Part 1
I know that germs aren’t immortal, but I know that I am.
I’m not a vampire or a werewolf or any kind of “supernatural” being, I just seem to exist and no one has seemed to figure that part out. The part where I’ve been living for centuries. I don’t know how long, I stopped counting when it got to the fifties, and this past half-century the name I’ve been going by is Mike Dunnan.
I live in a body that is perpetually forty years old. I am male, with a bit of what people call a beer gut. I don’t drink, I have a receding hairline, I wear suspenders and khakis, my eyes are green, my hair brown, my skin tanned with that t-shirt tan line. I work for the city’s public transportation, a train conductor to be exact, and I’m a germaphobe. I don’t know how I got stuck working as a public transit train conductor, but here I am, spending many lonely nights stuck in a coffin full of sneezing, coughing, and utterly disgusting human beings.
I wear gloves every time I leave my house, I sanitize the gloves every twenty minutes. I take them off to wash my hands after I use the bathroom after I’ve sanitized every single thing I know I’m going to touch, and grab a new pair once I’ve finished.
I’m not the only immortal here on Earth, but I don’t know of very many, right now my repertoire is three, my good friend, who goes by Nancy and works at my DMV, and one of the local politicians who currently goes by Annie. I see her on TV sometimes making big speeches, but I’ve never been into politics. It’s an interesting feeling knowing someone semi-famous and seeing them on the TV as you flip channels.
This is exactly what I was thinking about when I was bringing the train back to the yard.
One of the things that we’re required to do at the end of our shifts is to make sure the cars are sanitized, something I hate to do, not the act of doing but the fact that I know how many hands have touched everything, the bodily fluids that have been exchanged, and the ones that have been left. Public trains are disgusting and as I walk into the first car my imagination shows clouds of black, putrid smoke that represent bacteria and viruses.
I always leave work more stressed than I am on my way to work, or during work.
Like clockwork every weekend, Nancy sends me a text message on my drive home, asking me how I am, how was work tonight, is it helping with my condition? Even slightly?
I don’t respond until I get home but I tell her I think it is, I’m not sure though, work was fine, how was the DMV any good stories? Brunch tomorrow? I’ll make BLTs.
I love BLTs, sure I’ll be there! Mind if Annie joins us?
Sure that’s fine.
Excellent!
She always adds a smiling emoji that for some reason, even though I know she’s happy, seems condescending in a text. Maybe it’s just the emoji.
I wipe the phone down with an alcohol wipe, plug it into the charger. I wipe my hands down with what’s left before putting on rubber gloves and removing my clothes, stuffing them into a lidded hamper. I take the gloves off and throw them into a lidded trash can. I take a shower. I brush my teeth, put my toothbrush into a plastic cup newly filled with hydrogen peroxide. I rinse my mouth. I wash my hands. I put on my pajamas, spray my bedding down with Lysol, climb in and allow myself to unfurl every inch of my being into sleep.
I wake up at 9 am, I’ve done this for many centuries. Nancy had left a text message for me, I could see the light on my cell phone blinking, no one else texts me, besides my bosses if they needed someone to cover a shift.
I pump some hand sanitizer on my nightstand into my hand before grabbing my phone and sitting up to read it.
“Hi! Just double-checking for today, are we still on for brunch?” Timestamp, 8:30 am.
From everything that I’ve seen and read, most immortal beings have little to no faults, so when I think of myself with my phobia, and when I think of Nancy, she has really bad anxiety, bad enough that she has medication she needs to take, I chuckle. The stigma that people put on immortals because they don’t know anything is endearing. We may be immortal, but for all intents and purposes, we’re still human, we just don’t die.
“Yes, we’re still on for today.”
“Okay! 10 o’clock?”
“10-10:30, doesn’t matter, take your time, don’t rush.”
One smiling emoji.
I rise from bed and head straight for the shower. I never brush my teeth in the shower so I wait until I finish doing that. I don’t eat breakfast, so brunch is the closest thing I have to that. Latex-free gloves on, I line the cookie sheet with tin foil, check the expiration date on the bacon package, place the bacon strips just so, and pop them into the oven. I wash my knife and cutting board before I use them, I cut the tomatoes with chef-like precision and set them aside, pull the bread out of the cabinet, and slice the lettuce into long strips. I like it this way, it’s easier to eat the BLTs, lettuce for each bite instead of the potential of a whole piece of lettuce in one bite and none later.
I enjoy cooking and making food, something about multitasking while cooking gives me a feeling of freedom, and for at least a few minutes I forget about my lingering fears. The gloves never come off, I wash them like I wash my hands any other time, remove them if they turn yellow, and replace them.
The oven dings, the bacon is done. I take the strips and cut them in half and assemble the sandwiches, adding slices of avocado to the plate in case anyone wants to have an extra addition.
The clock says 9:45, Nancy is never late. I arrange the platters on the table, which is next to the window in my kitchen, and take a moment to digest the image of the sun pouring onto the table and the scenery outside. For another split second, I am at peace, I think about opening the window and smelling the air. I don’t do that, but I imagine it smells like fresh-cut grass and a memory comes back to me.
It’s the roaring 20′s, jazz and blues pour from the bars on Bourbon Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, I’m walking fingers intertwined with Chrissy, a beautiful, cherub-faced brunette with a grin that could bring me to my knees even now, with just the thought of it. Her teeth aren’t straight, I liked that about her, I also liked that her eyes were large, round and a deep green that shone in certain lights. She wasn’t skinny, and she wasn’t fat. She wore the fashions of the time, those dresses that, in this day, remind me of a cloth bag, on her it was anything but, the fabric used shone like her eyes, a mustard yellow, and something about the shimmer of the fabric gave the illusion of contours as if it was made specifically for her body. I’m not sure if I loved her, but I sure did like her.
