I was in Santa Barbara for work last week, which is a place so beautiful that I could never live there. A place like that, where the sunlight is egg-yolk yellow and the eggs are all free range, makes doing anything boring or ugly feel shameful. How could I have a job when I’m here, where the Beach Boys first sang about “Fun, Fun, Fun?” How could I feel sad when the shores are littered with seashells so perfect I’m compelled to check for price stickers? I couldn’t hack it — so many reasons to feel uncomplicatedly happy all the time would make me start to go insane. Between all the fresh produce and the starfish, how demoralizing to be human.
Imagine my embarrassment, then, when three days after we arrived I came down with the worst bout of flu I’ve ever had. Aches, chills, bloodshot eyes and a fever I could feel radiating off the linen comforter on my Airbnb twin bed. It’s ironic to be so unwell in a state that prides itself on the opposite, with a capital W, to be as sick as I was when all we’d eaten and would continue to eat were acai bowls and macrobiotic kelp noodles and as much Erewhon hot bar grub as we could carry.
My coworkers, which feels like a misnomer for people to whom I say “I love you” once a day, were worried about me. I hadn’t been checking my phone, so they knew it was serious because I love checking my phone, and they wanted to delay my ticket home and put me up in a nice boutique hotel until I felt better. The image of this, though, of convalescing for days in sunny Southern California, made me almost weep with dejection. I needed to be in New York, a place perfectly curated for being bedridden; cold and gray and echoing with the sound of someone’s wet cough. I was desperate to be back. So I bucked up, put on some blush and an M95 and smiling eyes so my boss wouldn’t be worried I’d die on her watch, and without so much as a gripping headache and popped ear upon descent, I was in my own room just after midnight.
There I languished, in and out of consciousness, and indulged in the weakness of my slow-moving brain to finally watch a classic. I chose Chinatown, an LA-based movie where four of Faye Dunaway’s eyebrows could fit into one of mine, and where Jack Nicholson is investigating a murder case that is so much more than a murder case.
Chinatown is what it feels like to have the flu in California. It’s as discordant as tracking down a killer among the orange groves, as looking for a discarded weapon on a stunning coastal cliffside, as trying to appear professional by always wearing a full suit and sweating so much your hair gel seeps out. Filth and sin are thrown into stark contrast by the beauty of their backdrop. “How could something so awful happen in a place like this?”
This morning, my first without a fever but not without aches, I woke up to sirens and cold rain that showed now signs of ceasing. It was 80 degrees and sunny in Santa Barbara. It’s good to be home.
I hope you are feeling much better!
Only you can make the flu funny, though.