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It was December 31, 2016, and most of my friends had become so woke they were intolerable to be around. I was starting to wonder who my people were, if I even had any people, what I had done to deserve this, and whether I was doomed to die friendless and alone in a grossly overpopulated world.

My questioning of friendship, belonging, and reality itself was exacerbated by social media, which was the only method I had for interacting with almost everyone in my life these days. It was great for keeping up with that friend from grad school who was now doing a poorly paid postdoc on the opposite coast, or teaching English as a Second Language in Turkey. Without it I would have been much lonelier and more isolated.

But it meant that when my so-called friends started calling out other people (people like me, for example), they were just disembodied text pumping out hateful, hurtful words from the other side of the world. Social media might be making me less lonely, but it was certainly making me more angry.

These unkind thoughts were filling my head—again—because I had made the fundamental strategic error of responding to a political post on Facebook this morning, and was now reaping the rewards of my own stupidity. Somehow an innocuous comment about pigeons had been taken as proof that I was, in fact, the Devil incarnate, or worse, a Karen. Not the actual Karen who was my department chair, who was, I freely admitted, pretty bad, but a “Karen” as an abstract concept. Apparently this was the worst thing you could be.

“All these super-woke liberals who’ve just discovered racism and sexism are like teenagers who’ve just discovered sex, only less charming,” I complained to Mel.

Mel was currently the only friend whose company I could tolerate. We were hiding out from the world together by spending New Year’s Eve sitting in my low-rent one-bedroom apartment and drinking non-alcoholic festive drinks.

They had to be non-alcoholic because Mel was currently on an aggressive regimen of antibiotics that did not, she had been told, mix well with alcohol. Also, she probably shouldn’t drink alcohol in general if she wanted to get better. Or coffee. Or tea. The less said about sugar, gluten, and dairy, the better. And she should probably avoid lectins and salicylates as well. It was unclear what she was supposed to eat. Possibly just filtered water, although even that was questionable.

“Preach,” she said. She took a sip of the mocktail she was holding, made a face, and set it down. “And let’s not even talk about their sudden horror of homophobia that somefuckinhow is the most homophobic thing I’ve ever seen. Did I tell you about my first and fuckin’ last meeting with Queer Crimson?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

Crimson College, named in honor of its rather tenuous association with Harvard, was a private college in Greenfields, Georgia, a small town about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta. Mel and I had the dubious honor of being Visiting Assistant Professors (VAPs) there. I taught Russian. Mel taught Arabic. Mel was an ex-Air Force veteran with a strong South Carolina accent and some bad experiences in Iraq to her credit. She was also one of the few openly gay members of the Crimson faculty.

“Yeah, someone sent out an email during finals week, saying why don’t we try to put something together, you know, support each other during these trying times. So half a dozen of us who were desperate to escape our families got together a couple of days ago to talk about making something official.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“It started off nice, but then somehow, and I’m still not entirely sure how, I got expelled for being a trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” said Mel. “Pretty much all the lesbians did. But only after getting lectured by a bunch of men about how we were bigoted and exclusionary for not liking dick.”

“Well,” I said. “I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Mel shrugged. “It ain’t nothing I haven’t been through before. It just sucked extra-bad to get it from my so-called ‘allies.’ Seems like no one can be friends anymore. I’m just a little worried that I might get fired over it. If I’m not fired for being sick, that is.”

“I want to say that’s not going to happen,” I said. “But I know it’s all too possible. I’ve got your back, though.”

“Thanks,” said Mel. “We can be outcasts together.”

“Fabulous,” I said. “Do you want anything to eat? Should we actually cook this feast we’ve planned?”

She made a face. “I’ve got to eat something, ‘cause I’ve got to take my next dose of doxycycline, and if I don’t chase it with something high-fat, I’ll barf like…well, you get the picture. But I don’t want to eat anything.”

“How much longer do you have to take it?” Mel had—finally—been diagnosed with Lyme disease at the end of last semester, after a year of increasingly bizarre symptoms that ranged from sudden bouts of what seemed like the flu to half her face going paralyzed. She had started taking antibiotics over winter break. Since the treatment itself could be pretty debilitating, the hope was to get through the worst of it before the start of the next semester.

“I’ve got one more week of this round. Some people get better after one round. Some people have to take antibiotics for years, and still never get better.”

“Oh,” I said. “So, um…how do you feel?”

She shrugged. “My joint pain’s almost gone, and I’m not twitching as much as I used to. My face looks better, too, don’t you think?”

I leaned across my small table that served as both a working desk and a dining room table for entertaining, and peered at her face through my right eye, and then my left. From up close, I could see that her dark blonde hair in its boyish pixie cut was developing gray streaks around the temple, her wide, expressive mouth had fine lines all around it from too much smiling and too much sun, and there were dark blotches from permanent sun damage across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, I noticed for the first time, were blue-gray with flecks of green and gold. We were so close, our breathing had synchronized.

I jerked back. “It looks perfectly symmetrical.”

“It wasn’t perfectly symmetrical before the Bell’s palsy, but thanks. It feels like it all works fine again, so that’s great. Some things are great.”

“But?”

“But I’m tired as shit, and every time I eat something, it feels like a poison bomb’s going off inside of me. It was like that before, but the doxy ain’t fuckin’ helping, I tell you what.”

“Maybe that will go away when you go off it, and you’ll just feel better,” I said. “Maybe a week from now, you’ll be done with this and you’ll be completely cured.”

She gave me a smile. It said, You think you know what I’m going through, but you don’t. I’m just too nice to point that out.

Well, at least she didn’t say it out loud, I told myself.

“Let’s make supper,” I said. “Even if it doesn’t taste good, it’ll keep you from upchucking the pills that are going to cure you.”

“Yeah…is that your phone?”

Two loud pings had filled the apartment.

“I think it’s both our phones,” I said. We pulled out our phones. Indeed, mine had a message notification.

Darling Inna. Happy New Year! Wishing you joy and happiness. If all goes well, in 24 hours mama and I will be with you in Atlanta!

The warmth from that message insulated me from the chill coming from the other side of the table. It was only Mel’s muttered “Fuck, fuck, fuck” that brought me back to myself.

“What is it?”

She looked up from her phone. “Apparently I’ve just stolen a hundred grand.”

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