by Kate Vozella
Subjects: Alba and Daniel
We tell everyone we met on the subway because it feels more romantic and old New York than the truth. The truth is that we met on tinder. Right before the pandemic. Eventually, we organized a date. That night I went home with you. The next day, the city closed down. I stayed with you for 14 more days. We were simultaneously glued to one another and our devices, tessellating between despondency, despair and desire.
We had no shot at a normal relationship, whatever normal had become in this contemporary digital age, I don’t know, but now, with this pervasive virus, everything between us seemed to be on fast forward. Our masks, which we carefully and strategically painted through our steady and calculated virtual courtship fell just as swiftly away. They were replaced by the medical grade ones, the ones that gave you horrible acne and me crippling anxiety. Or maybe the anxiety was from one another. From the unknown. Although we didn’t know just how much unknown was coming. The virus. The falling. They were one in the same.
When a virus takes over your body it infects its host by injecting its genetic material into the cell or by entering the cell whole. The cell is now under the virus’ commands. It follows the virus’ direction, spreading, infecting, then eventually destroying the cell. Then, it moves on, finding another cell to consume and destroy. Does that sound like courtship to you?
For us, it was part chance, part basic human attraction… with just enough digital distance to make it risk-free and therefore easy. That’s what these apps are about, right? We simultaneously swipe. Gratified by the approval of another, we grow giddy, feverous. The symptoms have begun. Over the next few weeks of interaction we would project all of our fantasies about who we thought or hoped we were and what the other was going to do to confirm or deny that. We were infected. Mutually. There is no blame or individual coersion that can be identified. Like a flock of birds heading towards a brick wall, it was hard to tell who was guiding who - who was directing what and where, but we were heading somewhere, somewhere not good and fast.
We finally met up, late one night at a bar for a drink. It’s possible, no, probable, that we were only destined for a night of good (or moderate or okay) fucking, but now by sheer proximity, mild compatibility and, oh yeah, the world ending and hundreds and thousands of people around us dying... we were made into a couple. A pair. Two fast-tracked virtual strangers, now IRL lovers, reluctant partners, and surely soon to be exes. If we survive this. The relationship or the virus. Or both. We watched the news together, terrified of the numbers rising. What is this fucking covid virus? Am I going to die? Eventually, you said. I thought that was bleak, but honest and fair. We fucked harder that night. Like we were fucking for our lives. 7 months later, we broke up.
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