Reimagining Society at the Edge of Sickness and Travel

By Alex Mell-Taylor

I was traveling to a wedding in Sacramento, California. I wasn’t “feeling it.” Something bad in my gut told me I shouldn’t go, but I decided not to listen because I wanted to be there for my friend.

I went to the airport using Lyft or Uber — I don’t remember which one. The ride was uneventful, but the moment I got there, I realized I didn’t have my wallet, so I had to go back home. I got in another taxi, this time a local company. The taxi driver went incredibly fast so that I could make my flight, and I felt nauseous and sick the entire time. I was thankful for his speed because, without an ID and a wallet, travel would have been impossible, but my stomach was not thankful. When I got home to pick up my wallet, I took a shot of Pepto Bismol so that I could get back into the cab without hurling my guts.

It’s strange that an ID is necessary for travel. I don’t need an ID to get on a bus. I don’t need it to get on a train. I do for a plane, though. There’s a rich history there. Airports are not the originators of the intense surveillance we now know, but they have been a nexus of our police state following 9/11 when security theater became all the rage. Airports require us to self-identify to such an intense degree, giving away our information, our DNA, and so much more so the state feels comfortable with our movement. And we do it for convenience, even as plane travel becomes increasingly less convenient.

So, to have an ID and a wallet for money, another necessity in our society, I once again traveled back to the airport. I was nauseous but fine. I had a bit of time. I was able to scarf down a sandwich from a vending machine, but I struggled with water. I could not keep much down when I felt nauseous in the taxi, and that feeling lingered in the airport.

I got on my plane. We were all packed in, deeply uncomfortable, with little arm and leg room the entire time. The man to my left was coughing. A lot of people on the plane were coughing. I had a mask on, but he didn’t. A lot of people didn’t have masks. There wasn’t hand sanitizer in many places in the airport anymore, and passengers were not given it.

Disregard COVID. Disregard whether or not you think the plague is over. I am traveling on an airplane, a tight box where you share circulated air. It makes no sense to be maskless, regardless of whether or not there’s a plague. We still have endemic viruses, like the flu or influenza. Yet that’s another thing you must take with you when traveling: a lack of care for yourself and those around you — a willingness to endanger others.

Before I land, there’s a small kindness that happens. I can’t forget the small kindnesses. I asked an airline steward for a box of food I had to pay for, and she said I could only pay for it on the United app. I don’t have the United app, so I say, “Oh, forget it.” And she hands me the box anyway. She shushes me so I’m not too loud. She gives me what I want. That was kind.

There have been many small kindnesses on this trip. For example, when I landed, my friend offered to pick me up, which I had not expected and very much appreciated. He said he’s 25 minutes out. I said, “Okay.” Of course, I still needed to get out of the plane and get my bag. Twenty-five minutes worked — more than enough time. I get out of the plane. I head to the baggage claim, and my bag just doesn’t come. It doesn’t come for a lot of people.

At first, I thought there was a mistake with the baggage claim number. I see other people from my flight get their suitcases from a different conveyor belt, and one woman even says, “Oh, there was an announcement.” I figure it must be on this other conveyor belt, but I don’t see my bag there either. I wait and wait, and I am struggling to see it, so I return to the other baggage claim. I see a lone, broken wheel that has fallen off a bag on the original baggage fare, and I go, “Oh, it sucks to be that person.” It hits me suddenly that I might be one of those people. I found my bag when I looked for the broken discards on the conveyor belt. The handle had popped off, and my ticket and the poofy purple wraparound I had to make it identifiable had slipped off. It was there the entire time. I just didn’t see it.

Finally, with my bag in hand, sans handle, I head to my friend, who drives me back to my Airbnb. We have a lovely time. He stays a bit and talks, then leaves to pick up another friend. I decide to get some food. I end up having these delicious tacos and a horchata. It’s the first and last point of my trip that I feel okay.

There weren’t a lot of water options at the takeout place. There was a sink at the Airbnb, but for whatever reason, I was paranoid about drinking the sink water. I kept boiling it in the tea kettle, but there was never enough. And so I didn’t have as much water as I needed. I’m transgender. The puberty blocker I take is Spironolactone, which is a diuretic. I go through a lot of water. Something I notice about travel is that it takes work to get water. Sure, I buy it. I drink it. I refill it. But they give you the tiniest water glasses on planes, and I need more. I need a lot of water all the time. I’m always very dehydrated when I travel. It’s just one of those small things I don’t feel cared for. It hurts me.

Small, I know, but the following day, I felt off. I drink more water, but the dehydration lingers. I decide to get more water and food. I’m still in “wedding mode,” so water is only one worry among many. I also needed to buy nail clippers to be presentable for the wedding and a shawl to cover my shoulders in the temple since it was a Sikh wedding. I go to a CVS, get even more water, and drink it on my walk back. I walked through an excellent farmer’s market filled with stands from all over the region — the aroma of fried pork, naan, and more wafted around me. I tried to pick out something for food, and I was so exhausted that the first time I went around the market, I had to sit down on the roots of an old tree to catch my breath.

For whatever reason, it hadn’t hit me that I was ill yet. I get back up. I start selecting food. A bagel. A tamale. Coffee. With the tamale woman, my credit card was a little broken, and so I had to give her another one. I say something along the lines of how “the card’s just holding on by a thread.” She’s an elderly woman who says, “Sometimes that’s just the way it is.” It was lovely: a small moment of intimacy. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed her being vulnerable. I don’t know if you can call that a small act of kindness, but it felt like one.

When I get back to the Airbnb, I realize I’m sick. I start coughing and wheezing. The sweat drips down my face, and I want to puke. I try to drink water, but it’s never enough. I finish all the water I got at the Target or CVS — I can never remember which red-logoed corporate conglomerate it is — and I realize I might not make it to the wedding. I message people and tell them I’m sick, but when I call my friend, he tells me to come anyway, masked.

“I know the bride wants to see you, and she’s fine with it,” he says.

And so, despite my better judgment, I go. I actually arrive early since my sense of time has become distorted. I take a 30-minute Lyft ride into the outskirts of Sacramento by Laguna. It’s more rural, more conservative. I start to see Trump 2024 signs. The destination is this massive Sikh temple that towers over the landscape, a self-contained ecosystem just off the highway. I don’t know anything about the history, but there are all these rituals that are foreign to me. You can’t wear shoes inside the temple. Your head and shoulders must be covered. And In my sickness, I didn’t look up where and when to take off my shoes. I’m sick and don’t know where to go, so I sit slouching on a plastic chair near the outskirts of the temple, waiting until I overhear where I’m supposed to be.

I can hardly recall the wedding. I just willpower through it — through talking to friends, through the wedding ceremony. I know nothing about Sikh traditions. I didn’t know that the wedding would involve a lot of kneeling, standing, and sitting. I wanted to vomit the entire time. I would have really enjoyed it if I wasn’t sick. I felt blessed that my friend had brought me, this white person, into this mostly brown space on a significant day for her. I tried to push through. I don’t know if I regret it.

I didn’t stay for the food or the reception. I went back to my Airbnb. I had to check out at 11 am the following day. I had planned this. I was going to leave my suitcase in the foyer and explore the city. My flight was the following day at 11 pm because, again, I wanted to explore Sacramento and have a fun time, but now that I was sick, it was a very inconvenient plan. I couldn’t extend my Airbnb stay because another person was coming, which meant I had to pack up while sick and book another place. I booked a hotel room with a splitting migraine, taking a break every so often between clicks. I had to pack up while sick, too, folding my dresses and clothes up, only to abandon the effort and toss everything in my large suitcase, even my backpack, which I didn’t want to carry. I would take breaks to try and drink water, even though my stomach hardly allowed me to keep it down.

It was an awful experience. As I was leaving, three minutes to 11, which was my checkout, I puked my guts out all over the bathroom floor. And that was me not showing any kindness. I knew someone was going to be there to clean it. However, I was worried I would have to pay a fee if I didn’t leave at precisely 11 am, so I just left my sick on the floor for money.

I’m worried about how many people I’ve transmitted the illness to on this trip. Yes, people transmitted this sickness to me, and that was annoying, but even though I was masked, there were small things I could have done to make the lives of those around me better. My Lyft driver to the new hotel, for example. She grabbed my bag, and I thought to myself, “fuck. I hope she washes her hands,” but I didn’t say anything. She wasn’t masking, and I am worried I hurt her. That Lyft driver was so kind to me. Despite its confusing layout, she made sure to drop me off at the front entrance of the hotel. Even though the directions on the map were wrong, she was nice and got me where I needed to go, and I didn’t repay that kindness.

It’s so interesting how we both feed into and resist the toxic systems around us. My life could have been made a lot better if some institutions just cared about me more. If we existed in a society that cared about disease transmission. That cared about travelers. It seems self-evident to say, but travel is dangerous. You definitely have to do it when you’re healthy.

But despite this very shitty society, there were so many small kindnesses on this trip from friends and complete strangers alike. The man in my hotel allowed me to check in early, free of cost, which is not policy. I’ve been at this hotel before, and checking in early costs money. And yet, he did it at possible risk to his job, and I sometimes wonder if I would do the same. I would like to believe I would. I would like to believe kindness is not an anomaly to the human experience.

I am writing this in the hotel, on my phone’s notes app. I have to return home soon. I’m going to mask while traveling, but I wish I could stay in this hotel for another five days, and it wouldn’t cost me thousands of dollars, and then I wouldn’t get other people sick.

Yet I’m not going to stay here because I can’t afford it. I’m going to go on this plane and contribute to the cycle of pain I hate. I understand why that man sat next to me coughing. I understand why everyone’s traveling while sick. People may disagree with me here, but I believe we have such a bad system that it is sometimes difficult not to be selfish. And while small kindnesses do breakthrough — I have borne witness to them on this trip — they are not always enough to overcome the system’s harshness.

However, one day, they might be. What would my flight have been like if I were in a different world? It might not even have been a flight at all. Maybe it would have been a high-speed train that would have zipped across the country in only X hours. I would have still forgotten my ID, but I wouldn’t have needed it. I wouldn’t have needed my wallet either. I would have gone somewhere where I had access to food and lodging, regardless of my circumstances.

I would like to believe that I would not travel as an atomized individual either — that the communities I would travel to would create their own rituals for accepting and receiving travelers, even when sick. Guests would announce themselves, and that news would inspire joy within that community. Travelers would not be perceived as a burden but as an opportunity to experience and know a new person. They would welcome me into their homes, telling me the rituals for entry, and I would do them happily.

And then, in exchange, I would tell them the story of my life. I would let them know the reason I am there and all I think and feel about the wedding before me. I would tell them my perspective on life over a bowl of hot food: my past disappoints, my wisdom, my lovers, my friends. Everything that makes up me and with this community, we would be united, forever briefly, in that exchange.

I don’t want to pretend like bad things wouldn’t happen in this society, but I would not have had to struggle with my illness alone. While we have a healthcare system in the US — one that is poorly managed, expensive, and inaccessible to many — even that only covers the “serious stuff.” There is a world of care between throwing up on your bathroom floor and a hospital. Care that is often tossed over to informal ties such as friends and family members and not that accessible to strangers in an unfamiliar place.

In this world, the ritual for travelers would have widened me into that circle. Let’s say that I still got sick. I still will-powered through my friend’s wedding: that I made the same bad decisions. I would have been here for another five days resting. Someone would have dropped off food. I would have puked my guts out on the floor, and it wouldn’t have been a cruelty, but something I would have communicated freely, telling them to wash their hands and avoid my germs.

And I like to imagine that however this society works, we would all be part of it.

Sometime in the future, I would be that person taking care of a stranger. They would be a traveler, and they would replicate my rituals for entry. That someone would get sick, and I would help them and feel blessed to hear their stories.

You might think that I wouldn’t — that we are all inherently selfish — but I have seen acts of kindness push through. I have seen people being nice within the confines of a cruel system, even when it could hurt them.

We could live in a place where the dysfunction around housing, healthcare, and basic necessities like food and water are not always one day away from disappearing. In helping travelers and vulnerable people, we help ourselves by creating a world of true safety and freedom — a world where, wherever you go, you are not left to fend for yourself.

I hope to travel to that world one day.