Anna and the Sergeant: Dreams are made of eucalyptus, part 2

Missed the first part? Catch up!

________

Mumbai, Fall 2007

After a trip to a chemist right down the street from my friend’s rather shockingly priced rented room (evidently not marked up due to our whiteness, unlike most street food and many other things), I tracked down a bottle of eucalyptus oil and a small plastic-wrapped roll of cotton.

By the time I got back to my friend’s place and realized Sargie had never precisely described the exact application of the oil, I found myself starting to think of John Cusack’s oh-so-glam Q-tip use in Better Off Dead. Hotness, for sure.

While I was hardly there to add myself to the local queue for arranged marriages, much less attempt intercontinental flirting, stuffing my orifices with cotton seemed a bit desperate. Which I clearly was by this point, just not that desperate. Yet.

Instead, since my friend had been recommending I try out some fabulous sauna down the street, wherein one evidently sweat out all the dutifully drunk bottled water in one’s system while breathing in lungfuls of eucalyptus-laden steam, I decided to go for a more homegrown steam bath.

In truth I did attempt to inhale
Although my friend’s rent did not apparently cover kitchen access, like all practical travelers abroad, she had a hot pot for boiling water. After finding a bowl big enough to serve as a “bath,” I plugged in the pot and waited to see if Sargie’s oil would do any magic.

Once I was carefully huddled over the bowl, attempting to hold a small towel over my head, without spilling the steaming water on my lap, I dumped in some oil, and then a little more just for good measure.

Well, so maybe it was a lot more. It’s likely the pigeons that normally roamed the ledge outside the open windows (and left their germy fluff on my toiletries in the bathroom each morning) had started shuffling toward a less-cleansing perch, but I was too busy coughing to notice. Lean too close to the bowl (and by close I mean less than 12 inches), and I could suddenly feel the steam pricking my eyeballs, tickling my throat and basically opening up or provoking everything but my confounded sinuses.

Evidently, when in India, one must do what all the locals do — which certainly isn’t treating sinusitis (as the ayurvedic doctor called it) with cotton bits and the oil preferred by one northern European father. Hence a week-long adventure in swallowing the various unknown but speckled pills I got from the doctor and which I hoped bore only a superficial resemblance to dung or mud.
I’ll never know exactly what was in them, but at least the shooting sinus pains never came back. If only I could have said the same for the pigeons and their morning bathroom “gift.”

The proof is in the stuffing?
Ah, but Sargie. If you’ve been reading closely, you’re probably wondering why all this makes me grateful for him, no? Well, in what may perhaps prove that even the weirdest of my recent adventures in dating could yet have copper in not silver linings, one day months after my Mumbai trip I woke up with another sinus headache. And while I had full access to a kitchen, stove and tea kettle, let’s just say I was short on time.

And who knew? It turns out if you dab a little oil on some cotton and tell yourself Cusack was hot no matter what he was saying — or, more importantly, doing — you start to get a taste of Sargie’s folk cure. For I found myself strangely grateful.
________

Now then: as to those yet-unredeemed dates mentioned (which I hear some of you want reports on), I certainly could tell a tale or two, but for the time being, I don’t like to be a girl who dates and blogs. I can however promise a few reports from my weekend ditch-your baggage party and hopefully news of a forthcoming double crazy blind date. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, if you’re looking for more things to read, check out a V-day article I was quoted in, a recent review of this blog in San Francisco magazine, or pre-order your copy of Faith on the Edge, a forthcoming essay collection from GodSpy that includes my essay, “Confessions of an Undercover Virgin.”

Anna and the Sergeant: Dreams are made of eucalyptus

A head cold is an admittedly odd reason to feel some gratitude for a long-ago, tongue-pierced suitor, but when said date was the one to inform you of eucalyptus oil’s powerfully curative properties, even the boob job he’d bought his “ex” (in an ill-fated effort to boost her self-esteem, or so he claimed) becomes the sort of endearing quirk that makes you sigh, “Ah, Sargie,” laugh and shake your head. (Yes, that sentence weighed in at 71 words, thank you.)

Sargie wasn’t really his name, of course — in fact, he had a such unusual one, I still sometimes wish I weren’t committed to pseudonyms — but somehow or other, a similarly shortened version of St. Ex-cessories’ real name had previously wound up on my shoulder, in a short-term tattoo scratched with eye pencil for my Halloween guise of stripper one year. (Ironically, that costume predated the early-20s bender of secular dating I went on, in a sort of rebound from being so shattered by Married Man’s being, well, married. Yes, you can get more back-story in the book.)

And when I met Sarge at the bar one night in grad school, he talked well enough that I chose to overlook his tongue ring, highly tricked out Jeep (all of which accessories he swore were vital to its optimal operation) … and the various other details that moved from being eccentricities to deal breakers in a matter of three dates.

Maybe the fact that I’d once gone around a party with a nickname version of his name writ as evidence of some prior, ill-fated “fling” had something to do with it. Or maybe I sensed that behind the avid first-impression conversation (which he later claimed was like running his brain in the “red zone,” a place he’d rather our physical contact went), was the sort of valuable homeopathic insight that would one day take on the sinus scourge of my second trip to India.

I don’t remember how it came up, except that I think I got sick the month of our dates. So one night Sgt. Ex-cessories helpfully mentioned that his dad used to have him put eucalyptus oil up his nose during head colds, which he claimed promptly caused all germs, junk and who knows what other fluids to promptly eject themselves from said stuffed-up orifice. Charming, no?

But charming or not, in an hour of desperation in Mumbai — either shortly before or after my equally desperate visit to an ayurvedic doctor who performed acupressure, some treatment with a heat lamp and played an unsettling meditation chant from an elephant plug-in — I remembered Sargie and the oil.

My head had been putting me through such misery that the needle-like pains in my temples sometimes drew spontaneous tears, an experience that was into its second or third day since my departure for Mumbai. Our first treatment had been tracking down the Indian black-market version of Sudafed — made with the real stuff, not the nearly impotent phenyl-whatever — and had taken us three or four chemists to find (the local version of a corner drugstore).

This worked quite nicely at first, but less than 24 hours into the treatment, the more capricious, black-market side of the pill introduced itself — as if it perched there beside me in bed, fearlessly gulping unboiled local water, and laughed when I pointed to my temple ordering, “Sinuses, NOW!”

“What, you think my work is clinically proven or something? I’m just a pill in foil packets that some unknown pilot or flight attendant dropped by the chemist for God knows what reward.” Wink, wink. That’s probably when I remembered the claim that oil of eucalyptus might cause, well, a disgusting flow of discharge, but one that just might open my sinuses, stop the pain, and allow me to sort of enjoy my vacation. In short, it might be a miracle cure.


Did I find it? Did it work? Did I manage to live in sinus happiness ever after? Check back next week for the thrilling conclusion to Anna and the Sergeant: Dreams are made of eucalyptus.

Chills ’n fevah!

I know. You’re probably surprised some guy in the Caymans hasn’t taken up squatting this here domain (or whatever the proper term is). I think I’m almost equally shocked myself.

What I’m not is well, sadly. Some fevah hit me Saturday, and I’ve been home sick ever since (except for Easter, that is — can’t miss the hymns!). That’s meant to be both update and excuse, I guess. The good news is, whenever I manage to lick this thing (they tell me a fever is good news, and the thing you really want most to lick is not so much the fevah itself as its adversary), I’m super-close to wrapping up final edits. For real.

And that means ... Yes ... A final return to blogging! Less talking about Sexless 2.0, and more implementation.

So, in the mean time, go to it, body! Fight that virus, fever!

And thanks for your extremely longsuffering patience, to the readers who still check this blog.

Saturday night, Sunday night, Monday night fever

Oh, you thought I meant dancing, John Travolta and polyester tighty-whities? Well, shucks, ya’ll, I meant the physiological kind! Not sure what the devil’s got into me, but I been right sick this holiday weekend. :( Sick enough that, Saturday, I didn’t have a drop of caffeine. Word.

Well anyway. What I can say? My brain’s still addled. Clearly. But seeing as how I’ve got a whole five-day temp assignment beginning today, the gray bits are a little overtaxed already. Which hopefully will not describe the state of my finances when I commence the dreaded e-file!!!! (Shudders) Anyone with tips on how a freelancer does the 1040, feel to weigh in.

But gracious - what have I turned into?!!! Fevers and taxes?!! Such terrible Tuesday-morning prattle. You see I’m trying not to make yet another excuse for not blogging but, um, well .... (trails desperately for red herring)
I’m thrilled to note that the lady in question in Reader Frasier’s dubious but non-winning photo has actually weighed in. And she’s gracious, folks, as well as very funny. So reread up on our Blog Reader World Series judging party and get a load of Lilith’s comment. You remember the show, right? Frasier ... Lilith ... It took me a few hours - but then, I have the Fevah.

While you wait for me to recover, finish work, and get back to my home computah ... check out Blogfather’s latest feature in his ongoing Nondating Life Series. And phew, it’s a steamy one! ;) Maybe he’s got the Fevah too ... Ta for now! I’d kiss bye, but then you might get what I’ve got. ;)

Don’t forget to enter this month’s contest! Now that the Valentine’s haze is over, what kind of relationship does your job resemble? Ponder, describe ... email!!!