Something came into focus today as I awaited the long-delayed arrival of my massage guy. Actually, there are better ways of describing Ricky, but I’m not sure which to use. Rolfer would be one. But many people don’t know what this means. And ‘bodyworker’ sounds a bit too much like someone who performs illicit acts or pounds out the dents in one’s car. Ricky does pound out the dents in my musculoskeletal system, that is true. More to the point, he is one of those rare, intuitive people with a special knack for healing.

What needs to be healed is my lower back. This is not exactly unprecedented. Low back pain is common enough. But in my case, having a body with damaged wiring, pain sends crossed signals to all the wrong muscles at all the wrong times. Which means that I can involuntarily bend over when I am, say, trying to stand up. Which in view of my osteoporosis could lead to certain complications, such as a broken hip, which in my view could not too implausibly create additional problems, such as death, vis-à-vis, the Grim Reaper.

So there is much to be said for getting Ricky over to the house for a little bodywork session. I have been trying to get Ricky over to the house for a little bodywork session for several months, but as we all know the black viral death has intervened. This came into sharper focus yesterday when Ricky, who has been hunkering down in isolation like everyone else, finally decided that he might as well take a chance, emerge and head back to work with select clients. His shtick, if one can call it that, was that he hasn’t been out of quarantine, not once, in a couple of months. He can attest to not being infected. So he can reliably tell clients I’m all right if you’re all right.

And being such an enormously high risk myself, Ricky decided that it would fall to me to be his very first patient. He would emerge from hibernation of financial necessity, to treat me, then treat others. Thing is, when you haven’t driven a car for months, things can happen. A tire can gradually deflate, for example. And sure enough, Ricky was about to come over here yesterday when he discovered his flat.

Big deal, you say. But for some reason his spare was also flat. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ricky’s spare hadn’t been flat for years. He is a great healer, but his mind isn’t always on such things as automotive preparedness. Anyway, there’s no problem with fixing a tire, right? No. Unless you are determined to swear up and down that you have not seen a single person and not had any dealings with a single person, such as a tire-changing person. As I say, Ricky was determined. No visitors, no business interactions, nothing. He was supposed to be indisputably virus-free.

No phoning a tow truck. No phoning a friend to drive him to a tire shop. And even if a tire could be miraculously delivered to his doorstep, he would need help putting it on. So working with these parameters, what did he do? Don’t try to guess. Moreover, don’t try to understand. Ricky explained in the text. There was only one solution. Ask his brother to fly up from Los Angeles. That is correct. For whatever reason…he decided this was the safest course. It may be that he trusts his brother so completely with regard to anything, including possible virus exposure, that this was the only option.

Friday. Two days from now. That’s when Ricky is supposed to come by. Let me add that I am not holding my breath. He may make it. He may not. For there is another complication, Ricky’s life. He has ups. He has downs. He is not over his divorce. He was always prone to rescheduling appointments. This is only an intensification of an already odd situation. And I could almost say that who cares? I give Ricky high marks for being a sort of musculoskeletal artist.

Meanwhile, I have pain. Sudden, balance-threatening pain. Getting out of my wheelchair and into bed at night is scary. Reversing the process in the mornings is scarier. Such is life during Covid-19. Such is life for most people in the world every day of the week. And here, I don’t mean the specifics of my situation. I just mean being at the mercy of fate and the human body, not having endless options and services and help at one’s disposal. And living daily with what those of us in the first world think of as unlivable…such as the notion that there may never be a cure for this particular virus, that it may be with us indefinitely. A humbling thought, really.