Love in The Time of Coronavirus: Part 2

Brave New Post-Pandemic World 

After my disappointing, frustrating final forays on Bumble et al, after my decision to look at “silver-single” life as an opportunity rather than a depressing dead end, I began envisioning what I’d like my 3^rd Act to look like.  Where I would live, what I would I do, who I would do it with … But first, I’d show them –

 

I’d give Bumble a piece of my mind.

 

I wrote to their Customer Service Department.  I wrote them of my myriad concerns, of my unpleasant experiences using their site, laying out the several close encounters of the criminal kind I’d experienced with the supposedly single men who were supposedly using the Bumble dating website for dating.  When, in fact, they were using the Bumble dating website to ensnare unsuspecting women and men, luring them with fake photos and profiles, wooing them with flattery and fiction, conning them through various schemes, and trying to shake the most gullible, desperate and/or hopeful down for money.  Surely this was illegal?  Surely Bumble should utilize some sort of vetting process rather than allow their site to be a conduit for predatory types and criminal enterprises?

 

Surely?

Silly me.  Bumble replies.  They apologized.  "... So very sorry that … We do our best to ….  Please feel free to report all … We are sure your future encounters will …"  Etc. etc. etc.  Before adding a little nugget which essentially stated that, well, they seem to be finding that women in my demographic (read:  not young) seem to be targeted by this type of con artist for this type of activity far more often than, well, other demographics (read:  younger).  Really.  Far more often.  Which I took to mean:  Sorry, lady.  You’re old, and most likely more monied, more willing, more desperate, which makes you a mo’ better mark for "romance scams" rampant of dating sites.  Nothing we can do about that.  Caveat emptor, baby.

 

Well, f*ck you very much.

 

And that marked my first divorce from Bumble.

 

Second date:  Cocktails on the roof of the Empire Hotel at sunset.  His idea.  This time I looked cute, got out of my yoga capris, sported a darling dress, put on a little make-up (quite a challenge after a year without having applied any) ... I arrive a few minutes late.  This time, his face lights up with a dazzling smile as I approach the table.  Which makes me smile as well … At some point after sunset with the arrival of drink #2, our fingertips touched.  I very nearly swooned. I hadn’t touched a member of the opposite sex in about 16 months.  That’s a long time.

 

Several hours and a few more drinks later, he walked me home on the much-changed, still nearly deserted Upper West Side city streets.  In front of my building, a flurry of “I had such fun tonight” and “let’s try to see each other before you leave for Sicily” – but dare we actually touch?  embrace?  kiss?!?

 

Beginning March 2020, the mysterious novel coronavirus began its sweep across the city, the nation, the world, shutting down the city, the nation, the world.  Little by little, then all at once.  In the early days we were still speculating about where the virus came from (Asian wet markets?  Bats, monkeys, pigs, pangolins?  A virology lab in Wuhan, a Chinese city of 11 million we’d never heard of?).  How it spread (by touching infected surfaces?  by touching each other?  by breathing in droplets of sneezes?).  How contagious it was, and for how long (days?  hours?  weeks? permanently?).  Who was most at risk (the elderly, immunocompromised, overweight, everyone?).  How long it would negatively affect our health and well being (for now? or forever? knock us out for a day or two? a week or two?  a month or two?  ad infinitum?).  What it would do to us (put us on a ventilator?  drive us crazy?  kill us all?).

 

Legitimately scary stuff.  

 

So scary that we all stopped leaving the house and started “sheltering at home”; we stopped seeing and hugging our friends and family and started “social distancing”; we stopped working at the office and started “Zooming”.  We also stopped looking each other in the eye, we stopped any and all physical contact including hand shaking, hugging and touching.  We moved into an electronic space of virtual communications, of out-of-body encounters.  

 

For those of you not from New York City, it is unbelievably difficult for us to spend any more time than necessary in our cramped apartments.  Staying at home for an extended period of time feels like torture.  But, for our own health and for the health of the more vulnerable, we did.  We waited until, per the CDC, our governor, the moronic then-president and his team of stupid sycophants, the pestilence would pass.  A few weeks became a few months, a few months has now become a few years -

 

(I didn’t “shelter in place.”  God, how I hate the stupid marketing euphemisms, inspired by our embrace of Silicon Valley and its gadgets, invented to make us feel better about our loss of movement and freedom and our ever-increasing reliance on its technologies and –

But I digress.  Beginning mid-March, when the city and the country began shutting off and shutting down, when my acting, travel photography and other work projects stopped cold, with nothing but time and concern on my hands, I began volunteering.  Four mornings a week I either delivered Meals-On-Wheels food packages to people in my neighborhood, or packed meals for The West Side Campaign Against Hunger or God’s Love We Deliver.  When I wasn’t feeding others, I was shopping for food for myself on the bare shelves of UWS stores.  And taking walks, very long walks, in Riverside and Central Parks as they woke from winter’s slumber into full spring foliage.  

Please do not judge me for not locking myself alone into my apartment for a then-indeterminate period of time.  In part to counter the lack of supplies and hands to help the ill, elderly, and less fortunate.  In part to get the f*ck out of the house so I don’t go mad – which I nearly did - alone in my apartment with only my technologies for comfort.) 

 

I had sworn off on-line dating for good. For ever.  For always.  No mas.  Plus jamais.  Never again.  One – make that one hundred - too many fakers, imposters, posers, liars, scammers, cheaters, thieves, trash –

 

I had been single in the city for a long, long time.  Since the millennium, several stretches of singlehood were interrupted by a series of relationships with NYC DDDs (New York City Damaged Divorced Dads) lasting anywhere from nine to many months.  I start this tale around the year 2000 because at this time I, and the rest of the world, took their search for romantic (and other) partners out of the bars, off the beaches, outside the office, away from the gyms and supermarkets and parties and parks et al, and onto the Internet.  The world was changing, and we all had to change with it.

 

So despite my innate discomfort with and mistrust of the medium, despite my disappointment in the lack spontaneity and romance and providence, I dove in.  With full faith and open arms and a trusting heart.  An honest profile and real photos and realistic but hopeful expectations.  Until the Jeremy fiasco (see Part 1).  And all the others before it.

 

And in 2018 I left for good.  Deleted my profile, closed my accounts.

 

As per my resolve, I tried to embraced the single life.  Took better advantage of New York City, its plays and concerts and restaurants.  Met with my fabulous array of friends.  Started another screenplay.  Looked for real estate in Europe, so I could vacation and ultimately move to Spain or Portugal or Italy or France.  Yes!  It would all work out …

 

And then, days after my return from a real estate shopping trip to Malaga at the end of February, the world shut down, and we shut ourselves in.

 

As I mentioned, non-New Yorkers may not understand just how difficult it is for city-dwellers to stay at home in our claustrophobic apartments with an entire world of music, art, fashion, film, food, et al, at our fingertips.  Until we have no choice but to do so, as that world and everything in it grinds to a halt.  Now imagine being imprisoned in your cramped apartment for an indeterminate amount of time.  Which keeps extending and extending and extending from days into weeks into months into years.  With unreliable, incomplete and ever-changing news reports, hysterical social media postings, and friends texting the latest findings - factual, truth-y, conspiracy, and more - that they just heard on YouTube or Reddit.  While led by an incompetent president and his understaffed, baffled administration.  Isolated and alone in your too-small city apartment.  Devoid of all but the most minimal, masked, distanced, computer-screen-generated, and non-physical human contact.

 

We are mammals, and mammals are social beings.  We have sophisticated ways of communicating, through sound, sight, scent, touch.  We generally live in communities, and unlike reptiles we generally do not eat our young.  We form strong emotional bonds that can last a lifetime.  Our ability to, and need for, social interaction and physical contact separates us from other members of the animal kingdom.  Without it, we suffer and die.

 

During the long months of the pandemic, I and single people like me, locked away alone in our sleeping cells, experienced first hand what happens when conscious, sentient humans are deprived of real human contact.  And I can tell you, it ain’t pretty.  

 

At about week five or six of physical distancing, of no physical contact of any kind – I began noticing that I was feeling kind of miserable.  Disoriented.  Weirdly, uncomfortably.  In a way I hadn’t known before.  This wasn’t garden-variety depression.  I think I started to go a little mad.  Despite all my best efforts to turn this adversity into an opportunity! To use this time to help my fellow humans by volunteering to pack and deliver food!  To continue coaching!  To get out of the house as often as possible, to take advantage of spring in the nearly deserted city, reveling in the beauty of our parks as they began to burst with budding trees and blooms flowers!  To use Zoom and other technologies to stay connected and stay in shape!  To become fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian!  To cook more!  To write more!  To –

 

But as days became weeks became months became more than a year without any real person to person, skin to skin physical touching or hugging or kissing, for the first time in my life I felt a sort like I would lose it. 

 

(I am of a generation which became dependent upon computers and living virtually after the age of 30.  Our brains and identities had developed not on-line but in person, not screen to screen but face to face.  Initially computers helped us work more efficiently, allowed us to play some lame games, delivered our messages and documents faster than paper.  Living on-line – shopping, dating, sexing, researching, etc., came later.  We weren’t born to it like later generations.  Boomers and early GenXers may be the last of interation of humans of this kind; future generations will be much altered by this computer connection.  

So what I'm saying is, when we were deprived of the real thing, we felt it.  Deeply.)

 

At about week five or six, it got so bad that for weeks and into months, every afternoon and evening, I put on the same fuzzy fuchsia unwashed robe.  Just so I could breathe in the scent of a human being.  That the being was me didn’t seem to matter.  I needed to experience some physical form of actual humanity.  I still have not washed that robe.  Just in case another variant shuts us in again.

 

Date #3.  The make or break.  Three’s a charm; or three strikes, you’re out.  I suggested we listen to a local violinist who plays in the courtyard of her brownstone while the Broadway and other theatres she usually plays in remain dark.  Then walk to Riverside Park to see the sunset.  Then walk to Central Park to watch the moon rise. Before I leave for Europe for two weeks the following day, and he leaves for Europe for two weeks the day I return.

 

After a spring, summer, fall and another winter of Covid 19 and its progeny Alpha, Beta, Delta, Delta AY, Omicron 1, 2 or whatever, a full year of masking, social distancing, sheltering at home (ugh and ugh), of not touching or hugging or kissing, I’d had enough.  I didn’t care what the CDC or anyone recommended, I needed to get out of my apartment and out of the city. So I got on a plane and flew west to the open air and mountains, hiked around northern AZ and southern UT and Sedona.  

 

And with all the alone time and meditation and breathing and communing with the gods, at some point I realized that no, I was wrong wrong wrong.  While I could indeed spend the rest of this life as the wildly independent cool aunt, the interesting neighbor, the fabulous friend, if I was to be truly honest with myself, that simply wasn’t enough. After spending a year physically apart from my fellow human beings, experiencing firsthand what my later years could feel like to live alone and on my own, I realized that as much as I would like to be at peace with it, in my heart of hearts I wasn’t.  I might go mad.

 

And so in the spring of 2021, some time after returning from Sedona, with the world still masking, avoiding eye contact, and not touching, I held my nose and returned to Bumble.  I uploaded a few more recent, flattering but real photos, rewrote my sincerest profile, and started scrolling and swiping.

 

Reluctantly. But hope springs eternal.

And we kissed.  Finally.  For the first time.  On a bench in Central Park, under the full June moon.  And it was good.  Fire and ice, the sun, moon and stars.  Then not again until weeks later, until we both returned stateside.  Well worth the wait.

 

Sometimes, there's God, so suddenly.*

*Tennessee Williams

Coda

He's tall and handsome and European.  Ironically, German.

He's brilliant and educated and thoughtful and a college professor.

He's got warm brown eyes, a bright smile, and a shock of the most gorgeous silver hair you've ever seen.

He's almost preternaturally attentive and considerate and generous and complimentary and sweet.

He's an involved father of three sons, and a concerned, involved citizen of the world.

He's sexy af.

He's one of the best men I've ever met.

And, currently, he's mine.

And I met him on Bumble.

Go figure.