I have had shingles pain/tingling for a week now, and the rash showed up 2 days ago, went to my doctor yesterday and am now taking Valtrax. I can say this is by far the worst pain any virus has caused me.
Anyways, my rash is on my right leg in 3 spots, the main rash which is on my inner thigh, and little rashes on the middle of my quad and a few inched beside it.
Is it possible for shingles rash on your inner thigh spread to the penis/scrotum? or can you only spread it to your eyes? my scrotum is constntly touching the rash area unless i make a point to seperarate the areas with my boxers briefs, and weven then, it does not take long for them to be touching one another again.
i am terrified of this happening, i am already in unbearable pain, the last thing i need is for my genitals to be affected. is there anything i can do?

For context last year in October I was bit pretty bad but I had no idea if it was a tick. But I had gone to northern Italy where one day we were hiking through woodland and farmland. A week after I was back from Italy I had huge bites. Fast forward till late November and I get shingles, but proceeding to that I light sensitivity and ear pressure problems. I recovered well from shingles, but when I started to have very intense headaches which were then followed by a seemingly chronic prostate infection, I was treated with only a week of doxy at the time and my symptoms improved during that small period especially my leg. During this time I was very fevery on and off, often with nausea and temperature issue and feeling very run down with massive problems sleeping with sometimes 4 days with no rest and with severe brain fog which last until feb, I also had an increase in visual snow which is something I’ve had for 4 years but it got alot worse during this period, other visuals problems like tunnel vision and blurry vision. Around the same time I started having this bad right leg, feels like it was just tight and felt off with little to no pain in the lower part of leg. This continues until February where I start with getting weird heart problems like skipped beats and also POTS and I was very unfit. Both legs were weak with twitches in both in both of them. During March I started to treat what was suspected POTs and felt a little better but then I started to get facial problems, struggling to talk as my mouth felt loose and my eyes were extremely dry and felt hard to keep open, i couldn’t/can’t talk without holding my face. Now in April. My bad leg continues to get worse with it almost like have a peg leg but then sometimes it’s barely noticeable but always still there and has spread down to my foot almost causing drop foot, the twitching is in the rest of my body now and I’m extremely stiff everywhere very much so in my hands in both sides. I have many nuro symptoms such as buzzing and hypersensitivity, trouble swallowing, breathing, hypnic jerks. I’ve lost 20lbs which all seems to be muscle. I also lost alot of sensation in my penis which has led to ED. bowl movement also has been difficult. I can’t help but feel it’s ALS, as all the weakness came from one leg and the symptoms and the way it’s progressing, it’s on track but I’m 22 the odds are ridiculous with no family history and I can’t shake the other infection symptoms I’ve had.
Other context: - Extensive blood work came back perfect. - X3 ECG was all fine. - Doctors on examination disregard ALS due to my age and not yet clinical weakness but still on waiting list for nuro. - Extreme stress during this time. - BFS and VSS for 4 years which were put down to stress, all made worse in this time. - hyper mobile. - current medicine is Propanarol, Fluoxetine, Zolpidem

I was recently diagnosed with shingles for the first time on my upper thigh and groin area and wanted to create a post to share my experience since it may help someone in a similar situation.
This started last week when I first noticed a cluster of blisters in the crease of my thigh/pelvis and lethargy the day before. The next day I noticed another area a bit lower on my thigh that was red and seemed like a cluster was forming there as well. There also seemed to be some redness/blisters on my pelvis (but none on my penis/scrotum). All of these were on the left side of my body.
I was able to see the doctor who confirmed shingles based on visual examination alone.
However, I started to get concerned afterwards if this was indeed shingles (herpes zoster) or genital herpes (herpes simplex) due to the location of the blisters. I also realized that I had always heard of people getting singles on their upper body. Of course, I resorted to Google which further deepened my worries and created enormous anxiety that this was actually genital herpes and not shingles.
However, I was able to find a few posts on here where others had shared their experience with shingles in the groin/thigh area which helped eased my anxiety and provided some much needed reassurance.
I revisited the doctor a few days later and had a swab sample from a blister (which was kind of painful since he needed to burst open the blister to retrieve the fluid from within). Then I agonizingly needed to wait a few days for the test results (thanks to all the previous reddit posts on thigh/groin shingles during this time), which ultimately confirmed the presence of the shingles virus. This was a massive relief.
I figured I would create a post to share my experience with others in a similar situation who are facing shingles below the belt and are worried.

Hey everyone, I apparently have shingles on my buttocks as well as my testicles, and one single sore on the head of my penis. I am currently traveling in Ecuador and the doctor said he was absolutely sure that it's shingles (Although I did not see the sore on my penis at that time). I got a blood test done for HSV 2 because I was really freaked out that I may have somehow contracted it, and I came back negative. It seems that this is a very rare location for it to appear, so I am wondering if other members of the community have had it in the genitals the way I have described.
My sores are all on the left side of my body and mostly appear in linear to somewhat linear patches.
Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I am writing you because I really need help and advices.
First of all, sorry for my bad writing, English is not my mother tongue. And also sorry in advance if I'm not using the right words to express myself.
I just turned 36 and I still can't believe that I'm now closer to 40 than I was to 30... I really didn't see it coming.
And I've spent the last years struggling with many unusual health problems: atrial fibrillations, strange and temporary polyuria-polydipsia syndrome, lower back surgery, bilateral sciatica after surgery, shingles occurring often and in strange ways (hyperesthesia without rash, migrating through different places of my body...).
Despite being a cartesian person, I am really starting to wonder if my body is sending me some signal...
I have always been extremely jealous of women since I'm 7 years old, approximately... I was wearing my mother's clothes, bras, and pantyhoses. Then I bought my own clothes, and it never ended. I have always had periods of "control", trying to bury this wish, live like a man, and forget about it.
But it always come back... always. The jealousy gets even worse when having sex. I have always been very aware, clairvoyant, about many things. And when it comes to sex, the difference between me and the girls is more than obvious...
While I can have only one orgasm that feels nothing more than a sneeze, I see my partners convulsing, moaning, and again and again, for multiple times... Every girl is different of course, some do more, some do less, but it is in any case waaaaay better than what I can have.
And I tried everything : anal sex alone, anal sex with girls (including prostate massage, etc.), nipple play... I have never succeeded in anything else than the conventional and boring "sex as a man".
My worse dysphoria really is on the sex topic, but of course I have it for the other topics : I want to be able to dress a girl, I want to be able to make up... I refuse all the roles that society wants to assign me because I'm a man. I just want to be a girl, and it is killing me.
My ex really didn't accept the mere idea that I have always wanted to be a girl... And it is one of the reasons why we are not together anymore. After almost 8 years... Strange way to support the one you love, don't you think?
Today, I am with another girl who accepts me exactly as I am and it feels wonderful. We are really in love with each others and this is amazing.
Unfortunately, as nice as it can be, my dysphoria is still there : the opportunities to go out together with me as a girl are really rare because transphobia is everywhere... And people see that I'm "trans", or "transvestite", and look at me a lot. It all gets sooo worse when it comes to talk with people with my voice...
And above all, when making love, this problem strikes again. And it is really starting to be a huge problem in our relationship. I am even afraid to make love to her now, because I know that I will feel so bad after we have finished (after having seen once again, the huge difference between us).
There is an internal fight in me, between my horniness for her, and my mind that tells me not to do it because I will feel bad afterwards. So I'm struggling not to feel horny, not to respond to her horny entincements, and I even sometimes masturbate in secret, in the toilets for example.
I am really going through phases of depression because of this.
I am 36 now and I feel that it may be now or never, for a transition. The problem is that I live in a country full of transphobia (even if it's in Europe), and work in a country that may be even worse because it is a Catholic state, the court has crucifix, etc.
And I'm almost sure that the public health care insurance of this country doesn't reimburse the costs of a transition...
That being said, I have a few questions to ask you, if you kindly allow me.
1) I have read in a lot of Reddit posts that the HRT makes wonderful changes on the sexual side: some people become multiorgasmic, some feel much more intensity... In brief, and sorry if the question seems silly or too direct : would it make me be able to experience orgasms like girls do ? More or less the same intensity, duration, and be multiple ?
If it was true, it would already fix so many problems for me... So many.
2) Is it possible to still boymode at work or with some of my friends, while taking HRT ? Even after like 3 years of HRT ? Or changes would be too obvious ? Of course, for breast development, I suppose that it would require that I wear something very tight to hide them.. and for the beach, that would really be a "problem" (even if on the other hand, I would love so much to be able to show them and be proud of them...)
3) Doing HRT means that I will have to take hormones for all my life, or not ? I'm still very unsure about it (sorry for the "noob" question). And if yes, what would happen if I stop taking them ?
4) Doing HRT means that I would eventually stop producing testosterone, even if I stop taking HRT ? And I have read that sex hormones are very important for health, that we can't live without them. Does it mean that I would end up being forced to take hormones all my life ?
5) My girlfriend also likes the classic sexual intercourse : will I still be able to make love to her "like a man", with HRT ? I have read that it may be difficult to get hard again, but many ladyboys still can... ?
6) Still for the same question, will my penis reduce in size for sure, or is there any way to avoid it ?
7) I am right to expect having much more unusual health problems during or after HRT ? As a hormone change doesn't look like an easy and classic stuff for the body...
Of course I know I need to check with a doctor, but I'm already afraid that the answer is "don't do it".
To conclude, of course, it I could press a magic button and be transformed instantly into a woman with feminine voice, complete passing, real vagina, etc. I would not even hesitate. Even if it implies that everyone, including at work, knows about it.
But I'm really scared to just "look like a transgender person". I suppose I am not the only one to experience this fear...
What it sure is that I hate my body more and more and more as years go by... about this dysphoria and also the fact that it's sick and painful all the time. I just hate it now.
Many thanks in advance for your answers and your support. I really need them :(

I think I have std but my tests is negative i had a unprotected sex with man that have things on his penis that have color like purple but it was makeout ... for 3 years I Fell alot of weird things in my body specially alot pimples like acne appears all over my body without any reason and sometimes I fell like I have a cold and my temperature is hot and I fell tired and sometimes I fell thr pain of shingles on my body I don't know what diese I have can anyone help me

Anyone here experience sacral shingles? I have a rash on my right buttcheek, right thigh, and the base of my penis. Bad nerve pain on my right side if my pelvis.

M33, overweight, smoker.
So apparently no doctor can help, maybe someone here has an idea.
I noticed kind of herpes similar rash on my nose and lips. Some cold sores on the tip of my penis aswell. End of september i got ill with bronchitis. Because of burning sensation in my throat i was tested positive for strep, so got antibiotics for 5 days.
A doc assumed HSV2/shingles and gave me Aciclovir 800mg but that didnt help. Rash on nose and lips is ongoing with clear discharge.
From end of september up today i have burning throat, burning lips, rash on my lip and on my penis plus lungs are weaker. For a week now my left ear is closing from time to time. Doc gave me now 20 days therapy of daily 200mg doxycyclin, i am on day 4 but no change yet.
Tests: Strep and staph 1 week ago negative Hiv and syphilis negative 3 days ago Genital smear test negative for standard test, Urine quick test negative EBV was higher than usual, Cytomegaly Chlamydia pneumoniae positive No HSV Small Body count no findings
Docs don't know about where my symptoms come from, only assumed chronical bronchitis and sent me to lung clinics, i will be there end of month. Anyone any idea? Thank you.

Yes, I am doing this because I have realized I am good at making these long goofy ahh klinglebingingsontwerkernuttington names, and its only pretty much because I am absolute197, who has been going on here for about half a year at this point,
First, you want to just come up with your own quadavious ahh words like "Klingleblinglebingertwerkerfuckingsonasspoundingtontwerkershittingtonfardshittlecookie".
But you need to do that by adding alot of small things like "Klankleblock", or "Shingletits", or you can just use those, or something like "Quadavious". If you wanna make long words, heres are 2 steps to do that

1. You can try and add spam like "Lapascoroameroakkersateioernsaoemer" which isn’t fully spam
2. Try and add those other words like "Bingletwerkerton"
3. Try and add alot of those weird spam words or those small names that are slightly long by themselves

And now 5 steps on how do your own quandalepingleson ahh words:

1. Try and do something like "_____son", or "_____ton" for some of them
2. Do a bunch of these, and some other goofy ahh long words
3. You can also use something like "Klankle" or "Shingle" for the the beggining of them so you can make something like Klankleton. Try and use your fucking brain to make a single goofy word of the beggining of a word.
4. You need to not always use "ton" or "son" at the end of your word, you can also try and think of something that will match up with the first part of your word, like "Shingletits"
5. Theres a simple word, but don’t try and make it goofy in a way where its cringe.

Now you can try some first words like "Klingletingleson" and then make more of those than there are big words, unless you want alot of words that are like "Bingleklingleklongletinglewingleshittlecookingtonfardershidspeniscirbetinglefartingson"
So make your own words, and as soon as you come up with one think of another combination for the first part and the end part of your small word, just look at that one word and think of some completely full on transitions of that word that you can use, you can also use 2 or more of those to make a slightly big word for your name.
Now that you have made all of your words, try and think of an ending, it can be something like "Sr. III". But here are 13 steps to the end of your name:

1. You can use "Sr." or "Jr.", or you can use both
2. It would also be better if you used something like roman numerals at the end
3. You can also use "Of", and then another small name after it and then you can also add some roman numerals
4. You can also add shit like "the 194th" at the end
5. You can also add "Sr." or "Jr.", or both, right before the "the 184th"
6. for the "the 164827th", you can also use fictional googology
7. If you are getting better at names then try and come up with your own ending of a name

Now if you can’t think of your own small words, here are some begginings and endings of them:
​

Quingle	nuts
Quingle	son
Quingle	ton
Quibble	son
Quibble	nuts
Quibble	dick
Quibbly	penis
Quibbly	tits
Quibbly	nuts
Klankle	son
Klankle	block
Klingle	son
Klingle	dick
Kibbly	shits
Quibbity	dick
Quibbity	shits

​

So this is like my last option to ask here, please bear with mistakes as english isn't my first language.
I try to make it short, promised.
I'm mid20 male, no serious health conditions, no regular meds.
I am sharing my flat with a guy, let's call him Greg. I am gay and thought from his behaviour that he was straight but to my surprise he opened up as bi-sexual. Things led from one to another and we ended up having sex on two occasions in first week of september.
A week later i started noticing some herpes coming up my lip, didn't think much of it as i have some outbreaks from time to time. In a matter of 2 weeks it started coming up my nose and eventually one spot came up on the head of my penis. I went to the doctor but as my usual doctor was on holiday i went to his substitute. He didn't really check on me but immediately prescibed me some 4000mg daily dosage Aciclovir pills. This seemed to work as the spot on my penis disappeared in 2 days, my nose seemed to get better, also my lip. 5 days later the pills were empty and i saw good progress.
Few days later Greg came back "home" from holiday with bad bronchitis. We share the same kitchen and bathroom so no surprise i got sick aswell two days later. Apart from the typical bronchitis i noticed weird things. My throat started to give a burning sensation, same inside of my lips and the tip of my tongue. My usual doc was back now so i went to see him. Told him all my story so far about the herpes, bronchitis, burning mouth and of course told him about the possible STD. Although i mentioned that all of my symptoms are basically in my mouth he took a urine test plus a genital swab. He said he was testing for chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and some others, all tests were negativ. He took a throat swab only for strep and said "just to be safe but i doubt that you have strep". 3 days later i come back to his practice and he welcomes me with "Well, strep type B positive". He prescribed me 5 days of antibiotics plus prescribed me Aciclovir lotion for the herpes to go away (he refused to give me the Aciclovir pills as he thinks they have too heavy side effects, yet he was weirdly surprised why his substitute didn't give me a higher dose, 8000mg per day instead 4000mg).
Well, i am on my last antibiotics today and my throat and mouth are still burning, so are my lips.
The blister on my lip gets better *very slowly" and although the blisters on my nose seem to heal well i have noticed some small red dots on my nose, further there are now 3 small skin colored dots which release white stuff on pressure, it looks like some typical talcum or what comes out of some inside skin pimples, don't know how to describe. On top of all today i noticed also on my forehead there are blisters coming up now.
So based on how i feel with my non stop headache i am almost sure i now have shingles.
I had shingles on my neck a few years ago due to heavily induced mental stress so i know the symptoms. And i am pretty sure it came up again now because of all the stress i had again the last two weeks, plus of the antibiotics and antimyotics (i need anti candida stuff every time i have AB because of resulting mouth candida).
Greg says he doesn’t and didn't feel any throat burning and he went to the doc for strep test, his doc told him he wouldn’t have it because he wouldn’t feel no pain or burning in his throat.
I did my last STD test 5 months ago, negative. No contact after until with Greg. Greg has been tested last year when being in hospital and says he didn't have any sexual partner besides both times with me. We used protection (condom) for sex. Oral was unprotected but without cum involved.
Does anyone have an idea what i could be? I don’t if I am totally exaggerating with my fear of an STD because two docs doubt it. I think I can exclude HIV but there are a lot of other possible things. I've read a lot about oral gonorrhea, my doc kinda laughed about that. My question how a genital swab can help with oral symptoms has been unanswered, he said urine would be more precise as throat swab.
I am lost. Doctors don't seem to fully pay attention, my symptoms do not disappear. What the hell is happening?

When I (male) was 13 and my sister was 15 we had a storm one night that tore some shingles off the roof of our house. Some water leaked in and got her bed wet. She asked if she could sleep with me until her bed dried and our dad could fix the roof. I said fine. I had my back to her as she climbed in to bed. She snuggled up close to me and rested her hand around my waist. After a few minutes she started to slowly caress my stomach. I quickly became aroused and I felt her hand slipped under the waistband of my briefs. She took my erect and throbbing penis in her hand and began to slowly stroke it. After no more than a minute I exploded all over her hand and inside my underwear. She softly laughed and asked if I liked it. I said yes. She said good, we'll do it again sometime. Sometime turned into about 10 minutes. This time she had me finger her pussy first. She instructed on me where to touch and what to do. Soon she began to moan and could feel her body thrust and shake as she tightened her thighs around my hand. She masturbated me again and we both fell asleep.
We agreed that we could continue to do that but could never have intercourse. We had hand and oral sex many times until she left home for college. But we kept our promise and never fucked. After she left we were never intimate again. We are both middle age now and never speak of it anymore.

Mark Haddon
The Island
She’s dreaming of the pines outside her window in the palace, the way the night wind turns them into a black sea that tumbles and breaks against the stone wall below the sill. She’s dreaming of the summer sound of trees being felled farther up the mountain, the hollow tock, tock, tock of the axe, the slow cracking of the trunk and that final thump, all that splintered yellow, still damp with life, the smell of fresh resin in the air and columns of midges rising and falling in the angled sunlight.
She’s dreaming of the wood being split and planed and toothed home into a curved keel that will cut an ocean in half. She’s dreaming of this morning, standing on the prow with her husband-to-be, the oars churning the waves to foam and the fat sails slapping in the wind, over the horizon his city where they’ll marry, behind them the home she’ll never see again.
She’s dreaming of the wedding, flames dancing in the sconces of a great hall. Flames multiplied in a hundred golden cups, painted plates heavy with roast meats and chickpeas, quinces and saffron and honey cakes.
She’s dreaming of the bridal suite, a snowfall of Egyptian cotton on the bed. Hanging above the pillows is a tapestry, the work so fine she could be looking through a window. In the centre of the picture is a woman weeping on a beach, and far out, in the chop and glitter of the woven sea, a single ship sailing steadily towards the border and the world beyond.
She moves a little closer so that she can see the woman’s face, and then it hits her like a punch. She’s looking at herself.
She comes round like a drowning woman breaking the water’s surface, thrashing and gasping for air. The light hurts her eyes, her throat is dry and the world is foggy from drink, or drugs, or fever.
She rolls over and finds herself in an empty bed. He must be awake and making preparations for today’s journey. She stands with difficulty and realises that she can hear nothing except the cry of gulls and guy ropes humming in the wind. She staggers to the door, uncouples the four leather ties which bind the canvas flaps and steps outside to find herself in a ghost camp, five squares of flattened, yellow grass, fishbones, a single sandal, the torched circle of last night’s fire and far out, in the chop and glitter of the sea, a single ship.
She tries to scream but there is a weight on her chest which stops her filling her lungs. Her mind bucks and twists, searching for ways to make this right. He’s coming back. The crew have mutinied and kidnapped him or left him somewhere nearby, tied up, beaten, dead. Then she looks down and sees, beside her feet, a jug of water and a loaf of bread, and on the loaf is the ring she gave him as a sign of their eternal love. He has abandoned her.
The sky revolves, she vomits on the wet grass and the world goes dark.
When time begins again she’s skidding down the scree on bloody hands and knees towards the beach, then stumbling over the slip and clack of pebbles to the surf. She yells into the wind and her cry echoes round the rocky cove. Her heart thrashes like a netted bird.
The boat shrinks. She has become the woman in the tapestry.
He is the only man she’s ever loved, and he has dumped her like ballast. She needs to find an explanation that does not make her a fool and him an animal, but every thought of him is a knife turning in the wound love made. She wants to hurl a stack of figured bowls across a room. She wants to weep till someone comes to comfort her. She wants to find a man who’ll track him down and break his neck or make him realise he’s wrong and bring him back.
She turns to take it in, this godforsaken place, bracken and sea pink, rye grass jerking in the wind, slabs of basalt rusty with lichen. Lying in a shallow pool, she sees the bloody head of a seal pup hacked off by the men last night then hurled off the cliff before they cooked the body. Its blind eyes have turned white.
She crouches on the hard, wet stones and hugs herself. No one has any idea that she is here except the crew of the departing ship, and no one else would give a damn. She does not know the name of this island. She knows only that this is the place in which she will die. She is off the heart’s map and her compass is spinning.
Minutes pass. Water breaks and fizzes on the pebbles. The wind sings and the cold begins to bite. She stands and starts the long climb to the bed they will never share again.
She is a princess. In twenty years she has never been alone, never cooked a meal, never cleaned a floor. She has bathed in clean, warm water every morning. Twice a day newly laundered clothes have been laid on her bed. She realises that this will be hard. She does not know the meaning of the word.
She enters the tent and sees his body’s imprint on the sheets and has to turn away. She eats the bread and drinks the water, then lies down and waits, as if an easy death is one more luxury some nameless servant will provide.
She cannot believe that anyone is able to bear this kind of pain. She thinks of shepherds sleepless in the blue snow, their furs pulled tight around their shoulders, waiting for the wolves, armed only with a slingshot. She thinks of the soldiers who come back from every summer’s campaign with legs and arms missing, the stumps like melted wax. She thinks of women giving birth in stone sheds with leaking roofs and mud floors. She thinks about what it must take to lead such lives, and she starts to understand that wealth has deprived her of the one skill that she needs now.
The light begins to die and the dark thickens slowly to a colour she has never seen before. Then the shearwaters come, two hundred thousand birds returning from a day at sea to run the gauntlet of the black-backed gulls, and suddenly the tent is inside a hurricane of screams, the noise that makes young sailors think they have drifted near the mouth of hell. She dares not go outside for fear of what she might find. She covers her ears and curls into a ball in the centre of the single rug and waits for claws and teeth to tear the flimsy canvas walls and shred her body like a deer’s. She waits, and waits, and when the silence finally comes it is worse, for she has been stripped of everything that used to shield her from a hard world where every action has a consequence. She has no one else to blame. This is her punishment. She helped him kill her brother. Now it is her turn. When her bones are picked clean the scales will be level once again.
She should have listened to her maids and walked around the palace grounds, but she had walked around the palace grounds a thousand times. She knew in tedious detail every carved fountain, every lavender bush with its halo of bees, every shaded bower. She wanted the bustle of the quays, those overflowing baskets of squid and mackerel, the stacked crates and coiled ropes, the shouting and the knock of tarred hulls, that childhood fantasy of walking up a gangplank, casting off and slipping through the cupped hands of the breakwater into the white light of a world outside her family’s orbit.
They came at every summer’s end, a war-price Athens paid to keep the peace, just one more ceremony in a calendar of ceremonies, the Leaping of the Bulls, the Festival of Poppies. Twelve young men and women taken from their ship and housed in the barn above the orchard while this year’s pit was dug beside the last, then led out and lined up to have their throats slit and die on top of one another. They were human cattle, and they knew this, shuffling with heads down, already half dead. She gave them no more thought than she gave the enemies her father and her cousins killed in battle.
But her eyes locked briefly with the eyes of the one man who held his head high and she realised that there were many worlds beyond this world and that her own was very small indeed.
Later that night she woke repeatedly, thinking he was standing in the room or lying beside her. She was terrified at first, then disappointed. She felt alive in a way that she had never felt alive before. The cold flags on the floor, the cicadas, the pocked coin of the moon, her own skin…She had never seen these things clearly until now.
Shortly after dawn she slipped past the maids in the outer room and walked round the orchard to the stables. She told the guards she wanted to talk to the prisoners and they could think of no adequate reply to this unexpected request. The last of the night was pooling in the big stone rooms, the window slits no wider than a hand. There was sand on the floor and the sound of breathing. She felt the stir her presence caused, warm bodies shifting nervously in the dark. It was a small thing to be brave about but she had never needed to be brave before and mastering her fear was thrilling.
His face materialised behind the bars of the little window. “You came.”
She had spent her whole life waiting for this moment and never realised it. She thought stories only happened to men. Now her own was beginning.
“My father is the king,” he said. “In time I will become king. If you save us I will make you my queen.”
She gave him her ring and he told her what to do. She slid her hands between the bars, let him grip her wrists and cried out for help. When the guard came running and reached through to free her the prince grabbed him. He wrapped one hand around the man’s mouth and the other around his neck. He put a foot on the bars and heaved as if he were pulling a rope. The man kicked and thrashed for a long time before he sagged and slid to the floor. She took the keys from his belt and unlocked the door. She had never seen a man being killed. It looked no different from the games her cousins played when they were young.
He took the man’s sword and met the second guard running in. He swung it into his belly and lifted him on the point to force it deeper, then let him drop. He put his boot on the man’s chest and pulled the blade out with a sucking gurgle. By this time his friends were pouring out of the stables, the men arming themselves with makeshift weapons from the walls—staves, pitchforks, iron bars.
He told them to take her to the harbour and treat her well. For a moment she thought he was going to murder her parents. He laid a hand on her cheek and told her that they would be safe.
He chose two men to accompany him and they ran towards the palace.
They said her mother had been raped by a bull and had given birth to a monster who lay chained and snarling in a nest of straw and dung at the centre of a maze beneath the palace, waiting for the young men and women from Athens to be offered to him as fresh meat. Let the peasants keep their stories, her father said. They had precious little else. And it was safer to be feared than to be pitied.
There was some truth in the story for her brother sometimes seemed like a monster, his bloated head, his rages, the way he lashed out at the men who went into the cellar to sluice him with buckets of water every week, to carry off the foul straw and fill his trough with the same food they gave to the pigs—kitchen scraps, greasy bones, wine gone sour.
They thought he could not speak. They never asked him a question so he never gave them a reply. But she knew. She went down to the cellar most days and sat with him in the light of that single, guttering torch and held his hand. He would lay his head on her lap and tell her about the things the men did to him for their amusement. She gave him fruit and bread which she had hidden under her skirt and while he ate she told him about the world outside, about the ocean that was like the water in the bucket but deeper and broader than he could possibly imagine, about boats that were like floating houses, about music that was sound shaped to make you happy, about the pines outside her window and the woodcutters in the summer.
He wept sometimes but he never asked for help. When he was younger and she was more naïve she suggested that he try to escape, but he did not understand what she was saying for he had never seen anything beyond these damp walls, and thought her stories of oceans and boats and music were simply games to make the darkness bearable. He was right, of course. He could not live outside. The sun would blind him. He would be mocked and taunted and stoned.
Her mother, her father, her cousins, they put him out of their minds, but she could not. She felt his presence constantly, like the distant rumble of thunder, and when she felt the weight of his deformed head in her lap and ran her hand through his patchy hair, the kindness flowed both ways, for he was easing her discomfort as much as she was easing his.
They reached the harbour to find that the Athenians had already hoisted six small barrels of pitch out of the hold, set them on fire with flints and torn cloth and slung them onto the decks of the other ships so that the sailors on watch were too preoccupied with trying to extinguish the flames to concern themselves with anything but saving their own vessels.
She was petrified. She could see what it meant to be in the middle of a story, and why the men protected them from this. It was a mistake. She understood that now. A moment’s weakness had caused this horror, the way a single spark from those struck flints bloomed into the fires that surrounded her. Metal struck metal, planks split, the air was so full of smoke she was finding it hard to breathe.
Then she saw him running along the quay with his two companions, carrying a sack, pursued by palace guards, and he was a hand reaching down to pull her from the hole into which she had fallen and if only he made it to the boat in time she would be safe and happy. They pushed off and the men jumped the widening gap between the hull and the harbour wall. A guard leapt behind them and was struck in the face with a sword and dropped into the water, his blood spraying the man who killed him. A second leapt and clung briefly to the rail of the boat before his fingers were broken under heels and he fell onto his companion. Then they were too far away for anything but angry yells which were soon drowned in the roar of the fires.
He turned to her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close and she could no longer hear or see the flames, she could only feel the warmth of his body and smell the sour tang of his sweat. Then she looked down at the deck and saw the mouth of the sack fall open to reveal her brother’s head.
She is woken by the biting cold and the sound of two hundred thousand birds taking flight. Waking to anything solid is a relief after the murky, cycling panic of her dreams. She walks to the door and sees the creatures that petrified her the night before emerging from their burrows and climbing into the air like ashes above a fire, black backs turning into white bellies, the whole flock becoming a cloud of grey flakes drifting out over the ocean.
When they have gone the air is washed and white and she is able to hold the events of the previous day at a distance for a few minutes, as if they happened to someone else, or happened to herself many years ago. Then it all comes back, raw and real, and there is a spasm in her guts. She crouches behind a rock and relieves herself, and the sight of her own excrement sickens her, doubly so when she finds that the earth is too thin to bury it and the handfuls of grass she rips free just blow away in the wind and she is forced to use a stick to push it under the lip of the rock where she will not see it.
She drinks from a muddy pool of rainwater, retches and makes herself drink again. She wraps herself in the rug from the tent floor and walks round the perimeter of the island, a figure of eight with two stony beaches on either side of its narrow waist. It takes her two hours. There are no trees, only clumps of low thorn bushes bent flat by the wind, green cushions of mossy thrift, bracken and sea campions, razorbills and butterflies. The greater part of the coast is sheer cliff, though in places the grass falls away to great slabs of cracked and toppled stone, stained with an orange crust above the waterline and shaggy with weed beneath it. She catches a movement in the corner of her eye and thinks, for a moment, that she is not alone, but it is a group of seals lying beached on a thin promontory, half-fish, half-dog, their wet skins like mottled gemstones. The only signs of human presence are the remains of an ancient stone circle about which there hangs an atmosphere that scares her.
She returns to the tent pitched in the low saddle between the two halves of the island and sheltered from the worst of the wind. She is hungry but has no idea what she can eat. She wonders how long it takes to starve. She knows nothing about such things.
He held her till her sobs began to die down then wiped her cheek and looked into her eyes. “I have to command these people. They need to look at me and see someone who has powers they do not possess. They need to know that I can kill monsters.” He was not angry. He did not need to be angry. “Your father killed twelve of us every year for ten years. Those people had sisters, they had mothers. Your father was planning to bury us in a ditch. I killed your brother. I could have done a great deal more.”
She had no choice. She had to embrace this man and put her brother out of her mind. She had to throw away her old life and become a new person. She wondered if this was what it meant to love someone completely.
The second morning, hunger wakes her before dawn. It is like a broken bone. Her body is not going to let her starve.
A cold drizzle is falling. She wants to stay in the tent but the pain in her stomach is worse than the prospect of getting wet, so she makes her way down the scree again to the little beach. She stands at the top of the shingle slope and looks around. She does not know if there is anything edible here. Her food has always been cooked and prepared. She has little idea of what this involves. She is accustomed to eating grapes and pears and quinces but she has seen no fruit on the island. To her left is the seal pup’s head but that would need cooking and she has no fire and she cannot look at the object without thinking of her brother.
She tries to chew some seaweed but it is leathery and gritty and covered in a layer of slime. She finds some shells stuck to the sides of a rock pool but they prove impossible to remove. She wades into the shallows. The water is like shackles of ice around her ankles. She bends down, turns the pebbles over and pushes aside the fronds of shaggy weed, nervous of what she might find beneath. She wades a little deeper. Already her sense of danger is being overridden by an animal need which obscures all other thoughts.
She is up to her thighs in the freezing waves now, the stones under her feet are harder to see and searching among them requires her to put her face into the water. Her fingers find a cluster of something sharper and more geometric than the surrounding rocks. She pulls and breaks it free and retrieves a cluster of shells, speckled with stony mortar. She walks out of the water and discovers that the temperature of the ocean makes the air seem warm. She tries to prise open the shells but splits a nail, so she goes up the beach to a flat shelf. She puts the shells down, takes up a large pebble and cracks the shells open. There is a kind of meat inside. She picks away the shards of broken shell and scoops some out. She puts the contents in her mouth. It is like salty phlegm. She waits and swallows. At least she does not need to chew. She eats a second. Then a third.
The air is no longer warm and she is beginning to shiver uncontrollably. She has five more shells. She carries them back up the scree towards the grassy saddle. She goes inside the tent, thinking that she must get warm and dry, but there is water dripping through the roof onto the bed and she has very little energy. She removes her clothing and wraps the deerskin blanket round her and lies down in the dry half of the tent.
She cries and rocks back and forth and manages to descend into a half-sleep that calms her a little. Then the stomach cramps begin. With no warning, she is sick onto the ground in front of her. She rolls over so that she does not have to look at it. The cramps ease a little.
He ordered one of the women to bring a cloak from below decks and sat her on a bench to one side of the boat then returned to the other men, commanding them to trim sails and watch for rocks and stow the ropes, sending them to the rowing benches when these tasks were done, to maintain as high a speed as possible. When they were out of sight of land he altered course to throw off any following ships.
She had never been on a boat before. The cleanness and the coldness of the air and the spray coming over the prow took her by surprise. The way the deck yawed and pitched terrified her at first, though everyone else on board seemed oblivious. She tried to pretend it was a child’s game, like swinging on a rope, or being thrown into the air and caught by her father.
It was the sheer size of the ocean which unsettled her most. She wondered how deep the water was beneath the hull and felt a nauseous tingle in the back of her legs as if she were standing on a high tower and looking over the edge. She thought of how they were supported by a wooden platform no bigger than a courtyard floating across this sky of water, how none of them could swim and how they were all less than ten steps away from death, and she began to understand how brave sailors were, or how stupid.
The thought of her brother was like a pounding headache. She moved as little as possible and watched and listened hard to what was going on around her and tried to distract herself from the pain.
Finally the rowers broke off and a basket of provisions was brought up from below, olives, salted fish, fresh water and dry biscuits of a kind she had never seen before. He sat beside her but addressed her directly only twice. She liked the way in which she had so rapidly been accepted into the magic circle from which the others were excluded. He had to maintain a public face, she understood that. She was flattered that the private man belonged to her alone.
They anchored in the bay of the island shortly before nightfall. A small boat was lowered on ropes and three men rowed ashore to reconnoitre. They returned with the news that the island was uninhabited and began ferrying boxes and packets and bundles to the beach, taking passengers only when several tents had already been erected on the grassy ridge.
Nightfall frightened her. The firelight at home had always illuminated a stone wall, painted plaster, a woven hanging. She had never seen darkness eat up the world like this. She was losing her bearings a little, and times and places began to overlap. She remembered the stories she had heard as a child, how Chaos gave birth to love and hell, how Kronos castrated his father with a sickle, and these things now seemed no more or less real than her cousin Glaucus nearly drowning in a barrel of honey, or her cousin Catreus trying to ride a goat and breaking his arm.
They ate more of the salted fish and the dried figs which had been compacted into discs like little millwheels. Some of the men found a young seal on the beach and chased its mother away so that they could kill it. They roasted chunks of the flesh over the fire but several of the women found it inedible so she declined, deciding that she could easily wait another two days for proper meat. The sweet wine, in any case, had taken the edges off her hunger.
So novel and so consuming were all these events that she forgot entirely about the one waiting at the evening’s end until he drained his final glass and took her hand and led her towards his tent. She knew almost nothing about what he would do to her. She had been told little by her mother and less by her cousins. She had gained more information by overhearing the maids’ gossip, and they seemed to find it comical, though the things they described were both repellent and unnerving. She consoled herself that they were talking about men of a kind very different from the one she was marrying.
He closed the door flap and kissed her, for longer this time. She wondered if he would hurt her but he simply slid a hand inside her dress and held one of her breasts. It felt odd and clumsy and wrong. She did not know what she was meant to do in return, if anything. Earlier in the day she trusted him to protect her. The stakes seemed higher now, the rules less certain. Her life depended on remaining inside the magic circle, and to remain inside the magic circle she had to please him. She had already become a different person this morning. She would have to do it again. She pulled her mouth away from his and said, “What would you like me to do?”
He laughed and lifted her dress and turned her round and bent her over the bed. The maids were right. What he did to her was indeed repellent and unnerving, but oddly comical too. She should have felt adult and sophisticated but it reminded her mostly of being a child again, wrestling, doing handstands, turning cartwheels in the dust. It was demeaning at first, and dirty, then it was good to be a child, to have no responsibilities, to forget everything that had happened today and concentrate only on the present moment.
When he was finished he rolled onto the bed and pulled the deerskin blanket over them. Within minutes he was asleep. She was unable to move without detaching herself from his embrace and she did not want to wake him so she lay listening to the voices outside getting fewer and fainter as everyone made their way to bed and the fidgety orange light of the fire faded. Every so often the wind flicked back a tongue of canvas at the top of the door and she could see a tiny triangle of sky that contained three stars hanging in a darkness that went on forever.
Sometime after midday the rain stops, the pain in her stomach disappears and her mind is returned to her. She hangs her sodden clothes on the guy ropes outside the tent so that they will dry in the sun. She does the same thing with the bedclothes and ties back the door of the tent in the hope that the breeze might evaporate some of the water from its muddy floor. She is naked. She cleans up the vomit, scooping it into her hands and carrying it outside, then wiping her fingers clean on the grass. She does this without thinking and, in the middle of doing it, she sees herself from the outside and realises how far she has travelled in such a short time.
She finds a shallow pool of brackish water gathered on the concave top of a mossy rock and drinks, and the coldness of the water makes up for the earthy, vegetable taste.
She begins to think, for the first time, that surviving here might be possible, but that to do so she must become like a fox, hunting constantly and never thinking about tomorrow.
Wrapped only in her blanket and wearing her sandals, she makes her way back to the area of the island where the thorn bushes were thickest and finds that her memory is correct and some of the plants are indeed covered in small red berries. She does not want to repeat the mistake of this morning, so she picks just one and puts it into her mouth. But when she crushes it between her teeth the taste is shockingly sour and she has to spit it out.
She makes her way down the scree to the beach, determined to master her feelings about the seal pup’s head. But it has begun to rot and the smell is overpowering, and when she gets close she can see something moving inside.
She has to make a fire. If she can make a fire then she can perhaps cook the shellfish and make them edible. She used to watch her cousins doing it many years ago with tinderboxes stolen from the kitchen before they were caught and beaten. The boxes contained two stones and a wad of lint. She has no lint, but she has an endless supply of rock. She begins searching the drier, top half of the beach, picking up pairs of stones, turning her back to the wind, striking one against the other and watching for that tiny scrap of lightning. She does this for a long time with no success.
She climbs back up to the grass. She is exhausted. Her clothes are dry but she does not have the energy to put them on. Instead she lies in the mouth of the tent watching the shadows of clouds slide across the surface of the water. There is a seductive comfort in doing this and she knows that the longer she spends without eating the harder it will be to find food but she can neither bring herself to stand up nor think of what she might achieve if she did.
He was right. Her father had done worse. She thinks of the bodies in the trench. She wonders if any of them were still alive when the earth was shovelled on top of them, and imagines mud in her mouth, that unmovable weight holding her down.
Her father was doubtless privy to events and information of which she knew nothing. Perhaps, from his perspective, these cruelties were simply the price that had to be paid to keep his people safe. She will never know.
She has not talked for three days. She has not heard another human voice. Her thinking is becoming simultaneously clearer and more confused. Those concentric rings of the royal apartments, the public rooms, the gardens, the town beyond the palace walls, seem to her like a beehive or an ants’ nest, some beautifully structured object whose working must remain forever mysterious. There is a picture of her father which comes back to her throughout the day. He is standing at one of the big windows looking down towards the harbour. She is sitting at his feet, playing with a set of ivory jacks. His face is lit by the sun coming off the sea. He is not looking at her but he knows that she is there. She must be three, four, five years old. She feels completely safe.
Later she saw him strike her mother. She saw him bring his fist down on an earthenware plate and shatter it, so angry that he did not notice that his hand was bleeding. She saw him send men to be hanged and watched them weep as they were led from the room.
She can see now that her father, too, had a magic circle around him, and that she loved him less on account of who he was than for allowing her inside that circle when so many others were kept out.
The following morning she combs the beach again looking for stones that will strike a spark. This time she selects two of every type then ferries them up to the tent where the air is drier and there is no sea spray. She bangs them together in turn and her spirit leaps when she sees that a tiny star is born with a loud crack between two of the stones. She tears a corner from her dress and picks at it with her dirty nails until it is a wren’s nest of cream fibres.
Only then does she remember that she has no wood. She feels stupid, and scared by the realisation that she is losing the ability to plan ahead. She thinks of the effort involved in finding that wood and begins to cry. But crying is pointless so after a few minutes she stops. She wraps the deerskin round her once more and walks a circuit of the island.
There are no logs because there are no trees, but she succeeds in gathering an armful of dry branches. She is walking beside the cliffs on the way back to the tent when she sees movement in the waves. She turns and watches two dolphins break the surface, curve through the air and enter the water again, then break the water a second time, as if they are riding the rim of some great, hidden wheel. They are heart-stoppingly beautiful, like long, silver bottles or wingless, grey birds.
But they are mocking her. She cannot swim. She would die out there, whereas they can travel to ten kingdoms and back. For a moment she dreams of having their freedom, then realises how little it would profit her. She would not be wanted in Athens. She would not be wanted at home. Here is as good as anywhere.
The dolphins have gone. She returns to the tent, piles the twigs on the ashes of the last fire and rebuilds the little circle of stones the men built around it. She fetches the two stones and the little nest of cotton lint.
It does not work. The stones spark one time in twenty, and when they do she has no way of directing that spark into the lint. She tries a hundred, two hundred times. Her hands are bloody and bruised. Her arms are exhausted. The lint refuses to catch.
She is too tired to remain awake but too uncomfortable to sleep. She drifts halfway between the two states, clipping the edge of nightmares and coming away trailing nameless fears that snap her briefly awake. She thinks she has fallen overboard or is running up an endless slope of shingle, chased by a nameless, seal-faced creature that is and is not her brother.
When dawn comes she lies listening to the shearwaters taking flight. When there is only the muffled sound of the waves left she stands and walks down to the beach, climbing round the rocks at the side of the cove until she is looking down into deeper water. She sits on a rock with her legs dangling. A jellyfish swims below her, a ball of light in a white bag with a charred rim, trailing ragged tentacles. It pulses in the slow wind of the current. She watches, transfixed. She is no longer able to measure time.
The jellyfish is gone. The translucent green water flexes and wobbles like flames dancing in a grate.
There is a rash on the back of her left hand where the skin has reddened and begun to peel away. She runs her fingers over it. There is pain but it does not belong to her.
Clambering back up the scree she hears women’s voices and a high metal chime like tiny bells ringing. She climbs faster but by the time she reaches the curved, grass saddle the voices have stopped and there is no one there.
Her bowels clench. She does not bother to find shelter. She squats and relaxes and what comes out is a foul, orange liquid so that she has to clean herself repeatedly with clumps of torn grass.
She walks aimlessly towards the highest point on the island simply to postpone her return to the tent. She does not want to look at the vastness of the sea so she keeps her eyes fixed on the ground. It is peppered with the burrows out of which the shearwaters emerge. She stops and stamps her feet and realises for the first time how hollow the earth sounds and how it must be honeycombed with little tunnels. She gets down on her hands and knees and begins to tear at the mouth of the nearest hole. The earth is woven thick with pale roots and she has to search for a sharp stone to cut through the toughest of them. She digs farther, making a deep furrow. She feels something scratching and flapping at the ends of her fingers and excavates the last two handfuls of earth to find two fat, grey chicks huddled in their subterranean chamber. She had hoped to find eggs but it is too late in the season. She picks up one of the birds, a puffball of dove-coloured fur. It pecks her with its hooked black beak. She stands up and crushes the head of the chick with the heel of her sandal. She hacks at the chest of the tiny bird with the edge of the stone until it peels back. There is blood all over her hands and tiny feathers stuck to the blood. She bites into the warm innards, chewing at the gristle and swallowing what she can tear off. She is eating feathers along with the meat. She gags but carries on eating. Three mouthfuls. The bird is finished. She gazes down at its brother. It is looking back up at her with its mouth open, waiting to be fed, the black jewels of its eyes glittery in the sunlight.
She walks away, wiping her mouth on the deerskin.
She cannot remember her mother’s face. She can remember the faces of her brother, her cousins, her father. She can remember the faces of the men who sat around the council table. She can remember the faces of the four male servants who were trusted enough to work in the royal apartments. But she cannot bring her mother’s face to mind.
This is the woman who brought her into the world, the woman her father loved. Yet every time she turns her mind’s eye in her mother’s direction she sees only the men she is talking to, the children she is playing with, the maids to whom she is giving orders. She begins to realise how little her mother did, how rarely she offered an opinion, how the family revolved around her without ever making contact, how small an effect she had on the world.
How alike they are, she and her mother, these blank sheets on which men have written their stories, the white paper under the words, making all their achievements possible and contributing nothing to the meaning.
She realises that she can no longer remember what her own face looks like so she leaves the tent and makes her way to the shallow pool on the rock. She puts her back to the sun and makes a canopy of the deerskin cloak to shield the surface from the glare. She stares down into the water and sees her brother’s sister staring up at her, hair matted like his hair, skin filthy like his skin, cheeks sunken, eyes dark, the skull starting to come through.
There is a storm at night. The thunder is like buildings coming down, and after every explosion the tent is flooded with a harsh blue light that sings on the back of her eyes for minutes afterwards. She wills the lightning to strike her directly, for everything to be over in an instant, but this does not happen. The canvas bucks and cracks and after several hours she is woken from her half-sleep by the rough cloth smacking her face as the tent collapses around her. The wind fills the canvas like a sail and drags her along the ground. She has lost all sense of direction and is terrified that she will be hauled over a cliff. She does not want to die, not now, not like this. She does not want to lie on rocks with shattered bones or drown like a dog in a sack but she does not possess the strength to wrestle herself free, so she lies flat and prays for the wind to slacken. Eventually a gust hoists her free of the ground, she is swung hard against a boulder, the tent comes to a halt and she can do nothing but block her ears to the roar and the whipping of the canvas so that she can nurse the pain in her side.
Morning comes and the wind dies away. She frees herself and rolls what remains of the tent into a heap behind the rock that anchored her through half the night. She looks back towards the square of dead grass where it had been pitched. All but two of the pegs have gone. Putting the tent back up is impossible now. She drinks some water then begins the painfully slow process of dragging the torn canvas sheets down to the head of the beach where there is some protection from the wind and she can wrap herself up at night.
There is now a constant throbbing in her head and a churning anger in her guts that she has no way of expending. She lies down and closes her eyes and tries to get some of the rest she should have got last night. As she slips out of consciousness she hears the women’s voices again and that distant tinkling, but when she opens her eyes she can hear only the surf. She descends into vivid, fitful dreams. She is in the bridal suite once more, standing by the bed and examining the tapestry of the weeping woman and the receding ship. This time, however, she sees a part of the picture she had not noticed before. In the lower left-hand corner of the great, woven square, on the green of the island, she can see a band of figures. They are walking towards the weeping woman. She does not know whether they are coming to help the woman or whether they are hunting her down. She steps forward to examine them more closely and the dream evaporates.
The sun is overhead and the air is warm again. She decides that she must make use of what little energy she has left to find some food. Picking up the sharpened stone she climbs to the grassy plateau where the shrubs grow. Half of her is in her body, half hovers in the air above. She moves fluidly and for once walking is easy. She can smell the perfume of the small blue flowers and see two gulls hanging on the breeze.
She finds the largest plant, breaks off the straightest, toughest branch then uses the sharpened stone to whittle a point at one end. She walks to the place where she first saw the seals. She has no idea how many days ago that was. She simply assumes that they will still be there and indeed they are, three adults and a pup. She sits on the grassy ledge and looks down. There is a drop, perhaps twice the height of a man, to a slab of rock that slopes smoothly down to the little channel beside which they are lying. Holding the makeshift weapon in her teeth she turns, lowers herself as far as she can then lets go.
She feels, briefly, as if she is flying, then she lands badly. The pain is so bright and sharp that she cannot breathe, only cradle herself and moan till it dies away, before rolling onto her back. She examines her left hand. The little finger is bent backwards and will not respond to any commands. She cannot bear to touch it. She is sweating profusely.
She looks up to the grassy ledge. She can see no way of getting back. She looks down. The seals are still there. They seem unbothered by her presence. She tells herself that this is good. They are tame. She can do what she came to do.
Her stick has slid down the rocks. She stands up, intending to walk over and retrieve it, but as she does so a flock of tiny, white insects swarms across her field of vision. She sits and waits then shuffles sideways, using her one good hand until she has the stick in her possession again.
She begins moving towards the seals. Two of the adults are watching her. She is fifteen paces away now. They are bigger than she had thought, their bodies as bulky as the bodies of oxen. One of the adults nudges the pup into the water then slips through the surface after it. She is ten paces away now, and she can see, for all their ungainliness, how strong these animals are and how much they weigh. She realises that what she is about to do is dangerous. She cannot remember precisely why she is doing it but changing her mind and doing something different seems like the hardest thing of all. She is five paces away. One of the seals lumbers towards her, rears up, opens its mouth and barks. It sounds like the bottom of a great jar being scraped. It is talking to her and no one has talked to her in a long time. She almost says something back. These animals are going to save her. She wonders why she did not come here sooner. It would have made everything so much easier.
Putting her right hand flat on the ground she gets slowly to her feet. She is a little giddy but there are no stars this time. The seal rears and barks again. She grips the stick tightly, steps forward and shoves the point into the flesh of the seal’s head. It moves with surprising speed, flicking the stick away and swinging immediately back to sink its teeth into her ankle, then swinging its head a third time so that her leg is yanked out from underneath her. The seal lets go and she is tumbling towards the channel. She puts out her hands but the stone is slimy with weed and she cannot get sufficient grip. She crashes into the water, her arms flailing. She’s hunting desperately for handholds but there are none to be found. Her head goes under, she breathes a mouthful of salty water and coughs it out. She grabs two hanks of weed and pulls her head above the surface. She looks round, thinking the seal is going to attack again, but they are all gone. She wonders if they are circling beneath her, biding their time. She looks down but she cannot even see her own feet. What she can see is the pink froth and clouds of blood in the water.
She holds the weed tight and breathes as slowly and as calmly as she can then hauls herself sideways along the channel to the point where the bottom rises and she is standing in waist-deep water. Everything hurts. She is cold to her bones and unable to stop herself shivering but getting out of the water means lifting herself onto a seaweed-covered shelf. It is all of a hand’s breadth above the surface of the water but even that effort is beyond her imagination.
The world slips out of focus then comes back. She sees her stick a little farther up the rock, the stripped wood of its point still red with the seal’s blood. She remembers eating a baby bird. Was that yesterday or the day before? It is hard to be clear about these things. Why did she not dig another bird out of its nest instead of coming down here to kill an animal ten times her size? She has no answers to these questions.
With no warning, the water rises around her and a seal breaks the surface only a few feet away and lunges at her. She has no idea how she does it but she is suddenly out of the water and crawling up the rocky slope.
She collapses and looks back, panting. The seal is no longer there. She examines her leg. There is a deep gash on her ankle. Inside it she can see something white which might or might not be bone. She looks away.
She went down to the cellar one time and found her brother’s head covered in blood. She asked him what had happened, but he would say nothing at first. She fetched some water from the bucket and washed the wound, then tore a strip of cloth from her skirt and bandaged it. She put her arms around him and asked if one of the men had done this to him. He shook his head. She pulled back and looked into his eyes.
“Tell me.”
“I did it.”
“You did it?”
“I did it.”
“You hurt yourself? How?”
“Wall.” He nodded to one of the arches of the brick vault and she saw the bloodstains.
“Why?”
“I want it to stop.”
“What do you want to stop?”
“Everything. I want everything to stop.”
She pretended not to understand. She can see now that she was a coward. She can see now that if she had been braver, if she had really loved her brother, she would have taken a knife down those dark stairs and slipped it between his ribs and let him die in her arms.
Night comes and in the darkness, after the shearwaters have flown ashore, she hears animals that are neither seals nor birds. She hears lions and leopards and wolves. She hears the clanking of chains. She hears drunken shouting and the crackle of a fire and something large breathing close to her ear. She hears the air going in and out of its nostrils and smells the rot of its yellow teeth. She feels the heat of its breath.
Grey light. Intense cold. A fine rain is falling. She cannot move her leg. She cannot move her hand. The world is a tiny, bright thing, so small she can hold it in her hand.
She looks up to the fringe of green grass high above her head. That was the place she had come from. There was a bed somewhere up there. But if there is a way back she is unable to see it from here. She can move her other leg a little. She thinks about trying to stand so that she can find a route but this rock is a kind of bed, too, and she has a memory of the other bed blowing away. She can smell the ammonia on her breath. She looks down at her damaged hand. One of the fingers is the wrong shape. It looks like a badly drawn picture of a hand.
She is in a garden. There are fountains and lavender bushes covered in bees that rise in angry, humming clouds when her cousins hit them with sticks before the nurse drags them away. She trod on a bee once and her foot swelled to twice its size. There are bowers, too, where she can sit out of the heat of the sun. From her favourite she can look down over the wall to the quays and to the ships entering or leaving the harbour. She likes to imagine the countries from which they have come, the countries the old men talk about, countries made entirely of sand, countries where the people have skin as black and glossy as plums, countries where there are water lizards as long as a rowing boat.
She is playing with a hoop made of stripped willow branches, the ends tapered and bound together with little spirals of fibre. If no one gets in the way she can run alongside it, batting it with a stick to keep it rolling, and do a circuit of the entire garden.
It is the most beautiful garden in the world. She never wants to leave. If only she could remember where it is.
There is a high wind and the sea explodes on the rocks below. The moon is full and the waves come in like black hills with a crest of blue snow, swelling and flexing and dropping onto the rocky shelf where they turn to freezing spray which falls on her like rain. She thinks how calm it must be out there, under those waves, in that dark that goes down and down, where the dolphins swim and the jellyfish drift on the current and the forests of seaweed swing back and forth, so much better than up here where everything hurts.
Dawn comes. Her throat and mouth are dry and she cannot generate enough saliva to swallow. Her lips are cracked and bleeding. She can see nothing but fog through her right eye.
There is a flock of gulls standing farther down the rock, all looking out to sea, preening their grey wings with their orange beaks and shaking out their feathers. Their eyes are little yellow stones with black holes drilled through them. The ocean is beaten silver. The seals have come back.
She can hear the cymbals again, a distant, high ringing that comes and goes on the breeze, now louder, now quieter. She wonders if there is something wrong with her ears. Then she hears the faint but unmistakable sound of a big animal growling, that lazy rumble like a barrel on cobbles. The gulls scatter and the seals slip into the waves, leaving only circles of wash behind them.
Everything is briefly still and silent. Then she sees him. He is a big man, naked except for a ragged cloak of red cloth, taller than she remembers from the boat, and more muscular. His head is too large and there is blood on his face. A leopard pads at his side. Behind him are six naked men and six naked women. Some have made themselves crowns and belts of creepers and green branches, some are carrying freshly killed animals—rabbits, foxes, pheasants.
He stands in front of her, breathing heavily. His chest and shoulders are covered with wiry black hair and she can see now that he has horns. There is dung on his legs and his penis is thick and erect. He bends down and picks her up. She can smell wine on his breath and the rot of his teeth. He licks her. She recognises him from somewhere. She does not feel frightened. No one can hurt her anymore. There is no longer enough of her to be hurt.
He turns her over and lays her down and pushes himself into her. The movement back and forth inside her is the movement of the waves back and forth against the rock, the coming and going of the birds, the pulse of day and night, summer turning into autumn, to winter, to spring to summer again, the heart squeezing and releasing, the pulse of the blood.
Then they are on top of her, the men and women, biting, tearing, ripping her skin, pulling out her hair, breaking her fingers, gouging her eyes, hacking out the fat and muscle, pulling free the greasy tubes and bags of her innards till she is finally free of her body. Rising now, she looks down at the skeleton lying on the rocks, gulls picking at the remaining shreds of meat and gristle. She sees the grass blowing in the wind, the fringe of restless surf, the island shrinking till it is no more than a lump in the fastness of the sea, the sea an azure tear on the surface of the globe itself which shrinks rapidly in the haze of the sun as she floats into the great, black vault, becoming a buckled ring of seven stars, Corona Borealis, the northern crown.
She is immortal.

I apologize for hijacking this thread with yet another "Am I HIV positive post?"
But please hear me out.
I had a possible exposure on the 15th January 2023. Approximately a week after, I'd developed sores on my penis, which prompted me to get myself a full panel of STD tests done.
I was tested 10 days after the possible exposure, and came back negative for HIV (which I now know means nothing) but positive for Genital Herpes and Chlamydia. I was treated with antibiotics for Chlamydia and I took Acyclovir for a week after for the Herpes. I had a very severe outbreak of herpes sores on my penis, along with a fever and swollen lymph nodes.
My symptoms disappeared two weeks later, with my first recurrent outbreak occurring a week later. Sores on my penis head, much milder than the first time. No other symptoms as far as I could tell, except the generic pain in my lower back.
Had another outbreak, maybe two in the month of March, with no other complications.
About 10 weeks after the exposure, I got an outbreak first week of April 2023. This time I also got 4-5 separate rashes on my forearms and near my ankles. Just a red patch about 1cm in diameter with a raised bump. No pain, just extremely itchy.
I took acyclovir assuming this was a severe herpes outbreak and the rashes went away within a couple of days along with the sores on my penis. Fast forward to the 3rd week of April (3 months after exposure) I have what looks like my next herpes outbreak. This time around I'm exhibiting rashes on my arms, my hands, around my feet and on my upper chest, all of which showed up in 3 days. I am experiencing lower back pains, a stiff neck, pain in various joints. I've got a general feeling of being sick, but no temperature, diarrhoea, oral thrush, night sweats or headaches. I'd taken 2 400mg acyclovir pills for about 3 days after the rashes appeared but stopped two days ago.
For several reasons, I cannot get tested in the country I am in now and have to return home before getting any tests done.
I needed advice on the following:
Have any of you started exhibiting acute HIV symptoms 3 months after exposure? Have any of experienced such a delay because of preemptively taking acyclovir for another viral infection?
Can a severe herpes outbreak explain the symptoms I'm having? Or shingles? (I was treated with antivirals for chicken pox and was warned then that this would happened)
What are the dangers of waiting another 10 days from today to get tested and starting therapy

((TL/DR located at the bottom)) 29(M) started dating my now ex-girlfriend mid 2019 (break-up unrelated to HSV) and she had her first genital outbreak (as far as I know) shortly after we started dating. I tested negative prior to us having sex, she told me she had tested negative recently. We didn't use condoms.
Anyway, so she had a blister on her genitals, I recommended she get it checked out. She went to the doctor and they suspected shingles because she also had that on her elbow at the time as she'd had it before. I now suspect that was also HSV. I recommended she also get tested for HSV2, wether or not she did I don't know, but she said she didn't have HSV2.
Skip forward nearly two years, I have a singular blister on the shaft of my penis. Googled possible causes, and put it off as friction blister since we had very rough drunken sex the night before. And since she said she was negative.
I had another blister about a year later, which made me very suspicious but I was Ill informed and assumed herpes spread all over unless treated, and since it went away quite quickly I didn't do anything about it.
Now we've been broken up for 8 or 9months, I hadn't had any outbreaks and assumed I was okay.
I started dating my now girlfriend (32) and pretty darn sure the love of my life for just over 3 months. I was diagnosed with HSV2 a month after dating, she handled it really well and was/is very supportive. She understands that she might have it already too, since we've had unprotected sex prior to knowing.
When I had my first outbreak while dating her it was a little worse than the previous time, It was a tiny cluster, barely noticeable and very little discomfort, since I've had 4 outbreaks in a row... Luckily she's been out of town for a month on business, and I've been away too.
I haven't told her that my outbreaks have become more frequent. I know I should since she's been very supportive, I just don't feel like it's something I should do over the phone. I'm seeing her this weekend and my last outbreak is just about cleared up, but I feel like another is brewing as I type this post
I've accepted the fact that I have it, and that I'll have it for life unless somehow they find a cure. I just feel horrible for potentially giving it my girlfriend, and for the inconveniences it will cause her that I (and if she) have it.
TL/DR: Why are my outbreaks becoming more frequent now, after probably having had hsv2 for nearly 3 years?
Edit: additional question, I've read contradicting information about whether or not you can spread your HSV2 OB to a different part of your own body. I was my hands regularly anyway, but is this something I need to worry about?
And if my girlfriend does end up having HSV2 as well, can we cause each other to have OBs or spread it to different parts of each other's bodies?
Thanks

Please read to fully understand my question.

Over the past few years I have been fortunate enough to meet a woman who wants to be my bride and we will spend all of this year doing what we need to do to prepare for our lives together. She, of course, knows that I have HSV2.
My question is, "Does anyone here have a female life partner who (both parties consenting) allowed her husband to infect her with herpes on a part of her body that is not her genitals so as to avoid becoming infected and passing it to the child in child-birth?"
Example: Lucy and Dave are married and want a child and want to have their baby without getting infected. Lucy says to dave, "Next time you have an outbreak, I'll make a small cut on my foot and then you can infect me by rubbng your penis on it. We'll wait until 6 months later and then we can work towards having a child. Dave infects Lucy's foot with HSV2, and then 15 months later, they celebrate the birth of their first child."
Is this even possible, or is my head going pie-in-the-sky in a manner of speaking...?
Slightly related: My bride to be has herpes zoster AKA shingles. Is there anything I need to know? Is there any level of immunity that I have to her or she has to me?
EDIT: Thanks for the replies. I will not be discussing this idea with my future wife and will instead do as you all have instructed.

Memories are fascinating tools of human ingenuity; Many carry the weight of childhood nostalgia and a ghostly reassurance in the symbolism of our lives. Others are obstacles.
The story of Mr.Eckhart is one of those obstacles.
It starts with a transition, from a time of stagnant chill to one of celebration, from winter’s claw to spring’s hammer. I suppose others may have similar tales about the monumental figures of their childhood, people that were just a passing but vital messenger. It’s funny how we often get fuzzy on the good things but remember every single camera pan of the bad ones.
I can see its golden hew in the deepening evening sky. I remember that spring just as I am now turning thirty, and I’m just as scared now as I was then, if I’m being honest. How do I begin to tell you about the yellow snow, or the evil intent of a man?
When it first began, I was ten or eleven -I don’t recall my exact age. It began the last days of March, when spring’s warm grasp turned the midday sky into an opaque golden, worshiping the treetops and churning the charismatic life smoke from stalk to stalk. I was too young to recall many specific details of that spring in ‘02 or ‘03. Mr. Eckhart lived in a faraway realm from my mind. I was swinging on vines in the woods behind my house with my friends and building lackluster forts with rotten two-by-fours. On the back porch on Saturday afternoons, I listened to dad’s high raspy voice and his acoustic guitar forming the enamel of some songs that would eventually take his band to a new level.
The bane of Mr.Eckhart’s existence was his loneliness. Anyone who ever knew a single thing about the man knew that. He lived a solitary life up on a hill outside of Fairview, half a mile from the town dump. He was the “strange old man”, the mantra townsfolk assigned to him like a scarlet letter. Back then, people treated him like a copperhead, but from what I had heard, he never bit. All he did was carry its sign.
I was okay with the lonely Mr. Eckhart. He never disturbed my magical world of nerf guns and flag football. So what was the problem, mom? Dad? And without pause or reservation -before mom could squeeze dad’s lips shut with her eyes- he’d say: “Fucking Jerry.”
From the stories I overheard, when my parents thought I was not around, the first days of spring were always generous to Mr.Eckhart. Its lustrous yellow spread covered his property at a depth of one inch in some places. I'll admit that the idea of this swirling Crayola yellow nightmare frightened me. But, if ever I ventured near his property and witnessed this, the years have done well to repress such memories. The mind, as such, is a powerhouse for self-preservation; Sometimes the bad things stick like congealed pollen in a rain gutter.
In ‘09, when I was finishing up my junior year of high school, I met the man for the first time.
On a day in March, I stopped on the left shoulder of River Valley Road, peering over my handlebars at the mangled mess of a cat on the blacktop. We didn’t own a cat back then, but we had a chocolate lab puppy. I remember imagining Rocco in the dead cat’s place, seized up and stiff. The horrible intensity of it is a memory I recall well, the cat’s intestines splayed amid the fresh yellow powder of spring. It was reduced to a grotesque road marker. So caught up in my observations, I didn’t notice the figure striding down the long driveway on the other side of the road.
“Hello.”
I swung around.
The man enjoyed my surprise or was ignorant of it because he kept smiling as he approached the nasty road-kill scene. He appeared to walk fine but punched a gnarled cane into the pavement every three feet. It was Mr.Eckhart in the flesh, his house just up the slight hill. How I could have been so oblivious to my surroundings puzzled me.
“My cat,” he remarked in a German accent, sounding subdued but not showing it. “Poor thing, I see.”
Mr.Eckhart was still dressed for winter: thick blue jeans, heavy-duty boots, brown wool jacket zipped up, camouflage hat pushed down on his crown. He was a shriveled man, the slivers of youth in his motions seemingly withering by the moment. He stopped just short of his mailbox. In addition to those peeling lips, his black sunglasses were smiling high up on his smooth, pale face.
The man raised the twisted cane and motioned towards the yellowing heap of torn black fur near me.
“Looking all day for him. His name was Aldo. My mess. I’ll go and clean him up.”
He shook his downcast head, beginning to turn back.
I don’t know if there is some unknowable entity that forces us all along specific paths, but I know I would not be the type of man I am today if I hadn't spoken.
“Have you got a shovel?” He continued to shake his head, but not to my question.
“Wheelbox,” he said, and I knew he meant ‘wheelbarrow.’
I took his mumbled queue and followed, pushing my dusty yellow bike with me. I was unsure about what I thought I was doing, but I knew two things. First, I was bigger than Mr.Eckhart if bees took to honey. Secondly, I felt obligated to ensure the cat had a proper burial since I was the one who had found it.
Late Saturday mornings aren’t meant for the dead, especially those that are clear and full of birdsong, but I shadowed Mr.Eckhart’s retreat up the hill. The driveway meandered around the right side of his two-story home, bordered by the barren stumps and twigs of past living seasons.
“I hate spring,” Mr.Eckhart commented as he rounded the corner, and I would have, too, if the plants loved me as much as they appeared to love him. Our shoes left perfect prints on the pavement. Pollen absorbed the surrounding yard like a paper-thin blanket.
“Sir?”
“Ya?”
“The stories are true, aren’t they? About this time of year?”
He grunted, not responding right away. When he did, he just laughed.
“How old are you? Still in diapers, yus? Still believing in fairytales, yus?” And he laughed again. His dry crackle made me feel sorry for his advancing age.
I leaned my bike against the house, and we started across the yellow grass towards the barn. The barn was one hundred yards or so from his back door. He didn’t have a back porch, just a rectangular concrete slab with a single wooden chair and a grill on its yellow surface.
How that padlock chain dangled from those two wooden doors stirred worry to a liquid in my guts. I hated how that barn just sat there like a dead bug in the sun. Becoming ever so more confident that he didn't need that cane, I saw every reason to be dishonest about my age and reason more to be wary.
“I’m eighteen, sir,” I said.
Mr.Eckhart stopped. He seemed to sniff the air, and turned. I saw that his nose was a bulbous appendage of white flesh. He made his point at me with a long wrinkled finger.
“In spring lies the torment, boy.”
He turned back around, leaving me scratching my head. We resumed our trek. He grabbed the padlock and got the key in without battle when we got to the barn. Inside, blades of light from the sun cut the shadows in sections, and the only remarkable object I saw was a vehicle covered in a worn-out gray tarp. Along the left wall was a workstation piled with a man’s equivalent of happiness: tools. In plain sight near the opposite wall was the wheelbarrow. I moved towards it but stopped. Did I want to be in front of Mr.Eckhart?
He pointed at it.
“You want to help, yus? You roll it.”
I swallowed.
“Okay.”
I got the wheelbarrow back down the hill. Mr.Eckhart handed me the shovel he’d taken and leaned back on his cane as I worked. He surprised me in a different tone.
“Thank you, boy. What’s your name?”
I was as delicate as possible with the cat, but it was -forgive me for the metaphor- like trying to flip a fried egg in a sticky pan.
“Sandy,” I said.
“Huh?”
“My name. It’s Sandy.”
“Right,” he said, nodding vigorously. “Sandy, do you know my name?”
I levered the cat off the shovel and into the wheelbarrow, wincing when the hanging viscera slapped the dirty surface. I looked up to find Mr.Eckhart’s black sunglasses smiling at me again.
“Eckhart,” I said and tried to be funny, even grinned a little. “Everyone knows you by your first, middle, and last name: Eckhart.”
All black sunglasses on me.
“My first name.”
I pretended to think about it but just shook my head.
“Josef,” he said. “Josef Lucius Eckhart the Third.” He was quiet as I wheeled the cat back up the hill. After rounding the corner, he motioned for me to stop at the garage entrance, which I assumed was a garage, intersecting the main house. He went in and started moving things around, twisting things, grunting. After a minute or so, he came back out with thick white gardening gloves, abruptly grabbed the dead cat by its stiff scruff, and hurried back in.
“Incinerator!” he said from inside.
A light wind had kicked up and created a formidable yellow cloud. I wanted to tell Mr.Eckhart that it was okay. I’d bury it, that I’d do it myself. I could have entered the garage to inspect what was going on, but when I stepped forward he shouted:
“Don’t come in! Sights like this shouldn’t be seen by a mere boy.”
Should I just grab my bike and leave? I thought it probably one hundred times when he stepped back out in the sun. I couldn’t see his eyeballs from behind his thick sunglasses, but I knew they had changed their tone as his smile had transitioned into a tight frown. If he was looking past me, I couldn’t tell. Black smoke filtered from the chimney into the blue sky.
“To Hell with it. My God.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
“Look at all dis shit!” he shouted, raising his cane and hands to the sky, walking around me in agitation. “Every guddamn year, I’m made to suffer!”
Gooseflesh prickled on my arms, but I rubbed them out with my hands. His backyard was a thick haze of pollen, moving in one direction: left to right, like a river current. I remembered him asking me if I still believed in fairytales. I wanted to ask him why he was so superstitious. I could only marvel at the spectacle despite this -as I would soon find out- being the old man’s annual seasonal inconvenience.
“This is crazy,” I said, dumbfounded by the yellow air. “Why is it so much? Where’s it all coming from, Mr. Eckhart?”
I didn’t see him reaching into his pocket, but there was a fifty-dollar bill in my hand the next instant. A level tone fell from his curled lips, one full of hatred and wild fear despite the fertilized tears cascading over his cheekbones.
“Want a spring job, boy?”
Now that I think about it, it was the same as asking if I wanted years of swirling, Crayola yellow nightmares.
*
You’re probably thinking: Whatever happened to this Sandy kid, it’s his fault for going back to that property. And I wish there was a more eloquent way to explain myself, but there isn’t. He paid me well for a man with a home weathered bare and gray.
The following Saturday, the first one in April, I arrived at Mr.Eckhart’s house at ten in the morning to haul cut logs across the yard. Earlier that week, he had called a landscaping company to butcher three large oak trees, one in his front yard and two in the back. When I got there that Saturday morning, a mound of yellowing sawdust sat in the middle of the yard where the stump had been eaten away by metal. The tree was chainsawed, and the base pieces rolled into a pile off to the side. Mr.Eckhart was sitting in a chair on the front porch when I pulled up on my bike. The air was cool, but the sun was out, and there was no breeze.
He watched me pull up, goggles replacing his sunglasses. His shirt was off, and his torso was shrunk to the waist like a funnel. Skin tags riddled his flabby skin. His white chest hair had a dusting of pollen.
It was strange. The closer I got to his front porch, the more pollen there was.
“Good morning, Mr.Eckhart,” I said, dumping my bike near the steps.
Mr.Eckhart nodded once, reached shakily to his right, and picked up a pair of gardening gloves and goggles from a small table. He handed them to me. There were two cans of beer on the table, as well.
“What I need you to do is drag that mess, see..” he motioned towards the cut-up tree in the front yard with his chin. “..drag that bitch to the back and burn it.”
I said yessir, and just as I turned around, I heard him say:
“One hundred dollars for every mudder-fuck of a tree you get rid of.”
I worked until two or three that afternoon, dragging branches and logs to the burn pit Mr.Eckhart made earlier that morning. I made three hundred dollars that day. Dad was off on tour with his band around then, and the guitars he often left behind I played in lust. I suppose he made enough to snag any guitar in any guitar store I wanted, but I wanted to earn my first one.
I was rushing when it hit mid-afternoon. There was a girl I was taking to the movies that night, and I needed to wash some clothes for that evening. She was the epitome of first dates, but I don’t remember her name; many came and went over those years.
As I worked, I often caught Mr.Eckhart waving a lighter in the air like he was trying to catch the sway of a ballad at a rock concert. He would angrily kick at the yellow dust with his bare feet and mutter curses. Towards the end of the day, he walked up to me in the backyard as I threw the remnants of twigs and branches into the steady flame. He still only wore his shorts and goggles, and he was delirious in the day's warmth.
He had a wad of bills in one hand, the lighter in another.
“Bullshit fuck! I hate this! I hate…” he paused, gazing up at my face. The goggles made me want to laugh at him. “You know, boy, sometimes I live to see the night. Give me the night! Here you go, my sweet Sandy boy!”
Before I could move, he tucked the bills into my pocket, jumped back, threw his face up to the sky, and laughed, a terrible grin breaking the skin along his lips. I pretended to understand the situation, but this frightened me.
I liked how the wad of twenties felt in my pocket though.
*
For the next few weeks, the pollen count over the county dropped, as it naturally does. But it got worse on Mr.Eckhart’s property. I know this because Mr.Eckhart had me take his beaten-up Toyota pick-up to a Home Depot to get twenty gallons of liquid grass killer and a bed-load of orbit sprinklers for the yard. He had alcohol on his breath as he shakily hashed out the money I was to use for the supplies. His words, “I’m done fucking around.”
I’m not proud of my swift, joyful attitude towards the decimation of Mr.Eckhart’s yard. If he wanted me to kill every blade of grass, I was prepared to do it. I think I tried; There was plenty of green growth in the world, but Mr.Eckhart wanted his dead.
I set all the sprinklers up in his yard in a circular pattern, all relatively close to the house. For these jobs, I wore boots and jeans despite the gaining humidity and a mask in addition to the goggles. The stubborn yellow ejaculate was several inches deep along the foundation, obscuring my heels. On Mr.Eckhart’s roof, it was a thick unearthly blanket.
While the sprinklers spurted the poison, I was either disposing of the limbs of other trees Mr.Eckhart had his landscaping cut down, or doing my best to wash away the yellow madness on the exterior walls of his house, the cement walkways, the porch, or the driveway. One day I even got on a ladder and attempted to rid the roof shingles and second-story windows of Mr.Eckhart’s hell. After that, I spent a week straight after school and all day during the weekend digging a shallow trench from the house to the barn, then followed that to a steep embankment at the tree-line. I noticed aberrant indentations in the earth where Mr.Eckhart had most likely resumed digging when I was gone. I layered that same trench with over a thousand pounds of concrete I mixed in the wheelbarrow I had used as the cat’s hearse earlier that spring. This task alone cost me precious hours normally spent practicing guitar scales but made me one thousand dollars richer.
But here’s the thing. It always came back. After an arduous day’s worth of work, the pollen would be back the next morning, and I would have to labor it away with the hose or the shovel. Mostly the shovel as time went on.
The ground would be saturated with an inhumane concentration of RoundUp from the previous day. But yet, the yellow drifted in the wind like food coloring in water, a solid sheen of unforgiveness. By the last week in April, I knew what I had been seeing was for me somehow. I knew the spring had eyes for Mr.Eckhart, and it was making me watch.
On a late April afternoon, I had all sprinklers on, soaking the torched soil. Nothing grew, but the pollen was an everlasting tide seeping forward. The porch steps were steeped in half a foot of it. Mr.Eckhart no longer sat outside. Understandably.
As I was spraying the trench banks, mesmerized by the turbulent flow of dirty yellow water, I saw him stumble out of the barn bare naked. He hauled a gas canister in both hands. I felt the bright tremors of alarm in my head and strolled over to him quickly. His mouth was moving, and he was crying, saying he wished he had done things differently, praying to God that what he had done would just kill him already. When I reached out to grab the canister, I saw it and shrunk away immediately. Directly above the base of his shriveled penis was the tattoo of a swastika, faded and gray with time but distinct. I looked into his face and tried to see his eyes through the fog of his goggles. I had torn mine off in the run-over.
“Mr.Eckhart,” I said. He was speaking in German now, staring past me at the house. I didn’t know if the RoundUp was flammable by itself or its reaction with gasoline. That’s why I had moved the burn pit further back away from his residence in the first place. And Mr.Eckhart was moving away from the pit, directly towards his back door.
“Josef,” I tried again, looking back at the tattoo and wishing I hadn’t. He was getting erect. I took a hurried breath and jostled the object from his horribly-callused hands. It wasn’t hard, and he didn’t seem to care. The foreign words he sputtered sounded to me like attempts to dislodge dirt.
I couldn’t help my panic.
“Dude, what the hell? You’ll burn everything down!”
I convinced myself. I would call emergency services. Even in my disgust at Mr.Eckhart’s physical demeanor, I felt a transient obligation to care for him.
Mr.Eckhart grabbed a tuft of my soaked shirt. I cried out in surprise, wrapping my hand around his wrist. His deep tone overlooked the grimace on his face.
“Down...stairs,” he said. “Downstairs.”
“Downstairs...” I said, relieved I could hear his normal voice again. “Mr.Eckhart, why are you naked?”
He let me go and retreated to the barn, shutting the door behind him. I decided to go home to wash this interchange off of me. I was afraid Mr.Eckhart would resume his questionable pursuit of arson, so I took the gas canister with me. As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long for the paralyzed sleep. It came for him the next day.
*
The following morning I went back to inform Mr.Eckhart that I had done everything in my power to alleviate his stresses but that it seemed like an unexplainable malevolence had shadowed his property. The truth -something I wouldn’t tell him- was that he had made me uncomfortable.
I didn’t understand the whole thing, but I no longer wanted to be caught in the middle of a battle between man and nature. I would thank him for paying me so well, of course. I still had my manners.
Despite my sore body, I pedaled that Sunday morning and made the right turn off River Valley Road and up the dusty yellow driveway. When I got to the top, I pedaled in deep pollen the consistency of fine-powdered snow. When I saw what was on the front porch, I stopped and sat there for however long it took me to find the strength to move again.
Something shifted in the trees nearby, and a thin but disruptive yellow veil cut through the air; It was conclusory, and I wanted to scream at the deep blue sky. Mr.Eckhart’s hell had thickened the air, riding a subtle current, and turned my vision and body into a chalky pastel yellow. I engaged the kick-stand and hopped off.
As I came up the steps, which weren’t steps at all now, just a yellow slope, I greeted Mr.Eckhart, knowing he didn’t have that capability anymore. The madness had ended him.
He was in the chair. The madness had ended him through multiple orifices, it appeared. His eyes had been diseased by the terror, stiff and bulging through puffy yellow sockets. It had clogged his nostrils, which were swollen. It had taken advantage of his screams, his mouth open wide, wider than any mouth should have been allowed to open, and the terror had run in, had no doubt ceased his breathing. I moved up the steps cautiously, searching for each step. Mr.Eckhart looked like a slug, his neck large and twisted, gut protruding from his stained shirt. There was no blood. Then, I saw the dark trails underneath his clouded eyes. I understood what really killed Mr.Eckhart.
The madness had brought him to a whimpering boy of himself.
I would not be writing this if his front door hadn’t been open. I think the nightmare would have been more manageable had that entrance been unwelcoming. Pinned to the door with a nail was an envelope with Sandy scratched in black marker.
I shuffled forward, inadvertently kicking pollen everywhere, cursing, shaking. “Jesus Christ,” I said, touching the envelope but withdrawing quickly. Wasn’t this a crime scene?
But the interior of Mr.Eckhart’s everything was inches away, and I had to see. Something told me he had shut this door before sitting in the chair, maybe even going so far as to lock it. Who had opened this door? Could they still be inside?
I stepped into a living area that had the aroma of old age. Two couches, gray and used, formed a right angle with the wall. I could hear an air vent’s rattle, but I could feel no current.
Fearful the door would shut as soon as I made my way deeper inside, I pushed the door all the way to the wall and propped one of the couches against it.
It was dark, the curtains impenetrable, but the light from the front door engulfed the place and turned it into an unsettling gray hue.
Had I been confident Mr.Eckhart was really dead? I decided to look back at the sitting bloated version of him, the lower half of his calves hidden beneath the yellow tide. Did I expect him to suddenly rise? At one point, I think I did.
It crossed my mind that I was almost done with high school, a year left to go, and wouldn’t it have been funny to have been murdered by a dead man? What would my parents think, what would they believe?
On the right, next to the living room, was a dining room. Boxes with some of their spilled contents littered the table. I found a wooden slide door and entered the dead man’s kitchen.
I expected to see something unsavory there, but the kitchen was tidy and clean. The marble counters reflected light from the window above the sink. I moved on through the door. I could go directly to my right into a brief corridor-like space that ended with the backdoor, straight ahead towards what looked like a lounge or go up some stairs that went up to my right further down. Squinting, I could see the lounge-like room twenty feet or so away, and my blood ran cold.
I stood at the entrance to Mr.Eckhart’s cozy memorabilia room. For awhile I was confused, biting my lip, turning it around in my head. Could Mr.Eckhart have been in the war? The lamps in this one space were on, and I could clearly see what was on the walls.
Nazi flags plastered the walls, the ones with the sharp-edged swastikas on red backdrops. Old black-and-white photographs were blown up in huge, decorative frames on all sides. A fireplace sat like an eternity to my left, its brick foundation slightly blackened and soiled. It wasn’t until later on, during a college history course, that I fully understood the symbolism of the death-head, the skull with the cross and bones. At seventeen years old, I didn’t recognize the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, in the four by four frame in front of me. I didn’t know who the wiry man next to the Angel of Death was, either. For all I knew, they were two guys having a comical conversation, guys who wore really cool uniforms and talked of women and dreams. At seventeen years old, I didn’t know who that man was who posed in front of a tough battalion of men. The Beast of Belsen, Josef Kramer, names and infamous murderers I had never heard of before. They all surrounded my ignorant statue.
By the far right wall, tucked in the corner, was a surly oak desk, its surface polished and unperturbed by the masses of stationary stacked on the red velvet rug near it. I meandered around a long, low-lying table decimated by thick books with yellowing pages, and pulled the heavy wooden chair away from the monstrous desk. I think I thought about running my fingers over the surface, just to prove to myself I wasn’t scared of this place. But then I thought about the dead man outside and temporarily backed away.
A thick white binder was sitting on one of the wooden desk’s shelves. I sat down in the chair, hesitated, reached and grabbed it, and frowned as the front cover wobbled in my fingers; the seam had ripped three quarters of the way down. The thing was old. It was a memory photo book.
On the inside of the cover was a date I assumed described the inception of what I was about to see:
July 14th, 1941
The next few pages showed a baby cradled in a crib. Under each one:
Josef Lucius Eckhart III
Most of the text that I would see would be written in scribbled German, but it didn’t matter that I couldn’t read the damned words; what matters is what I saw.
I turned the page over. Here was Mr.Eckhart as a toddler, shrouded in a big white diaper, crawling on the floor. Here was Mr.Eckhart with a bubbly grin on his baby lips. Here was what I assumed was his father, holding his son out to the unknown photographer.
A few photographs were so distilled with age and wear that I could only make out a knee here or a tree there. Soon, I got to the other guys. In one, I remember seeing what I now know to be an SS officer cradling his own baby, an MG-42 machine gun. He was blowing smoke towards the photographer. And laughing. I shivered.
Three men huddled together. Mr.Eckhart’s father among them, cigarette in mouth, oblivious of the camera.
Towards the end of 1942, I came across some intriguing photos. I don’t remember much of what I saw, but I do recall seeing a group of children standing at attention to the photographer. They had all been frowning, backs straight, palms planted flat to their sides. The next few photos were of them doing some kind of training exercises, running around and around in a large open field.
May 1943. A very young Josef Lucius Eckhart III standing up, clothed in nothing but underwear, a toy duck fisted in one hand.
July 1943. A large structure with a railway passage cutting through it. The next one, a train billowing smoke and approaching the entrance, but from a different angle. This place looked familiar to me like I had seen it in an English textbook or something.
I flipped the pages in a fever, growing uneasy.

1. Things started getting bad, really fucking bad. In one photo, hundreds of people stood around the boxcars, faces wild and confused, some suspicious. Nazi officials loomed over them. In one, a joyful SS soldier was smirking while leading a horde of terrified faces down a dirt path barricaded with barbed wire.

1944, still. Gaskammern von Auschwitz, read the description. I knew the word ‘Auschwitz’, and I remembered the word ‘gaskammern’ because it had the word ‘gas’ in it. I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. A German Shepard lunged for a young girl grasping her mother’s skirt. In the next photo, a Nazi was forcibly yanking on the same dog’s leash while it tore at the same girl’s lifeless body.
I flipped more feverishly, more frantically, unable to turn away, held in by its spell.
By October of 1944, all of the photos were of mangled corpses being ripped open by men in white lab coats. In more than a few, the mutilated bodies were being burned in a large bonfire. In two or three, a man appearing to loom over a body turned to face the camera and smiled. There was a gap between his upper middle incisors. The description read: Doktor Mengele. Dr.Mengele playfully showed off his scalpel in the next one.
November 1944. Bodies. Charred remains.
December 1944. Men in white coats. Bodies. Bulging dead eyes.
January 1945. Bodies. Bodies. Bodies-
I groaned and threw the memory book aside. I should burn it, I thought, thinking about my fingerprints. Oh, Jesus Christ, Mr.Eckhart’s father had been a murderer, a damned sadist. They all-
Something shattered to the floor near the kitchen. I drew back from the chair, knocking it to the carpet in my haste, and scrambled into the hallway again. To my left past the stairs, a ten-foot corridor led directly to the backdoor. Glass shards burdened the wooden floor and old rug, obscured by the frame and its occupant.
Was someone in this house with me? Yet surely they would have seen me, heard me in the lounge? I wanted to yell out but I knew better. The picture had fallen to grab my attention, steer me towards something.
I tiptoed past the mess and found myself looking stupidly at another door just to the left of the backdoor.
Downstairs, Mr.Eckhart had told me. My skin broke out in gooseflesh. He had been hauling the tools for fire. What had he intended to burn?
I went down two preluding steps and twisted the basement door knob.
Inside, it was actually cooler than upstairs. I flicked on the light and went down the flight of stairs, holding the railing the whole time. The steps creaked as my weight prolonged its stay.
It wasn’t obvious at first, but that cage in the back did some pretty nasty things, did some pretty nasty emotional things. I was sure of it.
The fluorescent lights were exceptionally bright, allowing me witness to the carefulness of this underground world’s creation. Mr.Eckhart’s basement wasn’t built with the lazy hands of a close drinking buddy, or during the duration of a season, for that matter. Mr.Eckhart’s basement consumed time and money alike.
Mr.Eckhart’s basement didn’t have cobwebs or spiders or bugs. It had perfect dimensions and white-washed walls. It had concealed, non-obstructing air vents and its own thermostat. It had immaculate marble floors, a terrible hardness that made it feel like a person was walking through an alien aircraft.
The metal surfaces of the tables lining the wall on my right were rigid and bare, polished, gleaming. A sink had been built in the middle. I went over to the sink, looked in, and saw a single piece of notebook paper residing in the dry basin.
The piece of paper was three-quarters filled with Mr.Eckhart’s large-printed handwriting. It was almost as if he had thought writing in pencil diluted some of its finality. It read:
Somewhere in this room are the tattered bones of three boys. Their ages were five, eight, and nine. The fourth boy was done after the floors were put in. He was thirteen. You’ll find him wrapped in plastic underneath the car in the barn. The car, I touched them in with my dirty hands. The cage, I washed them off in before putting them to rest. I’ve tried for forgiveness within myself in the past ten years since Johnathan, the fourth one. I have been reminded by such forces that it does not forget or forgive.
When I dropped Mr.Eckhart’s confession back into the sink, I turned and looked at the steel bars in the corner through my tears, saw the faucet, saw the drain. In the time it took me to run, I thought about bones crushed by marble. I thought about the additional pressure my weight put on the bones.
I didn’t voice an angry shout or a strangled cry as I ran past the fallen picture in the corridor, back into the kitchen, stumbling through the living room with that couch propped against the front door. I sobbed with a full heart of alleviation, with a relief that summoned me to the envelope nailed to the front door and the money Mr.Eckhart had left for me inside. I cried silently for the forgotten bones underneath the marble, bones that would be forgotten no more.
I waited for my groans to stop. Then, when I could finally compose myself, I waited at the end of the driveway for someone to come.
**
We all have a duty to let those deserving of life not be forgotten. We often forget that there are forces we cannot understand, protectors of the wild that don’t wear our skin. But they have a consciousness of their own, and I believe that more than I have ever believed in any god. Maybe this is the God everyone gloats about. As my dad would say, “I don’t know, dude, okay?”
Swirling Crayola yellow nightmares plague me, as they have since that day. I don’t get them every night, Thank God, but they follow me regularly. Usually, it isn’t the yellow air that haunts me; it’s the man with the smiling sunglasses as black as obsidian.
“Downstairs,” he says, and I wake up screaming my head off.
Beth knows I like peace and the unfounded quietness of nature. Her father lives in a small ranch house near the mountains. Wide-open spaces, acres of rolling fields. So, when I told her I had an idea for a new book, expressing concern over this distracting city noise, she suggested I try the ranch house. Yes, her father would be there, but it would be a good bonding experience for us. I’d only met the man a handful of times. He had a bad leg, and was a man who waved off help to preserve his pride. We all know someone like that.
Beth has had things she’s had to deal with in her past, too, even though I’ve never told her about mine. I suppose one day I will, but my tone has always been balanced and calm when she talks about how her mother and her sister disappeared off the face of the earth one day when she was fifteen. The day they had gone missing, she had been spending the night at her grandparents’.
When my eyebrows rose, she caught my thinking and reassured me: “Dad was on the road when it happened.” Supposedly, he was hauling some freight across the country and would have been hundreds of miles away. His job had been driving what my fifteen-year-old self would have called ‘the big trucks’.
I’ve always had my doubts about Mr.Benningham. I never told Beth that, though.
I arrived at the ranch house in spite of Mr.Benningham’s stifled mumbling that he didn’t need “old people help”. It was something I reassured him I wouldn’t do, of course. He was too heavy to roll over, and at this, he flicked a glance at me and slowly smiled. He was supposed to use a cane for his bad leg, but I suppose the being seen with it at forty-eight years of age only ages you faster.
For the first few weeks, we played rummy on the front porch and drank beer that tasted like chilled piss from a cooler every night. Mr.Benningham -Dereck, he tells me- has seen just about everything there is out on the road. He tells me stories of drunken scuffles and tales of lonely adventurers out on the Ventura Highway. He doesn’t mention his missing wife and daughter, though. Maybe that’s his way of dealing with the loss. I figure it’s reasonable.
I was being serious, by the way. I can see spring’s golden hue in the evening sky out here. It’s subtle, see, and the yellow days have come and gone here in the piedmont, but something else concerns me.
As the season progresses, the weeds grow quickly, suffocating the bright green grasses into submission. Mr.Benningham has changed, too. I hear him lumbering around in the night like a lost vagrant.
I find myself cutting them back, these weeds. I’ve seen Mr.Benningham outside with the weed killer, too, spraying the outline of his home and cursing to high heaven.
In the blackness of these rural nights, I often wonder if my mother-in-law and sister-in-law are in these fields somewhere. I’ve watched as the weeds pile on top of each other, how they appear to be crawling forward like a sneaky green tide.
I plan to know what happened to the girls one way or another, even if it takes all summer.

Hello. I'm a psychopath apparently so I hand-copied all of the links for the Jerma Awards 2022 from the voting page so they can be accessed and enjoyed at your leisure.
Please let me know if I've messed anything up!

Best Bro

• Where's the Magic School?
• Bro? It's Not a Woodcutter
• Pac-Man Button Issues
• Where Do I Put This Stuff?
• Bro... Are You Kidding Me?
• Don't Use Bluetooth
• Creating a Bro
• Did you Know There's a Dodge in this Game?
• F*** you, bro!
• Radahn is too Hard
• What are you Talking About, Bro?
• House Flipper is my Game
• Bro, Bro Bro Bro?!

Worst Beter

• Ghost Beter
• It Was the Chapstick
• You've Been Such A Good Boy Peter
• That's a Beter
• Chat Spamming Beter!
• Infomercial Beter
• Put'er There!
• Peter the Apostle
• Saw Peter
• Everyone is Doing It, So I Can Too!

Best 'OooOo UhHAHAUGH UGHHHH'

• Slow and Steady
• We Got It!
• Nonchalant Shopper
• Normal and Collected
• Turn It Into a Song
• Sorcery Spell Excitement
• Just Chillin' Out Playing Crash
• Get Ready to Nominate This One

Worst Cat Puke

• Snakes Freak Me Out
• Pitch Black
• Trying Out That Brew
• Crusty Bread
• Frustrated Talent Show Chug
• Stream of Pure Water
• Eating Eggs
• Maintenance Puke
• I Don't Tip It Up
• I Need the Inspiration
• Ahhh Thank God!
• Scared Cat Puke
• Pumpkin Cat Puke
• Actual Cat Puke

Worst Face

• Now listen here, Batman
• jermaCheesed
• Robotnik
• Toothless Excitement
• "You look very handsome today"
• Radahn Webcam Glitch
• Jumpscare Eye Bulge
• Puffs Up, Points Up
• Science Pog
• 2 in One / Better Caul Saul Face
• Evil Ringlight Face
• Smooshed Sleeping Face
• jermaThing of Horror
• Scared Pog
• Anger, Genuinely Terrifying
• Returning the Game Eyebags
• Wax Faces
• jermaBeesting
• "That was weird" Scrunch
• Cartoon Anger
• jermaHamster
• Rhythm Heaven Meltdown
• Duck?
• "I'm just going up the stairs" Jumpscare
• Rooster Runs Around in Circle Double Scare
• Goblin Mode

Best Accident

• My Favorite Ice Cream, Let's Take a Look!
• Clapping Under the Seat
• The Mask Falls Off Spider-Man
• Pointing Meme
• Moaning Sounds
• Saw and His Tricycle
• High Angle CCTV Cam
• Sat on the Glove
• Booty Smash
• What Does Hamburger Helper Look Like?
• Whipped Cream
• Truck is Stuck

Best Overdone Boston Moment

• Wrestling Empire - "ok kid"
• Your Boston's Showing
• New Year's Song
• Do You Still Consider Yourself a Bostonian?
• Risk - "Did you just take Boston?"
• Khakis Car Keys
• Ants
• Boston Meta, Universally Despised Source #2
• Kid's Game Angry Rant
• "Sup dude. Sick ahmah", Respectfully
• Rain of Stahs, Stahlight Kid Source #2 Source #3
• Boston Morph
• "Your cousin from Bwoaston"
• Driving in Boston
• "Whadda lookin' at, Mahs?"
• "Loogadis ahtwork"
• Boston Guy Plays FNAF
• "GAHLIC" Catchphrase Story

Worst Hair

• Shaggy Hair Gets Chat Member Banned
• VR Hair Deer in Headlights
• VR Red Mark
• Uneven Sideburns Again
• Big Kid
• Keep Dreaming
• Spider-Man Hair
• Trump Hair
• Greasy Cooked Hair
• Pube Sideburns
• He Looks Off

Best Dancing

• Hit The Luddy
• Hip Sway Green Screen
• Penis Music Hand Rolls
• Name Your Price Dance
• Twerking King
• Cringe Dance Plok
• Twerk 0.2
• "You think you can beat ME?"
• Goofy Goober
• SUS Walk

Best Otto Moment

• Sleepy Otto in Jerma's Arms
• Otto's Tail Revealed
• Otto is a Little Chunky
• Snoring in the Cheaper Bed
• Otto Sneaks In
• Otto Gets a Treat

Best Rant

• "Humans are not supposed to be doing this"
• Goat Cheese is Vile
• Alien Panic 1
• Meat Grinder
• Dishwashers are Stupid
• 23 is a Scary Number
• The Afterlife is Stupid
• "One Sentence"

Best Impression

• Mermaid Man
• "and Sir Gideon Ofnir"
• Alex Jones
• Doofinschmirtz
• Democracy Manifest Subtitles
• Parrots all sound like recordings
• Tom Scott
• Super Mario
• Stone Cold "and that's the bottom line"
• Troll 2 "They eating her!"
• Seinfeld "Just say big"

Worst Impression

• Jack Sparrow
• George Costanza
• Toad
• Mario Party "Okay"
• Yoda
• Bobby Hill
• Cookie Monster
• Doc
• Taz
• Patrick Star
• Frog

Best Joke Taking More Than 5 Minutes to Set Up

• Scorn
• The Ultimate Thumbnail
• Old Timey Elden Ring
• TF2 Saints Row
• The Bug Eating Doctor
• Communicating with the Bar
• Doing every Twitch "moment" for the whole month/3am SUS Guy
• Construction happening, sorry guys :/
• Tuber Routine
• Sleeping to FNAF
• No. 13 plays Destiny 2 after winning the talent show
• Scooby-Doo BeamNG

Worst Joke Taking More Than 5 Minutes to Set Up

• Sleeping to FNAF
• Someone Got in the Discord!?
• Bugs Bunny Carrot Routine
• Deadpool Joins the Halloween Party!
• The Vending Machine
• Breaking Bad Van
• Doing "Pushups"

Best Noise

• Scorn
• O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O
• Wilma Record Holder
• SUS Sounds
• Cricket Legs
• Power Washer on Metal
• Waiiiiyyy
• Bucket Laugh
• Taz in the Chair
• Scream Test
• Plastic Squeaks
• Two 1ups!
• Hand Scream Shake
• Sad Squeaks
• Crystal Enemies in Elden Ring
• "Are you the imposter?"
• Unintentional Homer Simpson
• Grandpa Flatline
• Gimme Gimme Gimme

Worst Noise

• Frog Noises
• Slime Soap
• MultiVersus Squeal
• Growls at Chat
• Rage Burp
• Monkey Rage
• Donkey Noise
• Goblin Squeal
• Temporary Possession
• Lobster Eating Noises
• Growl Slurp
• Horrid Howl
• Suck Snort Wheeze Cackle
• Pushup Noises
• Rock and Roll Baby Noises
• Nerf
• Evil Marge
• Sudden Chewbacca
• Loud Co-op Stream Squeal
• Backpedal Noise

Best One-Guy Moment

• xxxballfondlerxxx's Origin
• Stanley Parable Dev Adds Spider to Jerma's Mouth
• Barf Drinker's Origin
• Day 1 Elden Ring Played at Bar
• Cinnamon Candle Comedy Routine
• Gross Jelly Beans
• Beginning of the Drug PSAs
• Scientist Isolates the Jerma Virus
• Wood Sandwich
• "Play FNAF"
• Leads to Pushup Bit
• Ring Light Around Neck
• sterben6702 Slots Weeklong Ban
• Asylum 5-Hour Edit
• DuskDev Tweets Help
• Ultrakill VA Taunting
• Dark Souls 2 Ruined
• Andy Funny Voices
• Arby's Gyro Dinner Bet
• Breakcore

Best Scare Moment

• Charborg Corner Jumpscare
• Iron Lung Scare
• "Did he leave the room?"
• Scorn Pillar
• Lady Pushing Stroller
• "I'm just going up the stairs"
• Rooster Runs Around in Circle Double Scare
• Starting the Game
• Drape (thought it was a tentacle)
• Flamingo Monster
• Bat
• Dumpster
• Getting Jumped in Elden Ring PVP
• House Flipper Explosion
• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
• Real Face
• VOLUME WARNING Puppet Combo
• Santa
• "What are you pointing at?"
• Cliff Scare Vomit
• Sticks Tongue Out
• Almost Shut Down Computer

Best Singing

• Miku Hatsune PO PI PO
• You've Got a Friend in Me
• Mario Kart Beatbox (Part #1) Part #2
• Soulslike Opera
• Oh the Misery
• What's New Scooby Doo
• "Early in the Morning..." Saints Row 3
• Green Screen Accordion Opera
• John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt (scared)
• Lullaby for Chat
• Apples and Bananas
• Hercules - Go the Distance

Worst Singing

• Bjork
• Splatoon 3 Laughsong
• Hitman Rave
• Anime Intro-like Song About Friendship
• Vi "She's such a misfit-"
• Berserk Theme Song
• Goodnight Song for Boba the Kitty
• Wrestling Empire "Good Morning" Song
• Beatbox Oh the Misery Remix
• Doesn't Know the Words, Crashes Truck
• Christmas "Since We No Place to Go"
• You've Got a Friend in Me
• Campfire Duet With Ster

Best Gamer Moment

• Ultimate Poker Bluff vs Ludwig
• Beating Ulcerated Tree Spirit Early
• Skipping the Whole 19 Par Minigolf Course
• First Try Cuphead DLC Boss
• Bopping to the Guard
• Beating V2 2nd in 2 Tries

Worst Gamer Moment

• Korok Forest Confusion
• Guesses Every Letter Except "X"
• "OH MY GOD IT'S SWITZERLAND"
• Stone Talus
• Pentakilled by Fire Giant in Tourney
• Falls to Death with Ster
• Sim Catches Fire in 1st 10 minutes of Gameplay
• Not Completing Shrine in Time for Bet, Went Wrong Way
• Luigi'd
• Drops 3 Crates Off Cliff
• Trying to Land in Fortnite
• "Dude you're kickin' butt right now dude"
• Cartoonishly Handling Boulder
• "Do not flip the car"
• Grenades Himself in BO2
• FLASHBANG OUT
• All Gutter Balls
• Horse Cliffside Plummet
• Loses Easiest Card Game
• Margit 1 Hit Away, "Let's do the rest of this with my eyes closed"
• "Kill him, KILL HIM, I don't know how to do it"

Worst Overall Stream

• Fortnite Tournament
• Glover
• Mythbusters: The Game
• Black Ops Tournament
• Baby Sensory Videos
• Disney Karaoke
• Ranking Every Boss in FromSoftware History

Favorite Collab Appearance Outside of Channel

• Name Your Price (AustinShow)
• Bro vs Bro (Ludwig)
• Tummy Time (Cr1tikal)
• Juiced (xQc)
• Flight (AustinShow)
• Hey Donna (WillNeff)
• Beerio Kart (Ludwig)

Best Overall Stream or Series (Non Event/Show)

• Mon Bazou
• Ultrakill (Part #1) Part #2
• Stanley Parable
• BeamNG
• Snack Tier List
• Strawberry Magic
• BOTW
• Infomercial React Andy (Part #1) Part #2
• Geoguesser w/Ster
• Sims 4
• Wrestling Empire
• Hitman 3 VR
• Scorn
• Dying Light 2 w/Ster
• Internet Cafe Sim
• Elden Ring

Best Overall Stream (Event/Show)

• Who Will Replace ME?
• The SUS Guy Finally Plays Among Us
• The Jerma Baseball Association
• The Green Screen/Watch Party

The raw input of this comment, in case it is useful to anyone else for anything (Mozilla Pastebin because regular Pastebin.net won't work).

I'm a male with HSV2g. I recently successfully disclosed to a partner. Here's what I said. Hopefully this can help you. The info below could be in greater detail.... but I don't want to bore you...
I followed this agenda for the discussion which was via speakerphone. My mind was racing, but I honestly felt confident because I had practiced what I was gonna say, what sequence and what words. I wanted it to be casual and open and also.... no big deal if you are not comfortable being intimate with me. Ultimately, be you and craft your words carefully.
Sexual health: I said I was HIV - and asked if they were. I asked if they get cold sores. I said almost everyone has the virus that causes cold sores and it's a variety of Herpes called HSV1. I said that I test positive for HSV2. I explained that the CDC estimated 1 in 6 to 1 in 8 adults have it, but 80% or more have no idea because it doesn't do anything. It can be in your body and you'd never know. I also mentioned that Shingles are a variety of herpes...... I also mentioned that regular STI testing does not check for HSV which is why a lot of people have no idea.
How it happened: I explained that I know who I got it from and it was because condoms were not used. I explained how the virus is transmitted via skin to skin contact, etc...... I said that for me I initially got a rash on my penis (I did not use the word lesion or outbreak so as not to make it seem super unsexy.) I said that was pretty much it and that I take a daily pill to suppress the virus.
How would we have sex? I said that we just need to wear a condom if we have intercourse and that combined with the daily pill really reduced any risk. I also said even if we had unprotected sex and I was not on a pill..... it does not mean you automatically get it. I also said it's transmitted from nerve endings and it's not like HIV with semen or blood, etc.
I stopped and asked if they had questions? They were very curious if anything. I suggested the American Sexual Health Association site as the best resource because there are a lot of conflicting messages out there with HSV1, HSV2, risks, etc...... https://www.ashasexualhealth.org/
Closing: I said.... "Well you think about it and let me know. I think you're cute and I'd like to hang out with you more. We can talk tomorrow. And if you are not interested, that's fine, too." They stopped me and immediately said.... "Thanks for being honest. It makes me like you even more. Condoms are things that exist."
​
Again...... the above is somewhat paraphrasing.... but the general approach I took.

Well I didn't expect this to ever happen but here we are, especially when two Doctors who seen the tiny tears on my penis (before I went to the STD clinic to take a swab) were certain they were friction tears from sex but I got the message the following day that I was positive for HSV-1
The outbreak was barely an outbreak and I hope, like many, it'll be the first and the last. The nurse at the STD clinic reassured me all the reassurances you all know here and I'm not particularly devastated by this as I've had my fair share of sex in my life (mostly protected, only unprotected in relationships and with those that have also been tested clear like me for routine tests after we've shown each other) and generally the idea of being alone or not intimate again doesn't phase me too much (yet) as I've had that for years anyway.
I do have some questions to ask for anyone who knows better than me, I appreciate you taking the time to read and answer:

1. How reliable is a PCR swab for this? Could those potentially been just friction tears after all and my skin had the virus rather than them being actual sores? Well then this popped up not long after and it does look very suspect (picture attached - https://ibb.co/HxGV5xt ). This is now healing and no longer open. I don't think we do Western Blot in the UK but perhaps I should just accept its not needed and I have HSV.
   
2. Obviously I would disclose but if I never have a recurrence again - exactly how different am I to those walking around asymptomatic out there?
   
3. Am I alright to not take antivirals unless I only have recurrent outbreaks?
   
4. Symptoms popped up two weeks after a really bad illness (very very similar to Covid symptoms, never been this ill in my life) but I've been having unprotected sex with a girl (again, we've both tested all clear for routine STD testing before starting and only have sex with one another) for about a month and she has no symptoms, at least not yet and she knows about my diagnosis. Chances are more or less I'll never know if this was latent and popped up or I got it off her (she claims only ever time she's had a sore on her lip was during a shingles/chickenpox episode a few years back, never recurrent and even then she's not 100% it was a cold sore). Guess I'll never know? I don't hold any grudge anyway.
   

sanctuary, a teal-blue lozenge surrounded by gray-shingled walls that will be covered with pale pink climbing roses in the height of summer. Around the pool are “the most comfortable chaise longues in the known world, extra-wide and easy to adjust,” and stacks of custom-ordered Turkish cotton towels in hydrangea blue.
Next, it’s off to the yoga studio. Jill has never been to Bali, but she has read Eat, Pray, Love, so she appreciates the aesthetic. The ceiling of the studio is an elaborate teak carving salvaged from a temple in Ubud. (Jill considers how much it must have cost to ship and install such a ceiling... mind-exploding emoji!) There’s a gurgling stone fountain in the form of the somewhat terrifying face of the god Brahma that empties into a trough of river stones. The light from outside is diffused through rice-paper shades, and gamelan music plays over the sound system. All in all, Jill thinks, the new yoga studio will be an idyllic place to find a child’s pose.
But as far as Jill is concerned, the ultimate reveal is the hotel’s bar. It’s a high-concept jewel box, a space painted Farrow and Ball’s Pitch Blue (which falls on the spectrum between sapphire and amethyst) and a blue granite bar. There are domed pendant lights that look like upside-down copper bowls and an accent wall sheathed in bright pennies! There’s also a copper disco ball that will drop from the ceiling every night at nine o’clock. There’s nothing like it anywhere else on the island. Jill is gobsmacked. Can she make a reservation now, please?
Jill races back to her desk at the Standard office. Has she ever been so inspired to write a piece? She types like a fiend, getting all the details down—including the rainbow- hued Annie Selke rugs, the curated selection of novels on the bookshelves of the suites, the pin-tucked velvet stools in the new hotel bar—and then goes back over the piece one sentence at a time, making certain the language is as gracious and rich as the hotel itself.
When she finishes her final edit, she takes the piece to Jordan Randolph’s office. He likes to read each feature article on paper and then mark it up with red pen like he’s Maxwell Perkins editing Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Jill and her colleagues joke about this. Hasn’t he ever heard of Google Docs?
Jill stands in the doorway as he reads, waiting for his usual “Outstanding.” But when he finishes, he tosses the pages onto his desk and says, “Huh.”
Huh? What is huh? Jill has never before heard her extremely articulate boss utter this syllable.
“Is it not okay?” Jill asks. “Is it...the writing?”
“The writing is fine,” Jordan says. “Maybe it’s too polished? This reads like one of those advertisement sections in the middle of Travel and Leisure.”
“Oh,” Jill says. “Okay, so...” “I was hoping for more of a story,” Jordan says. “I’m not sure there is more of a story,” Jill tells him. “The
hotel was falling to pieces and Xavier Darling bought it. He hired local—”
“Yes, you say that.” Jordan sighs. “I wish there were another angle...” His voice trails off. “I’m not going to run it this week. Let me think on it for a little while.” He smiles at Jill. “Thank you, though, for going to get a ‘behind-the- scenes first look.’” He uses air quotes, which makes him seem like such a boomer. “I appreciate it.”
Privately, Jordan Randolph suspects that the Hotel Nantucket will be like a work of art by Banksy—after it is unveiled, it will shine for one glorious moment and then self-destruct. One person who agrees is a ninety-four-year- old resident of Our Island Home named Mint Benedict. Mint is the only child of Jackson and Dahlia Benedict, the couple who owned the hotel from 1910 to 1922. Mint asks his favorite nurse, Charlene, to push him all the way to Easton Street in his wheelchair so that he can see the spiffy new facade of the hotel.
“They can fix it up but it won’t succeed,” Mint says. “Mark my words: The Hotel Nantucket is haunted, and it’s all my father’s fault.”
Mint is talking nonsense, Charlene thinks, and he definitely needs a nap. She spins his chair toward home.
Haunted? we think. Half of us are skeptical. (We don’t believe in ghosts.) Half of us are intrigued. (Just when we thought the story
couldn’t get any better!)

1. The Fifth Key

Lizbet Keaton’s Breakup Playlist
“Good 4 U”—Olivia Rodrigo “All Too Well” (Taylor’s version)—Taylor Swift “If Looks
Could Kill”—Heart “You Oughta Know”—Alanis Morissette “Far Behind”—
Social Distortion “Somebody That I Used to Know”—Gotye “Marvin’s
Room”—Drake “Another You”—Elle King
“Gives You Hell”— The All-American Rejects “Kiss This”—The Struts
“Save It for a Rainy Day”—Kenny Chesney “I Don’t Wanna Be in Love”—Good Charlotte “Best of You”—
Foo Fighters “Rehab”—Rihanna
“Better Now”—Post Malone “Forget You”—CeeLo Green “Salt”—Ava Max “Go Your Own Way”—Fleetwood Mac “Since U Been Gone”—Kelly Clarkson “Praying”—Kesha
Ever since her devastating breakup with JJ O’Malley, Lizbet has been searching for an inspirational meme that will make her feel better. She spent seventy-seven dollars at Wayfair on a framed quote attributed to Socrates: The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. She hangs it on the wall at the end of her bed so that it’s the first thing she sees when she wakes up and the last thing she sees before she turns off the light.
All your energy. Not on fighting the old. But on building the new. The secret of change.
Easier said than done, she thinks. She spends all her energy fighting the old.
Reliving September 30, the Last Night at the Deck.
Last Night at the Deck is a bittersweet tradition—it marks the end of the summer season. Lizbet and JJ have to say goodbye to the team they poured so much time and energy (and money) into building. Some of the staff will return next spring, but not everyone, so a summer can never be replicated. This, they’ve found, is both good and bad. Last Night is a time of bacchanalian revelry for the staff. Lizbet and JJ throw down an excellent party, opening tins of beluga caviar and bottle after bottle of Laurent-Perrier rosé.
One of the traditions is the staff photograph that Lizbet takes of them all leaning up against the railing with the Monomoy creeks behind them. She frames these
photographs and hangs them in the hallway that leads to the restrooms. It’s a record of sorts, an album, a history.
Tonight’s picture will be the fifteenth. She can hardly believe it.
Lizbet calls for everyone to gather, and they configure themselves into a creative and cozy pose. Shorties up front! Goose, the sommelier, and Wavy, the head server, pick up Peyton, who is everyone’s favorite (and quite petite besides), and hold her lengthwise. Christopher and Marcus reach for each other’s hands, their first public acknowledgment that they’ve become a couple this summer. Ekash and Ibo and all the prep chefs, dishwashers, and food runners fill in, finding their places.
Lizbet uses JJ’s phone to take the picture because it’s sitting right there on table 10 in front of her. She punches in JJ’s passcode—0311, her birthday—and his text messages pop up, all of them in an amusingly large font (JJ won’t admit that he needs readers). Lizbet is about to click out of the texts when something catches her eye: I want you so badly. This is followed by Tell me what you want me to do to you. Lizbet freezes, but then she thinks, Wait, this isn’t JJ’s phone after all. It must be someone else’s iPhone 13 Pro Max with an electric-blue cover and a photo of Anthony Bourdain on the back and her birthday as its passcode. A split second later—it’s incredible how fast the brain processes even counterintuitive information—she understands that this is JJ’s phone. These texts—she scrolls back until she finds pictures of a woman’s breasts and what
she knows to be JJ’s erect penis—are being sent to and received from Christina Cross, their wine rep.
Goose calls out, “Take the picture already, Libby. This bitch is getting heavy!”
Lizbet’s hands are shaking. What has she found? Is it real? Is this happening? Somehow she manages to play through (later, she will consider this a show of superhuman strength). She takes the pictures. They’re good. They’re the best ever. Then Lizbet takes JJ’s phone and hurries to the ladies’ room, where, sitting in a stall, she reads through the pornographic text messages—187 by Lizbet’s count—that JJ and Christina have sent each other over the past three months, the most recent of which was earlier that night. Lizbet wants to flush the phone but she doesn’t; she has the wherewithal to take screenshots of the messages and text them to herself.
Then Lizbet returns to the party. It’s in full swing—Polo G is singing “Martin and Gina” at top volume, and Christopher, Marcus, and Peyton are dancing. Lizbet finds JJ in the corner at table number 1, the most sought-after in the restaurant, drinking a beer with a couple of guys from the kitchen.
“There’s my queen,” JJ says when he sees her. He places a hand on Lizbet’s waist and tries to draw her in for a kiss, but she stiff-arms him, pushing his phone into his chest.
“I’m going home,” she says.
“What?” JJ says. He takes his phone, and the texts from Christina brighten on the screen. “Oh God, no. Wait, Libby
—” Lizbet doesn’t wait. She walks away, pushing past Wavy,
who senses something is wrong and tries to stop her. “It’s not what it looks like!” JJ says. Oh, but it is what it looks like, Lizbet thinks once she
gets back to the Bear Street cottage she owns with JJ and reads through the texts one by one. It’s exactly what it looks like.
The Hotel Nantucket is perhaps the only place on the island where Lizbet doesn’t have any history or memories with Jonathan James O’Malley, so when Lizbet hears that Xavier Darling has bought the hotel and is looking to hire a general manager, she drives straight to Bayberry Properties to see Fast Eddie.
“What can I do for you, Lizbet?” Eddie asks as she sits down across from him. She has caught him during a rare moment in the office. Eddie prefers to be out buzzing around the island in his Porsche Cayenne, wearing his panama hat, doing deals. “I hope you’re not here to list your cottage? Though if you are, I can get you an excellent price—”
“What?” Lizbet says. “No!” She tilts her head. “Why? What have you heard?”
Eddie clears his throat and seems uncharacteristically reserved. “I heard that you and JJ parted ways...”
“And?”
“And that you’re eager to put him in your rearview mirror,” Eddie says. “For good. So I thought maybe you were leaving island.”
“Absolutely not.” If anyone should leave island, Lizbet thinks, it’s JJ! But she won’t drag Eddie into their drama; anything she says will be mangled by the Cobblestone Telegraph. “I’m here because I’d like Xavier Darling’s contact information.” She sits up straighter and flips her braids behind her. “I want to apply for the general-manager position at the new Hotel Nantucket.”
“You must have heard about the salary,” Eddie says. “No. I haven’t even thought about the salary.” “It’s a hundred and twenty-five thousand a year,” Eddie
says. “Plus full benefits.” Lizbet pulls back a few inches. Her mind lands fancifully
on a trip to the dentist when she wouldn’t have to worry when Janice, the hygienist, tells her it’s time for a full set of X-rays. “Wow.”
“I’m happy to give you Xavier’s e-mail.” Eddie snaps his fingers. “Didn’t you tell me your father owns a hotel in Wisconsin?”
Lizbet’s father manages a retirement community in Minnetonka, Minnesota. As a teenager, Lizbet used to pull numbers for the bingo games and escort the residents to their hair appointments at the salon. One year, she judged the butter-sculpture contest.
“Something like that,” Lizbet says.
Eddie nods slowly. “Xavier wants someone with a background in luxury hotels.”
Lizbet blinks. There is no way she can make the Rising Sun Retirement Community sound like the Four Seasons.
“But he also wants someone who has dealt with the Historic District Commission and the Nantucket selectmen.”
“Me,” Lizbet says. “And who can charm the chamber of commerce.” “Also me,” Lizbet says. “The hotel has quite a tattered reputation to repair.” “Agreed,” Lizbet says. “I assume you’ve heard the rumors
about the ghost?” “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Eddie says. “And I never listen
to rumors.” Ha-ha-ha! Lizbet thinks. At least one of those statements
is a flat-out lie. “Xavier has his work cut out for him,” Eddie says.
“There’s a lot of competition at the high end—the Beach Club, the White Elephant, the Wauwinet. I told him I wasn’t sure there was another seat at the table, but he was adamant, and he does have deep pockets. The hotel will open in June, and according to Xavier, it’s going to be the finest lodging this island has ever seen. But he needs the right person at the helm.”
Lizbet nearly leaps out of her chair, she wants this job so much. “I’ll send Mr. Darling my résumé tonight. Do you think you might...put in a good word for me?”
Eddie presses his fingers together in a way that seems contemplative, and Lizbet hopes he’s remembering all the times he called the Deck at the last minute and Lizbet found him a table, even when they were crazy full with a wait list. Eddie always requested table number 1 and Lizbet granted that wish when she could (that David Ortiz was sitting there one night and Ina Garten another wasn’t Lizbet’s fault!).
“I won’t put in a good word,” Eddie says. “I’ll put in a great word.”
The next week, Lizbet interviews with Xavier Darling over Zoom. Although she thought she crushed it—dropping the name of the chairman of the zoning board to underscore her local connections—Xavier’s demeanor gave nothing away. Lizbet figured someone like Xavier Darling would have a short list for the position that included people like the GMs from Wynn Las Vegas and the XV Beacon Hotel in Boston. However, only two days later, Xavier Zoom-called Lizbet and offered her the job. She was calm and composed as she accepted, but the instant she pressed the Leave Meeting button, she jumped up and down, victorious fists raised over her head. Then she collapsed in her chair and wept tears of gratitude.
The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
Lizbet had a proverbial clean slate.
She visualized a Hollywood production assistant snapping shut the clapper board as the director shouted: Take two!
On the morning of April 12, Lizbet is, unfortunately, back to fighting the old—specifically, she’s remembering how it was Christina who called her to explain away the sexting (Those texts are nothing, Libby, JJ and I were only kidding around) —when she gets a message from Xavier Darling; he’s requesting a meeting. It’s six thirty a.m.—Xavier, in England, is oblivious to the time difference—and Lizbet sighs. She was planning to get on the Peloton. But she has agreed to be at Xavier’s beck and call, so she pulls a blouse on over her workout tank, drapes her braids over her shoulders, and fluffs her bangs.
Join meeting with video.
“Good morning, Elizabeth.” (Xavier refuses to call her Lizbet, even though she has asked him to twice, telling him that the only person who called her Elizabeth was her late grandmother.) Behind Xavier, Lizbet sees Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, a view so iconically London, it might as well be a Zoom background.
“Good morning, sir.” Lizbet tries not to worry about his stern tone of voice, though she briefly wonders if today is the day the hammer drops and the hopes she has invested in the hotel will collapse, the whole thing a belated April Fools’ joke.
“I’m calling to shed some light on things that might have been unclear.”
Lizbet steels herself. What is Xavier going to tell her?
“You’ve never asked me—in fact, no one has asked me— why I bought this hotel. After all, I live in London and I’ve never visited Nantucket.” He pauses. “Have you wondered about this?”
Lizbet has, in fact, wondered, but she chalked it up to her understanding of the very wealthy: They buy things because they can.
“I bought this particular hotel,” Xavier says, “because I’m trying to impress two women.”
Whoa! Lizbet pinches her thigh to keep from gasping. This is probably the only answer worth sacrificing her thirty-minute hip-hop ride with Alex Toussaint for.
“Two women?” Lizbet says. She checks her image on her laptop screen; she’s maintaining a sort of straight face. Lizbet has, naturally, googled Xavier Darling. According to an article in the Times (London), he never married and has no children. The internet showed pictures of him at the Royal Ascot and the Cartier Queen’s Cup with young, combatively beautiful women on his arm, but never the same one twice. Who are the lucky two, and will they both be coming to Nantucket? Because that will get the island talking! She would love to remark that buying each woman a private plane or a minor van Gogh might have been cheaper.
“Yes,” Xavier says. “I’m going to share with you now who one of the women is.”
“Wonderful, sir.”
“One of the women I’m trying to impress is Shelly Carpenter.”
Shelly Carpenter, Lizbet thinks. Of course. “Do you know who Shelly Carpenter is?” Xavier asks. “‘Stay well, friends,’” Lizbet quotes. “‘And do good.’” “Precisely,” Xavier says. “Elizabeth, I want a five-key
review from Hotel Confidential.” Aga b

Beat the queue and fly with me on I’ll Take My Chances Airways
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, May 1)
British Airways seems to be in a bit of a pickle. On Wednesday alone it cancelled nearly a hundred flights in and out of Heathrow, and when bosses say everything will return to normal by June, you can’t help raising a quizzical eyebrow and wondering if they’ve been taking lessons in optimistic time-management from their local builder.
The problem, it seems, is finding staff for the airports. Many were sacked or furloughed during the pandemic, and when management asked them to return to work, they found that a great many had been driven by Brexit back to Latvia or Romania or wherever.
Finding replacements is not easy because these days unskilled workers can earn around £8,000 a day washing dishes in a pub or driving a lawn mower or replacing the soap bars in a hotel. As a result most baggage-handlers at Heathrow now have their own chauffeurs. Maybe that’s why Nicky Clarke closed his Mayfair hairdressing salon last week. He’s too busy doing 600-quid blow dries in Feltham.
There’s another issue too. Before being given a job at an airport you must be vetted by the security services, but because the inspectors are basically civil servants, they’re working from home.
It’s the same story with the immigration officials: they also claim they’re working from home. Right. I see. And how exactly do you check someone’s passport when you’re in the park taking the dog for a walk before picking the kids up from school? I flew into Heathrow the other day, and while there may have been several million passport booths, only three were manned.
Travel hasn’t been easy or even remotely pleasant for many years, but now it’s just horrific. Because you must queue to check in, and then, after you’ve taken off your shoes and your belt and your watch and you’ve stood around with your hands in the air while someone checks your gentleman sausage for explosives, you must prove to someone in a high-visibility jacket that you are not diseased. This means there are now queues to join queues. And all so that you can make it on time for a flight that may or may not have been cancelled.
One day I will revolutionise the entire sordid travel experience with a business model that I’ve been developing in my head for some time. I’ll have an airline and an airport where you just turn up and get on the plane. There will be no security checks. No one will push a probe up your nose and into your brain. No one will touch your penis. And on board you’ll be able to drink as much as you like, make phone calls when you want and stand for landing if that’s what takes your fancy.
Yes, it might explode, and, yes, you might catch a disease, but this is an airline for people who, to save time, are prepared to risk it. It’ll be called I’ll Take My Chances Air. And it’ll be more of a disrupter to the travel industry than Tesla was to the world of cars.
But that hasn’t happened yet, which brings me on to the big question. Where are you going on holiday this summer? Corfu? The Russian-free beaches of St Tropez? Lovely. Except in all probability you aren’t.
In recent weeks I’ve had one friend turned away from the check-in desk because his new wife still had her maiden name in her passport. They had a covering letter and permission from the authorities in America to fly, but because the name on the ticket didn’t match the name on the passport, that was that. And they ended up holidaying not in New York, as planned, but in Lechlade-on-Thames.
Last week another friend, also going to New York, was turned away because her Covid test came back as “inconclusive”. And last weekend I was talking to a couple who boarded their flight to Nice and then de-boarded because the plane was broken and the engineers were too rich to come and mend it.
In addition I know of three people who had their flights cancelled at the last minute over Easter, and I damn nearly didn’t make it to the Seychelles in February because I was flying via Dubai and they had different rules about when the Covid test should have been done.
As a result of all this, many newspapers and magazines will fill their pages in the coming weeks with ideas for holidaying at home. They’ll tell you about Corfe Castle and the bridge in Knaresborough and canal boats, and they’ll make it all seem idyllic, but I know many of you are so desperate to get away, you’ll ignore the appeal of a staycation and simply hope your travel experience won’t be so bad. Even though you know full well it will be.
Don’t worry, though, because if you are determined to go abroad for some guaranteed summer sunshine, and you can’t afford to rent a private jet, Uncle Jeremy has had his thinking cap on and has come up with a way of ensuring you board the plane with no fuss at all, and that it takes off, on time.
Here’s what you do. Slip into a black leather jacket and a pair of ill-fitting jeans, drive to the port town of Folkestone and then rent a small dinghy. Wait for the tides to be right and for a northeasterly to be blowing, and then hop aboard. If your nautical calculations are correct, you’ll wash up a few hours later on the shingle beach in Dungeness, where you will be greeted by a kindly Border Force chap who’ll want to know what pronoun you’d like and if you have any dietary issues.
After an agreeable lunch he’ll chauffeur you in a Mercedes to a lovely hotel, and then, the next morning, you’ll be driven straight onto the tarmac at Heathrow, where you will board a flight to the sun-kissed, gorilla-filled paradise of Rwanda.
Getting home? I haven’t worked that one out yet, but, having been to this lake-filled jungle country a couple of times, I can tell you it’s so lovely you’ll probably want to stay there for ever.
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When it comes to farmyard pest control, you’re either a man or a mouse
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, May 1)
We all accept that life is the most precious thing and as a result we would burn our beliefs to save a friend, and ourselves to save our children. Some go further still, making themselves pasty-faced and weedy by only eating plants, because they don’t want to be responsible for the death of an animal. And that’s where things start to get complicated. Especially if you want to be a farmer.
Last weekend my friend Reggie, who owns the Cotswold Wildlife Park, invited me over to see a rhinoceros that had just been born. And as I stood there looking at its fantastic mother, I found myself wondering how on earth anyone could kill such a magnificent thing.
I appreciate, of course, that the poachers are poor and that the only way they can feed their children is by feeding the idiotic Chinese belief that horn makes you horny. But I like to think — and it’s easy sitting here at my quartz-topped kitchen island — that if I were in their sandals I could not and would not pull the trigger. No matter how poor I was.
So how then can I be a farmer, because what I do all day is look after my cows and feed them and keep them warm so that one day in the not too distant future I can murder them for money? No. Hang on. It’s worse than that because, actually, I pay a hitman to murder them for me.
It’s weird. I truly love animals and especially birds. But I also love roast beef and chicken and foie gras and baby sturgeon and oysters and pork and ham and bacon. And get this for added confusion: while I will happily shoot a partridge so that I can eat it with some sprouts and a bit of mashed potato, I won’t shoot an equally delicious woodcock. Why? No idea.
I’ve long held a belief that we only really care about animals that are one of three things: cute, magnificent or delicious — Attenborough, for instance, rarely covers the stickleback — but actually, it’s more muddled than that. I would happily shoot a grey squirrel — and have — but could not even break a whisker on its red cousin. I wouldn’t hurt an otter but would happily stamp repeatedly on the head of a badger. And even though the farm’s deer are laying waste to my trees, I really struggle with inviting someone over to walk them “down the road”.
I think all of us are similarly conflicted. Even the most hardcore peace ’n’ love vegan will smash a wasp over the head with a copy of the Socialist Worker if it’s being annoying. They will also spray their holiday hotel room with mozzie killer before they go out for dinner. And even if they are so fanatical they don’t do either of these things, I bet they’d be happy for someone to shoot a crocodile if it was eating them at the time.
All of which brings me on to the mouse that Kaleb found in the frame of my seed drill last week. As a proper farmer he wasn’t the slightest bit bothered and, as the weather was closing in, told me to get out there immediately and start planting the spring barley. But I couldn’t go out into the fields and unfurl this enormous machine — it’s like an oil rig, only bigger and more complicated — knowing that a sweet little mouse was in there. And that in all probability it wouldn’t survive.
Kaleb was staggered by this and pointed out that the whole farmyard is littered with mouse and rat traps. I was stumped because he had a point. But I still couldn’t do it and so, to a chorus of tutting noises and “oh for God’s sake” exclamations, I found a length of hosepipe, which I gingerly inserted into the frame until, after a few moments, the little creature fell out and dashed for the nearest bit of cover. Which was under the back wheel of my tractor.
I got down on my hands and knees and I could see the poor little thing, cowering in the tread pattern of the tyre. I then spent some time assessing the situation before coming to the conclusion that Kaleb had reached several minutes earlier — there was no way in hell I could get it out of there.
“Now what are you going to do?” Kaleb asked impatiently. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” I replied. “The best hill start you’ve ever seen.” And so I climbed into the cab, engaged first on all of the 42 gearboxes and then very gingerly pushed the button that would raise the six meter seed drill off the deck.
Straight away there was a problem. Because as this 3.5-tonne machine rose from the ground, it pulled the tractor backwards about nine inches. A sickening nine inches. A crunchy nine inches. There was no way the mouse could have survived and I was white-faced with horror and guilt. And what made me feel more awful was that Kaleb was standing there, shaking his head and saying, “You are so not a farmer.”
He had a point, though. The mouse would have been eaten that night by an owl and now it was carrion for the red kites, so all I’d achieved by faffing around was to delay getting my spring barley in the ground.
And so, with a heavy heart, I let the clutch in and set off knowing that after the tyre had done a quarter of a rotation, a small red splodge would become visible. It never got that far, though, because after I’d moved just a foot, the mouse shot out and set off at what appeared to be 2,000 mph across the farmyard. And into the path of Kaleb’s brother, who’d just come round the corner carrying some hay for the cows. Seeing a mouse, he did what any farmer would do. He lifted his size-12 boot, stamped down hard and...
Missed.
I was delirious with joy but the truth is that I’ve not felt more like a townie since I started this farming malarkey. Worrying about how many mice and rats you kill in Mudfordshire is like a lorry driver worrying about how many flies have splattered into his windscreen. Or a rambler losing sleep over how many earthworms they squidged that day while establishing their right to trespass.
All of us are different when it comes to animals. Some are Kurt Zouma and some are Chris Packham. And then you have people like me who’d happily nurse a baby hedgehog back to robust good health while cooking a hearty stew.
Since I started farming I’ve been permanently conflicted, especially yesterday, when I spent a whole day rearranging 120 yards of hedge to make it more friendly to nesting birds, before heading off in the evening to waste the pigeons that have been eating the bits of rape that haven’t already been devoured by the flea beetle.
Vegans would say I was wrong to do that because even a pigeon’s life is precious. But if I hadn’t, I’d have no rape oil to sell, which would cause many people to use palm oil instead. And that would be very bad news for the world’s orangutans, whose lives, in my book, are more precious than a flock of airborne rats. I guess that’s what I need to remember. All the animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
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And here's the Sun column: "Doctors slashing hours? Their grandkids will suffer for it"
Clarkson's past columns are regularly collected into books. You can buy them from his boss or your local bookshop.