Love in the Time of Coronavirus

A quarantine is not an opportune time for a break-up.  While we hear news reports (and occasional courtyard noise) that warn of spikes in domestic violence, the operative word of shelter-in-place would be 'shelter'.  For some couples, even a honeymoon is claustrophobic... but we have ventured beyond even a long holiday confinement into what feels for some like a prison sentence.

By the Harlem Meer today, I met a young man with a suitcase, desperately phoning everyone he knew. His girlfriend, he told me, kicked him out.  That is cruel punishment at this time when it is not charitable but dangerous to offer your sofa to a stranger.  What did you do, I asked him... and he muttered, through his mask... You mean what DIDN'T I do?  Which I understood to mean not his transgressions but the simple boyish failure to meet his partner's standards.

It's harder to deceive in the unstaged world of home confinement.  We are each other's mirrors; we can't hide behind excuses of 'I'm working' or 'at the gym' when we're having a drink at a bar, flirting a little too long at the office... hanging out... having a cigarette--- enjoying a little personal solitude.  Personally I cringed when one of my guests posted a Thanksgiving dinner photo; my home is my private domain?  But this month alone I have received so many home-broadcast videos, films, demos... if I looked at them all I'd be screen-blind.

At first it was a little novel seeing the usual TV newscasters sitting at their desk... their bookshelves revealing years of research and reading choices.  Most all of them, I've noticed, have the Robert Caro biographies-- the Winston Churchill World War II set (often unread-- mint condition).  I have a place in my heart for the dog-eared spine of Judy Woodruff's Oxford History of the American People; it looks just like mine-- a well-used souvenir of student days.

But the jokes have worn thin... the celebrity cameos seem callow and annoying.  Happy people in their well-stocked places with clean children-- housekeepers, toys, amusement, music-studios, ping-pong tables... showing how homespun they are-- mixing facials out of refrigerator ingredients, trying on costumes... looking 'casual', showing just enough of their personal environment to seem privileged.  Many of them are not aware of how this fuels domestic discontent for viewers.

A few blocks north of me is a woman with 9 large children... and a small 2-bedroom apartment.  Her husband is out of work but trying to drive a rented Uber car to make ends meet.  I have seen her in the grocery store where she stretches out her enormous shopping task into an afternoon activity for the kids who are literally bouncing off walls and turning over carts.  At least there are distractions-- label-reading opportunities.  She has aged five years since the pandemic began.  They have no wifi, she told me-- the kids received BOE tablets but they are useless unless they are 'somewhere'.  The youngest one was sitting in the front of the cart with a box of Confetti Cupcake Poptarts showing me how she knew her colors (well... a couple of them).  At any given moment, at least one child was crying, one stomping his foot.  Her tab was impressive; food stamp allowance for eleven people edges well into 4-figures.  Eating is the narcotic of the poor and under-stimulated.  Her boys have hoop-dreamy eyes and seem to grow by the hour.  She gives me a look-- shakes her head.

I would like to take one or two off her hands... to shelter that poor boy on the bench by the Meer... to even reach out and host a friend.  But we cannot.  I remember a time when I broke up with someone-- and you just wanted the world to end-- you wanted that person to have no life and no friends and no future without you.  We are not supposed to complain in the face of the litany of names listed every day of the pandemic victims... we are supposed to wait on lines and gladly pay twice the value for second-choice staples we need to survive.  Today I waited 35 minutes  just to find the price of chicken was more than I could manage.

But I am alone; I am old.  My son, I know, has violated the quarantine-- has 'dated' against social distancing recommendations.  I really can't blame him... I remember the early days of the AIDS epidemic, standing in a crowded bar weighing disease against passion-- and the latter always won.  There's a risk, yes... but I can't imagine being so young and independent-- having worked hard to make himself a home--  to watch his future being wrung out like wet laundry.  He is restless and ambitious.  I cannot answer his questions.

Personally I have no regular means of support... but I do recognize that I have a place to live in which I have collected things of importance to me-- books, instruments-- things that offer me a window in this solitude.  My rich neighbors with the renovated new space-- they have nothing... I hear their children, too-- trying to learn an instrument, being scolded, in the end sitting in their large bookless rooms with phones and tablets like social pacifiers.  They order food deliveries-- that is an event, an adventure.  Yes, occasionally I see the restaurant bags and sigh. They have no idea.

On the street outside the tent hospital Ubers line up at 9 PM to transport the medical staff home.  We applaud the workers every night, and they seem a little happier these days... less stressed.  At least they are not confined to a hostile apartment. The shiny black Billy Graham truck announces they are 'Sharing in the name of Jesus Christ.'  I'm not sure about that...  I don't like to speak for Him.

Shout out today to the white egret at the Meer today who almost let me touch him...to the fruit-vendor who stuffed a finger of fresh ginger in my bag and would not take my money... to the market that sold me a giant honeydew melon for $3 that is the best thing I've had in weeks...  And to all those who have met disappointment in love-- better sooner than later, I suppose.  The pandemic at its best will be like a sieve that filters truth from illusion.  And may that boy find a mother or grandmother who will take him in... the night is cold and bench-sleeping is not for the weak of heart.