COVID Scare

Stanley the sex bunny video-called Carl and me earlier this week.

It was 11am and Carl was sweating and panting when he answered the call. 

Do we want to know what you had been doing prior to this call, I say suspiciously into my phone.

Carl the dense one responded with a grin, flashed almost all of his 32 teeth at the camera, and let his actions do the talking. 

"This," the gym rabbit explained in between doing a push up with dumbells in his hands before recovering into a squat and a jump, "is called a maneater exercise."

On cue, the two of us looked to Stanley who surely must have something to say to this exercise. 

"Guys, I think I could be a super spreader," he said. "And the kind of fluids and droplets involved are the viral sort."

Carl immediately stopped eating men and sat on his yoga mat bringing his phone closer to him.

Turns out, Stanley had been identified as one of those who may have come in contact with a COVID-19 case. 

Our sex bunny friend had recently gone grocery shopping at JEM.

Days later, the authorities urged those who had been there, to get tested ASAP.

"I feel like my throat is scratchy... like it's heating up or something," Stanley said, and proceeded to dramatically swallow his saliva and moan as if his days were numbered.

Knowing Stanley and his track record, anything could have given him that burning throat and that virus may well be something other than COVID-19. 

"Should I go see a doctor now?" Stanley asked. 

"Is the STD clinic still open for business now?" Carl blurted.

Stanley threw dagger eyes in Carl's direction. 

"I'm supposed to get swapped," Stanley said, "for COVID," he added with a raised voice, letting his tone mark the exclamation point. 

Carl bit his lip guiltily and quietly went back to doing a few more maneating sets. 

"I'm worried," Stanley said.

"Don't be," Carl reassured in between pants and grunts. 

"It's purely because you did your safe entry that you were alerted to the exposure. You should be at ease".

Stanley took a deep breath and said: "Let me break this down for you boys simply and plainly. You hit the right spot, Carl, when you threw up words like safe, entry and exposure, and in my case, those words are linked to an actual male human body.

Carl took all of nine seconds to digest Stanley's words and gasped with his mouth so wide that this time, all 32 of his teeth were visible for the virtual world to see.

Stanley had recently met two strangers (on separate occasions) for, in his classy words, "intimate engagements".

Carl nodded with approval, mentally shelving those terms for his own use in future.

Thing is, Stanley was worried that he may have to spill the beans to the authorities to help them with contact tracing.

If you can spill your seeds in front of absolute strangers, what's spilling a little beans? I ask, unable to help myself. 

This time, the dagger stares were diverted in my direction. 

Hours later, Stanley posted a photo in our group chat.

It was a sealed plastic bag with the word "biohazard" set against a yellow triangle. 

Between Carl's indoor workout and me replying endless emails and now, Stanley had booked himself a slot to get swapped, contacted two of his one night stands to break the news, and driven himself to the clinic for testing.

Stanley had handled those tasks with precise efficiency. 

After all the workflow of contacting sex partners and going to a clinic for testing is something Stanley the sex bunny had been reenacting various times in his life.  

"Boys, in a while, someone is going to insert and wiggle a rod in a part of my body that no men had ever ventured," the queen of theatre typed. 

"And I'm actually excited," he wrote, despite himself. 

A day later, Stanley updated the group chat.

"I'm negative for COVID!" Stanley wrote, the sentence pulsating with relief against the WhatsApp interface. 

"And good news is, when they swapped me, I gagged! I thought I had lost my gag reflex years ago!"