By Stuart Green

Today is Day 969 of my being Covid-free. Well, actually, it’s been a lot longer than that, as I turned 52 last week, but at least that’s how long it’s been since Covid was a thing that people got sick with.

As of yesterday morning, Freddy Lawson, my neighbor in Apartment 7C, had also never had Covid. As far as I know, the two of us were the last human beings on West End Avenue, and possibly by extension the whole United States, who could say that. Then Freddy called with his news. There were two little red hash marks on the indicator stick, he told me, as if he’d just won some kind of Nobel Prize.

There was a time, strange as it now seems, when I actually tried to avoid getting Covid. I was one of the first people on line at the Javits Center to get shots 1 and 2 in February 2021. We were all so careful then. I made a mask out of an old pair of boxer shorts. I held my breath the whole way down in the elevator. I purelled my hands before and after I used my cell phone.

My boss seemed happy to have me work out of my apartment. I bought one of those crazy expensive Peloton machines, though I never really could figure out how to use it. I loved clanging pots out the window with everyone at 7:00 every night. Do you remember when the crime rate was way down? There was hardly any traffic in the city in those days. The air seemed cleaner. I heard that a whole family of Woolly Mammoths – mother, father, two little ones – was spotted in Central Park, near the Delacorte Theater.

The first individual I personally knew who got Covid was Emily Schwartz in apartment 2D. What did it feel like, I asked her. Terrible, she said. Like being hit by a dump truck. But Emily pulled through just fine. And guess what? She developed antibodies!

Then Dr. Fauci said it wasn’t enough just to get the first two shots. Everybody needed to get boosted. So I did that too. And then Fauci himself got Covid.

You’d be on the subway and people would be trading war stories. Oh yeah, someone would say, I had a 107-degree fever. I was hallucinating. I had to be intubated, ventilated, crenellated. For a while, the world seemed to be roughly divided between those who had had the virus and survived it and those who hadn’t had it yet. But more and more people kept getting it, and the ratio started to shift. One day, I was downstairs in the mail room. About half a dozen people were milling around, trading Covid tales. Every single one of them had had it. Except me. Talk about FOMO.

People were saying, oh yeah, I had it, I felt lousy for a few days, but then I was fine, it was just a rite of passage. Like getting through sorority rush or having a bris.

So, I thought, what the hell? If all these folks had it and most of them were okay, maybe I should just get it over with. So I stopped wearing a mask. First at Murray’s Sturgeon Shop. Then at Barney Greengrass. And finally, at Zabar’s (that was a little scary, I gotta admit). But still, no Covid.

The other day, Emily asked me, by the way, Ron, when exactly did you have Covid? She couldn’t remember my ever mentioning it, she said. Well, actually, I told her, I haven’t had it yet. What do you mean you haven’t had it yet? You mean, like, you tested positive, but you were asymptomatic. No, I told her, I’ve never actually tested positive for Covid. God knows, I’ve gone through enough of those BinaxNOW antigen tests, but so far none has come back positive.

Oh, Emily said, you are such a funny man, Ron. Well, I said, Freddy Lawson has also never had Covid. So at least there’s the two of us. Ah, that’s very interesting, said Emily. I didn’t know that Freddy hasn’t had Covid. Well, he is a funny guy too.

Well, Freddy was funny, until yesterday anyway, when he tested positive. I don’t know if Emily knows that or not. I don’t think she and Freddy are really that close.

So, now it’s just me. All alone. Still waiting.

When not writing humor pieces, Stuart Green is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University, and the author of several impenetrably highbrow books of legal theory. He recently recovered from Covid and is feeling fine.