That one rash on my scrotum.

So, that one rash on my scrotum wasn't going away (it was like these white raised patches under the skin, and very very occasionally they itched, and like 2 or 3 times when I was waking up I had scratched the big patch and a scab formed there), so like 2 months ago I went into the student clinic on campus and got some STD tests ("Doesn't look like anything I know," the nurse-practitioner said), and so I got a referral to a dermatologist at the university hospital system for like a week later.

The dermatologist turned out to be this good-natured, efficient short German guy with a resident in tow, so he gave the resident a stab at it first.

"Maybe warts or a local viral infection?", the resident was like.

"No, look at that," the German doctor said, rubbing the rash on my scrotum between two fingers. "It is deep, it is definitely dermal, not epidermal."

Then, he said it didn't seem to be anything life-threatening - "Definitely not cancer, so do not think that at all," he said - and said that it could just be inflammation caused by stress, but it could also be a fungal infection, and so he gave me a prescription for some cream and told me to rub it on my scrotum every morning and then come back in a week so they could see how it was doing, and maybe biopsy it to get more info if it didn't seem to have improved by then, because if there was a secondary fungal infection the cream would have cleared it up and we could see what was happening.

I did follow his instructions and get the cream and rub it on my scrotum every morning, and a week later it was a lot better, and so they told me to set up an appointment for a month later, and to cancel it if it cleared up, otherwise to come and then maybe they'd biopsy it then...

As it turns out, the rash didn't completely disappear, and there was even one little new spot, so I went in for that appointment, which was beginning of this week. By that time, the short German dermatologist dude had a new resident, so that guy quizzed me on my history and then had me drop trou so he could see the rash, and then the dermatologist came in so they could do the biopsy, and the resident shot some Novocaine or some shit like that into my scrotum and then they took out a millimeter of the rash from the non-scabbed over part and then sewed it up with one stitch that would naturally drop out by the weekend, since I was leaving town for the summer to study with the pope's Latinist.

"This will give us more information," the short German dermatologist was like, and he said that they would find out if it was just inflammation or a fungus or something, and they said they'd call me Monday, which was when the results would be in.

Meanwhile, I was prepping my big language paper which I've thought about for 4 years where I argue that the basic relationship between spelling and pronunciation was messed up in a stage of this one ancient language that gets a lot of press, and I was working like 12 hour days making these helpful charts and doing careful footnotes etc.

So, on Fri. I do that presentation (wore my seersucker suit I got for $40 on clearance at Banana Republic), and my one Russian linguist friend said it was publishable and that he couldn't believe that no one had found this out ("We are living in the 21st century, come on, guys!", he said afterwards, in the Q&A period; he also shook his head in disgust when I read a quote from some big scholar who said that spelling mistakes weren't important information in historical linguistics), and the nice specialist in the language who's been helpful to me in the past and came for the first part of the presentation but had to leave 10 min. before the end to teach class, wrote me an email and said it definitely had merit and we should talk in August when I'm back from the Latin program, that her only comment was to expand/clarify one point about one line of evidence -- I've been waiting to present on this shit for 4 years and it's finally coming to a head!!! -- and then afterwards I swing through a year-end bbq to grab a late lunch, and am just about to leave when my cell phone vibrates to show I had gotten a voice message.

It was from the hospital.

So, I go outside and check my voice mail, and it's the 2nd internist, and he's like, "Please call back about your biopsy results, I know you're leaving soon for the summer, but here is my personal cell phone, we should get in touch, preferably before you leave, if you haven't left yet."

So, I call, and he answers right away and he's like, "Oh yes, Mr. [my last name]."

Then, he's like, "Well, we got your results back, and we wanted to get in touch with you about an appointment for Monday."

Then, after a short pause, he's like, "Are you sitting down?"

Then, after I said I was, he was like, "Now, when we had talked before the appointment, you had mentioned that you were in Divinity. Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Yes," I was like.

"Have you been on any mission trips to Africa in the past year?", he was like.

At that, I thought to myself, "*FUCK*", and told him about visiting a friend who was in the Peace Corps in Benin last summer.

Then, he informed me that I had come in contact with the eggs of this one parasite that lives in fresh water, and that I now have 2 2cm worms (one male, one female) located somewhere in the bloodstream in my body, likely near the intersection of 2 major veins, and that they were laying eggs that were coursing through my blood throughout my entire body, and had been for the past 8-9 months.

And, that larvae were hatching on my scrotum.

We talked a while on the phone, and since I don't have blood in my urine or any bladder pain, I likely don't have any incipient kidney or bladder problems (which can happen if these worms are in residence for like 3-4 years or more; sometimes there are no visible symptoms, so I'm lucky), and neurological problems only develop in people 30-40 years out, but that I should come in on Monday so they can take a blood sample and then get this 2-dose medicine that will kill the worms so they will be absorbed into my bloodstream and my body will purge myself of the eggs.

And, that in August I should come back again, so they can take another blood sample to make sure that the worms are gone.

And, that when I come in on Monday, do I mind if a few people -- "like 9 or 10" -- from Infectious Disease and Neurology and Dermatology take a look at my scrotum, and can they take pictures of it for teaching purposes at the hospital?

I also asked him if I could communicate this disease to anyone, and he said only if they drank my piss.

Anyhow, I call up the train station right away to change my reservation to Monday night from Sunday night, which meant I'll have to miss the first day of the pope's latinist's class.

And, since the guy is a little eccentric and only communicates with people my mail (no email, no phone), I go to the main library on campus to print out my new train ticket and email the summer housing people that I'll be arriving a day late and then go write this frantic letter telling him about my biopsy (I was so distraught, when I put down that it was not communicable, when I re-read the letter, I put this carat in with "unless you drink water that I've pissed in" - what was I thinking!?!??!), and then I get his address off an email and run to the post office to go mail that shit out (after going to see if this librarian I know is in so I can bum an envelope and stamp off her, what was I thinking? - I was distraught, thinking of these worms in me, and larvae hatching on my scrotum the entire time I was doing my language presentation in my nice seersucker suit from Banana Republic; I also wrote down the address on the back of the letter so I could copy it out on the envelope, and I don't remember doing that), and when I get to the post office near campus I'm all hot and sweaty because it's like 4:50pm and I wanted to get there before it's closed.

So, I ask one of the 2 (black) counter women about priority mail to get my letter to the pope's latinist, and she suggested overnight delivery, so I did that.

And, I was like, "Would you like to hear this shit that just happened to me?", and when she was like, "Sure," I told her.

Her eyes got really big, and by the end of it, she was like, "Woo-wee," and that was all she said.

Then, she was like, "I am so glad that they shipped us over here."

And, she said that people get tests back that mean cancer or AIDS or something like that, so my test results is actually a blessing, because they caught everything in time and there's no permanent damage.

And, I apologized to her if I ruined her weekend.

"I won't say no and I won't say yes," she was like, and laughed, and at that I said bye and left, because a line was forming behind me.

Then, when I get back to the library, I had emailed the one dude who's done the latin program before and had gotten the summer housing arrangements to see if there was any way besides mail that I could contact the pope's latinist about missing the first day of class, and the guy had replied back with the pope's latinist's cell phone number, so I went to go outside to call him.

(I also ran into my one [white] friend from Mississippi and told him my story... He liked the post lady part, and I liked seeing people's head snap up as they walked bye us as we were talking on the main library steps and I'm saying loudly while I'm gesticulating, "So I find out that I have larvae hatching on my scrotum, and the worms have been laying eggs in my bloodstream for the past 8 to 9 months").

And, I called him, and he answered, and I identified myself and told him what I had just found out, and had to set up appts. change my train tickets etc., and he was very very nice, and said to take care of that, and to come when I could come, and he wished me (couldn't understand him at first, he had begun talking Latin) "...animo" (="[from] the soul").

At that I started laughing, and I was like, "Ago gratias multas, padre" (="Thanks a lot father!"), and I immediately thought to myself, *FUCK*, because not only could I not remember if the Latin vocative was used with "pater patris (m.) 'father'), but also that if it was, I had spanish-fied it.

Then, he started saying "Conquiesce" (='calm down'), and I laughed again, and was like, "Thanks, thanks," and added, "Te videbo soon" (='I will see you soon'), and immediately I was like, *FUCK*, because I had conjugated the verb according to the wrong conjugation and added in the English word 'soon', and while I was thinking that, he was gently correcting me, "Vidam", and then started saying "conquiesce, conquiesce" again.

I tried to save face and was like, "'Spectabo', I meant 'spectabo'!", since that was another form of the word 'see' that would have been conjugated the way I had conjugated, but I think he knew what I was doing (there was a little patient silence over the phone), and so I thanked him again, and said I'd almost def. be there Tues. morning, and then he told me to take care and I hung up.

I'm still reeling.

But, I also wonder if I'm just saying that to justify my poor spoken Latin?

...rethinking...

A little while ago I was re-reading parts of Peter Brown's famous autobiography of Augustine.

You know, during the 4th c., ascetics were really weird, because they were all these celibate non-clergy people that were outside institutional structures of the church. We don't tend to think of Augustine that way because he was later pressed into being a priest and then a bishop, but he was - at least for a while. Really, even though his Confessions were written from when he was a young bishop, it's all about how he converted to this sort of elite Christian life where he was celibate and really really into leading the full life of a Christian, outside the institutional church!

BREAK-UP!

My one friend with the cat and the Catalan dude (who I had introduced back in August and have been going out ever since) sat down for a relationship talk... and ended up breaking up.

They met downtown on a Sunday when everything was closing, but they had coffee in the basement of a Macy's until they kicked them out. She walked him to the bus and gave him a hug and wished him well, and then turned to walk the three blocks to the subway line that goes to her place, and it was all she could do to not look back or slump in a doorway and cry.

Then, like a block before the subway, she notices out the corner eye that he's following her on the other side of the street, so she stopped and he came up to her, right in front of a Walgreen's.

She wasn't sure what was going on, so she was like, "Did you need cigarettes or something?"

(He chain-smokes.)

"My feet just carried me here," he said, and he said it was almost like he was a zombie, which my friend with the cat appreciated, because he can never remember in English what's a zombie and what's a vampire and usually mixes the words up (he usually goes to bed at 6am and so he says he's a zombie, so she always has to correct him that no, he's a vampire).

As it turns out, they weren't done talking, so they went out for a beer and sat for like another four hours to talk, and after it got done both were emotionally exhausted.

They didn't see each other the next week, and the next weekend she was in town for a wedding in New York, and later she found out that he took a cab all the way to her neighborhood to drink and smoke alone at the bars that they used to go to together.

She also wrote him a very long, emotional email telling him that she cared about him as a friend etc., and he wrote back an email saying that could not express himself in English, but that perhaps she could find the same emotions in this Catalan song, and he sent her a YouTube link to some song about how when you love right you love so much that it hurts and that when that love ends it hurts even more, which song she watched with a translation of the lyrics next to it and tears streaming down her face...

She was so moved that she called him up and they talked for a while, and there was the same song playing on repeat in the background of his apartment.

At the end of that conversation, which also left her drained, she was like, "Thank you, but I think I need to wait a while longer to talk to you, I can't take all this Spanish drama," and right away he leapt on her words and was like, "No, it is Catalan!"

Addendum Addendum.

I forgot about that Nigerian cafeteria -

The last time I was in there, as it was closing up, the counter girl, this (black) teenager with an American accent, must have been told in some African language (Yoruba?) by an older woman who works there (her mother?) to help get chairs from upstairs to take into the main dining room, because the woman spoke to her and she stood on the staircase that goes up from the main dining room, and then would shout instructions to her, and she'd yell them up to some guy upstairs, who'd then come down with a chair to give to her and she'd run down and give it to the woman.

In the midst of shouting, the woman said something in African, and the girl yelled up, "Yellow!", and then the woman yelled at her really severely, and the girl yelled up more loudly, "No, orange, I meant orange!", and you could tell that she must have been born here or come over at a young age and she must only speak the language a bit at home, if she confuses words for similar colors.

Addendum -

I forgot way ago about Tennille -

She was telling me that a friend invited her to Catholic church, and she went with her to a service, but it makes her mad that you can't get communion since everyone should be invited, so even though her friend told her not to, she went up anyways. She said she wasn't quite sure what to say after the host and after the cup, and that she crossed herself the wrong way and people were looking, but she was glad that she didn't.

I told her that it was like that woman who shouted down a bishop in Germany, that someone gets divorced and they can't take communion, but a priest can molest and still serve it.

"Exactly," she was like.

Census people!

Every once in a while the census ended up calling me for a job, but it was always at times where I couldn't take the call, and by the time I called them back a few hours later, the job had been given to someone else.

The other day I was at a local bookstore coffee shop and there were like 2 census people (one younger [black] woman, one older [white] guy) waiting after a long day's work for their supervisor (a very young [white] guy with a beard) to show up, and I realized I could have been one of them.

The very young white guy with the beard was making small talk with the one older white guy while they filled out routine forms, and he was saying that he had to be up at 5am to help unload produce downtown as a volunteer thing for organic farmers.

Neo-pagans.

Like a year or two I was drinking with a Russian friend at the student bar when my one hippie/stoner friend from Michigan stopped by, and somehow (I'm guessing she was on something?) she started talking out of nowhere about how her family worships the moon, because even if there's nothing behind it, it's a social bonding mechanism - all in all, this really self-knowing, "better than religion" smug kind of thing that was very unlike her.

After she left, my one Russian friend said affably enough that he had a strongly allergic reaction to her, and he can't stand pagan revivalists...

"I pissed away my 20s reading Buddhist philosophy," he was like, but then he proceeded to tell me how he has come back to orthodoxy, only he doesn't go to church, and it's a more-enlightened form where he thinks everyone will be saved.

"The worst thing about neo-pagans," I was like, "Is that if you have to choose your path to hell, why pick those gods? If they ever existed or even if they still do exist, they have no power," and I said those last words very slowly and very dramatically.

He totally agreed.