Rehosting "Living with covid-19"
Adapting to a brave new world, with just a handful of men. We’ll start all over again
Mar 12, 2020
She doesn’t love me. How could she. How could I have thought she could. I’m a fucking idiot.
It’s not fun any more. The fantasy that ennobled me and drove me to rise above my terrible habits is ruined.
She likes me, of course she does — but not quite enough. I’m not boyfriend material — I am lover material. I’m the weirdo freak she wants to impregnate her, while she gets some normal guy with a job to raise it. My son. Randy junior.
Woulda coulda shoulda. What did I do wrong. How did I miss the chance, when and where. I obsess about these things. Not really because I want to be better in the future and learn from my mistakes, but because in hyper focusing on the mistakes, I get to project into the past and live there, for as long as something doesn’t break my concentration. I’m miserable — of course. But I’m still in love. And I am if nothing else, a romantic. You can’t learn from the past. You can’t bathe in the same river twice. You can just boil yourself in a soup of your own filth.
She speaks to me as if nothing has changed. She tells me I look nice without the beard. Stutters as she says it, fumbles the delivery. In any other world, it would have been terribly cute. It takes me a moment to comprehend what she just said, then I belly laugh. I cut off the beard to make myself ugly. I know what my chin looks like, and it’s not impressive. I’m bald and hairless and I have bad posture — unless I’m in love, then I stand up straight whenever I see her by instinct. I look like a freak. What makes it really funny though is, I also grew the beard to look ugly. I don’t dress this way for you. I do it for myself, because I hate myself.
I saw it coming, too. Woulda coulda shoulda. A woman will always hurt herself in spectacular ways if you let her. And if you make the crucial mistake of empathising with her instead of telling her what to do, like a dog or a child, she will just hurt you too. Or rather, you will hurt you. This is on you buddy.
I say I’m sorry about earlier, I was just in a bad mood and had to get it out of my system. I’m sorry I didn’t take your fears and anxieties about the corona virus seriously. I recognize that you are upset and I was not being considerate about your feelings. Are you doing okay? I can tell that you are upset.
Oh no, she says, I thought the piano playing was great, fantastic even. You’re a great musician.
It’s not supposed to sound good. The music I write is supposed to sound a little bit annoying. It does to me. She genuinely enjoys it, and it is beyond me to understand why.
I will never again compete for a woman. She must come to me. That shit is for kids, when you have all the time in the world. And now we’re all running on borrowed time.
Schools are closing. That’s a bad sign. Who cares about toilet paper, if push comes to shove you can improvise, and I have a ton of shitty books. But I should stock up on nicotine gum and energy drinks I guess. Or maybe not. All I ever needed to do anything was have an excuse. Maybe it’s time to quit.
I welcome it all. “It only kills the old and frail”. Good, that means all politicians are going to die. The world run by the senile. There isn’t a great big conspiracy of secret hidden powerful groups — or well, it is, but it’s not a racial thing or whatever. it’s just old people. American politics are the worst in this regard, the presidential election is just a beauty pageant for senior citizens. For some reason politicians are excluded from the modern cultural notion that old people are useless idiots who need help setting their VCRs.
Why is corona being taken seriously when sars and swine flu and all the rest of them weren’t? Why isn’t this “just a media hysteria”? Because it kills old people, and the world is run by the senile. They’re panicking. It’s basic self interest.
“It’s a designed bioweapon to eradicate the male population of Taiwan”? No. It’s a bioweapon designed to kill the leaders of the western world. Or maybe not designed to, but you know, mistakes into miracles. Happy little accidents.
I finally understand the gay community. I want the bug. I welcome it all. Let it wash over us. I welcome it for the same reason I am for universal basic income.
I’m heartbroken. I could have made you so happy. But it’s too late now. The walls are closing in. Andrew Yang has already won. I will never touch you. The risk is too great. We are going to live in perfectly atomised apartheid. Separate but equal. The virus is no disease, it is the physical manifestation of perfect equality.
I play the piano, roommates have some friends over for dinner. A girl comes in to say hello. She breaks my concentration and I stop playing. I shake her hand, and make some crack about not being afraid of human contact, in these dangerous times. She responds in turn by saying she just came home from Spain, so here’s a little bit of corona virus for you. Presumably it’s bad in Spain, I don’t really know.
The instant I touch her, I feel a shortness of breath. Tightening of the chest. I feel cold, and nauseous. I feel sick.
Because she’s ugly. She’s disgusting.