Can I get coronavirus if a guy shoots in my eye?

A gay man applies gallows humor to coronavirus the way he does with STDs.

Back in the day, pre-pre-exposure-phophylaxis for HIV and Truvada, when I would come up with all kinds of theoretical ways I might have contracted HIV (and this always took place after sex, never before, let alone during) I would tell myself, “Let me be the one gay man in the world who gets HIV from oral sex,” or from removing the used condom from myself or my partner incorrectly and spilling an invisible droplet of seed on me, or from micro-tears in the condom, or getting a shot of ejaculate in my eye—as if I would then become famous and become a guest speaker of honor at all the international HIV and AIDS conferences:

“And here’s Brian Griffin, who was infected when the bandaid he had over his papercut fell off while he gave his partner a handjob.”

And thus, I’ll be the person who gets coronavirus from his Amazon delivery:

“And now on the Today show we have Brian Griffin, connected via Zoom from his bedroom in Brooklyn, where he is currently in self-isolation after having contracted coronavirus when he neglected to put on his protective face bandana while bringing his Amazon Fresh delivery into the house from the front porch. How are you doing this morning, Brian?”

“Oh fine, Hoda. I have a really mild case. In fact all I have is this niggling barely there case of conjunctivitis. My eyes aren’t even red. They just feel dry sometimes. I’ve found it gets worse when I have my space heater on and I’m blowing hot, dry air straight into my face.”

“Now tell us, Brian, you think you got coronavirus by forgetting to put on your protective face bandana?” Hoda says.

“I didn’t forget, Hoda. I neglected to out of embarrassment, because my roommate was standing right there in front of the open front door at 6:15 in the morning, and I didn’t want to look weird by running back to my bedroom for my red face bandana. Also it was early, and I was tired and confused, and I hadn’t established clearly what I would do with the face bandana after I brought the groceries in: take it into the shower with me? Drop it on the floor in a part of the house that was already dirty? Put it in a used grocery bag?”

“Now let’s get this straight,” Hoda says. “You did wipe down the groceries with Lysol wipes as you were unpacking them.”

“Oh yes, I did, Hoda. I removed the groceries from the brown paper bags, and wiped them down with Lysol wipes my brother had sent me via Amazon two weeks before.”

“Lucky your brother even found Lysol wipes on Amazon.”

“I know, right? I used a total of two wipes for the set of groceries, which was probably enough food for a solid five to seven days of eating. Should I have used more wipes, Hoda? I don’t know. When the second wipe started to get dry I did ‘wet it up again’ by spraying it with Lysol from a spray J_____ my roommate and I keep under the kitchen sink. Also there were some items that were difficult to decontaminate, like the three pounds of clementine oranges in a mesh bag. And the bananas: is it enough to just disinfect the outside edges of the peels, or do I also have to get the inside edges? I mean, I’m going to peel the peels off anyway, right?”

“OK, we’re running over time here,” says Hoda.

“Shout out to my brother John who made the Amazon order for me,” I say.

My favorite life coach talks of insomnia, then infects me with it.

What other things happened of interest yesterday? I watched Martha Beck’s “The Gathering Room” with The Artful Badger. Martha was scared. She said she was visited the night before by her old friend insomnia. I knew it when she said it: Great, now I was going to get insomnia too. She had infected me over the Internet waves. But really, this is the woman who is arch-calm and peaceful and cornily funny about everything, and she’s telling us she’s scared! She gave us this meditation to do in which we literally climb inside our own fears. “This is a pretty advanced technique, everyone, but I think we’re ready for advanced.” I mixed it in with my Contemplative Prayer meditation before bed, which itself followed a viewing of the Spokes II orgy scene. A lot of visuals there! I went to bed, and fell asleep, and then was half-asleep, half-awake and heard this whirring sound.

My own breathing.

That woke me, of course.

Finally I get up and read some Nicholas Nickleby (I found it in one of those Free Little Libraries in Park Slope on the way to the gym from the Seventh Avenue subway). I make it about a page and a half before nodding off (the text is so small, this would be like eight pages in another edition). Kudos to Martha Beck for telling us she was scared: this is what she’s been preparing for her whole life. I mean, she’s the change and transformation guru, and till now she’s been doing one-on-one coaching, virtual courses, and the occasional African safari workshop. Now she’s going to have to lead the entirety of humanity through an epoch-defining transformation. She should be scared. It’s the “refusal of the call.” She’ll answer it (I think she already has; she has that free masterclass tomorrow, “Thriving in Turbulent Times”). Martha, incidentally, was on Today with Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie the other day.

Tying it together with my bandana.

Time to take the bandana in the shower with me. I did put it on when I unpacked the groceries. Like with condoms, a 50 per cent usage rate is better than zero per cent usage.