Pandemic Dating Diaries
The Pandemic Dating Diaries is a series from The Bold Italic that features moments in love, dating, and sex during Covid-19 directly from our readers. Have a story you’d like to submit? Email us or DM us on Twitter or Instagram.
I added extra layers of tape to the boxes piled in the center of my apartment, taking care to stack the smaller ones on top. I was wearing a tank top and shorts at 8 a.m., but I was already beginning to sweat in the end-of-June heat. My mask stuck to my face.
Earlier in the year, I had lost my restaurant job to the pandemic, then underwent my first episode of debilitating depression, which I had mostly recovered from other than the occasional shaky feeling. Now my lease was up and there was a sliver of hope, of new beginnings — moving in with a friend from college, plans to foster cats, cheaper rent, and for the first time in my life, professional movers to help me across neighborhoods, over a bridge, and up two flights of stairs — it was, in other words, a time for things of a certain nature to happen.
The three movers who showed up were exceedingly professional. The driver did all the talking and was obviously in charge of coordinating, so we exchanged numbers to pick up the used furniture I had purchased beforehand. They loaded all my things onto the truck in 30 minutes, and made three stops on the way to my new apartment (which the driver would later tell me was a bad decision because of the upcharges, but I had no other way of getting that furniture myself!).
The unloading would have been as fast as the loading if it weren’t for the stairs. The bed frame and mattress were the last to come up.
“Do you want us to build it for you?” He asked. “It’ll be $50 extra. It’s up to you.”
“No thanks,” I said. There was no fan or A/C set up yet, and my roommate was due to arrive soon. We were all sweating. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I guess that’s everything then.” He pulled out an invoice and scrawled while I fidgeted in the vicinity, noticing him.
We traded a receipt and cash and then he was out the door. I thought seeing the new apartment was going to be the most exciting part of my day, but instead, I ran to the front window to peek down at the truck still parked outside. The movers were washing their hands with water and smoking, taking a break before the day’s second move. I quickly snapped a photo and sent it to my roommate.
“First human contact in months!”
I was unpacked by the end of the day, and by the end of the week, it was back to the flow of quarantine, finding freelance gigs and trying to keep cool in the crowded Manhattan building. Most mornings I laid in bed and aimlessly scrolled through my phone, which is where I was when I found myself still thinking about the mover. I had his number saved from our hectic arrangement of furniture and nothing to lose. I was almost positive I already had Covid the month before (it was June and the test was not widely available yet, so I couldn’t verify) and I never went outside anyway.
I texted him asking if he wanted to come over. An hour passed. No response. “Fuck this guy,” I thought. “I was never gonna see him again anyway.”
Two hours later, he responded, “Today?”
“Yes, today,” I typed, and then I screamed and ran to my roommate and we laughed about how easy men were.
He had done multiple moves that day, so he went home to shower before coming over. He arrived on my doorstep with a pack of beer (Blue Moon is his favorite) and snacks, which my roommate would later eat in appreciation and call “the sex tax.”
When he saw my room he praised the furniture’s arrangement, knowing he had carried up almost every piece.
“You figured out how to put the bed together?” He joked.
That first hookup led to a few more until he was coming over regularly after work. We got along well, and when the snacks turned into meals, I knew it was getting serious. We never went on dates or did traditional “couple activities,” but let the relationship grow in a loose and tender way, without the need for labels or milestones. We’ve now had a relationship for more than half a year, digging me out of the hole the pandemic had casually tossed me in.
The mover helped me settle in a new home, and I gave him five stars on Yelp.
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