When Hepatitis strikes, the body closes down

I'M SICK. My liver has been mashed to pieces by the hepatitis virus.

Two weeks ago, I thought I had done my back in after dancing for a couple of hours at a summer festival. I found this utterly depressing, felt very old and feeble, and imagined that I would never dance again. The aches and pains got worse, and seven days later I was unable to do anything but sleep. The exhaustion is overwhelming, all-consuming, inescapable. Three days ago my eyes went a beautiful shade of yellow, and yesterday the doctor called me with test results to tell me what was wrong with me, and ordered me to rest and drink plenty of liquids. But I don't need to be told to rest; I can't do anything else.

The nice thing about being under doctor's orders is that it gives you permission to be completely self-indulgent, when you can muster up the strength to leave the bed and go down to the shops. But the old indulgences are gone; my former daily staples of strong black coffee and cigarettes are now replaced by weak Earl Grey tea and olives. Olives! I never bought olives before in my life, until yesterday. But I'm munching them away now, obviously meeting some mysterious need of my body's.

As for that other old indulgence, I can't imagine ever feeling horny again; which is actually quite calming. Being single and horny is more trouble than it's worth; it may even have led me to this sorry state, although it's impossible to say. And of course alcohol is out of the question for quite a while, although I don't miss it. I'm pleased about the cigarettes though. Every cloud blah blah blah.

SEX INDUSTRY

The body is an amazing thing. Everything has shut down, while my body devotes all its resources to mending itself. With any luck the healing will be complete, and I'll be ready to take life by the scruff of the neck again. But while I'm writing this my eyelids keep on closing. I don't actually know whether I'm going to finish it, which is interesting. Zzzzzzzzz. Sorry? Oh yes, where was I?

Oh, I do have news. A letter came from "The Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services". You may remember a couple of months ago I wrote about hearing a 13-year-old boy advertising for sex on a phoneline. Well, I made a few phonecalls, and the buck stops with this lot, who are the regulators of premium rate phone lines. They monitored the line for a few weeks, and they came to the conclusion that the phoneline was in breach of their Code and fined them #500.

But the judgement mentioned nothing about underage callers or lack of monitoring. The company was found guilty of "having sexual messages on the line" which is nonsensical. Of course it had sexual messages on the line, it was a gay phoneline. I don't know what planet these people are from, but when gay male strangers get together they don't talk about the weather.

I don't feel I've won over this; the fine is hardly a day's income from the people who run it were actually informed as to the real reason of my complaint. For me to get them fined for sexual content is a bit rich, considering I was a customer of theirs. I'm not anti-sex at all, for adults. But whatever line there is to draw regarding the age of consent, 13 is under it. The company should employ a human being to monitor all that technology; not to hear the private messages between individuals, but to screen the ads, and sort out the men from the boys.

Alternatively, phoneline dating services should be an option that people expressly choose to have on their telephone. This would mean - shock, horror - that the sex industry would be curtailed, for such services could not be used by people on payphones, and the embarrassment factor would mean very few people would actually ring up the operator and sign up for the option to call such lines.

Well, I'm off back to rest my fevered brow. I've been dreaming a lot, mostly inconsequential fragments; but the other morning I dreamt I woke up to the news that Dana was going to stand for the Presidency. Spooky, huh? n