the absinthe drinker - covid scare

We had our first serious covid scare a week or two ago.  MJ's brother calls and he is feverish and not feeling well and his doc tells him to go in for the test.  He lives in Anacortes and Kaiser wants him to drive almost fifty miles to their clinic in Smokey Point, halfway to Seattle and he doesn’t feel like driving and his girlfriend refuses to help.  

About now in MJ's story, I'm getting ready to go off on her big time for offering to expose the two of us giving him a lift, which she did offer but he ended up getting tested closer to home, came up negative and all's well that ends well I guess.

Would have been a total exposure for us if he had been infected. We were at his place just seven days earlier, masked and outside most of the time but he fixed drinks, absinthe and he has a really cool fountain, pretty sure I saw Maxfield Parrish models dancing in the vapors over above the louche. No masks. Kept mine on but the vision-girls were bare-faced.  I’m noticing that lots of women seem more intriguing behind the mask these days, aren't they?.

It's been ages since I've seen the absinthe kit.  The ritual is really fun, and the drink is a refreshing change from the usual strong porters and ales we like, but even with the masks, we were too close to one another around the fountain. Total exposure risk.  Not to mention those damned Parish girls dancing around my fantasy mind like colorful earworms.

The incident did put me half notch up in the man's pecking order between Jim and me though. He has a girlfriend who will sleep with him and I don't, so he is ahead in that game.  But my companion will drive me to the clinic and his won't, which should be worth a point or two on my side of the scale. 

MJ really went off on me when I told her that part of the story - is it something I just made up out of whole cloth?  Are men really subconsciously always in a competition like that - I never really fit into men's society so I really wouldn't know.  

Of course, my companion MJ would be driving me to the clinic because if one of us needs to be tested the other needs to be tested as well. She refuses to be lovers, can't really understand that lots of couples enjoy sleeping together, although at our age the literal thing of trying to spend the night on the same mattress under the same covers might be a problem up in the night to pee and stiff bodies trying to get comfortable - all I want is an hour snuggling spoons of a Sunday morning once in a while.  Get up and have waffles.  But no.  That's just not going to be ever allowed again.  One would think we are safe from exposing one another.

Not so much. Outside her bedroom, we are like little love birds, always with the hug and squeeze and giggle, even hold hands walking down the street sometimes.  We would definitely infect one another before symptoms started.

Of course, now that she has declared herself forbidden fruit, she seems ever so much more desirable to my passions than fifteen or twenty years ago when we were married and normal lovers.  Have a little tickle a couple times a week role over to the wall snore, fart.

Story of my life, if I can't have the forbidden fruit, I don't want any fruit at all.