“…[A]s this is the rainy season, I must necessarily suffer from wet and cold.”
--Ulysses S. Grant. Dec. 19, 1852. Vancouver, Washington
I.
Any second now, I am going to be joined in this virtual Netflix Party by a beautiful woman. I sent her the link several minutes ago, painstakingly typing every character of the url into the Hinge messenger text box. I think she has seen it by now.
I am interrupting my normal schedule for this. There are a lot of things I still need to do today. I need to write a blog post—hopefully that will take care of itself—and prepare my remarks for tomorrow's speaker's bureau meeting. I need to write my friend in Paris. I need to prepare a budget and look into writing radio ads or resumes again to rustle up some cash.
I need to do my pandemic workout: a few half-hearted pushups and jumping jacks eked out directly beneath the furious whir of my ceiling fan. I pull the silver chain three times for maximum velocity. Sweat means laundry, and I don't want to do laundry if I can help it. I don't really want to do anything if I can help it.
On Sunday I went with some friends to the river, a brave voyage into the infected unknown. My hair has turned ratty and brown in quarantine, and I wanted a little sun. I got it. Now, as I sit here in my spinny office chair, staring at my computer monitor, my red shoulders burn and chafe against my wrinkled—but sweat-free—shirt.
Who decided to sew scratchy paper tags into the necks of T-shirts? What a catastrophic engineering failure, no doubt some cynical experiment from the cold war era, stubbornly perpetuated by generations of bangladeshi textile workers, defiantly oblivious both to common sense and the ready availability of screen printing technology. I can't help but think about a soiled pamphlet I once found on the bookshelf of my dead grandmother, linking the Jesuits to various national tragedies, from the Vietnam War to 9/11. I allow myself to entertain an idle suspicion that the bright medieval minds behind the hair shirt might have been at work here too.
The movie I have chosen, with the input of this beautiful woman, is Drive. Nicholas Winding Refn's triumphant Hollywood debut, a stylish, neon-steeped Ryan Gosling vehicle with shockingly gory fight scenes so slow and fluid it looks like they were filmed in syrup. It was one of the first films I watched with my ex—a favorite of hers. Why have I chosen it again now, at the cusp of what might be a new relationship?
I am perpetrating an historical act of hubris, like beginning a war by telling the infantry they'll be home by Christmas, or naming a yacht after the Titanic. Those who don't understand the past are doomed to repeat it, yes, but those who voluntarily repeat the past, what does that say about their knowledge of history?
II.
I believe she has seen my message. Maybe she's in the shower. Nobody is as responsive to dating app messages as they are to normal texts.
It is now 10pm. A bit late to be starting an almost-two-hour film, but whatever. I don't need to be at work tomorrow until 1pm. In fact, this comports neatly with my new sleep schedule. I haven't been falling asleep until early morning. Sometimes I try to sleep earlier. I turn out the lights and close my eyes and hold quite still. I even take sleeping pills sometimes.
If I start early, say around 1am, I can hear the security guard in the parking lot listening to strange, percussive Vietnamese music in his golf cart. Ironically, he once accused me of playing loud music in the parking lot late at night, not, I now suppose, because he gets paid to maintain peace and quiet, but because he had loud musical plans of his own and the parking lot wasn't big enough for the both of us. It takes some effort to tune him out.
I try to let my thoughts run completely uninhibited, coaxing dreams out of my subconscious like rabbits from garden holes. Come on out, fellas. Sometimes it works. More often, I lie there in a cold sweat for hours, tangled in sheets, mind racing with insane thoughts.
By 3am, even the security guard goes quiet. There is true and total silence. Everything good and wholesome in Texas is asleep. I think this, not midnight, is what Hamlet meant when he spoke about the witching hour,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the bitter day
Would quake to look on.
I can't relate, of course. This quarantine version of myself is not cut out for bitter business. Any business at all, really. I do not want to drink hot blood. I want to fall asleep.
I know I've been up for a long time when I start to hear the birds. When I hear them twitter and chirp outside my window, I know that the honest, hard working people of Texas will be yawning soon, sitting up, getting dressed, making coffee. Not me. I will be lying in bed, listening to the birds sing.
III.
Netflix Party is a great invention. It's a chrome extension that allows you to watch Netflix simultaneously with other people. It provides a chat bar on the right of the screen where you can discuss what you're watching with your friends in real time. On the chat bar to the right of my screen, I am represented by a circular avatar. It shows a smiling, stylized slice of pizza. Beside it, a cursor pulses endlessly, impatiently, waiting for me to have something to say. When she clicks the link I sent her, a new avatar will spring into existence beside mine. A raccoon, perhaps, or a panda bear. I will say "hi:)" and press play.
Until then, the cursor blinks. I almost want to type, just to satisfy it. I almost want to say something. But what message can I send to myself? What truth can I send echoing into this empty chat that I don't already know?
Without an audience, I have nothing to offer.
IV.
"Sorry! I was in the shower. Hang on."
I am relieved. For a moment there, I was afraid this was going to spiral into a sad Godot homage. If she has downloaded the plugin, she should be on any second. Of course, if she just skimmed my last message, and missed the reminder to downloading, there will be several minutes of waiting yet.
I preemptively type "hi:)" into the box.
Any second now, she is going to join. We are going to watch a movie and talk. Maybe we'll get on. I am going to sleep tonight, and in the morning I will go to work at my pseudo job. Maybe tomorrow night we'll talk again. The state will continue to open. The economy will pick up steam again. I will go back to school in the Fall and find my groove again. I will get a gym membership and my hair will go blond in the sun. I will wake up early like an honest, hard working person, and sleep when my head hits the pillow. I will get a good legal job and pull down an enviable salary. I will put it into a Roth IRA. I will feel good then, and happy.
Any second now, I will press play.
Until then, the cursor blinks.