-stirring rhetoric be damned.
It's like a peace treaty being signed for some future date — everyone knows the war is over, but everyone knows there's plenty of shit to wade through till the effective date. And, like the treaty, everyone's just marking time till it happens, and NO ONE (even those who don't believe in the treaty) wants to be Charles McMahon or Darwin Judge in this battle, no matter your tribal-signaling and posturing up till now.
And those impossible, high-risk, low-reward operations that you could always find some testosterone-fueled batch of fatalists or true-believers or macho men to go do? Once the treaty's signed, you couldn't get that same crew to get on the road to drive across town if traffic was a little heavy. Keep a low-profile, try to not be the last guy standing when the music stops, and hunker down till you can get on the plane and go the fuck home becomes the plan, and the ideology can wait for another day.
Which is now being played out in Sam's/Walmart.
Although I don't think we should overlook the impact of my opinion, either.
10 4 on that. I don't want my obituary to read, "Roy died of Covid-19 complications while standing in line with a group of people queuing up to receive the very last batch of Covid-19 vaccine in all of North America. He is survived by everyone else on the planet. Poor bastard."
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