On the long drive home from the state university athletic facility where I received the second dose of the vaccine I could feel the fever coming slowly on, cresting up over my recently shaved head like the flush I get when I drink wine, tickling my scalp. I felt more euphoric after the first dose, maybe because this time I recognized the names and places on the freeway and already knew the byzantine layout of the many stations of the shot. It was somewhat routine. Like videoconference birthday parties and livestream concerts this particular novel aspect of the novel virus got old pretty quickly. The first shot felt something like an adventure, the second one felt something like a chore.

But it's a chore I am absolutely privileged to be able to perform (here are the things I have that not everyone does: free time, working Internet, English literacy, available personal transportation, money for gas, freedom from obligations like children, unfazed white person wherewithal). And it's a chore I am absolutely grateful for, even if I feel the muscular soreness I felt for a couple days after the last one setting in as I write this and will be presumably even more unpleasant. I am fully prepared to spend a couple of days supine, and have been preparing myself for the idea of being fully unproductive (which is hard for me). I am glad that I will probably no longer be a possible vector and I am glad that I will in all likelihood not get sick. It's a wonderful thing to feel.

I'm also a little relieved that this time around felt unchallenging - admitting to myself that, as a fat / medically obese person, I have indeed been at an elevated health risk for the past year was a weirdly high hurdle for me. I felt some extreme discomfort at allowing myself to acknowledge that fact, both when I was setting the appointment and when I was asked to verbally state my qualifying health condition to the nurse practitioners administering my first dose. But there was none of that discomfort today, both because the more I talked about it the less ashamed I felt and because the young national guardsman with the brusk bedside manner wanted to get on with it already. He was all business, except for him saying I had cool tattoos and making sure to land the shot "where there wasn't any ink."

There was one major difference between today's appointment and my appointment from three weeks ago: in the waiting area where you're asked to sit for 15 minutes to ensure you don't have some kind of emergency reaction they've set up a social media selfie station. That wasn't there before. They've got a step-and-repeat set up with the logo of the university's sports teams and a blinking LED sign (the kind you'd see in a bodega window) reading "THANK YOU" and laminated pieces of printer paper that read "VACCINATE NEW YORK, I got vaccinated at SUNY POLY." The volunteers checking everyone's status while they waited were urging people to take a selfie, use a hashtag, and generally perform online the act of enthusiastically and safely getting vaccinated. People need to be convinced, we need to consume these doses conspicuously. Also, there were stickers being handed out but I couldn't bring myself to bother the guy from the national guard for one (even though I wanted it).

So, here we are. The recombinative RNA is coursing through me (that sounds right but I doubt that it is). I've known intellectually that these shots would roll out gradually, that their efficacy takes some time to develop, and that, like so many things in recent memory, the historic event taking place would be too big to wrap our arms around, too monumental to see all at once. But in my heart I have been hoping, yearning, straining against the wire dog kennel walls of personal physical distance, wanting nothing more than to see the whole world erupt in one traffic-stopping midday bacchanal, denting the roofs of cars to leap out and tap toes to the house music that rolled in on the vaccine celebration breeze.

Last night I dreamed of partying - I vividly revisited the pyrrhic aluminum can crushing, vigorously bleary tobacco stained fingers underdressed for the winter five am blackouts of my early twenties. There were throngs of people and loud music and too-bright overhead lights in the kitchen where people were taking shots over the sink. There were pressed-in bodies and people pairing off. There was loud music and talk of noise complaints and fear of the vile cops. And as I drank deep I felt that old ablution, I was rinsing myself clean of my self, letting the mounting high tide of BAC float me out toward nihilism. In the dream I got the spins and in the dream I laid down and in the dream I fell asleep, nested and recursive, the most perfect nothing I have touched in months.

As eager as an eight year old the night before Christmas I went to bed last night with a little candle of hope for summer congregation and abandon burning. I was going to get the shot, I was going to get out from under it. And I do feel relief today, and a little bit of pride, too, and also like I have a duty to tell you and everyone I know to get the damn shot already. But the main thing I feel, radiating from the bandaid on the forehead of the skull tattooed on my left arm, is hungover - all those beers in my dream last night and all the contents of this afternoon's syringe have made it necessary for me to drink gatorade and pop ibuprofen, even though I haven't had a drink in months. But a hangover is a blessing, it's proof that you survived your wildness another night, so I will happily watch action movies and ride it out. May you join me here on the other side of it soon, we'll dance under the stoplights.