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Love in a Time of Corona
I am single.
Not just normal-people single, but the kind of singleness that makes your couple friends say “aww”. Having recently ended a serious, 3+ year gay relationship (scientifically equivalent to 21 straight years), I am still in the window where people suggest I “just get back out there” and ask questions like “met anyone you have your eye on?”
They’re not asking the important questions though. Like, “why are you still sleeping with your ex” or “why aren’t you sleeping with that other hottie?” And now, with the coronavirus’ panic-inducing rise, the question no one seems to be asking is: how you gonna fuck?
This is salient because I don’t want to give up my sex life for a low-stakes virus, and dating is a momentum game. Get off the escalator, and you may never make it up to the floor that has the Panda Express, which is my term of endearment for marriage. It’s sweet, sticky, culturally ambiguous and will definitely give you diarrhea. Just. Like. Marriage.
What’s interesting for gay men is that we’ve been through something not unlike Coronavirus, and not so long ago that pics were in black and white and nurses had jaunty little peaked hats (we’re looking at you, 1918).
In June of 1981, 5 gay men were reported to health authorities for PCP pneumonia in Los Angeles. Case histories suggested they…
