Blogito - texas jabs

‘Well,’ our friend in green visor and starched collar told us, ‘I’ve done the math and…’ *clack clack clack clack clack* he hammers figures into an adding machine, spools of paper cascading from the top, ‘factoring in age, health, Mexico’s health care and the planned roll out,’ *clack clack clack clack clack* ‘You should be eligible to get your first dose in 2041’

‘Well,’ I reasoned, ‘you should see the lines at Disney.’

I once had the opportunity to skip the lines at Disney, a dream so palpable it features in several Hollywood movies, but I was thwarted at the last by good taste. My Dad, fulfilling a lifelong dream, had packed his wife and son up and set off on a tour of the Western United States. I don’t know where my two sisters were, gossiping about boys or doing each other’s hair for all I know, but for this three-week extravaganza, it was just us. The dream-team. The year was 1998 and the album of the moment was The Beastie Boys’ “Hello Nasty”, a record we played so often on those long interstates, my Mum can still spit a pretty serviceable Mike D verse.

Somewhere around Arizona, I began to feel a little woozy. Culminating with me roller-skating naked into my parent’s motel room at three in the morning exclaiming, ‘I don’t feel so good…’ before promptly collapsing.

I remember three things from the hospital. One, the doctor earnestly telling my parents, ‘I want to perform surgery, I just don’t know where…’

Two, my Dad tapping his watch, saying, ‘listen, we’re on a fly-drive, right? If I don’t get the car back in time, we lose the deposit’

Three, getting a joke out. ‘Okay kiddo,’ the nurse said, ‘I’m just putting on some gel for the ultra-sound, it might feel a bit cold, okay?’

‘Oh God, not pregnant again?’ Sure, a bit hack, but for a semi-conscious fourteen-year-old who needed surgery somewhere, not bad.

I don’t know how long I was in the hospital for but eventually Dad’s deposit couldn’t wait any longer. I was bundled, undiagnosed, into the back of the rental with a wheelchair and pot of very strong sedatives and away we went.

We ended up in LA, visiting my Dad’s old pal and West Coast Punk icon, Brendan Mullen, whose partner took pity on this doped up, wheelchair bound adolescent and suggested a trip to Disney. My parents relented, Mum drew the short straw and away we went. Disneyland. In LA. In August. The lines, indeed, would have us there until 2041.

I had time to probably get on one or two rides, so I pointed towards Space Mountain and mother trundled me of the back of the queue, which began somewhere in Portland. We waited, and we waited, until eventually, who should show up but Mickey Mouse himself! He waved at me in my chair. I waved back and he beckoned over some officials who started guiding me towards the empty disabled line.

‘Oh no,’ said Mum, grabbing the back of my chair. ‘He’s not disabled, he’s just very, very ill’

The consensus amongst Mickey and his pals was that being very, very ill is enough to get you in the short queue. Not to my Mum, though. We’d queue up like everybody else, thank you very much.

She’s a good stick, my Mum. And she was right, of course.

I think we did get two rides in but to be honest, I don’t really remember much. The opioids I was on were so strong, I successfully sold the remainder at school the following year for healthy profit.

2041, we mused. And even then, we figured, there will probably be thousands of Mexicans who will need it more urgently than we do. In a country like this, its’ not right for us to be taking vaccines from people who are more vulnerable than we are.

So, what’s to be done? We thought for a minute… then both looked up.

In Texas, there are vast swathes of the prairie where the vaccine is seen not as a medicine but as a personal, political statement. In many small towns across the state, people are not taking the jab out of spite. For who or what, I’m not sure. Biden? The liberal left? Science? Who knows. But there is now such a surplus of doses in rural Texas, if you’ve got an arm, you can get a jab. And many Mexicans are hot tailing it across the border to do exactly that.

‘Should we do it?’ Annemarie asked

‘Well, I’ve always wanted to go to Austin…’

We booked the flights, we booked a car, we signed up for Walgreens (the pharmacy where you can buy beer!) and booked our appointments.

It was a strange feeling. At once, the giddy anticipation of getting this miracle of modern science, and the apprehension that we, immigrants twice over, may quite justifiably be told to do one upon arriving.

First things first, we had to pass a Covid test before we could fly. I’d never had one of these before, the two sticks shoved so far down your nose you can feel it in your socks, but in the end, it weren’t so bad. As a youth, I used to pick down to the elbow.

Who would want that job though? I felt nervous enough standing outside in the queue, surrounded by elderly people who might have The Rona. Imagine being the poor intern inside, hazmat suited for space travel, sticking swabs directly into the face of potential carrier after potential carrier, spending your day reaching your arm into would-be wasps’ nests. I know it’s been said a thousand times but blimey, anyone working in healthcare these days, especially those on the front line of the virus, should all be given a five-week, all-expense paid holiday to Hawaii. (Anna, if you’re reading this mate, you’re a hero).

With a clean bill of health, we boarded, flew and alighted in The Land of the Free Vaccines. We were still anxious about actually, successfully getting the thing, driving out the airport asking, ‘Do you really think people aren’t taking it?’

The first car we pulled up behind was a pick-up plastered with InfoWars and Qanon stickers. ‘Well, there’s your answer.’

It’s difficult to add anything new or constructive to the subject of the Covid culture war. By now, we all know someone who’s had it, someone who’s had it quite badly and maybe even someone who’s lost a love one. God knows AM and I can tick all of those boxes. Why does a political affiliation effect your thinking on this? Reply to a Julia Hartley-Brewer or Toby Young tweet saying something positive about the vaccine and see the abuse you get. It’s almost invigorating, like those people who swim in frozen oceans. Except in this case, it’s a frozen ocean of human excrement and broken glass. Similarly, there are people saying those who don’t get the vaccine “deserve everything they get”. I mean… what? Maybe I smoked too much weed as a teenager, but I always thought keeping people alive was the absolute bare minimum we as a species should being trying to achieve? But I digress…

Austin is a fine town. I consumed enough fried chicken and bourbon to cause a state shortage. We thrived in thrift stores, buying new outfits and accessories of glorious vintage. Thrift stores in the Sates aren’t like the one in the UK. The US was cool in the 1950s (at least in terms of fashion). The UK was interesting in the fifties, but you could never call it cool… except Lionel Bart. I bought a Stetson hat, which I was clearly born to wear. I’ve been walking around naked until now. We visited the state capitol, which is pretty if not bizarre. It’s peppered with these contentious 21st century statues to the Confederacy. Monuments to a lost war, surrounded by grumpy men muttering how, ‘they’ll want to tear this one down next’ (this was literally said to us). I try to understand: They were a young state in a young country, striving for identity at the turn of the century but a hundred and twenty years later, these objects of fetish outnumber the monuments to African Americans, the Tejanos, the native population, frontier women, the world wars and modern conflicts COMBINED. It does strike an odd tone but hey, I come from a country where you can now get more years in prison for defacing a statue than you can for violently assaulting someone, so what do I know?

The most amazing thing we did in Austin was going to a concert. Yes, a live show. With musicians. Trumpets and everything. Oh, how we’ve missed this. It was all socially distanced, masked up, seated and covid-tested but my God, an amuse-bouche to the world we’re about to get back. Many cried at the taste of normality. Never has vanilla seemed so spectacular. Fortunately for us, it was The Mavericks, who were doing an acoustic set of their (sensational) ‘En Espanol’ LP. Yes, we travelled a thousand miles to go and listen to Mariachi music. We’d never felt more at home.

‘You’re going where to get your shot?’

‘College Station,’ we bemusedly replied.

‘You’re not, like, staying there or anything, are you? Not over night?’

We must have had this conversation five time. You can’t get a vaccine in Austin, there’s too many people who want it, so we had to book far out into Trump country. We were too nervous about actually being allowed to have it than to worry about getting into a debate about whatever it is they have a problem with.

So we jumped in the Dodge Challenger I’d rented (I’m nothing if not a slave to living that life), wearing our matching The Mavericks t-shirts (don’t let Instagram @shemp84 fool you, we really are quite lame), drove through the spring flowers and cows to the College Station Walgreens.

‘Wow, you guys want the vaccine?!?’ an excited Gil-from-the-Simpsons squawked as we walked past liquor shelves to the drug counter, ‘Well sure, sure, come on in, y’all! Say Marge! Dust off those vials, these here folks want the vaccine!’

We heard a ‘yee-haw!’ from behind the scenes, someone stared up on the fiddle and *pop* we got vaccines in a hoedown. Pfizer. First dose. Like everyone, we felt extraordinarily emotional, grateful and embraced a perhaps-premature feeling of relief.  

We’ll be back in May for the next one, more BBQ and a couple gallons more bourbon. It will be a tremendous early birthday present and a reminder that there’s more humanity in a single hypodermic needle than in all the column inches, protest marches and state erected statues on earth.

So, I finally skipped the lines at Disney but I beg you, stay in line, kids. Space Mountain is worth the ride.