Skin Fever

Standing at the shop counter, I felt nervous and ended up talking down to the chocolates rather than to the owner. The only other person in the shop wore a mask and I wondered if I should do the same, even if this thing wasn't airborne.

I thanked the guy for my change, hefted my bags, and headed home. The streets were emptier than usual. I saw one of the NHS tattoo removal places, set up in a car park with a few people queueing outside. Everyone else was scurrying about their errands, eager to be back home.

Once back inside, I placed the snacks and fruit juice outside my housemates' closed doors. The three of them were deep within the fever phase and I was waiting my turn. It could only be a matter of time. Back in the lounge, I wasn't in the mood to work so I watched TV. The news showed footage of an airport quarantine centre, a fancy hotel set up for visitors who wanted to go home.

The news cut to the TV presenter, a mark on her face. She'd come through the fever but had been unlucky, the results visible. It was good that she was presenting the show, making this all feel a little more normal. The BBC was careful about the disease, using gentle language, whereas social media and the tabloids talked about 'disfiguration' - but they made money from dermatology adverts. I wondered what would happen when the illness caught me.

"James?" Natalie stood in the doorway. She wore sweatpants and T-shirt, hair tangled and tired. She supported herself by hanging onto the door. "It happened," she said and then turned, rucking up her T-shirt to show me. It was just above her kidney, a faded image of a heart and some writing, at an angle where no tattooist would have placed it.

"That's not too bad," I said. "It's relatively hidden."

"I got lucky," she said, and slumped onto the sofa beside me. She smelled of stale sweat - the fever stage was hard.

"Can we change the channel?" asked Natalie. "I don't want to watch the news."

Before I went to the shops, the TV had interviewed someone who'd had a swastika erupt on their cheek. That's something you'd have to get fixed. You never knew what you might get with the skin fever. My big fear was getting something across my mouth and lips. The thought creeped me out.

"I can't make out the writing," she told me. She leaned forward, lifted her T-shirt again. I could read the name Sarah, and just make out the two dates. A tattoo of remembrance. Natalie groaned, and apologised - "Sorry, I need to lie down."

She made it to her room without help and I grabbed my laptop, wondering if I could find the person whose tattoo it might be. Social media was full of stories of people who'd found the person who'd originally had their skin fever tattoos.

Natalie had told me that she already had a tattoo. She was drunk and wouldn't show me but said that it was hidden behind a toe. She wanted a secret, she said, something about her body nobody else would ever know. Now she had a second tattoo.

I was still in no mood to compile work reports, so I found the woman who had Natalie's tattoo before. She'd lived in Stockport and died a year or two after her daughter. The last message on her feed was a recipe, with hundreds of comments below, people still adding to the messages years later on anniversaries. Some of the photos on the account displayed the tattoo, the same one that had appeared in faded form on my housemate.

Skin fever. It had only hit England. Two days of delirious fever, the body overheating as the skin resisted. Nobody had died from it, but the rest of the world was fearful about what was happening here. I browsed images in facebook groups for the disease - sometimes the tattoos were faint, like tiny bruises, but recently they were coming through darker and clearer, as if a signal was strengthening.

Some people had caught it two or three times, and I'd not had it yet. But I felt thirsty and hot, despite the dour day outside, so my turn was coming. Skin fever. Ghost tattoos. I hoped I'd be as fortunate as Natalie.

Background

Four years later, I'm still disturbed by my pandemic experiences, where I found myself in the sort of situation I used to have nightmares about. In many ways I had a ‘good pandemic’ - I didn’t lose anyone, I had a flat to myself, my work continued uninterrupted. But sometimes, when I discuss those times with my best friend, I realise how weird and mad the stress had made me.

The strangest thing about the pandemic was being trapped in (what felt like) an apocalyptic scenario, but experiencing it mostly through screens - a new model for cosy catastrophe. It never became quite as bad as I feared, but I can’t escape the feeling that the world had cracked open.

There have been newspaper articles asking why there’s not more pandemic fiction. For me, fantasy is a better way to draw out these experiences than realism. In his excellent book on Lovecraft, Michel Houllebecq wrote: “Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.”

Recommendations: new music

Over the years, I'd stopped listening to new music and I'd fallen into a rut. Spotify wasn't helping, its recommendations suggesting lots of music that middle-aged men like. I mean, if I've not got into Swans or Suicide by now, it's not happening.

It was also Spotify that took me out of this rut. I know that Spotify Wrapped is a marketing gimmick, but it's useful. One year, my top songs had a lot of things I'd been listening to for years. Did I want to be listening to these same songs over the next few decades? I wanted to be as excited about music as I was as a teenager.

(There's a lot of research on why we don't love music as much as we get older. Maybe it's having more leisure time to follow bands as we grow up. Maybe the degradation in hearing as we grow older means that music simply sounded better as a teenager. The statssignificant blog did a good analysis of this question.)

I started by listening to some of the curated Spotify Playlists, following the music they suggested. Eventually the algorithms shifted and my recommendations became more interesting. Before long, I was finding music as exciting as what I found as a teenager. I've spoken already about my love of Ethel Cain's American Teenager album, with its lovelorn Americana. But there was much more to discover.

Some of the musicians I've been introduced to recently include Samia, Chapelle Roan, Caroline Rose. Flora Alger currently has 366 monthly listens, but Spotify introduced me to her amazing record Once Upon a Time in the West. I'm also picking up odd things by word of mouth. Caroline Polachek recommended Malibu in a Vulture article. The recent article on the Tiktok shoegaze revival provided some good listening. Zheani's recent collaboration pointed me towards Buttress.

Spotify is far from perfect, particularly as it gets distracted from its job of providing great music (why do I want 'Courses' on my music app? Miss Excel is great but music apps should never recommend Excel tuition.)

Spotify is far from perfect, but the music on there is exciting. There are might be whole genres I have yet to discover (I love 'Ambient Country'). There are hidden gems I've missed like 70s post-punk Gina Birch's recently released first solo album, I Play My Bass Loud. I'm excited about new music again.

What are your recommendations? What else should I be listening to?