Rancid Memories of a Touchy World

Confinement feels like an experience synonymous to shipwrecked, an occlusion from all things related to social aliveness. Like a tumble down this sudden rabbit hole filled with a little bit of sadness, mixed with the persistent echoes of what’s happening here? It’s those voluntary pangs of need that then force us out into a contaminated world of don’t touch me and keep your distance. I feel like a flounder ready to be filleted, yet it’s far from time for that. That’s when I start thinking about the ever so intended milestones of marriage and children, as my would be suitor is somewhere out there, in this gigantic pandemic, wading through the threat of pestilence and disease, just to one day get to me. This brings me solace in some way as my experience is like a fairytale gone rogue and I have no idea; how to honestly accept anything other than, ‘this will all be over soon’ for normalcy will return.

That’s when the persistence of this silent bomb resurfaces on the days, that I find myself going out to fetch food and necessities. It thrusts me back into fits of anger and rage that just get exacerbated, as frivolous bystanders, continue to flit about town, hanging outdoors with little concern that this is a Pandemic! That’s when the rage turns to worry, not about myself, but about humanity. For it leads me to question, how did we get here? 

Then I reel back the lens into the hopes of a continued and even greater existence, that gets me condemning these times, only for the clinging moments of future plans that linger in the ever so hopeful future: that doctorate; falling in love; the wedding; the painted on dreams that make fighting through confinement worthwhile. So I push myself more by continuing through all of the uncertainty and brace myself during these times, even when I find myself confounded by questions and hopelessness. 

So, I ask you, where do we go from here? How do we sift through a world where the rules of connecting have shifted? What then are the ground rules for intimacy? The single ones would like to know, especially in this maddening malaise? 

Because this is all I’ve got, these wheeling questions, that race around in my head, arriving at only one answer, I guess I will have to wait and see. Wait and see, if a man looks my way, maybe on my next visit to Bio Shanti? I don’t know. Even when I revert back to intimate escapades from my past, it takes care of the moment, yet incites mixed emotions of apathy and aloof whatever’s. 

Typically a bustling life of motion is covered up by the pursuit of dreams; however, these current days alarmed with casual encounters of keep your distance and stay away from me, shape these days of uncertainty; hosting experiences that are far from anything intimate and more than likely devoid of touch. Instead they feel like chaperones governing our every move. Which prompts the elucidated ways I slide in between hostile to helpless. 

Supermarkets becoming pilgrimages of refuge as the trek for food and supplies to stockpile, seems to bring out a part of me, I don’t even know. These days I can’t even think about hopes of being hit on while out, because the anguish filled wildebeest snarkily, makes certain to wave the sign, “Nope, stay away from me! No hookups here, so save the pickup lines for sunnier days.”

This thing called confinement, I’ve gotten a bit cozy with it; however, the walls of prevention have created an eerily compelling storyline that reads: Love in the time of COVID, the solitary diaries. What does it look like? Self administered manicures and pedicures; deep conditioning treatments; elongated facial mask treatments; YouTube marathons while scoffing down mini peanut butter treats, picked up at the supermarket. Leaving the imagining of salacious experiences to instead stimulate my tastebuds. The only type of gratifying stimulation and the closest thing to decadence and comfort that has made it my way, in the meantime, during this time of confinement.