On the evening of my second COVID diagnosis I recorded a little video, mainly as an outlet for all the things I was feeling. It was a cathartic experience, with somewhat lofty ambitions (as so many other things in my life possess). But I never posted it, and hadn’t thought much about it. The outpouring of support from coworkers, friends, and (when I returned after quarantine and a negative test) regulars at work was more help and support than I ever expected. A few weeks out from the illness, recovery ongoing, and life pressing ahead, I decided to do a bit of an abridged transcript of the video as a blog post anyway (abridged because it was a fifteen minute video with several tangents). It’s a kind of raw emotion and anxiety that’s difficult to express but, as I state near the end, important to know.
Hey, everyone.
Um… to those who know me, and I have a blog and some followers so hopefully not everyone knows me, I’m Justin Corriss, sommelier and manager of a restaurant and author of a small fantasy series. This is going to be a project, hopefully not a lengthy one (but more on that later), but one I need to at least try because projects are how I keep my head above water and I need to keep my head above water right now.
It’s been a day.
I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, been seeing a lot of cool things and seeing a lot of old friends and that’s been wonderful and I just came back from a trip to New York. I saw Hadestown, I blogged about Hadestown. I was exhausted yesterday. I left New York at five in the morning and got to work at two in the afternoon I think, maybe one thirty and see, I have chronic sinus problems. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been so amazed I was ever a sommelier- my nose is almost always stuffed and my sinuses almost always have pressure, I get bad seasonal allergies and I’m also severely allergic to cats and cockroaches (want a free test? Invite me over. I’ve done it before.)
I’m a little stuffy now, but apart from that I feel fine.
And, see, that’s the thing. I feel fine.
And my morning was fine.
I made breakfast (bacon, egg, and cheese). It was tasty. I’m a decent home cook, something I’ve blogged about before and probably will again. I make tea every morning, drink a pot of tea every morning, and had a shot of espresso before I went to work. I took a walk. The air smelled like fall this morning. Then I went to work.
Bought some things we needed, lower on some wine, lower on club soda because we’ve a tasty housemade grape soda on the menu. Helped set up the bar. I bartend on the weekdays- solid 6/10 bartender (I can do it I’m just not fast (for comparison at the moment I’m feeling like a solid 1/10 FOH Manager)).
You know, it’s a lot of… weight… being responsible for someone else’s dream, their vision. My boss had been out of town the past week and I’d been kind of running the show. It’s there, always, even in the small things, standing there cutting citrus for juice and getting ice. You feel the pressure when you’re there alone and you have to problem solve and know they trust you to solve those problems.
My problem was that partway through gathering herbs for cocktails, I couldn’t smell them. It was sudden, and that was it.
I panicked. There in our little herb garden overrun with lemon balm, and I love the smell of lemon balm, I broke a leaf and shove it near into my nose and there was nothing. It wasn’t there. I walked back to the bar and took a quick taste pour of wine and it was water with acid.
I went home.
One at-home rapid test later and here I am: twice responsible for closing my work, a career I got into to make people happy, and dealing with the pressure of knowing I may have made people sick. And not just work- I was in New York!
I travelled because I’ve had COVID before, about this time last year or maybe a little later. I’ve been vaccinated (team Pfizer! Both shots! My second was on Star Wars Day (I watched Episode III to celebrate because it’s just a stupidly entertaining movie)).
You think these things load the dice in your favor, and maybe they do. Maybe I’m only going to be sick for a week, and then I’ll test negative.* But today teaches you that the dice are almost never loaded, and if they are then it’s to life, or death. I wonder which of those forces I’m about to deal with. There’s pressure for you.
So, now I’m left thinking “Now What?”
The reason I’m thinking that is because I grabbed down a bottle of Lagavulin after I came home. I hope you guys have read my blog posts reviewing alcohols before, and if you have then you’ll know I don’t particularly enjoy peaty whisky. Lagavulin I like, but I have to be in the mood for it. But if anything was going to break through this I figured it would do the job. Then it was just water, that burns.
The usual prognosis (is that the word?) for the loss of the sense of taste and smell for COVID positive people is two weeks to a month, according to half of the thirty tabs open on my computer. In some cases, it is permanent, or drawn out.
I built a career off of tasting and smelling. Or I was trying to, anyway. Can’t really say I’ve built a career when I’ve been at it for just over four years.
And I don’t know how long this is going to last.
So, what to do now?
Well, tomorrow I’m getting a PCR test which will definitively prove what this is. I just shot a glass of Lagavulin without tasting it, so I’m pretty sure what this is, but procedure is procedure.
If it’s positive, then work closes, and that’s on me.
My coworkers get tested, and that’s on me.
If any of them get sick, then that’s on me.
Projects are always going to be my lifelines, my ways of keeping my head above water. I write, and I write, and I have books to read and I have food to cook even if I can’t taste it because it’s important to be creative and have a routine. I will have tea, and I will have wine.
I will live.
You know. Hopefully. We’ll see if it’s COVID or me that does it.
I’ll hope, at least. And if anyone I know is in this position, and if that’s my fault then I’m sorry, or if someone in this position a year from now stumbles across this, or if someone sees this right now, then it’s like you’re not alone. And I know that’s a stupid thing to say, especially from me. I know you know you’re not alone. I know I’m not alone. I know that I know that I’m not alone! I know there’s millions of people even worse off than me with this. I’m not a complete idiot.
But only you can tell your story the way you can.
Only I can tell this the way I can.
If I didn’t believe that someone’s individual voice could make a difference, then I certainly wouldn’t be writing novels. Part of the beauty of that is taking comfort or finding inspiration in someone else’s words, just hearing or reading that someone else is experiencing or has experienced something similar.
For me, even though I don’t currently have a sense of taste and smell, I will turn to Dorothy Parker’s Resumé, as I so often do. It is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, poems. I leave you with it now:
Resume
Dorothy Parker
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
*I lost my sense of taste and smell for around a week, and it took another four or five days to return to normal. In the middle of that, there was a patch where all alcohol smelled the same, and tasted the same. I developed a chronic cough, and my asthma returned, both required massive daily doses of oral and inhaled steroids to bring under control. At its peak, I was waking up two to three times a night unable to breath. In the wake of being sick, I have begun carrying an emergency inhaler around for the first time in almost a decade. I like to think that being vaccinated prevented my symptoms from getting worse, and am thankful to be feeling better now. You really do think the dice are loaded, sometimes.