I’ve been collecting opinions about spending my repudiated so-called birthday in the ski resort where Kafka wrote The Castle.
James replied with a baffled and emphatic No. He suggests, if I must retreat to that land in that season, a spa vacation including long soaks in whatever it is people soak in there. Of course he also, at various times and for long periods, elected to live in Arizona – something I would never consider. Beyond that he developed a sincere devotion to public bathing during his years in Tokyo.
None of which really explains how a friend of twenty-one years has failed to pick up the fact that I am not allowed to participate in shared water activities. Especially since he went to Governors’ School with me in 1988 and therefore knows that the single, solitary time I was exposed to communal showers I picked up a staph infection requiring the partial amputation of a toe. I’m not joking.
There are valid reasons why my doctors have always forcibly advised against hot tubs, swimming pools, dorm washing facilities, and the like. My immune system just can’t take it, not even splendid options like the mineral baths in Glenwood Springs or the saltwater pool in Seattle.
Add to that a chlorine allergy that leaves my entire epidermis a screaming rash after no more than ten minutes exposure: I suspect I am the only person permanently excluded from swimming lessons in a school district requiring certification of mastery to leave the cursed facility.
I’m very sensitive.
I’m also the sort of person who rarely allows such things to intrude on my daily activities; for the most part, I don’t spend time thinking about the rules and restrictions. This in turn means I rarely talk about them, even when acknowledging physical limitations would be a more acceptable answer than my stock I don’t want to, I don’t feel like it, I have better things to do, I don’t care.
The truly amazing fact is that James could know me so long and so well, yet fail to account for the very real limitations of my life. This is I suppose a credit to my faultless facade of strength, but mostly a reflection of the fact that people who love me just don’t want to know that my health is, at best, precarious.
I can’t blame them: I don’t want to know either.