Recently, my former lover and now friend Paul called to say, “I think I have a girlfriend.” Having championed and edited his online dating profile (complete with edited photos from our travels), I was delighted that the same friends who set us up had also introduced him to this new woman. I was even more delighted that she was not the ingrate he flew to Paris on a whim or the lady who habitually combed her fingers through her hair to highlight her biceps.
He’d met this woman IRL, a term we’d both learned only recently.
“I wanted to tell you, Annie,” he purred sweetly. Assured of my joy for him, we shared mutually appreciative, warm, loving, forever-friend sentiments before I blurted, “Thank god you got in under the radar, right?”
“I know!” he replied. “And we just made it, right when this was all blowing up.”
“This,” of course, being Covid-19, the global woe ending and altering lives, shameless and swift.
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We dished about their good luck: unwittingly zeroing in on exclusive courtship before mid-March then soldiering through two weeks of strict social distancing before relaxing into relative safety.
My genuine excitement for Paul felt wholehearted. Until it didn’t.
“What’s wrong?” I wondered. Paul and I were long-established, long-haul friends. We returned the other’s calls immediately. I was rich with romance, still relishing a titillating make-out session with A (15 days ago, safe!), enjoying the steadfast sweetness of B and C.
I wasn’t jealous he was with someone else. So what was it?
“Timing,” I thought, as I flossed my teeth too hard. Those who’d been stirring the loins were abruptly lifted from the cauldron and placed stove-side to reluctantly cool and curdle. My connections to A, B, and C were too diffuse — therefore too dangerous — in this masked, gloved, step-the-fuck-away new world.
My bald-faced envy of Paul and his good luck sliced knife-like between my teeth.
The night before SF’s shelter-in-place decree, I threw a small dinner party that we laughingly deemed “The Last Supper.” A roll of TP was my hostess gift extraordinaire. We rehearsed halting hugs and air kisses while FaceTime-toasting friends who’d abruptly canceled after reading breaking news feeds instead of deciding what to wear.
Twelve hours later, we weren’t rehearsing anymore. We San Franciscans applauded our elected officials for their initiative in declaring a shelter-in-place order. Yes, let’s! Civil pioneers, we are. Fourteen days is nothing.
Fast forward 15 days.
30 days.
Fill-in-the-blank number of days.
It was “The Last Supper” until Thanksgiving—or longer—in all likelihood. Our fate is carved in sand.
Now, as weeks morph into months that may yawn into years, willpower wanes.
“I’m not not going to kiss anyone for much longer,” my neighbor defiantly declared last week as we bemoaned our dwindling patience with today’s libidinal limitations. Waxing poetic about a masked beauty on Bumble, it’s the less-is-more that he found most intriguing: “I have no choice but to linger on his eyes, the hidden mystery behind the mask. That’s what stopped me in my tracks.”
Could our current constraints signal a sort of Slow Love movement, a new savoring of the journey? I admit my recent “distanced” dates have a certain lemonade-on-the-porch-swing sweetness — tentatively perched on park benches or strolling seaside, running from waves like carefree kids. Might driving in the slow lane render me better at discerning a man’s character, kindness, the courage to go the distance? Am I better able to detect red flags when I have iced coffee condensation chilling my fingers instead of a warm, handsome hand prematurely intertwined with mine?
Turns out my hollow envy of Paul proved mercifully fleeting. Instead, I got sad. Beyond-emoji-frowny-faced sad that the 28% of Americans who live alone are living without touch of any kind.
Paul and his exclusive sweetie had just barely limbo-danced under the lowering bar, assuring, in the words of Springsteen, “just a little of that human touch.”
In early April, I’d sat on my driveway for the first time ever (why would I?)— six feet from a visiting friend, who texted en route, “How do drive-bys work?” “I don’t know,” I replied. Between our pitiful two-meter hello and goodbye, we fondly recalled hugs and massages. Our thought bubbles were electric with illicit embraces.
Six weeks later, my thought bubble is about to burst. I sink into bed alone and consider the ardent pleas from B, a card-carrying germaphobe who claims to have been isolating angelically. “I’ve barely let anyone near me. I won’t get you sick! You won’t get me sick! For god’s sake, can’t I make you dinner? Can’t I just hold your hand?”
Versed in the virus’ virulence on plastic, metal, and fabric, I suddenly see objects in his lovely home as landmines in this grown-up rock, paper, scissors game (anything can get you; what will it be?). But, there’s the family-size Purell on his kitchen counter, the ever-present travel size in every pants pocket.
I then indulgently picture us on his long sofa, cozy under separate afghans, Netflix and crystal goblets flickering in the dark.
But I know that Pinot-fueled temptation to quench physical deprivation in a nonexclusive relationship presents potentially dire consequences. Hungry as I am to be held, I decline B’s offer.
Exiled from human touch, this particular diaspora of which we are a part must remain, for now, apart.
