Saturday, January 2, 2021

1st Things 1st for a New Year....Face the Fear!

January 1st 2021, Brooklyn NYC 

I did something very very brave today.

I got out the scale.

I stepped onto the scale.

I looked down at the number.

It was not a magic number (or a magical thinking number).

It was a number I could accept without defeat!

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Transgressive Paranoia: Thxgiving 2020

Brooklyn NY

(Names removed to protect the narrowly deviant innocents.)

D called C.  Calling without first texting is transgressive and bold.  

Our annual Slothsgiving needed a go or no-go call.  

[Slothsgiving = friends and lovers and friends of friends who gather to eat what we want when want while wearing comfy clothes and watching serviceable and comfortable movies old and new until the collective stupor is so strong the evening and people attending drift away.] 

D: Are we doing this?

C: Yeaaaaaaah.  Right?  We should.  It's fine.  When is Thanksgiving again?

D: NEXT WEEK!!!!

C: We'll keep it small.

D: Cap it at six!

Gatherings with family and friends who do not live with you can
increase the chances of getting or spreading COVID-19 or the fl
u.

Bring your own food, drinks, plates, cups, and utensils.

...but also...

Limit the number of guests.

Have conversations with guests ahead of time
 to set expectations for celebrating together.

So it's a binary choice with options?

C: G wants to invite is German tutor.

D: That's fine.  I trust you.  We live our lives cautiously. 

C: and his friend B.

D: You're good people you have good friends.  I'm going to invite A.

C: Oh that's totally cool.  I've seen his Facebook posts.  He's exactly the right level of COVID safety vigilance plus outrage for me to feel comfortable with that. 

D: What are even the right questions to ask?  Before Truvada we asked each other "When did you last  get tested?" and still wore condoms and that was safe.  Asking someone when they last got COVID tested seems less relevant when we're dealing with something airborne. Wearing a mask isn't the same as a condom.  

C: I'll get a COVID test before Thanksgiving.  That covers G too cause we're the only people we see or spend time with.

Who was the last person I saw?  

G's tutor dropped out.  C says she felt duped because there would be 6, not 4 people.  Without her, we were 5.

Thanksgiving Day warm weather made it just comfortable enough to open a few windows.  I bought a second air purifier with a HEPA filter; also a box of disposable masks from Duane Reade ($30!) which sat mostly unused next to the Cacio e Pepe Cheese Puffs. Ceiling fans lightly moved the air.  I live in a loft that was once a factory - large space, high ceilings.  

My neighborhood, however, could give one pause.  South of South Williamsburg Brooklyn abutting Bed Stuy.  

November 8th the Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism held a 7,000 person wedding nearby, shoulder-to-shoulder, maskless.  

Elsewhere in Williamsburg/Bushwick ravers pray tell have been raving, although 200-500 people is not 7,000, and from the pics some of them are really making masking cute.  

The Hassidim's COVID prevention abstinence has been strong and consistent since mid-March.  Their anti-masking has been largely non-confrontational (and totally unchecked by NYC).  Earlier that week I looked at the NYC cluster map and it was yellow near me.  (I would have thought at least orange.) The red zone in Brooklyn is south and west.  That is the Ocean Parkway Cluster. 

C G with B arrived first.  

We hugged the way we hug now before removing masks - brief, arms up to our shoulders akimbo with heads strenuously in opposite directions with a light back pat and done.

I waved at B.

D: (to B) I'm not going to mask indoors today.  I'm not saying that as an anti-masker.  I want you to know that you don't have to wear your mask to make me feel comfortable or safe.

B: Thank you for saying that.  I'm going to wear mine for a bit.

It sounded to me like "I need a minute and probably a glass of wine."  

G: It's fine.  We're fine.

C: My mom is an epidemiologist and she says we're fine.

D: I called my mom this morning.  She said to "be safe today."  Be safe how?  By doing what?     

We scattered ourselves at a consistent distance from each other instead of glomming around the kitchen island.  

Person-to-person spatial distancing feels instinctive now; how we adjust and shift when someone moves to maintain the gaps between us.

We chatted while laying out many platters and pans of foods.  

A arrived. I gave him a quick pandemic hug after he washed his hands.  He jazz handed waved at everyone else.  It used to be that the /difference between saying hello to a friend, acquaintance, or new friend was the distance between kisses on the check and air kisses.    

We ate a bit of this and that (what we want, when we want!) but even on Slothgiving the eating doesn't ever really get serious till the Turkey came out of the oven.

We scattered onto bean bags and an armchair and a sofa with the middle seat vacant.  

We watched Dolly Parton's Christmas in Square which was nonsensical bonkers.  Perfect.  Next up was the Kristen Stewart starring lesbian Christmas rom com Happiest Season.  Between the wine and the tryptophan and...the movies melted into one another.  I can't recall how either movie ended and neither made sense.

I fell asleep on a bean bag.  Woke up to G and C and B washing dishes and packing up and heading out.  They masked up.  

I slept more while A watched Bombshell
I had already seen it. 
Just last year.  
In. a. movie. theater!

A left.

I masked up and walked my dog named H.

Anxiety never really left the room during our 2020 Slothsgiving. Our uneasiness did get fuzzy and took a few naps.

We weren't 20 people traveling and gathering.  We also weren't alone. We weren't a dedicated bubble. 

This is not a defense or rationalization.  Or is it?   

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Zoom: She Will Not Be Muted

Brooklyn & Ahwatukee. May 2020

I was assembling a cherry bourbon pie from Sister Pie when my Mom called me in need of Zoom.  She’s wants Zoom out of spite.  Not to connect with other people.  

The manager of the housing association in Ahwatukee Arizona is an idiot.  Said property manager will not unmute my mother when she uses the dial-in option only so my mother wants Zoom in an attempt to override that constraint.  

The next 10-15 minutes were spent on the phone together moving through together confusion about how to find Zoom and how to download and was it installing. 

Success.  No wait.  It’s gone.  It’s not.  I helped her find the Zoom software and pin it to the Windows taskbar.  

My parents are social distancing though Mom said Dad is bored and so he’s gone to the local YMCA to see if he’s comfortable with the setup enough to go back.  

“Is that okay?” I ask.  

“He mostly just does the treadmill.  He’ll be fine.”  

Will he?  He will.  

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Why Ask If You Can Help Me When What You Want is to Scare Me?

Saturday April 5 2020 4:40 PM
165 Spencer Street at the corner of Willoughby in Brooklyn NY


A friend translated it...


    Tent of Leah
    [2nd line is Yiddish slang for women] 
I took this photo while out walking our dog, a cocker spaniel named Honey cause she looks like honey. (I went home and Google translated it.)The entrance doors are opaque mirrored.  A week ago, midday the Hassidic woman and children were picking up boxed meals from a folding table.  I took the photo.  It was Shabbat so it seemed like an okay time to be curious, suspicious.A man came out in full Hassid drag (yarmulke, curled sidelocks, under garment with fringe exposed, black vest, pants) and a face mask. He yelled after me.“HELLO. CAN I HELP YOU? DO YOU NEED SOMETHING?”I walked the dog up Spencer Street. “No I’m fine. Thanks."“IS THERE A PROBLEM?”“No. I’m good. Good. Thanks.”Honey stubbornly stopped to obsessively sniff something. “DO YOU NEED SOMETHING?”I yank the dog to be honest.  “No thank you. I’m fine.” I didn’t look back. Maybe he’s operating out of a protective purpose from his perspective that may have embedded into it centuries of trauma and suspicion.He was still a creep. And a bully!
[From my post walk, Google search: Bnos Square of Williamsburg is a School Based Child Care in BROOKLYN NY. The provider does not participate in a subsidized child care program. Pre-K. Categorized under Synagogues. Our records show it was established in 2006 and incorporated in New York. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of $656,171 and employs a staff of approximately 4.]

New Job / Curious but Good Circumstances

November 2019, NYC NY
I started working for the company(a)  that had a majority interest in the company I used to work for (b) and paid for the acquisition of the company I worked at before that (c).

That feels right.   

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Someone Made a Big Mistake. Huge. HUGE.

Sorry I've been absent.  My current company bought the company that laid me off.  So now 85 of my former coworkers are my new coworkers and I'm a hero at my new job for my knowledge of my former job!  If I really stopped to think about it I'd get twisted.

Sunday, July 8, 2018

Nap Rooms and Small Acts of Survival

I need to sit down for a bit, I said.

You know there’s a nap room? my friend replied.

Glorious!

I followed my friend thru a door down a short hall. Sharp left.  There is was.  A long and narrow room.  Four bean bags. Lighting not dim but not bright. The base beat from the main room of the club below came up thru the floor.  The brighter disco music from the bar down the halls permeated lightly as well.

Whoozy. I felt whoozy.  It wasn’t as bad as I’d worried it could be.  I laid down on the bean bag.  I thrashed about a bit first like our dog does sometimes before settling into a spot. I’m big. Six foot three and more than 200 pounds.  So the bean bag was disproportionate. I didn’t want to be greedy by taking more than one. 

This felt safe.  Like a place I could be for a while.  My molly was peaking.   Cresting. Overwhelming.  Why doesn’t every club have a nap room?!  I’d thought I’d thought that but I said it out loud.  I said it out loud many times that night.  Any many times after. 

Tonite will be different.  Tonite this whooziness will pass and I’ll stand up and rejoin the party. The party downstairs. Down the hall. Up on the roof.  I just need some time.  Some time in this nap room.

People rotated in a checked on me.  Sat on a corner of the bean bag and talked or just sat.  Other partiers came and went. Mummer mummer prattle tattle bahaha.  I closed my eyes and listened.

Do you want an Adderall?

YES! Please.  

My hope hoped that addy would be like a life preserver tossed out to me on a line.  The addy will pull be back to land and I will be able to stand without the whoosh and the whoozy and rejoin the party. 

And it did.  I did.  I leaned forward off the bean bag and my thighs and quads found my knees and my calves and my feet and I was upright again.  Sturdily standing I put one foot in front of the other and left the nap room.