The last time I was kissed by a man, it felt like the end of a chapter, the kind you pause over, time thickening around you, feeling the story settle in your bones like radiation. I knew it would be the last time for a long time. He was handsome in an absurd, cinematic way, and threaded that line between rough and tender that men in certain, old-school professions tend to capture. “You take care of yourself,” was what he told me when he had to go.
In the early stages of the pandemic, I sat with another friend in the kind of restaurant I tend to love wherever I am in the world — cluttered and somewhat French — spilled my secrets for shock value, and told him how my years as a sexual outcast in a prestigious and clique-y Southern private school had prepared me well for the inevitable social distancing nightmare/dance of death that was to come. “So you’re making up for lost time, huh,” my friend said, irritated at the vulgar way I teased him. “I am, actually,” I said through a mouthful of shrimp, like the degenerate I’ve been all along.
My philosophy is that you must love while you can, kiss while you can, have your heart ripped from your chest and be devoured while you can, resurrect yourself while you can, say thank you for everything while you can. I think the pandemic rather proves me right. You never really know when society will crumble and remake itself, or when the scythe will come down.
In Lars von Trier’s gorgeous “Melancholia,” the point is made that people with psychological problems may just be useful as the world ends — and the apocalypse, I believe, is not linear, each of us is a little, walking apocalypse, and so the world is therefore always ending. A recent chat with my psychiatrist at Howard University confirmed to me that clinicians can and do sometimes take a similar view: “You were more prepared for this than a lot of other people,” he told me. “You’re used to trauma and shock and unpredictability. It’s just that now you also have the tools to process them in a better way — or so it seems to me.”
What to do when you are stronger, as I have recently become, and thus capable of action? You must save what you love, of course.
I liked that idea, as lifted from “The Last Jedi.” But saving what you love isn’t always glorious or inspiring. Sometimes it’s just being like Kirsten Dunst’s character in “Melancholia” — building a tiny shelter for a scared little kid as Earth comes to an end. Because the things we do exist beyond our time here. Because courage is doing what you must, even if you know the outcome already.
Social responsibility, on the other hand, is much more boring, and thus harder, than heroism. I’m often asked by friends how I’m handling the sexual ramifications of the lockdown, which basically come down to staying celibate unless our partner is living with us. For all its prudishness, or, actually, because of its prudishness, the United States is a nation driven and animated by desire. We define ourselves by sex, or lack thereof. As the wonderful Dr. Jennifer Gunter has already noted — as restrictions are eventually lifted, the threat of wild behavior, and thus an uptick in STDs, is very real. I am reminded of those plague orgies I took such an interest during AP European History, those delicate cellular membranes between sex and death.
I am lucky to have memories. If you look at mental health studies, one of the things they tend to hammer home is that memories sustain us more than our possessions do — and I have had quite a trove to pick from, lately. It’s a joy and a privilege to be desired in this sad world of ours, and like I said before, we must do what we can, when we can. Besides desire, I discovered that love, much like the apocalypse, is not linear. There is no ending or beginning to it, instead it pools around our ankles, like sunlight, like gold. In a time of crisis and death I am enveloped in love, like a veil that makes life seem softer than it is. Love is made from the same base materials as angels in stories, random and full of grace. Sometimes, it comes back. Other times, it just shines on from a distance, like the eyes of stars, gorgeous precisely for being inexplicable.
“You take care of yourself,” my friend told me. I’ve decided, as of late, that taking care of yourself is knowing, really knowing, that you’re never really alone. I’m privileged enough to share my living space with a wonderfully droll and huggable 8-year-old child, as well as a stylish and affectionate cat, though I sometimes wonder if I am alone with thoughts and desires, especially when another night darkens around the edges and the ambulance sirens wail. Yet thoughts like that are a wave that crash onto something much more solid inside me.
In other words, if you’re single or separated by distance and shelter-in-place orders in the middle of this shitshow and feeling pain — listen to yourself. Really listen. Find the wave and find the rocks inside you. Let them do what they’re meant to do. Dig up memories out of old boxes, hold them up to the light. Isolation is hard for us tender creatures, but it’s not impossible. This chapter will end. Maybe the next one will be more interesting, or maybe it will not, but either way — we go on.
Image credit: Brieuc Saffré
OMG, this is absolutely beautiful. Thank you.