Can two, separate agonies deflect each other?  Could they destructively interfere like waves with dissonant frequencies?

This is a critical question as I imagine the prospect of being checked for Covid within the context of living with a koala.

Let me explain:

First, I have no immediate plans to get checked for coronavirus as I have scarcely left the house in weeks. But I think about it. Oh, I think about it…

In the unlikely event you haven’t heard, the current test for coronavirus isn’t your standard pin-prick or blood draw. Perhaps that might make you think “phew”, but that’s only because you don’t know the truth. 

The COVID test is called a nasopharyngeal swab. To the non-medical person, ‘nasopharyngeal’ loosely means ‘rapier-sized Q-Tip plunged into nose until stopped by brain.’ Most of the time this process is performed by a clinician in protective gear, although in some parts of the city it might be administered by a guy named Otto in a Quantum Leap t-shirt.  Regardless, the process is akin to someone cleaning your ears from the wrong side.

And it makes me very uncomfortable.

*

Living on lockdown with a koala is filled with discomforts and annoyances. Some of these rise to the level of outright agony.

Koala’s never eat meals, but they are always eating. Always eating: incessantly and unremittingly – gnoshing and chewing and smacking loudly on a never-ending array of starchy carbs, squishy fruits, and strange, questionable meats. If the ‘food’ is prepared (rather than sucked raw from the package like a plastic oyster shell) it is done so by no method known by any human society. There are no recipes – only vague impressions of what ‘cuisine’ should be.

For instance, the Ukrainian dish “borscht” typically consists of potatoes and carrots, a dash of olive oil, chicken stock, an array of gentle and lovely spices, vinegar and yes, beets. To my father, it is beets in vinegar. That’s it. Written down, the recipe might read as such:

1. Find large receptacle. If plastic water pitcher is available, use that.
2. Vinegar – any.
3. Pour vinegar into water carafe. Make sure vinegar is deep enough so that, when carafe sits uncovered in the refrigerator, the beets will look like an assembly of aborted monkey fetuses floating in formaldehyde.
4. Open can(s) of beets.  Flop into the brine.
5. Swirl carafe in front of wary son and grandson and proclaim: “there’s some of that BORSCHT here. It’s really good.”
6. Watch son and grandson exchange meaningful looks, then avoid the refrigerator all together for seven days.
7. Repeat process next week, substituting beets for discount knackwurst. Re-use same vinegar until all has alternately been either absorbed by the vegetable/meat/carbohydrate medium or has been entirely aerosolized in the refrigerator and titrated by the remaining food.

Koalas are always eating — but never in a meal, and never at a table.

And they prefer an audience.

Are you struggling to assemble a hyper-sophisticated virtual reality rig to mollify the badger so he does not tear up your living room carpet? The koala will loom behind you, quiltching his way through a dry pepperoni sandwich on white bread.

Trying to microwave oatmeal? To your left, a Koala with crackers: smacking, and crumbling, and falling gently to the kitchen floor like snow.

And if you finally reach your limit and decide to break quarantine and drive off in your car?  The koala will watch you from the window, slowly lifting his coffee cup to his lips. You can hear it only in your mind — a sound like a turkey-baster inhaling a puddle of partially coagulated bacon grease – but you can absolutely, 100% hear it.

                And of course the favorite place for a koala to eat is in the Chewin Chair.

                *

                Being scared of irrational things irritates me. I hate that my hind brain will not read the statistical reports submitted by my neocortex and instead insists on reacting hysterically only to primitive and antiquated evolutionary cues.  It’s annoying and a little embarrassing. 1 out of 3 people die of heart disease! No problem: eat that entire bag of S’more Chip Ahoy cookies off your bare chest in bed while watching Tiger King! Board a commercial airplane? Nooooooo!

 It’s dumb.

By some weird quirk of my personality I tend to seek out my irrational fears. It’s why I joined the speech team, it’s why I don’t murder spiders under my bed, and it’s why I’m currently trying to procure a couple hundred dozen nasopharyngeal swabs from Alibaba. My logic is that it’s like a vaccine: systematically jam a few hundred of them into my nose for practice, be immune to the discomfort for the actual test.

Of course, if you’re diagramming this logic you realize it’s no logic at all. But that’s what you get when negotiating an agreement between the cerebral cortex and the amygdala. It’s ‘decision’ by committee: you’re sick of hearing about it and you just want it over with. (Likewise, if you find yourself wanting to share a Cup ‘o Covid with your next-door neighbors because you’re sick of hearing about coronavirus and you just want to get it over with, you know the feeling.)

                *

                Koalas like an audience when they eat. They do not use plates. They do not keep their mouths shut. Perhaps they think of it as some kind of performance art. Or maybe they once read that typical humans socialize over meal time, and have misinterpreted that to mean “humans like to watch pulverized food tumble in the mouths of their kin.”  It’s probably an innocent human-to-koala cultural miscommunication, but regardless it is a “hot” miscommunication – the kind most likely to spark an inter-species war/genocide. 

The reason, of course, is that you can’t escape it. In fact, in a lockdown situation it impinges upon your escape.  You want to watch The Simpsons reruns to temporarily escape the fact you’re trapped in townhouse with feral beasts? Nope. You can’t – the minute the TV goes on, the koala will materialize, like mist, and eat at as many Halo oranges in the Chewin Chair as it takes for you to abandon the pursuit and retreat to your bedroom.  It never fails. Never. And they don’t sleep, either. So even if you get up at 4:30am to watch the latest drop of Picard, never mind because all of sudden – magic – there’s a bear in the chair pawing handfuls of cereal straight from the box.

                So can two agonies collide and cancel each other?  

                That’s what I want to find out.

                I have this vision of receiving my dozen gross nasopharyngeal swabs in the mail, setting aside a half dozen in a long, handsome, maroon box under the couch, keeping them there…

                I’m on the living room couch.  Maybe eating some oatmeal on the ottoman watching Frasier or maybe taking in the new Better Caul Saul with a Coors Light…

                A koala appears, takes a cold piece of pizza from the refrigerator, goes to work in the Chewin Chair…  And this time, rather than getting mad, I place the spoon in my oatmeal, casually reach beneath the couch, carefully produce one of the foot long Q-Tips…and jam the fucker right to the back of my skull without prejudice or delay.

                Would my father notice? React? Probably not.

                More importantly, would I find my consciousness – renewed and refreshed – delicately balanced between the twin opposing forces of these equal but opposite horrors?  Would it be an escape?

                It’s possible and, I think, probably worth a shot…