Human prophylaxis.

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These days in Tel Aviv - a hedonistic Sodom-by-the-sea, if ever there was one - aren’t entirely going according to plan. Somehow I’d imagined myself thrust full-on into the pageantry of pleasure and vice from day one: an orgy of sex, drugs and potato kugel that seemed to ignore my aversion to drugs and my ambivalence toward kugel. While I’d planned long days on the beaches and longer nights in the clubs, it’s only now that I’ve come to terms with the reality of my time in Tel Aviv: I look fat in my swimsuit, I don’t like clubs, and my wallet’s taken such a beating that I’m going to be slouching my way into Africa by month’s end.

Never mind the four-dollar iced coffees that have become a five-a-day habit, or the fact that I’m routinely spending twelve bucks on breakfast and fifteen on dinner: I’ve shelled out close to $800 on inoculations and malaria pills and mosquito nets in the past two days alone. My already-stuffed backpack is straining to hold a U-Haul’s worth of pharmaceuticals, while a trip to the medical clinic at the Dizengoff Center has left me as drugged-up as Whitney Houston in the V.I.P. Hepatitis A and B, meningitis, yellow fever: if they’d been handing out immunizations against rug burn and dirty looks, I’d probably be the first in line with my poor, battered arms extended.

By the end of the week I’ve become a walking prophylaxis, a guy whose saliva could be used to treat dengue fever in the bush. I’ve bought ibuprofen and antihistamines and salt tablets and enough anti-diarrheal pills to plug up Niagara Falls. Why leave anything to chance? You wouldn’t want to come down with diphtheria in the middle of Malawi, and I suspect polio - a disease the rest of the world snuffed out in the ‘50s - can take a few especially unpleasant turns in the wild, remote reaches of western Tanzania.

But here in Tel Aviv, sun-baked, caffeinated, fattened on schwarma and shakshouka - a spicy egg and tomato stew - it’s hard to treat these frantic preparations with the gravity they deserve. While it’s hardly a stretch to say I’m a bundle of frayed nerves these days, it owes more to the extravagant cost of medications than the prospects of actually needing them. Can malaria be any worse than a bad cold? Haven’t some of my mightiest craps practically verged on dysentery themselves? (Respectively, yes and no.) More certain than whatever perils might lurk in the bush is the definitive fact that I can’t afford another two weeks in Israel. And for all the lusty pageantry of flesh that is night-time in Tel Aviv, I’ve quickly learned that all that rollicking hedonism doesn’t come without a lofty price tag.

And so there are mornings at the cafés and afternoons on the beach and evenings strolling the leafy promenade of Rothschild St., with its dog-walkers and power-walkers and the sushi kiosk dishing out al fresco edamame. It’s the prettiest spot I’ve found in Tel Aviv, and I come back to it night after night, even if the love-struck couples cozying up on the benches remind me I’ve spent most of the week working away in solitude.

Back at the hostel there’s a bunch of young Aussies causing a high-holy ruckus when they roll in at half-past two: staggering up the stairs, going to town in the toilets, sounding less like hostellers hitting the sack than a pack of Wallabies and All Blacks going at it in the scrum. In the morning one of the showerheads is sitting in the sink; a mysterious wad of toilet paper is balled up in the shower. There’s a growing sense that some of those inoculations might come in handy before I make it out of Tel Aviv, and it’s all I can do to keep from hitting the penicillin as I wash my hands, pack my bags and make tracks for Jerusalem.

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